Goodbye Paris Cinema—from Palace to Porn to Worcester Icon

I just read that the wrecking ball is coming for Worcester's famed Paris Cinema next Wednesday.  If I were at home, I'd try like crazy to get photos of the interior of this Worcester icon before it bites the dust.  But since I am now in Mexico, all I can do is re-post something I first posted seven years ago, as part of an essay about an art exhibit featuring my photos and other prints of famed Worcester icons at the Futon Company (which is now also part of Worcester's history.)


I already knew about the saga of the Paris Cinema (originally called the Capitol Theatre) which is on Worcester’s Common, behind City Hall. I first researched it for Preservation Worcester back in 2005. By then, what had begun as a palatial movie palace in the 1920’s had deteriorated into a seedy “Adult Cinema” offering gay porn. In January of 2005, according to an article in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, “a series of police raids resulted in the arrests of 22 men for engaging in sexual acts in the theater, some in groups and others by themselves.” City Manager Michael V. O’Brien said that the cinema “painted an ugly picture of downtown at a time he’s pushing for revitalization.”

In January, 2006, the Paris Cinema was closed down by the authorities and has sat empty ever since, awaiting the wrecking ball, but Preservation Worcester has been trying to save it from this fate. The theater was once the pride of Worcester. Inside, much of the original architectural splendor is still there, although in a dilapidated condition.



As I wrote in my summary for Preservation Worcester’s “Most Endangered” list, the Capitol Theatre (now Paris Cinema) is a rare surviving example of the “atmospheric” theaters that were popular across the United States during the movie palace era of the early 20th century. Architect John Eberson developed the atmospheric style of theater design in 1923. He wanted to distract Americans from life’s problems by creating an atmosphere of rest and beauty, “a magnificent amphitheatre under a glorious moonlit sky in an Italian garden, in a Persian court, in a Spanish patio or in a mystic Egyptian templeyard, all canopied by a soft moonlit sky” as he put it.

Eberson had his own alliterative slogan for what he was doing: “Prepare Practical Plans for Pretty Playhouses—Please Patrons—Pay Profits.”

(Don’t you love the alliteration and the optimism of the era—it’s a far cry from being raided by the police for encouraging public group sex.)

Originally seating 2,500, the 1926 Capitol Theatre was the first of three atmospheric palace theaters built in Worcester in the late 1920’s. It allowed its patrons to live the fantasy of attending a show in an outdoor amphitheater in Spain.



Not only was its interior elaborately detailed with decorative plaster and wrought iron in the Spanish style, but the impression was enhanced by projectors that created the effect of twinkling stars and moving clouds on the arched ceiling of its auditorium and second floor mezzanine lobby. Although the building was converted to a multiplex cinema in the 1960’s, much of the interior and ornamental detailing still survives. But no one knows in what condition….

When photographing the Paris Cinema, I made one photo which shows the place in the rather grim (yet graphically sophisticated) condition it’s in today, incorporating an empty storefront and an African hair braiding shop, but in the other photo I’m submitting to the show, I used color to suggest the fantasy palace that it was at the beginning—a place designed to distract the citizens of Worcester from the harsh realities of the Depression by providing them a fantasy for a few hours that they were viewing the glamorous world of 1930’s Hollywood from a seat in a Spanish amphitheater, under the twinkling stars and moving clouds.

The Naked Truth about Worcester's Turtle Boy

(A photo of Worcester's infamous Turtle Boy statue that I just saw on Facebook inspired me to re-post  from August 2010 my inside story of the 102-year-old statue, which has earned a web site, its own song and an endless number of smutty jokes.  When you read Turtle Boy's story, keep in mind that this was written four years ago and some of the events celebrating him that are mentioned here may no longer be available.)

Once upon a time, (in 1905 to be exact), in the city of Worcester, MA, there was a wealthy woman named Harriett P.F. Burnside who worried about the poor horses who pulled carriages and carts all over town. And she wanted to do something to honor the memory of her late father, a prominent Worcester attorney. So she gave $5,000 to the city of Worcester to create a fountain in Central Square that would provide four drinking basins for the thirsty horses (and a lower trough for the city’s dogs.)

The artist chosen to design the sculpture that would be the fountain was Daniel Chester French, famous for the seated statue of Old Abe at the Lincoln Memorial, but he was so busy that he gave the job to his protégé Charles Harvey, who designed and sculpted it. When Harvey died, (slashed his own throat in Bronx Park because of “phantom voices of unseen persons who bade him take his life” as The New York Times described it in Jan.,1912) another sculptor called Sherry Fry finished it and it was unveiled to Worcester in 1912. By then automobiles were beginning to crowd out the city’s horses.

