Demolition work is finally underway at the old Exeter Street Theater building, where most recently there was a TGI Friday’s restaurant on the Newbury Street side of the building. Rumor has it that Paparazzi will be relocating from their Dartmouth Street location 1 block west to this highly visible location, known for its tinted greenhouse windows where diners had a delightful view of the ankles of the passersby. Seen above through a cloud of construction dust is the old racing shell that still hangs from the ceiling.
According to Chowhound, Papa Razzi will be opening in the Newbury Street space recently vacated by TGI Friday’s. When we called the Back Bay Restaurant Group to verify, they were “unable to confirm.” As always, we shall remain on the case.
The building itself, designed in 1884 as the First Spiritualist Temple, was also a movie house from 1914 to 1984, featuring non other than the cult favorite “Rocky Horror Picture Show”.
From Wikipedia: On the corner of Exeter and Newbury Street, the address is given both as 181 Newbury Street and as 26 Exeter Street, is a striking building designed by H. W. Hartwell and W. C. Richardson in the Romanesque Revival style. It was originally built in 1885 as the First Spiritual Temple, a Spiritualist church. In 1914 it became a movie theater, the Exeter Street Theatre. The movie theatre was notable both for is ambiance (”You felt like you were in some kind of Tudor manor or English country church there”) and programming (”It was a theater where people did not call to see what movie was playing, but called only to determine if the movie had changed).” The movie theater quietly closed in 1984. For a while it was a trendy Conran’s furniture store, then Waterstone’s bookstore. It briefly housed a dot-com named Idealab, and is now general office and retail space.
