The Somerville Theatre projected its first reel in May of 1914 — just one month after the very first movie house, Samuel " Roxy " Rothapfel’s Strand Theatre, opened in Times Square. The Somerville Theatre’s stage was once trod by Tallulah Bankhead and Ray Bolger and dancers choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Still bedecked in its Aztec art deco finery, the theater continues to offer both cinema and live performance. It’s the heart of a rejuvenated Davis Square; it’s also the only extant member of a sorority of 14 picture palaces that once dotted New England’s most densely populated city.

You may not have realized this. That’s why Tufts anthropology professor David Guss is curating a year-long exhibit at the Somerville Museum called " The Lost Theatres of Somerville " that opens this Saturday. Chronicling the Somerville cinematic experience from the first flickerings of moving pictures there in 1904 to the arrival of the behemoth Assembly Square Loews, the archival photographs, movie posters, ticket stubs, promotional giveaways, and stained-glass fixtures Guss has gathered tell of a time when these theaters were neighborhood living rooms.

But inanimate objects don’t talk. So Guss’s students teamed with kids from Somerville High School and fanned out to record 65 interviews with lifelong residents. Their oral histories are presented both as a This American Life–type audio commentary and as a film that you can watch at the museum while sitting in antique Somerville Theatre seats.

The stories these old-timers tell reanimate the city’s forgotten history. They think back on Winter Hill Gang boss Buddy McLean, who was gunned down in front of the Capitol Theatre on Broadway — " a cine-noir version of life following art, " Guss calls it. They laugh about the other Orpheum Theatre’s vermin-infested children’s matinees (you didn’t want to put your feet on the ground), where kids would toss sticks like arrows at the cowboys and Injuns on screen and the manager would threaten to stop the show unless the brats behaved. They muse on the Somerville Theatre’s infamous seat-flapping ghost.

As he created " a life history of these buildings, " Guss has also hired some of the city’s best photographers to document the sites as they are now. The Capitol Theatre is a Star Market. The Teele Square Theatre is Rainbow Rugs. One movie house has become luxury condos; another is office space. It’s depressing to look at what’s supplanted the Broadway’s stained-glass half-dome and the Paramount’s towering neon marquee (now one of Guss’s artifacts); it’s even more dismaying to contemplate the loss of neighborhood togetherness.

Guss, however, hopes that visitors to the exhibit (and the lectures that will be presented in conjunction throughout the year) will " reflect on the centrality of cultural institutions to a strong sense of community. What is it that makes a neighborhood a neighborhood? People have these social interactions that are emotionally rich, that connect them to each other and thus to a place. A lot of people suffer now from a ‘placelessness.’ This is a story about that, and about the type of ‘memory sites’ rather than historic sites that really define a sense of place. So rather than be depressed, look at this as a parable. Rather than just think about it as loss, look at it and reflect about what it is exactly that gives our environment meaning. "

" The Lost Theatres of Somerville " will be on view March 29 through March 28 at the Somerville Museum, 1 Westwood Road in Somerville. There will be an opening reception March 29 at 5 p.m.; call (617) 666-9810 or visit www.losttheatres.org.