What the schizophrenic Harvey created was a statue of a naked boy riding on the back of a hawksbill sea turtle, who seems to be in mid-flight. Originally water gushed from the turtle’s mouth, but like many things in Worcester, the fountain outlived its usefulness, and in 1969 the sculpture was moved across the street to a spot behind City Hall.

The statue, universally called “Turtle Boy” by Worcester natives, has had a colorful career. In April of 1970, according to Albert Southwick of the Worcester Telegram, vandals struck and the extremely large and heavy statue vanished. Several months later it reappeared just as mysteriously. According to Southwick “It was said that the Worcester police had agreed not to prosecute whoever was responsible.”

Southwick also revealed that “many years ago” Margaret Getchell, daughter of a noted Worcester physician, wrote a children’s book “The Cloud Bird” of eight chapters—each chapter about a Worcester landmark. Chapter eight, “The Adventurer in Armor” tells about a girl named Dorothy Ann who approaches Turtle Boy and sees that he is struggling to hold the Turtle in place. The boy tells her the turtle is “a great adventurer. See he is girding up his armor now.”

Dorothy Ann learns that the boy is a faun who persuades the girl to climb on the back of the turtle with him. It immediately runs down the street “all four legs going so fast you could barely see them.” They reach the ocean, the turtle leaps off a high rock cliff and sinks down into the green waters below. The peculiar trio spend a day sporting in the water until the Turtle truckles back to Salem Square.

According to Wikipedia, “Turtle Boy has become a mascot for Worcester in a way analogous to the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen.”

But if you study my Turtle Boy photo above, you will see that, unlike the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, our city’s mascot, like so many other things in Worcester, is a little weird. A hundred years ago no one smirked at the statue and made smutty remarks about the relationship of Boy to Turtle, but nowadays, when WAAF personality Hill Man declared Turtle Boy to be one of the 25 great places in Massachusetts and interviewed passers-by on camera as to what exactly they thought was happening between the boy and the turtle, most of them blushed and waffled about an answer.

The boy’s infamous love affair with the Turtle has made him a huge favorite. “Turtle Boy is the reason I decided to stay in Worcester” declared Scott Dezrah Blinn on the website “Worcesterturtleboy.com.”  Yes, Turtle Boy has his own website. He also has a fan club on Facebook. A yearly Turtle Boy Music Award caps a series of third Thursdays when local musicians vie for the honor.

If you want more, I suggest that you check into the Turtle Boy website, created by Claudia Snell, and click on the video of the Roadkill Orchestra, Dr. Gonzo’s house band, performing their song “Turtle Boy” at Dr. Gonzo’s Xtreme Freaky Tiki Grilling Championship on 6/3/10. (Dr. Gonzo’s store, which features “Uncommon Condiments” along with musical performances, is also one of Worcester's landmarks.)

As you can see, Turtle Boy’s popularity is boundless among his followers in Worcester, who lovingly refer to their city as "Wormtown" and “The Paris of the Eighties”.

Found Art: The Diners of Worcester

The city of Worcester (where I live) takes great pride in the city’s architectural landmarks and its contributions to modern civilization. Worcester boasts a number of “famous firsts”, including barbed wire, shredded wheat, the monkey wrench, the first commercial Valentines, the birth control pill, the first perfect game in major league baseball and the yellow Smiley Face icon.

 We have Coney Island Hotdogs with its famous neon sign, and the Boulevard Diner where Madonna ate spaghetti after a concert at the Centrum.  We have Table Talk Pies and Sir Morgan’s Cove (now Lucky Dog) where the Rolling Stones in 1981 gave an impromptu free concert. We have Mechanics Hall, where Henry Thoreau, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt,  Susan B. Anthony and Hillary Clinton have  orated and Auburn Park, where Robert Goddard sent the first liquid fuel rocket into space.

Worcester takes special pride in the  diners that  can still be found throughout New England and as far as Florida, because most of them were originally built  by the Worcester Lunch Car and Carriage Manufacturing Company which produced over 600 diners between 1906 and 1957.  The Miss Worcester Diner still stands in its original location across the street from the former factory.

Every year the Family Health Center of Worcester asks artists to donate examples of their work to the Art in the City Auction.  This year’s auction will take place on Friday, May 4, 2012 at Worcester’s famous Mechanics Hall.

I like to donate paintings or photographs to Art in the City every year, because the  Family Health Center provides health services to over 33,000 patients from greater Worcester, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay.

