Oklahoma City’s oldest continuously operating movie theater is dark this weekend with emails sent out by AMC Theaters notifying patrons the chain has closed the seven-screen discount cinema.

The theater represented the new wave of multi-screen cinemas when it opened as an anchor at the new Northpark Mall at NW 122 and May Avenue in 1973. At the time, the development was on the north fringe of the city. Memorial Road was a sleepy country corridor though Mercy Hospital was set to challenge assumptions about how far out the city might expand over the next decade.

The theater did well in those early years. When my family moved to Oklahoma City in 1977, my friends and I rode our bikes to see some movies at the Quail Twin at Hefner and May Avenue, but more often, went to Northpark Mall.