The Strand Theatre has been demolished. There are what appears to be five two-story buildings along the section of the square where the theater once stood, but if you look at the back of the structure from SW 1st Street you can see that it is one long, modern building.
In 1919, 2501 Lagrange Street was the location of a 733-seat house called the Savoy Theatre. Later, the name Savoy was moved to a smaller house on Lagrange. I don’t know what then became of the Orpheum/Savoy. Richard Abel says the Orpheum on Lagrange opened in 1910.
According to John Phelan’s Motion Pictures As a Phase of Commercial Amusement in Toledo, Ohio, in 1919 the Superior Street Orpheum had 664 seats and twenty employees, eight male and twelve female. That was not only a fairly high employee-to-seat ratio, but a very high female-to-male ratio. It makes me wonder if the Orpheum could have been a burlesque house at the time.
The March 6, 1915, issue of The Construction News said that Davenport architectural firm Clausen & Cruse had been hired to draw plans for the expansion and remodeling of the Family Theatre.
Richard Abel’s Americanizing the Movies and Movie-Mad Audiences, 1910-1914 mentions the Hart Theatre showing several Éclair features in December, 1912. But the theater might have been open a few years by then. It was owned by the Hart family, and the obituary of Harvey Hart in the October 6, 1946, issue of The Billboard (Google Books scan) said that in 1908 the family had theaters in Toledo, Marion, and Columbus, Ohio. The family moved to California in 1916 and operated a dramatic stock company in Long Beach. From 1926 to 1930, Harvey Hart presented the Hart Players in Pasadena. In later years he was a theater manager, working last for the Edwards circuit.
For some reason, the 1926 and 1927 editions of Film Daily Yearbook list the Hart Theatre at 650 Summit Street, but there are a lot of reminiscences on the Internet that suggest that the house never moved. Most likely 605 was the correct address, and FDY just repeated the wrong address year after year. From 1928 through 1931 it lists 650 Summit as the address of the 650-seat Summit Theatre. The house might have been renamed, but nobody in Toledo seems to remember that. Newspaper articles from years later mentioning the theater always call it the Hart.
One of those articles is a column in the June 9, 1953, issue of The Toledo Blade which features an interview with band leader Ted Lewis. Lewis got his start in show business at the Hart Theatre in the 1910s, and the article devotes a few brief paragraphs to his experience there. Google News has it, but won’t provide a link to the article itself. This link will display an adjacent article. Just scroll across the page to the right to the column headed “Mitch Woodbury Reports” to read it.
This page from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis says that St. Louis architects Harry G. Clymer and Francis Drischler designed the Shubert Theatre in Denver.
The entry for the Colorado-Yule Marble Company in the 1913 edition of Sweet’s Catalog of Building Construction lists the Shubert Theatre Building in Denver among recent projects using the company’s products, and that list also attributes the design to Clymer & Drischler.
Interestingly, the Princess Theatre in St. Louis, also designed by Clymer & Drischler, was built by an outfit called the McClure Construction Company. A Frank P. McClure Construction company was operating in Kansas City around this time, and I suspect that the Denver Public Library, whose photo of the Denham Building is the most likely source for our current attribution of this theater to McClure, mistook the contractor on the project for the architect.
This page from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis has a brief biography of architect Harry G. Clymer who, with partner Francis Drischler, designed the Princess Theatre. At the bottom of the page is a longitudinal section of the theater. The page notes that Clymer & Drischler also designed the Shubert Theatre in Denver.
Rochester’s Downtown, by Donovan A. Shilling (Google Books preview) says that this house opened as the National Theatre on May 18, 1903. However, the January 3, 1903, issue of the Lockport Journal mentioned a play that had opened at the National on New Year’s Day. I don’t know if that means the house opened earlier, or if Rochester had an earlier theater of the same name.
The July 15, 1902, issue of The Plumbers' Trade Journal said that the construction contract for the National Theatre called for completion of the structure by October 1. If that goal was met, and assuming at least another month for outfitting and decorating, the National Theatre could have opened as early as November, 1902.