Last year I donated four matted and framed photographs of Worcester landmarks which I had originally taken for an exhibit called “Welcome to Worcester” in  2010.  The show was put together by Elizabeth Hughes of the Futon Company on Highland Street. The photographs I donated last year featured the Owl Shop, the famous sign of Coney Island Hot Dogs, and photographs of the Miss Worcester Diner and the Boulevard Diner.  All the photos sold, and the diner photos were especially popular, so this year I’m donating  embellished digital photos of Ralph’s Diner (where the owner, Ralph Moberly’s ashes are buried beneath a tombstone in front) and a different shot of the Boulevard Diner at night.  I also contributed a photo of the Owl Shop’s neon sign against the bell tower of City Hall, and the clock tower of the Worcester State Hospital, long condemned and in danger  of being torn down until it was decided to replace it with a copy of the original building.

If the photos continue to prove popular with the public, I hope to photograph a half dozen more of the classic dining cars that still survive in Worcester and its environs, because the lovingly maintained, art deco details of these neighborhood restaurants, both inside and outside, are certainly found art.

The Saga of Turtle Boy

Once upon a time,(in 1905 to be exact), in the city of Worcester, MA, there was a wealthy woman named Harriett P.F. Burnside who worried about the poor horses who pulled carriages and carts all over town. And she wanted to do something to honor the memory of her late father, a prominent Worcester attorney. So she gave $5,000 to the city of Worcester to create a fountain in Central Square that would provide four drinking basins for the thirsty horses (and a lower trough for the city’s dogs.)

The artist chosen to design the sculpture that would be the fountain was Daniel Chester French, famous for the seated statue of Old Abe at the Lincoln Memorial, but he was so busy that he gave the job to his protégé Charles Harvey, who designed and sculpted it. When Harvey died, (slashed his own throat in Bronx Park because of “phantom voices of unseen persons who bade him take his life” as the New York Times described it in Jan.,1912) another sculptor called Sherry Fry finished it and it was unveiled to Worcester in 1912. By then automobiles were beginning to crowd out the city’s horses.

What the schizophrenic Harvey created was a statue of a naked boy riding on the back of a hawksbill sea turtle, who seems to be in mid-flight. Originally water gushed from the turtle’s mouth, but like many things in Worcester, the fountain outlived its usefulness, and in 1969 the sculpture was moved across the street to a spot behind City Hall.

The statue, universally called “Turtle Boy” by Worcester natives, has had a colorful career. In April of 1970, according to Albert Southwick of the Worcester Telegram, vandals struck and the extremely large and heavy statue vanished. Several months later it reappeared just as mysteriously. According to Southwick “It was said that the Worcester police had agreed not to prosecute whoever was responsible.”

Southwick also revealed that “many years ago” Margaret Getchell, daughter of a noted Worcester physician, wrote a children’s book “The Cloud Bird” of eight chapters—each chapter about a Worcester landmark. Chapter eight, “The Adventurer in Armor” tells about a girl named Dorothy Ann who approaches Turtle Boy and sees that he is struggling to hold the Turtle in place. The boy tells her the turtle is “a great adventurer. See he is girding up his armor now.”

Dorothy Ann learns that the boy is a faun who persuades the girl to climb on the back of the turtle with him. It immediately runs down the street “all four legs going so fast you could barely see them.” They reach the ocean, the turtle leaps off a high rock cliff and sinks down into the green waters below. The peculiar trio spend a day sporting in the water until the Turtle truckles back to Salem Square.

According to Wikipedia, “Turtle Boy has become a mascot for Worcester in a way analogous to the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen.”

But if you study my Turtle Boy photo above, you will see that, unlike the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, our city’s mascot, like so many other things in Worcester, is a little weird. A hundred years ago no one smirked at the statue and made smutty remarks about the relationship of Boy to Turtle, but nowadays, when WAAF personality Hill Man declared Turtle Boy to be one of the 25 great places in Massachusetts and interviewed passers-by on camera as to what exactly they thought was happening between the boy and the turtle, most of them blushed and waffled about an answer.

The boy’s infamous love affair with the Turtle has made him a huge favorite. “Turtle Boy is the reason I decided to stay in Worcester” declared Scott Dezrah Blinn on the website “Worcesterturtleboy.com.”

Yes, Turtle Boy has his own website. He also has a fan club on Facebook and often stars in the Worcester Magazine cartoon Zanzo Moxie by Veronica Hebard. A yearly Turtle Boy Music Award caps a series of third Thursdays when local musicians vie for the honor.

If you want more, I suggest that you check into the Turtle Boy website, created by Claudia Snell, and click on the video of the Roadkill Orchestra, Dr. Gonzo’s house band, performing their song “Turtle Boy” at Dr. Gonzo’s Xtreme Freaky Tiki Grilling Championship on 6/3/10.

