Criterion Theatre (1932), Cottage Street, Bar Harbor, Maine
Opened in 1932 on Cottage Street in the heart of Bar Harbor, the Criterion Theatre has operated continuously as a cinema for over nine decades, its Art Deco facade a fixed point in a resort town that otherwise reinvents itself with every season.
At a glance
Bar Harbor sits on the eastern shore of Mount Desert Island, Maine — a place that has attracted wealthy summer visitors since the Gilded Age and whose economy rotates entirely around the season of Acadia National Park. The Criterion Theatre, built in 1932, arrived into this world as a year-round amenity for the resident population and a summer-season attraction for the visitors who crowded the island’s hotels and cottages. Its Art Deco detailing — streamlined, precise, confident — belongs to the style’s more restrained phase, the commercial vernacular that translated the vocabulary of Manhattan tower ornament into the language of New England Main Street architecture. The building has operated as a single-screen cinema since opening without interruption, a continuity unusual for a theater of its vintage and an index of Bar Harbor’s stable demand for the kind of communal entertainment a movie house provides.
Key facts
- Built: 1932
- Style: Art Deco
- Address: 35 Cottage Street, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609
- Current use: Cinema — continuously operating since 1932
- GPS: 44.3880° N, −68.2040° W
- Location: Downtown Bar Harbor, one block from the Village Green
History
Bar Harbor’s summer colony in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was among the wealthiest seasonal communities in the United States: Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Fords, and Morgans built estates on the island, and the town center accommodated the infrastructure of resort life — hotels, yacht clubs, restaurants, and entertainment venues. The great fire of 1947 destroyed much of the island’s architectural heritage, including most of the Gilded Age cottages and estates that had defined Bar Harbor’s social geography. The Criterion Theatre, completed fifteen years before the fire, survived, and its survival makes it one of the older intact commercial buildings in the post-fire downtown.
The theater opened during the Depression into a tourist economy that had contracted with the general national slowdown but had not collapsed: Bar Harbor’s wealthy summer visitors were less immediately affected by the Depression’s first years than working-class communities elsewhere, and the resort retained enough activity to support a new cinema. The Criterion served both the summer population and the year-round island residents, whose needs for entertainment during the long winter months are more constant than the seasonal visitor economy suggests.
The building has been operated by a succession of owners and at various points faced the pressures that threatened single-screen theaters everywhere. Each time the theater has reopened rather than closed, its survival reflecting both community attachment to the building and the steady throughput of visitors to Acadia National Park who pass through Bar Harbor’s downtown.
What you see
The Criterion’s facade on Cottage Street is a composed Art Deco front in brick with applied ornamental elements in the entry surround and cornice: geometric incised patterns, stepped parapets, and horizontal string courses that define the floors without resort to historic ornament. The entrance marquee is the street-facing element that most clearly announces the building’s function; the theater’s name in raised letters above the marquee sets the reading distance for pedestrians walking from the Village Green. Inside, the single-screen auditorium is a moderately sized house whose proportions have been preserved through the building’s decades of operation. The screen and projection equipment have been updated — digital projection is now standard — but the spatial relationship between the audience and the screen follows the original 1932 design.
Arriving at the Criterion in summer, when Cottage Street fills with Acadia visitors and the island is at peak density, is to experience the building as it was intended: a neighborhood movie house embedded in the daily life of a commercial street, the marquee cycling titles at the same speed as the ocean tides.
Practical information
- Cinema schedule: current-release films from late spring through fall; limited winter programming; check the Criterion Theatre website
- Tickets: available at the box office and online
- Season: peak season May–October; reduced hours November–April
- Parking: town parking lots on Cottage Street and Firefly Lane; the Village Green is 1 block south
- Time needed: allow time for the film plus a walk to the Village Green pier for Frenchman Bay views
Getting there
Hancock County Bar Harbor Airport (BHB) is approximately 9 miles northwest; regional connections serve Boston (year-round) and Portland (seasonal). Portland International Jetport (PWM) in Portland, Maine lies about 55 miles southwest along US Route 3 and Interstate 95. Downeast Transportation operates seasonal bus service connecting Bar Harbor to Ellsworth (the nearest mainland town, 26 miles northwest) and the Greyhound/Concord Coach stop at Bangor. Bar Harbor is accessible by car via Mount Desert Island causeway; during peak summer season, the Island Explorer free shuttle bus eliminates the need for a car on the island itself.
Nearby
- Acadia National Park — the park boundary begins at the edge of Bar Harbor; the carriage roads, Ocean Path, and Sand Beach are all within 10 minutes by bicycle or shuttle
- Cadillac Mountain — the highest point on the US Atlantic coast (1,530 feet), approximately 3 miles south; the summit road is open seasonally and offers sunrise views celebrated since the Gilded Age
- Abbe Museum — Wabanaki history and culture of Downeast Maine, 0.5 miles south at 26 Mount Desert Street
- Bar Harbor Inn — 1887 Gilded Age inn on the Village Green pier; the waterfront porch faces Frenchman Bay and the Porcupine Islands
Sources
- Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor — operating history and programming
- Maine Historic Preservation Commission — Bar Harbor architectural documentation
- National Park Service — Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor historical resources
- Bar Harbor Historical Society — pre- and post-1947 fire documentary records
- Wikimedia Commons — building image
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