The magazine also noted that the National Theatre had been designed (not surprisingly) by Rochester’s own noted theater architects, Leon H. Lempert & Son.
This circa 1908 photo of Main Street shows that the National Theatre was fronted by a building that, judging from its architectural style, was probably built in the 1850s or 1860s. A new auditorium was most likely built behind the existing commercial building, though it’s also possible that the existing building was gutted and its interior rebuilt as a theater.
The July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item that was probably about this theater:
“Middlesboro, Ky. — The Brown Amusement Company has let contracts to R. L. Brown, of Middlesboro, for the construction of the new theater building to be used as a combined theater and business block. R. F. Graf & Son, of Knoxville, Tenn., are the architects. Prices have been asked on seats, indirect fixtures, four art doors, etc. The house will cost about $15,000.”
This photo of the Brownie Theatre shows a two-story building with a separate door for upstairs offices, and it’s about the right size to have cost $15,000 in 1916.
The theater at 4813-4819 N. Broad Street was also known as the Logan Theatre, according to this page at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. The page suggests that the name was changed to Broad Theatre around 1928, but it was probably 1924, when the new (and much larger) Logan Theatre was opened nearby.
PA&B attributes the original design of this theater to the firm of Stuckert & Sloan, citing an item in the the February 5, 1913, issue of Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide which said that contracts for the project had been let. An item in the April 5, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World also attributes the design to Stuckert & Sloan:
“Philadelphia, Pa. — Plans are being prepared by architects Stuckert & Sloan, Crozer Building, for a one-story brick moving picture theater at Broad and Louden Streets for the Logan Amusement Co. The building will measure 34 x 109, be finished in terra cotta, have tile and slag roofing and equipped with electric lighting and steam heat.”
However, there appears to have been a delay of almost two years before the project actually got underway, and the January 9, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item:
“Theater: 1 sty. & bas. $15M. 4819 N. Broad st. Archt. M. Haupt, Drexel bldg. Owner Logan Amusement Co., care archt. Archt. ready for bids abt. Jan. 11. Brk., Ind. limestone, conc, slag rf., galv. iron cornice, struct. iron.”
Although another page at PA&B attributes the design of the project to Anderson & Haupt, the site also says that that firm was dissolved in 1914. I think it is also significant that the 1915 American Contractor notice mentions only Haupt.
The fact that Max Haupt was the engineer in the firm (and in later years appears as an engineer on a number of other projects) suggests to me that, when the Logan Theatre project was resumed in early 1915, Haupt alone was brought in to supervise construction of the design made by Stuckert & Sloan in 1913, and to make any changes in the plans that might have been needed during construction. This is much more likely than that the Logan Amusement Company would have had entirely new plans prepared. The firm of Stuckert & Sloan was itself dissolved in 1915, and their impending dissolution might have been what prevented them from resuming work the project themselves.
The April 2, 1913, issue of The American Architect said that Philadelphia architects Stuckert & Sloan had filed plans for alterations to a five-story moving picture theater on Broadway at 31st Street in New York City. The project was budgeted at $15,000 and the client was the Joseph Weschler estate.
Fay’s Theatre was in operation at least as early as 1918, when the May 4 issue of The Moving Picture World noted that Edward Fay had paid the First National Exchange in New York City $1,000 to secure a one-week run of the feature film My Four Years in Germany at Fay’s Theatre in Rochester.
Fay’s Theatre was mentioned in the June 21, 1924, issue of Exhibitor’s Trade Review, which said that E. M. Fay had begun a remodeling project after the lobby had been slightly damaged by a fire a few weeks earlier.
Edward Fay had a long career in movie exhibition, but most of his operations were in Providence, Rhode Island. The records of the Fay Theatre Company from 1928 to 1971 are held by the Rhode Island Historical Society. An inventory is here.
I’ve found a number of errors in the NRHP’s listings, usually misspellings and sometimes wrong dates. I doubt that they’ll ever get around to correcting them. But “Flin, Cla” is one of the oddest things I’ve seen there. It sounds like it would be the name of a character in a bad sword and sorcery novel.
