Northwood Hills 4
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Spring Valley Rd & Coit Rd Richardson TX
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| Record #25595 |
Opened: 1970
Closed: 1990
Demolished: Yes (date unknown)
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Capacity:
Architect(s):
Architectural Style(s):
National Register:
Current Organ: none |
Also Known As: |
Previously operated by: AMC Theatres |
Information for this tour was contributed by Mark Richey. Richardson’s first multiplex opened with little fanfare on July 1, 1970. After having lavished so much attention on the opening of the second screen at the Westwood-Promenade six weeks earlier, the Richardson Daily News completely ignored the new theater’s opening about a mile south.
The Northwood Hills was the second AMC theater in the Dallas area, after the Northtown 6. The opening day lineup consisted of "Paint Your Wagon," "Which Way to the Front?," "The Reivers," and "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice."
The theater lasted for almost exactly ten years as a first run, before being converted to a second-run theater on July 11, 1980. The first four second run films were "Kramer vs. Kramer," "Chapter Two," "The Black Stallion," and "Coal Miner’s Daughter" ("Stallion" and "Daughter" were holdovers from the previous day, its last as a first run. The other two screens had "The Muppet Movie" and a double feature of "Phantasm" and "The Fog").
Nine and a half years later, the theater shuttered on January 1, 1990. The final shows were "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," "Immediate Family," "Dead Poets Society," "Parenthood," and "Let It Ride." In contrast to their complete ignoring of the opening, the Richardson News ran an article about the theater’s demise a couple of days after the closing. A spokesman for AMC said that the closing was due to declining business and competition, especially since the Promenade usually had the exact same lineup of films.
I’m not completely positive where the theater stood, but I’m pretty sure it was demolished within a year or so of closing and replaced with a plant nursery (which has itself gone out of business).
My mom visited the theater a few times, and remembered it being "seedy". Since she’s never been the type to patronize second-run theaters, she might very well have gone before the switchover. The location where the theater was is not one of the better parts of Richardson.
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Last featured 6/26/2005. Last edited 8/31/2013.
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