William Carlos Williams Center for the Performing Arts, Rutherford

The Williams Center is an arts center and cinema complex located in downtown Rutherford, New Jersey. The center was named after the Pulitzer prize winning poet and physician William Carlos Williams. The building that the center occupies was originally built in the 1920s as a Vaudeville theater known as the Rivoli. The Rivoli soon started showing silent movies and eventually "talkies". The theater enjoyed success until a fire destroyed part of the building in 1977. In 1978 a group of philanthropists started the Williams Center Project which open the Center in 1982. The center currently has two live theaters, three cinemas, and an open-air meeting gallery. As of 2021, the town of Rutherford sold the center to local real estate developer Native Development. ()