Turtle Boy’s popularity is boundless among his Wormtown followers, which is why I included his photo in the Worcester icons featured in the “Welcome to Worcester” art show now on view at the Futon Company on Highland Street throughout September. (Dr. Gonzo’s store, which features “Uncommon Condiments” along with musical performances, is also one of the landmarks celebrated in my digitally enhanced photos and Doug Chapel’s illustrations.)

The reception for the “Welcome to Worcester” show, at the Futon Company store, 129 Highland Street, opposite the Sole Proprietor Restaurant, will be held on Thursday Sept. 9 from 6 to 8 p.m. offering goodies from another Worcester icon—Coney Island Hot Dogs.

College students new to Worcester are especially welcome to drop by and learn more lore about the city its inhabitants lovingly call “The Paris of the Eighties”.

Tales Of Worcester's Famous Diners and Other Icons

(Please click on these photos to make them bigger--wish I knew why they appear so small here!)

On Friday I took to the Futon Company the photos I had framed for the “Welcome to Worcester” art exhibit which opens today and lasts until Sept. 30. The owner of the Futon Company, Elizabeth Hughes, came up with the idea of putting together a show celebrating certain Worcester landmarks as portrayed by two artists in different media: Doug Chapel’s illustrations and my digitally enhanced photographs.

On Sunday, Aug. 8, the show will move across Highland Street to the parking lot of the Sole Proprietor Restaurant, as part of “Art in the Parking Lot” . And on Sept. 9, from 6 to 8 p.m. there will be a reception at the Futon Company, 129 Highland Street, which will include hot dogs from Coney Island, whose famous sign is featured on the postcard for the show.

Here is a sneak preview of the photos I took. (Don’t know how many of them will be hung on the walls, but smaller, inexpensive prints of all these and more will be for sale at “Art in the Parking Lot” on Aug. 8.)



The Owl Shop, on Main Street, was opened in 1946 by George Photakis, offering tobaccos, cigars, pipe tobaccos, even hookahs. George’s son John Photakis took it over in the seventies but died in a fatal car accident in 2002 at age 51. His son Zack now runs the store.The Owl Shop, with its green-eyed neon owl, has been attracting photographers for over 60 years. I printed a day photo and a night one, but I think my favorite is a shot of just the sign with the Italianate tower of City Hall looming behind it.


The Boulevard Diner is even more a magnet to photographers. (Madonna ate spaghetti here one night after her show at the Centrum. ) It’s the most beautiful of Worcester’s famous diners. (I hope you know that just about all the diners in the Northeast were produced in Worcester at the Worcester Lunch Car Company.) The “Bully” was #730, produced in 1936 and was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week except for Sunday nights. I tried both day and night shots of this iconic diner, which frequently has a host of motorcycles parked outside. My favorite is the photo in the center with the word “Diner” against the sky. It has a lonely Edward Hopper atmosphere even though the people are hanging out together—yet they seem isolated in the glare of the neon.



The Aurora on Main Street was originally an elegant hotel built in 1897, but it deteriorated drastically along with the neighborhood. It was rehabilitated to be inexpensive apartments, especially for artists. Arts Worcester has its gallery and headquarters in the building, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. I shot the building at an angle to capture the feeling of the neighborhood. Then I noticed the reflection of the Aurora in a window of what I think is an empty store—perhaps it’s public art, judging from the mannequins. I thought the reflection provided an interesting perspective on the venerable Victorian tenement.



The Corner Lunch and Miss Worcester are two more of the famous Worcester Diners. Corner Lunch on Lamartine Street, no longer in its prime, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. Everyone raves about its breakfasts. According to one fan, it was originally in Babylon, NY only to make it to Worcester in 1968.

A block away, at 302 Southbridge Street, is the Miss Worcester Diner. According to Wikipedia: “ Worcester Lunch Car # 812 was built in 1948 by Worcester Lunch Car Company and is located across the street from the company's (now defunct) Worcester factory. While independently owned and operated, it was used by the Lunch Car Company as a "showroom" diner, and a test bed for new features.” It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.



The other Worcester Icons I photographed for “Welcome to Worcester” include Dr. Gonzo’s—as you can see it’s a store for “Uncommon Condiments”. It also has its own house band--- The Roadkill Orchestra. A few days ago, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette published a column by Dianne Williamson titled “Dr. Gonzo is Wooville’s Biggest Fan.” She wrote, “He’s a merchant, musician, unofficial city ambassador, unpaid local organizer and proud purveyor of all natural spices and sauces with names such as Wicked Wiener Wonder Relish, One Hump Dry Rub No. 2 and another rub whose name could test the tolerance of my editor”. She quoted Dr. Gonzo, who was born J Stuart Esty, as saying,“This town is going through a transformation, and it has an amazing collection of human beings. I’ve traveled around the country and lived in Europe and you can’t replicate Worcester anywhere in the world.”

