In the late 1960s, Maurice Kanbar, an inventor and real estate investor, purchased a six-story loft in Manhattan with plans to create an off-Broadway theater. After those plans fell through, he found himself with a large block of unused ground floor space. Kanbar believed a movie theater with multiple small auditoriums rather than a few larger ones could be profitable even with smaller audiences at most screenings. In October 1972, he and his younger brother, Elliott S. Kanbar, opened the Quad, New York City's first four-screen movie theater, and what Kanbar has called "the East Coast's first multiplex".
