The Moorlyn at the Shore
by Dawn Gari
Title
The Moorlyn at the Shore
Artist
Dawn Gari
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
The building where the Moorlyn is located has been on the Ocean City, NJ boardwalk since 1901. Starting as a bowling alley, called Moores Bowling Casino. It was the main attractions in its time. Movies showed up on the boardwalk since they were seen as good family entertainmentand because at night the girls were all dressed up in their summer finery, and disliked taking a tumble on the dirty floor," so turning to the movies seemed like a logical idea. The Nickelodeon, opened as a 200 seat movie house, and charged 5 cents a seat, and movies haven't left the boardwalk since. In 1922 the Moore Building, formerly the bowling casino, was converted into a movie house and named the Moorlyn Theatre. The Moorlyn was unique in that it presented vaudeville acts and "photoplays", or silent movies with an organ providing musical accompaniment. In a stroke of good fortune, the Moorlyn was somehow spared in the big boardwalk fire of 1927. Then, when the boardwalk was rebuilt closer to the ocean, the Moorlyn was moved with rails, horses, and windlasses up to the new location on the boards. It was the largest building ever moved from one place to another in Ocean City. 1929 the "talkies" came to the cinema. While not every theatre in Ocean City chose to show them, the Moorlyn pushed forward into the new era. In 1970 it was divided into two screens, and then into four in 1989. Closed for a while, the original building was mostly demolished and rebuilt in a different style. The theatre is now one of only two theaters on the Ocean City Boardwalk.
Uploaded
August 26th, 2013
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