Beginning of Nickelodeon

[5th grade Bethel]

What is the origin of the word Nickelodeon? What relationship does it have to the TV channel today?

[Hall of Fame Lenny]

Nickelodeons were small early movie theaters, most popular around the time of Take Me Out to the Ball Game. The word comes from nickel = 5¢-coin, and Odeion = a Greek word for theater.

The name "Nickelodeon" was coined by Harry Davis and John P. Harris, who opened their small, storefront theatre with that name in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in June 1905. Though theirs was not the first theatre in the world to specialize in presenting movies, Davis and Harris found such great success with their operation that their concept of a five cent theatre running movies continuously was soon imitated by hundreds of ambitious entrepreneurs, as was the name of the theatre itself.

Nickelodeons declined as larger, more comfortable, and better-appointed movie theaters showed higher-cost films.

The TV network copied the name, as well as the idea of showing older or low-cost fare. It was founded in 1977 as Pinwheel. The Pinwheel name was used until 1981.

[Expert Kathy]

The term "nickelodeon" combines a name for something that has a small price (nickel or five-cent-coin) with the Greek term for Theater (odeon). Originally the name was applied to mechanical player pianos and other mechanical music makers, which you operated by dropping a coin in a slot (some older folks may remember the Teresa Brewer song, 'Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon, all I want is loving you and music, music, music').

Starting in 1904 and 1905, entrepreneurs started opening little movie theaters in empty stores, and they did not have a name for these new kinds of theaters. They called them "Amuzu" and "bijou" and "photoplay parlor" and a few folks called theirs nickelodeons, and the name caught on because everybody was charging 5 cents to get in. They had sets for 100-200 people and were plain inside, but all covered with light bulbs and posters outside. Nickelodeons were around from 1904 to about 1913, when they evolved into movie theaters like you sometimes still see on small town and suburban Main Streets.
Kathy