The July 24, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World mentions a “Perrient” Theatre at 930
Chene Street. According to the guide on this web page, the old address 930 Chene would have been in the modern 4700 block, so odds are good that the house was the Perrein Theatre and somebody just misspelled the name.
There was a Savoy Theatre in 1915, but according to the July 24 issue of The Moving Picture World that year it was at 229 S. Chene Street. I don’t think there was a South Chene Street, but this web page, which has a guide to Detroit addresses before and after the 1921 renumbering says that the old address 229 Chene would be in the modern 1200 block, so it must have been an earlier Savoy Theatre. But it means that the house that was at 1515 Chene in 1926 must have been opened after 1915.
The FDY lists the Catherine Theatre with 800 seats in 1930, and in 1931 and later it is listed with only 320 seats. Perhaps the drop indicates that the second auditorium was closed at that time.
It looks like the Fredro Theatre was renamed the King Theatre sometime in 1939. A 400-seat Fredro Theatre is one of five houses listed on Chene Street in the 1939 FDY, and in 1940 a 400-seat King Theatre is listed but the Fredro isn’t. The other four theaters on Chene Street were unchanged from 1939 to 1940.
I wonder if gremlins got into somebody’s keyboard along the way, and the “Flin, Cla” that the NRHP document (cited in the very first comment on this theater by LostMemory) names as one of the architects or builders of the Colonial Theatre is actually Fuller Claflin? Claflin did design at least one theater in Harrisburg- the Lyceum (later the Orpheum), built in 1903 and reportedly demolished in 1925 to make way for the State Theatre. I’m skeptical that anyone has ever borne the odd name Cla Flin.
This house has the same address as the Tedro Theatre already listed. Our page says the Tedro closed after one year. The information probably comes from this page at Water Winter Wonderland.
I don’t know if the name Tedro was just a mistake, or if the house did operate under that name in 1922 and later was renamed Fredro, but that doesn’t seem very likely. A guidebook to Detroit published in 1916 mentions a Fredro Theatre, then located at the corner of Chene and Kirby Streets. What seems most likely is that the house was always the Fredro Theatre, both before and after it moved down the block. The neighborhood was predominantly Polish, and the guidebook says that the theater served a Polish audience. Fredro is a Polish surname. Tedro (or Teddro) is also a surname, but, as near as I can determine, it is of Estonian origin.
In any case the name Fredro Theatre appears in multiple FDY’s, and is mentioned in the trade papers at least twice, so that is certainly the name it should be listed under. I’ve found no other sources giving the name Tedro Theatre.
I wouldn’t know what to do about the duplicate listing in this case, as the Tedro page is earlier but this one has accurate information.
An October, 1913, newspaper item refereed to the Orpheus as Ellensburg’s “new movie theater.” It wasn’t open for long before it was renamed the Colonial, then.
Also, a correction to my previous comment: The Ellensburg theater was at the Southeast corner of Third and Pine, not the southwest corner. The Ellensburg was the house that in its last days became the Midstate Theatre, which Clarence Farrell dismantled in 1946.
I don’t know if it was the same Orpheum Theatre or not, but the April 29, 1908, issue of the Ellensburg Capital said “The Orpheum Theater opened last Wednesday evening with a motion picture program, changing three times a week, and the attendance has been heavy. The pictures are of good quality and are well presented.”
It seems likely that the house at 418 N. Pine would have been either a new location for this theater, or a re-opening of the house under new ownership. The Capital of February 9, 1909, reported that “The Orpheum has just hung up a handsome new electric sign.”
The theater appears to have been doing well a year later, when the February 11, 1910, issue of the Capital said “The Orpheum has an automatic piano stationed in the lobby of the theater which does not fail to let the people know there is such an institution doing business in town.”
By April of 1910, a theater called the Isis had opened, and by late 1912 it had been joined by a theater called the Queen. The Ellensburg Theatre, primarily used for live performances, might have been showing movies occasionally as well. It was probably too much competition for the Orpheum to withstand.
