This item is from the “Theater Changes” column of the July 17, 1940, issue of Motion Picture Daily:
“Open Kansas House Soon
“Kansas City, July 16. — The new theatre at Caney, Kan., practically rebuilt from the old Liberty by Larry Larsen, architect and builder, will be opened shortly by C. R. Gregg. The new house, renamed the Gregg, has been closed for two months.”
The Liberty Theatre at Caney, Kansas, was mentioned in the June 7, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World. Earlier than that I’ve found a Strand Theatre (new front to be installed, MPW April 6, 1918) and an Iris Theatre (recently opened, MPW August 28, 1915) in Caney. Possibly earlier names for the same theater?
The Ritz Theatre at Chenoa, Illinois, was listed as a new theater in the May 21, 1936, issue of The Film Daily. The only earlier reference to a specific theater in Chenoa I’ve found in the trade journals is an item in the August 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World saying that “Charles E. Hawkins of Mahornet is remodeling the Rex theater, which he recently purchased from Arch C. Howard.”
The most complete history of movie theaters in Chenoa is from a Centennial history published in 1954, but it’s wording is rather ambiguous. It never explicitly states that the Lyceum and the Ritz were one and the same, but doesn’t say they weren’t. It does say that the Rex was on the site of the Ritz:
“THE RITZ THEATER
“The first motion picture theatre (silent pictures) in Chenoa, known as the Rex, was owned and operated by Dexter and Clagget of Lexington about 1909, at the present location of the Ritz Theatre. Among others who later owned or operated the theatre were C. D. Caster, A. M. Blake, Richardson and Broadwell, Mr. Hawkins and Arch Swan.
“In August, 1919 the Rex was purchased and operated by John Pittman, now of Fairbury, who continued operation with the assistance of Lewis (Tubby) Claudon, until 1925. Mr. Claudon was closely connected with the motion picture industry here for many years. The first multi-reel picture shown here was ‘The Christian.’
“Later motion pictures were also shown at the Lyceum for many years, Les Twomey operating the machine.
“Music and entertainment was furnished at these shows by numerous local young people, among whom were Bernadine Twomey Elson, Clara Power Green, Myrtle Bower Winter and Georgia Green Power.
“On Feb. 8, 1938 under management of Elmer Larsen, the Ritz Theatre, in the present location was opened, and we might add it was 22 degrees below on that day. In 1944 the building was remodeled as it is now and was the first to operate a "talking picture” movie theatre in Chenoa. The Ritz burned on Dec. 19, 1940 and re-opened in March, 1941, still under management of Elmer Larsen.
“Mr. Tom Whetzell of Urbana, purchased the Ritz in May, 1951, which continues operations with Paul Hallbeck as manager and Ray Moore, machine operator.”
In this Bing Maps bird’s eye view, the Ritz Theatre building can be seen on the west side of South Veto Street just north of East Owsley Street.
jlinamen1229 is correct. The Grove Theatre’s building is still standing at the corner of Grove Avenue and Prairie Street, as seen in Street View. Part of the building is still occupied by the Prairie Rock Grill, reopened in 2012. The former auditorium, however, once the location of the microbrewery, is now occupied by Discover Church. A new entrance was built for the church at 200 Prairie Street.
A newspaper page from the Norwood News, dated November 7, without a year displayed but from the period 1903-1905, has this item about the Hetrick Opera House:
“Some strange things have happened out in Kansas. Oil has been discovered, and men who a few days ago were poor are now rich.
“One of the most striking cases is that of a man named Frank Hetrick. He owned a farm near the town of Chanute, and bad a hard time keeping the wolf from the door. He can neither read nor write.
His oil royalties now amount to $800 a month He has just completed the finest opera house in Kansas. It occupies half a block in Chanute. He said he Wanted to leave something for a monument.
“Mr. Hetrlck gives a box party at each performance, and Hetrick himself is always behind the scenes, seeing how the actors and actresses do things. They are having the times of their lives, and Chanute has become one of the best theatre towns in the west.”
As the Hetrick Opera House is mentioned in the February 13, 1904, issue of The Billboard, it must have opened either in 1903 or in early 1904.
The 1929 article in Motion Picture News that Tinseltoes linked to earlier was written by Victor A. Rigaumont, architect of the remodeling job that had recently been done at the Avon Theatre.
It is possible that the part of the building the theater was in dated from 1905 and was incorporated into the 1917 project. In the early photo at the Rialto Cafe, the theater part of the building, given a fancy new facade when converted into a bank in 1930, and the office and commercial building on the corner, remodeled in a simpler style at some point, then had a single, unified facade.
The Rohs Theatre, in the photo above, now the home of The Cynthiana-Harrison County Museum, is at 134 S. Walnut Street. This is the museum’s web site.
Cynthiana is also the home of The Rohs Opera House, an entirely different theater located at 133 E. Pike Street. The two are conflated all over the Internet, and we don’t want to be adding to the confusion. According to various web sites, the Opera House dates back to 1871, but a movie theater was installed on the ground floor (the Opera House was upstairs) in 1941.
