Lighthouse Cinema, Heritage cinema in New Market, India
Lighthouse Cinema was a single-screen movie theater in the New Market neighborhood of Kolkata, designed in a modernist style by Dutch architect W.M. Dudok. The building had a strong, geometric facade and a prominent entrance that stood out among the surrounding shops and stalls.
The theater opened in 1934 and operated for nearly seven decades as one of Kolkata's main entertainment venues. It closed permanently in 2002 as single-screen cinemas across the city began giving way to multiplexes and shopping centers.
For decades, people from across Kolkata came to this cinema as part of their regular leisure routine, often combining a film with shopping in the New Market area. Going to the Lighthouse was a shared experience that brought together very different crowds under one roof.
The building is in the New Market area, one of the most visited parts of central Kolkata, and is easy to reach on foot from most nearby points. Since the interior has been converted into a shopping center, the original cinema experience no longer exists inside.
W.M. Dudok, the architect behind the building, was a Dutch designer best known for town halls and civic buildings in the Netherlands, making this cinema one of his very few works outside Europe. The exterior still carries traces of his geometric style, even though the inside has been entirely rebuilt.
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