Our current description conflates two theaters, an error probably derived from this article published in the local newspaper in 2005. The Audion was never the Ellensburg Theatre, which was located in the Lloyd Building at the southwest corner of Third Avenue and Pine Street, and was demolished in 1953.
The Audion was a house that was called the Orpheus Theatre until it was bought, remodeled and renamed the Colonial Theatre by J. E. Ferrell in late 1913. The Colonial Theatre opened on New Year’s Eve, according to this ad that Ferrell placed in the January 8, 1914, issue of the Ellensburg Capital.
This article about the opening of the Audion Theatre on Thursday, November 28, 1935, appeared in the Ellensburg Daily Record the following Monday. It doesn’t mention the house having previously been the Colonial Theatre, but this article from the April 26, 1979, Daily Record does. In 1979, the theater had been disused for more than three decades, having been closed in the mid-1940s when theaters in Ellensburg were consolidated under a single operator (my previous comment cites Boxoffice of July 20, 1946, which says that Clarence Farrell intended to use the Audion as a standby theatre. It might never have reopened.) The house might not have been dismantled until 1957, though, when classified ads in the newspaper offered seats from the Audion Theatre for sale.
The history of this theater is puzzling. It opened as the Majestic in 1907, but by 1915 206-210 8th Street was listed in the city directory as the address of the Orpheum Theatre, and 313-317 8th Street is listed as the location of the Majestic Theatre. Orpheum vaudeville moved to the Sherman (previously Empress) Theatre in 1922, and that house was renamed the Orpheum Theatre.
Local impresarios Elbert and Getchell then took over the house at 210 8th and renamed it the Iowa Theatre. The Iowa was operated as a legitimate house, and closed after one year. The first photo on this web page shows the theater at 210 8th Street with the name Majestic on it, and from the dress and hair styles of the women and a fragment of a parked car it is clear that the photo was taken in the early to mid-1920s, so the house must have returned to its original name after the Iowa closed. I don’t know what became of the other Majestic at 317 8th Street.
From listings in various issues of The Billboard it is clear that there were houses called the Majestic and the Orpheum operating in Des Moines at the same time as early as 1908, but as no addresses are listed for either theater at that time there’s no telling which name then belonged to this house. It might have been renamed Orpheum fairly soon after opening, or it might have been called the Majestic for several years, in which case there was then another Orpheum somewhere in Des Moines.
The Strand Theatre has been demolished. There are what appears to be five two-story buildings along the section of the square where the theater once stood, but if you look at the back of the structure from SW 1st Street you can see that it is one long, modern building.
A photo of the Village Theatre’s concession stand appeared on the cover of the “Modern Theatre” section of Boxoffice, November 9, 1964.
In 1919, 2501 Lagrange Street was the location of a 733-seat house called the Savoy Theatre. Later, the name Savoy was moved to a smaller house on Lagrange. I don’t know what then became of the Orpheum/Savoy. Richard Abel says the Orpheum on Lagrange opened in 1910.
According to John Phelan’s Motion Pictures As a Phase of Commercial Amusement in Toledo, Ohio, in 1919 the Superior Street Orpheum had 664 seats and twenty employees, eight male and twelve female. That was not only a fairly high employee-to-seat ratio, but a very high female-to-male ratio. It makes me wonder if the Orpheum could have been a burlesque house at the time.
The March 6, 1915, issue of The Construction News said that Davenport architectural firm Clausen & Cruse had been hired to draw plans for the expansion and remodeling of the Family Theatre.
A 250-seat Palm Theatre is at 117 Paine Street on a list of theaters in Toledo that was published in 1919.
Richard Abel’s Americanizing the Movies and Movie-Mad Audiences, 1910-1914 mentions the Hart Theatre showing several Éclair features in December, 1912. But the theater might have been open a few years by then. It was owned by the Hart family, and the obituary of Harvey Hart in the October 6, 1946, issue of The Billboard (Google Books scan) said that in 1908 the family had theaters in Toledo, Marion, and Columbus, Ohio. The family moved to California in 1916 and operated a dramatic stock company in Long Beach. From 1926 to 1930, Harvey Hart presented the Hart Players in Pasadena. In later years he was a theater manager, working last for the Edwards circuit.
