On November 12, The Art Theater Co-op celebrated an impressive milestone. The oldest operating movie theater in Champaign turned 100 years old.

The Park Theater, the Art’s former identity, opened its doors on November 12, 1913, to a sold-out crowd. Ushers seated 2,400 people for four separate screenings and were forced to turn many away due to lack of space. A live piano score accompanied the pictures that evening and a live orchestra could be heard during the other festivities.

According to local theater historian Perry C. Morris, in February 1914, the Park installed a custom pipe organ that was inaugurated by a celebrated English cathedral organist.

The theater was remodeled and renovated through most of the 1930s. Changes included a larger lobby, a box office in front of the theater, art deco fixtures, better acoustics inside the auditorium and a new sound system. And, at long last, air conditioning was installed to refresh Champaign moviegoers just in time for the summer of 1937.

As current general manager Austin McCann said, the theater “started as a kind of mainstream Hollywood film (theater, as) there really was no non-mainstream — there were just movies.” The Park was closed in July of 1958 and then purchased by the Art Theatre Guild late that September. The name of the theater was changed to the Art and opened once again on October 3, 1958.

In 1991, Roger Ebert wrote an essay for Entertainment Weekly in which he spoke fondly of the theater and of how, as a child, he learned about the art of film from its seats: “The atmosphere of the Art reflected the new beatnik culture of the ’50s, and to walk through the doors was like breathing the air of freedom. There wasn’t any popcorn for sale, but the coffee was free, black, and strong, and at the age of 16, sitting in the dark wired on caffeine and trying to puzzle through Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly, I felt I was on the brink of amazing discoveries about the world, life, and myself.”

Ebert first began attending screenings at the theater around the time of its transition from the Park to the Art. The theater changed more than just its name during this time, McCann said.

“In the ’50s and the ’60s it became an ‘art’ theater, so they were playing foreign films … that were starting to be part of this burgeoning art theater,” he said.

The first film Ebert saw in the Art Theater was Citizen Kane in the 1950s. A framed copy of his Entertainment Weekly piece is now proudly displayed in the theater’s lobby.

A seedier period, featuring exclusively “adult” films, graced the Art’s history starting in the early ’70s. After larger theaters in the area began to show art films — pulling patrons away from the Art — the owner at the time to decided to seek out a new audience by shifting to an exclusively pornographic film schedule. Until it was closed again in 1986, the Art was the last “adults-only” theater in Champaign, according to Morris.

The Art opened again on February 12, 1987, showing art films once more, and has remained open, albeit under varying management, ever since.

“It’s always a matter of, y’know, through all those different things, the audiences changed,” McCann said. “But because of the historical precedent, it feels like we’ve always been the Art Theater. We’ve always taken the art of cinema really seriously.”

To acquire the funds necessary to keep the theater alive into the digital age, the Art became cooperatively owned in 2012. Most notably, it is the first art house theater co-op in the country. Anyone can buy a share to become an owner, and there are currently over 1,300 owners of the historic Art. As McCann said: “I’m just trying to … keep alive the interest in our art cinema and movies which are different and worth exploring.”