Oregon Theater Project: A Dataset of Oregon Cinemas from the Silent Era

The Oregon Theater Project (OTP) dataset is part of an ongoing collaborative research project by undergraduate students enrolled in successive iterations of “Exhibition & Audiences,” a Cinema Studies course at the University of Oregon. It will be updated with additional data each time the course is taught. The data set comprises geo/historical data about movie theaters (cinemas) and exhibition in the state from approximately 1894 to 1929. The data is presented on a public website (https://oregontheaterproject.uoregon.edu/) which includes maps and individual theater profiles produced by the students. All profiles, and the underlying data, are reviewed by the course instructors and edited as needed for clarification or accuracy. Profiles include, where available, the theater name, address, city, state, latitude, longitude, number of seats, owner/manager names, and a narrative description. The underlying data, shared as Excel documents and tab-delimited spreadsheets, invites historical comparative analysis of film exhibition practices across time and locale, both local and global.