For some reason, the 1926 and 1927 editions of Film Daily Yearbook list the Hart Theatre at 650 Summit Street, but there are a lot of reminiscences on the Internet that suggest that the house never moved. Most likely 605 was the correct address, and FDY just repeated the wrong address year after year. From 1928 through 1931 it lists 650 Summit as the address of the 650-seat Summit Theatre. The house might have been renamed, but nobody in Toledo seems to remember that. Newspaper articles from years later mentioning the theater always call it the Hart.
One of those articles is a column in the June 9, 1953, issue of The Toledo Blade which features an interview with band leader Ted Lewis. Lewis got his start in show business at the Hart Theatre in the 1910s, and the article devotes a few brief paragraphs to his experience there. Google News has it, but won’t provide a link to the article itself. This link will display an adjacent article. Just scroll across the page to the right to the column headed “Mitch Woodbury Reports” to read it.
The Hart Theatre building was demolished in 1967.
This page from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis says that St. Louis architects Harry G. Clymer and Francis Drischler designed the Shubert Theatre in Denver.
The entry for the Colorado-Yule Marble Company in the 1913 edition of Sweet’s Catalog of Building Construction lists the Shubert Theatre Building in Denver among recent projects using the company’s products, and that list also attributes the design to Clymer & Drischler.
Interestingly, the Princess Theatre in St. Louis, also designed by Clymer & Drischler, was built by an outfit called the McClure Construction Company. A Frank P. McClure Construction company was operating in Kansas City around this time, and I suspect that the Denver Public Library, whose photo of the Denham Building is the most likely source for our current attribution of this theater to McClure, mistook the contractor on the project for the architect.
This page from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis has a brief biography of architect Harry G. Clymer who, with partner Francis Drischler, designed the Princess Theatre. At the bottom of the page is a longitudinal section of the theater. The page notes that Clymer & Drischler also designed the Shubert Theatre in Denver.
Rochester’s Downtown, by Donovan A. Shilling (Google Books preview) says that this house opened as the National Theatre on May 18, 1903. However, the January 3, 1903, issue of the Lockport Journal mentioned a play that had opened at the National on New Year’s Day. I don’t know if that means the house opened earlier, or if Rochester had an earlier theater of the same name.
The July 15, 1902, issue of The Plumbers' Trade Journal said that the construction contract for the National Theatre called for completion of the structure by October 1. If that goal was met, and assuming at least another month for outfitting and decorating, the National Theatre could have opened as early as November, 1902.
The magazine also noted that the National Theatre had been designed (not surprisingly) by Rochester’s own noted theater architects, Leon H. Lempert & Son.
This circa 1908 photo of Main Street shows that the National Theatre was fronted by a building that, judging from its architectural style, was probably built in the 1850s or 1860s. A new auditorium was most likely built behind the existing commercial building, though it’s also possible that the existing building was gutted and its interior rebuilt as a theater.
The July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item that was probably about this theater:
This photo of the Brownie Theatre shows a two-story building with a separate door for upstairs offices, and it’s about the right size to have cost $15,000 in 1916.The theater at 4813-4819 N. Broad Street was also known as the Logan Theatre, according to this page at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. The page suggests that the name was changed to Broad Theatre around 1928, but it was probably 1924, when the new (and much larger) Logan Theatre was opened nearby.
PA&B attributes the original design of this theater to the firm of Stuckert & Sloan, citing an item in the the February 5, 1913, issue of Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide which said that contracts for the project had been let. An item in the April 5, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World also attributes the design to Stuckert & Sloan:
However, there appears to have been a delay of almost two years before the project actually got underway, and the January 9, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item:Although another page at PA&B attributes the design of the project to Anderson & Haupt, the site also says that that firm was dissolved in 1914. I think it is also significant that the 1915 American Contractor notice mentions only Haupt.The fact that Max Haupt was the engineer in the firm (and in later years appears as an engineer on a number of other projects) suggests to me that, when the Logan Theatre project was resumed in early 1915, Haupt alone was brought in to supervise construction of the design made by Stuckert & Sloan in 1913, and to make any changes in the plans that might have been needed during construction. This is much more likely than that the Logan Amusement Company would have had entirely new plans prepared. The firm of Stuckert & Sloan was itself dissolved in 1915, and their impending dissolution might have been what prevented them from resuming work the project themselves.