My last photo shows Turtle Boy on Worcester Common. He is the city’s mascot and has his own facebook page and web site. But he has such a lurid and tumultuous story that I’ll have to save it for my next blog post.

Paris Cinema—from Palace to Porn to Worcester Icon

Beginning on August 1, I’ll be hanging some digitally-enhanced photos of Worcester landmarks in a two-person exhibit called “Welcome to Worcester.”

The exhibit is the brainchild of Elizabeth Hughes who owns the Futon Company shop at 129 Highland Street in Worcester. Elizabeth doesn’t just sell futons—she also encourages local artists by exhibiting their work on the walls of the store.

It was Elizabeth’s idea to call the show “Welcome to Worcester” and to feature some of the city’s iconic landmarks as portrayed by Doug Chapel in his illustrations and in my photographs, which I have digitally enhanced.

The terrific vintage-style postcard advertising the show was designed by Elizabeth’s sister, Victoria Hughes Waters. It demonstrates how Doug Chapel and I differently portray the Coney Island Hotdogs restaurant with its famous neon sign.

The show will also be featured on Sunday, Aug. 8 at “Art in the Parking Lot” across the street from the Futon Company in the Sole Proprietor’s lot--along with local artists, live art and all sorts of surprises.

The reception for “Welcome to Worcester” will be held on Thursday, Sept. 9, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Futon Company and among the treats will be Coney Island’s famous hot dogs.

While photographing some of the funky Worcester landmarks that Doug has immortalized in his cartoons, I learned a lot about their history.

I already knew about the saga of the Paris Cinema (originally called the Capitol Theatre) which is on Worcester’s Common, behind City Hall. I first researched it for Preservation Worcester back in 2005. By then, what had begun as a palatial movie palace in the 1920’s had deteriorated into a seedy “Adult Cinema” offering gay porn. In January of 2005, according to an article in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, “a series of police raids resulted in the arrests of 22 men for engaging in sexual acts in the theater, some in groups and others by themselves.” City Manager Michael V. O’Brien said that the cinema “painted an ugly picture of downtown at a time he’s pushing for revitalization.”

In January, 2006, the Paris Cinema was closed down by the authorities and has sat empty ever since, awaiting the wrecking ball, but Preservation Worcester has been trying to save it from this fate. The theater was once the pride of Worcester. Inside, much of the original architectural splendor is still there, although in a dilapidated condition.



As I wrote in my summary for Preservation Worcester’s “Most Endangered” list, the Capitol Theatre (now Paris Cinema) is a rare surviving example of the “atmospheric” theaters that were popular across the United States during the movie palace era of the early 20th century. Architect John Eberson developed the atmospheric style of theater design in 1923. He wanted to distract Americans from life’s problems by creating an atmosphere of rest and beauty, “a magnificent amphitheatre under a glorious moonlit sky in an Italian garden, in a Persian court, in a Spanish patio or in a mystic Egyptian templeyard, all canopied by a soft moonlit sky” as he put it.

Eberson had his own alliterative slogan for what he was doing: “Prepare Practical Plans for Pretty Playhouses—Please Patrons—Pay Profits.”

(Don’t you love the alliteration and the optimism of the era—it’s a far cry from being raided by the police for encouraging public group sex.)

Originally seating 2,500, the 1926 Capitol Theatre was the first of three atmospheric palace theaters built in Worcester in the late 1920’s. It allowed its patrons to live the fantasy of attending a show in an outdoor amphitheater in Spain.



Not only was its interior elaborately detailed with decorative plaster and wrought iron in the Spanish style, but the impression was enhanced by projectors that created the effect of twinkling stars and moving clouds on the arched ceiling of its auditorium and second floor mezzanine lobby. Although the building was converted to a multiplex cinema in the 1960’s, much of the interior and ornamental detailing still survives. But no one knows in what condition….

When photographing the Paris Cinema, I made one photo which shows the place in the rather grim (yet graphically sophisticated) condition it’s in today, incorporating an empty storefront and an African hair braiding shop, but in the other photo I’m submitting to the show, I used color to suggest the fantasy palace that it was at the beginning—a place designed to distract the citizens of Worcester from the harsh realities of the Depression by providing them a fantasy for a few hours that they were viewing the glamorous world of 1930’s Hollywood from a seat in a Spanish amphitheater, under the twinkling stars and moving clouds.