100 Years of Cool Movies

On a recent sweltering day, I sought relief the way I have since childhood: by going to a movie. Later, I remembered that this year marks the hundredth anniversary of air-conditioned movie theaters. My book New York City Firsts states that the Rivoli Theater in Times Square was the first movie theater with modern air conditioning.

The Rivioli Theater, a few months before it first offered air conditioning in 1925

The key word here is “modern.” Other movie theaters had already introduced some primitive form of air conditioning. For example, the Central Park Theater — which despite its name was in Chicago, not New York — is sometimes cited as the first air-conditioned movie theater. Starting in 1917, the Chicago theater relied on a mechanical system. Fans blew air across huge blocks of ice, which had to be replaced daily. The system did cool the auditorium but made it rather damp.

The Rivoli, on the other hand, used a humidity-controlled system developed by the genius who created air conditioning in the first place: Willis Carrier. He had been continuously improving his invention since introducing it in a Brooklyn printing plant in 1902. For the theater, Carrier developed a centrifugal compressor system called the chiller. It would be affordable even for a relatively small theater, with fewer than 3,000 seats. The Rivoli was small for a theater palace, with a little more than 2,000 seats.

With much fanfare, the Rivoli showed its first air-conditioned movie on Memorial Day 1925. The cool atmosphere was such a hit that over the next five years, Carrier installed the system in some 300 movie theaters across the country. Long before home air conditioning became commonplace, Americans everywhere could find relief from the heat for the price of a movie ticket.