The Loew’s Canal Street Theatre was constructed as a neighborhood movie house in 1926-27 at the beginning of what is generally considered the Golden Age of Cinema. It was commissioned by Loew’s, Inc. which was one of the most important firms within the Hollywood Studio System. The emergence of the motion picture industry coincided closely with growth of the Lower East Side as the city’s most prominent immigrant district, and by the early 20th century the neighborhood could claim the nation’s densest concentration of human population and movie houses.