The Rohs Theatre is mentioned in the trade publications a few times, though the earliest I’ve found so far is from 1929, but there is also an item in the May 10, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World announcing the recent opening of the 400-seat “Prows Theater” in Cynthiana. It’s possible that a typesetter scanning hastily scribbled notes misread “Rohs” as Prows, but it’s also possible that there was a Prows Theater, as an Internet search brings up quite a few people with the surname Prows in that region of Kentucky. The latter seems less likely than the former to me, though. Plus, from its architectural style, the Rohs Theatre building looks quite likely to have been built in the early 1910s.
The January 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World listed the Crown Theatre as one of six Louisville movie houses being operated by the Broadway Amusement Company. The Crown was also mentioned in the January 4, 1913, issue of the magazine.
Here is an indoor Google Street View of a photo hanging on the wall of the Rialto Cafe, 108 W. Wilshire Avenue in Fullerton. The photo shows the Rialto at the left, probably about the time it opened. This is the only photo of the Rialto I’ve found on the Internet.
Unless the project incorporated an existing building (which it might have done), the building dates from 1917, not 1905. The Rialto itself certainly opened in 1917, though, and the project of which it was a part was mentioned in issues of Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer that year.
The first mention of the project was in the issue of February 3, and did not include the theater, but the March 17 issue described an expanded project in which a theater was now included:
“Frank K. Benchley is completing plans for the 2-story reinforced concrete business block for the Fullerton Improvement Company. Part of the lower floor will be devoted to a moving picture theater and the rest of the ground floor will be occupied by the improvement company as a store. The second story will be equipped as club quarters for the Fullerton Club.”
The April 28 issue of the magazine says that ground had been broken for the project, and notes the location as the corner of Wilshire Avenue and Spadra Avenue (now Harbor Boulevard.) The theater was to have a frontage of forty feet and extend the depth of the building.
Frank K. Benchley was probably Fullerton’s most active architect during this period, and a number of his buildings are still standing.
I don’t think that Walker & Eisen should be credited as architects of the Rialto. The only work they did on the building was after the theater had closed, when it was converted into a bank in 1930. The splendid Art Deco facade they designed would have made a nice front for a theater, but it never was.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of April 11, 1924, had an item about the Barton Theatre:
“San Pedro— Foss Designing & Building Company 1007 Pacific Ave, San Pedro, has the contract and has started work on a two-story theater and office building 45x100 feet at northeast corner of Santa Cruz and Pacific; estimated cost, $35,000. The building is being erected by Goebel Bros., who own the market building adjoining and will be under the management of P.H. Poirier. The theater will seat 500. The building will be Mission style throughout.”
The Foss Designing & Building Company was a Pasadena firm established by builder Robert Francis Foss in 1911. The San Pedro branch office was opened in 1923. Operating both as a general contractor for projects designed by other architects and as one of the region’s leading design-build firms, Foss Designing & Building Company was active at least into the 1980s as The Foss Company. The firm’s architectural and business records are held at the Huntington Library in San Marino. It’s possible that the plans for the Barton Theatre are among them, though it is also possible that this was only a contracting project. I’ve found a reference to the Foss company being the builders of the Strand Theatre in San Pedro as well, so it also might have been a Foss design.
For those who might be interested, this PDF of a document prepared by Tim Gregory is about a Foss-designed house in Altadena, but about half of the document is devoted to information about the Foss company.
The April 13, 1937, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Carter Theatre in Cleveland, which had not operated as a movie house for a year, was being redecorated by Community Circuit Theatres and would reopen with films on May 1.
It might have been 1937 when the Opera House was renamed the Holyoke Theatre. The April 7 issue of Motion Picture News ran this item:
“Takes Holyoke House
“Boston, April 8. — The Holyoke Theatre, Inc., has been formed to operate the Opera House in Holyoke, Mass. Frederick E. Lieberman, circuit head, is president of the new corporation, while his brother, Morton Lieberman, is secretary. Samuel Richmond is treasurer.”
knadles: The second page of the Boxoffice article I linked to in my previous comment has a black and white photo of the Coral’s auditorium (here) though it is small and the scan is rather blurry.
The April 1, 1937, issue of Motion Picture Daily said that the opening of the newsreel theater being built inside Grand Central Station had been set for May 3.
The Majestic apparently became the Loyal in 1937. The April 1 issue of Motion Picture Daily said that Springer & Cocalis would reopen the Loyal Theatre, formerly the Majestic, in Washington Heights, on April 2.
The Schuyler Theatre’s name was misspelled by Motion Picture Daily in its item of April 1, 1937, about the opening of the house: “Zimmerman, Noble and Yoost will open the new Schuler at 84th St. and Columbus Avenue tomorrow night.”
