Pelham Picture House will expand to Bronxville with ten-year lease on former Bow Tie Cinema

By Gabby Ahitow, Assistant Managing Editor|December 20, 2021

The marquee of the Bronxville Bow Tie Cinema announces the big news: Picture House Bronxville.

The Picture House Regional Film Center will expand to Bronxville when it takes over operations of the Bow Tie Cinema, which was in danger of closing for good, under a ten-year lease.

Like the Picture House, the Bronxville theater dates from the 1920s. It took six months to work out the deal, and the Bronxville theater will reopen in early February, said a Picture House press release.

The three-screen cinema on Kraft Avenue will allow “for even more wide-ranging and varied programming of new, independent, foreign and documentary films,” said the press release. “The addition of the Bronxville theater will also increase audiences and strengthen the impact of the Picture House across the region through amplified access to the best available cinema, conversations, arts education and live performances.”

“When we learned that the Bronxville movie theater was in danger of not reopening post-pandemic, we immediately put a call out to the community for a creative solution to keep the theater alive,” said Bronxville Mayor Mary Marvin in the release. “The way the Picture House brings communities together around film and cultural discourse is exactly what we were hoping for in Bronxville.”

Picture House Executive Director Laura deBuys said, “Our nonprofit was formed in 2003 when the Pelham theater was scheduled for demolition. It seems so fitting that, with the expansion to Bronxville, we can rescue another 1920s theater and further our mission at the same time.”

Bow Tie Cinemas is a family-owned company that has been running a chain of theaters for four generations. “We as much as anyone wanted to find a way to keep movies alive and well in Bronxville,” said Ben Moss, chief executive officer of Bow Tie. “Given our belief in the value the Picture House provides to the communities it serves, and overwhelming community support, we are confident in the success of a non-profit model in Bronxville, and we’re delighted to help make that happen.”

Bow Tie, based in Ridgefield, Connecticut, has 38 locations in Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Virginia. As of 2013, it was the eighth-largest movie theater chain in the United States and is the oldest, having been founded in 1900.

The Bronxville expansion comes as the Picture House continues a year-long celebration of the theater’s centennial.