page_title: Bow Tie Cinemas
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Bow Tie Cinemas / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The B. S. Moss Broadway Theater showing the American drama film White Hands (1922), on page 50 of the February 25, 1922 Exhibitors Herald.
context_page_description: Bow Tie Cinemas is an American movie theater chain, with 38 locations in Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. As of 2013, it is the eighth-largest movie theater chain in the United States and is the oldest, having been founded in 1900. Bow Tie Cinemas is family-owned and has been for four generations.
  The company was established by Benjamin S. Moss who opened nickolodeon venues, then shifted to Vaudeville venues, before settling on movie theaters.
context_section_description: B.S. Moss immigrated to the U.S. from Austria in 1900. He opened venues for nickelodeons. He soon changed to operating venues for the Vaudeville circuit and also established a film production company. The film production company produced Margaret Sanger's film Birth Control which was banned from release in New York in 1915. B. S. Moss Motion Picture Company presented Three Weeks (1914) and produced One Day (1916), Boots and Saddles (1916), The Power of Evil (1916), and The Salamander (1916).
  B. S. Moss Enterprises operated several movie theaters. In 1910, Moss organized the syndicate that built the $100,000 Washington Theatre at Amsterdam Avenue and 149th Street, known as the first "real" movie palace in New York City. Moss' Vaudeville theaters included Manhattan's Colony Theater, notable for being the venue of several high-profile Disney premieres including Fantasia and Steamboat Willie, the first Disney cartoon to feature Mickey Mouse. 
  In the 1930s, Moss decided to focus more on the movie business and phased out his vaudeville program. In 1936, he opened his Criterion Theater in Times Square, which lasted as a successful movie theater until 2000. Since then, Bow Tie Cinemas has continued to concentrate on the presentation of films.
caption: The B. S. Moss Broadway Theater showing White Hands in 1922
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