The April 2, 1913, issue of The American Architect said that Philadelphia architects Stuckert & Sloan had filed plans for alterations to a five-story moving picture theater on Broadway at 31st Street in New York City. The project was budgeted at $15,000 and the client was the Joseph Weschler estate.
Fay’s Theatre was in operation at least as early as 1918, when the May 4 issue of The Moving Picture World noted that Edward Fay had paid the First National Exchange in New York City $1,000 to secure a one-week run of the feature film My Four Years in Germany at Fay’s Theatre in Rochester.
Fay’s Theatre was mentioned in the June 21, 1924, issue of Exhibitor’s Trade Review, which said that E. M. Fay had begun a remodeling project after the lobby had been slightly damaged by a fire a few weeks earlier.
Edward Fay had a long career in movie exhibition, but most of his operations were in Providence, Rhode Island. The records of the Fay Theatre Company from 1928 to 1971 are held by the Rhode Island Historical Society. An inventory is here.
I’ve found a number of errors in the NRHP’s listings, usually misspellings and sometimes wrong dates. I doubt that they’ll ever get around to correcting them. But “Flin, Cla” is one of the oddest things I’ve seen there. It sounds like it would be the name of a character in a bad sword and sorcery novel.
The July 24, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World mentions a “Perrient” Theatre at 930 Chene Street. According to the guide on this web page, the old address 930 Chene would have been in the modern 4700 block, so odds are good that the house was the Perrein Theatre and somebody just misspelled the name.
There was a Savoy Theatre in 1915, but according to the July 24 issue of The Moving Picture World that year it was at 229 S. Chene Street. I don’t think there was a South Chene Street, but this web page, which has a guide to Detroit addresses before and after the 1921 renumbering says that the old address 229 Chene would be in the modern 1200 block, so it must have been an earlier Savoy Theatre. But it means that the house that was at 1515 Chene in 1926 must have been opened after 1915.
The FDY lists the Catherine Theatre with 800 seats in 1930, and in 1931 and later it is listed with only 320 seats. Perhaps the drop indicates that the second auditorium was closed at that time.
The Perrein Theatre was being listed in the FDY again by 1931.
It looks like the Fredro Theatre was renamed the King Theatre sometime in 1939. A 400-seat Fredro Theatre is one of five houses listed on Chene Street in the 1939 FDY, and in 1940 a 400-seat King Theatre is listed but the Fredro isn’t. The other four theaters on Chene Street were unchanged from 1939 to 1940.
I wonder if gremlins got into somebody’s keyboard along the way, and the “Flin, Cla” that the NRHP document (cited in the very first comment on this theater by LostMemory) names as one of the architects or builders of the Colonial Theatre is actually Fuller Claflin? Claflin did design at least one theater in Harrisburg- the Lyceum (later the Orpheum), built in 1903 and reportedly demolished in 1925 to make way for the State Theatre. I’m skeptical that anyone has ever borne the odd name Cla Flin.
This house has the same address as the Tedro Theatre already listed. Our page says the Tedro closed after one year. The information probably comes from this page at Water Winter Wonderland.
I don’t know if the name Tedro was just a mistake, or if the house did operate under that name in 1922 and later was renamed Fredro, but that doesn’t seem very likely. A guidebook to Detroit published in 1916 mentions a Fredro Theatre, then located at the corner of Chene and Kirby Streets. What seems most likely is that the house was always the Fredro Theatre, both before and after it moved down the block. The neighborhood was predominantly Polish, and the guidebook says that the theater served a Polish audience. Fredro is a Polish surname. Tedro (or Teddro) is also a surname, but, as near as I can determine, it is of Estonian origin.
