Postcard of the Night No. 7, Keith’s Theatre, Boston

This luminous façade, glowing in the darkness of the city by night is the B F Keith Theatre in Boston. No living presence intrudes on the scene except the ominous silhouette of a carnivore to be seen at a window. Keith’s background was in the circus and variety programmes but in 1896 he opened the Union Square Theatre in New York and began showing moving pictures licensed from the Lumière Brothers. The business expanded rapidly with theatres in Philadelphia and this one in Boston. Fourteen years after his death in 1914 his name would live on as the K in RKO pictures.