William Carlos Williams Center for the Performing Arts
Encyclopedia
The William Carlos Williams Center is a private, not for profit performing arts and cinema complex located in downtown Rutherford
, New Jersey
. The center was named after the Pulitzer prize
winning poet and physician William Carlos Williams
.
The building that the center occupies was originally built in the 1920s as a Vaudeville
theater known as the Rivoli. The Rivoli soon started showing silent movies and eventually "talkies". The theater enjoyed success until a fire destroyed part of the building in 1977. In 1978 a group of philanthropists started the Williams Center Project which open the Center in 1982. The center currently has two live theaters, three cinemas, and an open air meeting gallery. The Bergen County Film Commission is now located in the Williams Center.
The movie theatre now has 4 screens, 3 downstairs and one on the upper level.
Rutherford, New Jersey
Rutherford is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 18,061. It is an inner-ring suburb of New York City, located west of Midtown Manhattan....
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. The center was named after the Pulitzer prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning poet and physician William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
.
The building that the center occupies was originally built in the 1920s as a Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
theater known as the Rivoli. The Rivoli soon started showing silent movies and eventually "talkies". The theater enjoyed success until a fire destroyed part of the building in 1977. In 1978 a group of philanthropists started the Williams Center Project which open the Center in 1982. The center currently has two live theaters, three cinemas, and an open air meeting gallery. The Bergen County Film Commission is now located in the Williams Center.
The movie theatre now has 4 screens, 3 downstairs and one on the upper level.