Inside Cranford Theater’s Emotional Centennial Celebration

The Cranford Theater’s coming centennial was marked not with a movie premiere, but with three declarations that the theater itself has become part of the story of the town, the county and New Jersey.

At a Sept. 30 gathering outside the theater on North Avenue West, Cranford Mayor Kathleen Miller Prunty presented a township proclamation recognizing the movie house’s 100 years in the community. New Jersey Senate President Nicholas Scutari followed with a state proclamation, while Union County Commissioner James Baker Jr. presented a county resolution honoring the same milestone.

The ceremony brought township officials, Downtown Cranford representatives, community supporters and members of the Sayegh family together ahead of the theater’s formal 100th anniversary. The Cranford Theater opened on Nov. 29, 1926, and has remained at the same downtown address ever since.

Prunty used the occasion to credit theater owner Doreen Sayegh with refusing to treat the building as a relic. Calling Sayegh “a force in motion,” the mayor pointed to the ways the theater has adapted as both the film business and downtown life have changed.

“She never stops,” Prunty said. “Every business, every town, needs to be thinking about the future. And what do we do to make sure we stay competitive and that we can still attract audiences. And she has done that in spades.”

The township proclamation traced the theater from its 1926 debut as the New Branford Theatre, a 1,300-seat movie palace with a Wurlitzer pipe organ, through its adoption of the Cranford name in 1927. It also noted its conversion to a five-screen cinema and its 2019 renovation and reopening under the Sayegh family.

That reopening came only months before the COVID-19 pandemic closed movie theaters nationwide. Sayegh responded with curbside concession sales and outdoor screenings, including a temporary drive-in. The theater later weathered Hollywood strikes and a 2025 ceiling collapse that forced another seven-month closure. It reopened in November 2025.

Scutari said the restored theater gives Cranford something many downtowns have lost: a place where seeing a film is tied to an afternoon or evening spent in town.

“Cranford has this unique opportunity with this beautifully renovated theater to be the anchor of a continuing beautification of this downtown,” Scutari said. “It almost brings a tear to your eye to walk in there, to see how beautiful the renovation is. It’s almost like going back in time to when you were a kid.”

He presented a proclamation signed on behalf of the state Legislature and congratulated Sayegh, her father, Jesse, and her family for keeping the theater in operation.

Baker spoke from his own memories of visiting the Cranford Theater when he was younger. He said a neighborhood movie house accumulates meaning beyond the films on its screens.

“A theater like this becomes more than just a place to see a movie,” Baker said. “It becomes part of the community, part of people’s memories.”

Presenting the Union County resolution, Baker called 100 years in downtown Cranford “truly something special to celebrate” and wished the theater many more years of bringing people together.

Sayegh, joined by her family, described herself as the current caretaker of a place shaped by generations of moviegoers. She spoke about birthday parties, engagements and promposals alongside film festivals, comedy shows, filmmaker talks, international films and student programs.

“The Cranford Theater has always been about the movies, but I truly believe it has become so much more than that,” she said. “It is a place where families come together, where children celebrate birthdays, where engagements and promposals happen, and where memories are made.”

She also acknowledged the difficulty of keeping an independent hometown cinema open. The Cranford Theater is the last independently owned, family-run movie theater in Union County, operating in an era of streaming, shortened theatrical windows and rising costs.

Its survival has depended on broadening what happens inside the building. Along with first-run releases, the five-screen theater now hosts independent films, local premieres, live performances, comedy, community programs and special events—programming meant to give audiences a reason to leave the couch and gather downtown.

“Every challenge has only made me more committed to this theater and to this community,” Sayegh said. She pledged to expand its programming, support filmmakers and the arts, and keep the building connected to the people around it.

The centennial celebration will continue Nov. 7 with a screening of a restored version of *Padlocked*, the silent drama shown when the theater opened in 1926. Presented with the San Francisco Film Preserve, the event is intended to recreate the communal experience of silent-era moviegoing. Guests are encouraged to wear 1920s attire.

For one afternoon in September, however, the program was not on the screen. It was the theater’s own record of survival, and the officials who came to put that record in writing.