In any case the name Fredro Theatre appears in multiple FDY’s, and is mentioned in the trade papers at least twice, so that is certainly the name it should be listed under. I’ve found no other sources giving the name Tedro Theatre.
I wouldn’t know what to do about the duplicate listing in this case, as the Tedro page is earlier but this one has accurate information.
An October, 1913, newspaper item refereed to the Orpheus as Ellensburg’s “new movie theater.” It wasn’t open for long before it was renamed the Colonial, then.
Also, a correction to my previous comment: The Ellensburg theater was at the Southeast corner of Third and Pine, not the southwest corner. The Ellensburg was the house that in its last days became the Midstate Theatre, which Clarence Farrell dismantled in 1946.
I don’t know if it was the same Orpheum Theatre or not, but the April 29, 1908, issue of the Ellensburg Capital said “The Orpheum Theater opened last Wednesday evening with a motion picture program, changing three times a week, and the attendance has been heavy. The pictures are of good quality and are well presented.”
It seems likely that the house at 418 N. Pine would have been either a new location for this theater, or a re-opening of the house under new ownership. The Capital of February 9, 1909, reported that “The Orpheum has just hung up a handsome new electric sign.”
The theater appears to have been doing well a year later, when the February 11, 1910, issue of the Capital said “The Orpheum has an automatic piano stationed in the lobby of the theater which does not fail to let the people know there is such an institution doing business in town.”
By April of 1910, a theater called the Isis had opened, and by late 1912 it had been joined by a theater called the Queen. The Ellensburg Theatre, primarily used for live performances, might have been showing movies occasionally as well. It was probably too much competition for the Orpheum to withstand.
Our current description conflates two theaters, an error probably derived from this article published in the local newspaper in 2005. The Audion was never the Ellensburg Theatre, which was located in the Lloyd Building at the southwest corner of Third Avenue and Pine Street, and was demolished in 1953.
The Audion was a house that was called the Orpheus Theatre until it was bought, remodeled and renamed the Colonial Theatre by J. E. Ferrell in late 1913. The Colonial Theatre opened on New Year’s Eve, according to this ad that Ferrell placed in the January 8, 1914, issue of the Ellensburg Capital.
This article about the opening of the Audion Theatre on Thursday, November 28, 1935, appeared in the Ellensburg Daily Record the following Monday. It doesn’t mention the house having previously been the Colonial Theatre, but this article from the April 26, 1979, Daily Record does. In 1979, the theater had been disused for more than three decades, having been closed in the mid-1940s when theaters in Ellensburg were consolidated under a single operator (my previous comment cites Boxoffice of July 20, 1946, which says that Clarence Farrell intended to use the Audion as a standby theatre. It might never have reopened.) The house might not have been dismantled until 1957, though, when classified ads in the newspaper offered seats from the Audion Theatre for sale.
The history of this theater is puzzling. It opened as the Majestic in 1907, but by 1915 206-210 8th Street was listed in the city directory as the address of the Orpheum Theatre, and 313-317 8th Street is listed as the location of the Majestic Theatre. Orpheum vaudeville moved to the Sherman (previously Empress) Theatre in 1922, and that house was renamed the Orpheum Theatre.
Local impresarios Elbert and Getchell then took over the house at 210 8th and renamed it the Iowa Theatre. The Iowa was operated as a legitimate house, and closed after one year. The first photo on this web page shows the theater at 210 8th Street with the name Majestic on it, and from the dress and hair styles of the women and a fragment of a parked car it is clear that the photo was taken in the early to mid-1920s, so the house must have returned to its original name after the Iowa closed. I don’t know what became of the other Majestic at 317 8th Street.
From listings in various issues of The Billboard it is clear that there were houses called the Majestic and the Orpheum operating in Des Moines at the same time as early as 1908, but as no addresses are listed for either theater at that time there’s no telling which name then belonged to this house. It might have been renamed Orpheum fairly soon after opening, or it might have been called the Majestic for several years, in which case there was then another Orpheum somewhere in Des Moines.