'Old' Becomes New on Division

 

A new layer of entertainment history awaits a 97-year old lately-vacant theater that will bring more life to SE Division Street.

 The former Northwest Film Study Center, now going under the new name of PAM CUT, (whatever that means) plans to offer videos and multimedia events at the former Oregon Theater at 3510 SE Division St.  Until three years ago, the old theater was best known as a long-running home of explicit sexual movies.

Tomorrow Theater, as it will be called, expects to begin programming in the 300-seat venue in the fall. The film group will no longer be using the Whitsell Auditorium in the Portland Art Museum. 

 It will be roughly the fourth iteration for the building erected in 1926 by an early Portland movie operator, Isaac Geller.  The theater originally was intended for vaudeville, but soon shifted to movies.   Geller also built and operated the Aladdin and Walnut Park theaters in the 1920s.

All three of Geller’s theaters later operated as porn houses, run by his son-in-law, Sol Maizels.  The Aladdin was the most famous of the three, largely because of a 1975 court case in which Maizels was accused of violating an obscenity law by running the movie “Deep Throat.”

 He testified that he sold more than 100,000 tickets to the movie from 1973 to 1975, a number that helped convince jurors that the move had not violated “community standards --” and thus had not broken the law. (And yes, the movie was played for the jury.)

Geller died in 1976 at age 83.  The Walnut Park Theater closed in the late 1980s and later was torn down.  The Aladdin changed hands and has become a successful concert venue for popular music.

 Kevin Cavenaugh, a creative designer and developer, bought the Oregon Theater in 2020.  The name he chose for his ownership papers – Double Scrub LLC – hints at the interior condition as he found it.  Cavenaugh’s other notable buildings include the Fair-Haired Dumbell and the Zipper on Sandy Boulevard.

Osmose Design of Portland is designing the internal theater space.  The theater building also includes two storefronts that will remain facing on Division.  This follows a trend in that era when theaters had their front doors on a busy street, but the auditorium was tucked in behind so other uses could be offered on the high-traffic street.  

 In the past 15 years, Division Street has emerged as one of Portland’s leading new urban streets with many apartments and new storefronts.  It is encouraging to see a viable old building be retained for something close to its original purpose.  The theater obviously will add even more vitality to the neighborhood.

 But the vitality comes with a warning: Good luck finding parking.

 ----Fred Leeson

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