On Friday, May 24th, Kevin Dursun gave the trustees of the Roslyn Landmark Society a mid-construction preview of the ongoing renovation at the Roslyn Theater, one of the most recognizable storefronts on Main Street. The theater's origins trace back to proprietor Emil Rinas, who came to Roslyn before 1916 and first showed movies in a large tent on Bryant Avenue, later replacing it with the Tower Theater, which was destroyed by fire in March 1931. Construction of the current Roslyn Theater began in 1933. The building's story actually begins even earlier, on the same footprint: a 2½-story double house built for J&B Hicks in 1850 originally occupied the site, and when Rinas purchased the property in 1923, half of it was eventually demolished to make way for the theater. Over the decades that followed, the theater grew from a single-screen house with 500 seats into a quad cinema, becoming a fixture of village life for generations of Roslyn residents.
The Roslyn Cinema has remained vacant for four years, and the Dursunyan family has described the transformation as an opportunity to revitalize the building while respecting its legacy. The trustees' tour offered a rare look inside the structure during active construction, a chance to see both the bones of the building and the vision taking shape. For the Roslyn Landmark Society, whose work is rooted in the belief that historic buildings are worth saving and adapting, the Dursun family's investment in this property is exactly the kind of stewardship that keeps a Main Street alive.
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