Although nickelodeons did not show the first moving pictures, which had been appearing as part of the entertainment offered at vaudeville shows since the 1890s, they represented the first efforts to create a new venue in which moving pictures would be shown as the featured attraction. Also known as storefront theaters, nickelodeons experienced their heyday from about 1903 to 1915.

Named for "nickel," the price of admission, and "odeon," the Greek word for theater, nickelodeons offered the first affordable mass entertainment for lower-income urban people, and hence became wildly popular during the first decades of the twentieth century. As businesses, they were more affordable to run than the ubiquitous penny arcades, which featured hand-cranked "peep show" moving pictures (of usually quite wholesome subjects) but which could also only accommodate one viewer at a time at each machine. The rise of the nickelodeon marked a transition away from penny arcades and...