When the lights went out

How this was made — read before trusting a number

• Theaters, locations, seat counts and statuses come from Cinema Treasures, a crowdsourced, user-edited database. Some entries are incomplete or wrong.
• Opening and closing years were extracted by AI from each theater's written description, with a confidence rating. Many are approximate; some are unknown and those theaters are left off the timeline (counted under “undated”).
• Cinema Treasures records a venue's building opening year. Dedicated movie theaters did not exist in New York before about 1905 (the first projected film here was 1896, shown within vaudeville bills). Older venues that opened as vaudeville or legitimate theaters are therefore shown entering at 1905; their true building-opening year is in each detail card.
• A venue is counted as still lit only if it actually screens films to the public today. Restored palaces now used for concerts (Radio City, the Beacon, the Brooklyn Paramount), Broadway houses and arts centers are dated to when they stopped showing movies; 62 venues are counted active today.
• Seat counts are user-entered and unverified, though the famous houses check out.
• This is not a complete census of every theater that ever existed in the city — only what the source records.
• See the methodology for full detail.