We go back 70 years to Halloween of 1949: Some of the most popular costumes were cowboys, skeletons, witches, and clowns, and the kiddies were invited to show off their crazy (and usually homemade) getups at the Fox Plaza theater in Englewood. Halloween was on a Monday that year, so the theater held its annual kids’ Halloween party on the preceding Saturday. Cartoons and comedy films, a costume parade and contest, and games such as pie eating and bobbing for apples made for a fun day in Englewood.
The movie house, which is now the home of the Bergen Performing Arts Center on North Van Brunt Street, first opened on Nov. 22, 1926 as Englewood Plaza. Frank Capra’s silent movie “The Strong Man” was the inaugural feature on the big screen. In the 1930s, the era of talking films, the place became the Fox Plaza. In 1976 John Harms restored the building, which then became the John Harms Center for the Arts.
The streetscape photo below dates to the early 1950s and shows North Van Brunt Street as it looked then. A sign for the Plaza theater is visible above and left of the car that’s driving in the road. Beyond it, a sign for Food Fair, a supermarket that came to Englewood in 1941.