The Coyle Theatre was listed in various editions of Julius Cahn’s guide from the 1890s through the 1910s as a second floor house. The alterations in the 1920s must have been virtually a complete rebuilding to turn it into a modern movie theater.
The house apparently underwent additional alterations in 1934. An item in the April 8 issue of The Film Daily said, under the heading “Coyle Theater Enlarged” that “R. S. Coyle’s theater here is now called the New Coyle, with seating capacity increased to 999.”
Robert Coyle was still operating the house at least as late as 1945, when the July 16 issue of Motion Picture Daily mentioned him as the “…oldest
Paramount exhibitor in this territory.”
The Turn Hall which was burned in 1954 was replaced by a new building on the same site which is still occupied by the Syracuse Turners. The original hall was opened to the public on December 26, 1869. The Turn Hall Theatre was showing movies at least as early as 1911, when the July 15 issue of The Moving Picture World published a letter dated June 3 from the manager of the house, J.J. Murphy.
A photo of the auditorium of the Ohio Theatre, plus a photo of the exterior after it had become Rex Humbard’s Calvary Temple, and a photo of the projection booth can be seen in a slide show on this page of the Akron Beacon Journal web site. The accompanying article (click link at lower left of photos) by Mark J. Price says that the Ohio Theatre was designed by an Akron Engineer, John W. Egan. That probably accounts for the rather plain style of the front. I haven’t found who designed the interior, which was rather old fashioned for 1936.
The Shakespeare festival presented at the house in 1961 was mounted by Arthur Lithgow, father of actor John Lithgow. It had been scheduled for Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, where it had been presented the previous year, but by a narrow vote the Board of Directors of the Hall Foundation had ousted Lithgow, and he moved the performances to the Ohio Theatre, then still owned by television evangelist Rex Humbard, who let the festival use the theater rent-free, according to John Lithgow’s memoir, Drama: An Actor’s Education.
The Lyric Theatre is at 221 High Street. A photo of the Lyric Theatre about 1954 appears on page 53 of Fairport Harbor from the Arcadia Publishing Company (Google Books preview.) The theater was located in the Lawrence Block. Various issues of The American Contractor from late 1920 and early 1921 reported that Cleveland architect R. H. Hinsdale was designing a theater, store, and office building at Fairport for E. E. Lawrence. It must have been the Lyric.
The theater probably opened before the end of 1921. This newspaper article in which I found the address said that the Lyric closed in 1961, so it had a run of forty years.
The caption of a 1949 photo of the Aereon Theatre on this web page says that it was built in 1948. I remember the 1949 re-release of the movie San Francisco advertised on the Aereon’s marquee. It also played at my neighborhood theater around that time.
The RKO Palace was actually at 320 W. Sheridan Avenue (which was called Grand Avenue when the house opened.) The number 322 can be seen on the door to the upstairs offices at right in the 1911 photo missmelbatoast linked to.
Though the Metropolitan began presenting vaudeville at the end of March, 1909, the house had opened on January 28 with a stock company. The January 29 issue of Oklahoma State Labor News published an item about the opening.
The February 21, 1909, issue of the Oklahoma City Daily Pointer featured a large ad for the Metropolitan Theatre with, just below it, a photo of the Metropolitan Stock Company’s leading man, Hayden Stevenson.
Given the later troubles the theater had with labor organizations (in 1929, when it was theonly non-union theater in Oklahoma City, it was damaged by a bomb during a dispute with the projectionists and stage hands unions) this item from the October 29, 1910, issue of The Oklahoma Labor Unit is a bit ironic. It recommends a play called Lost Paradise to union members, noting that the producers, the North Brothers Stock Company, had made a sizable contribution to the Labor Temple fund. “The Metropolitan is fair to union labor,” it said, “and for this reason has always been liberally patronized by union people….”
This item is from the “Theater Changes” column of the July 17, 1940, issue of Motion Picture Daily:
The Liberty Theatre at Caney, Kansas, was mentioned in the June 7, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World. Earlier than that I’ve found a Strand Theatre (new front to be installed, MPW April 6, 1918) and an Iris Theatre (recently opened, MPW August 28, 1915) in Caney. Possibly earlier names for the same theater?The Ritz Theatre at Chenoa, Illinois, was listed as a new theater in the May 21, 1936, issue of The Film Daily. The only earlier reference to a specific theater in Chenoa I’ve found in the trade journals is an item in the August 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World saying that “Charles E. Hawkins of Mahornet is remodeling the Rex theater, which he recently purchased from Arch C. Howard.”
The most complete history of movie theaters in Chenoa is from a Centennial history published in 1954, but it’s wording is rather ambiguous. It never explicitly states that the Lyceum and the Ritz were one and the same, but doesn’t say they weren’t. It does say that the Rex was on the site of the Ritz:
In this Bing Maps bird’s eye view, the Ritz Theatre building can be seen on the west side of South Veto Street just north of East Owsley Street.jlinamen1229 is correct. The Grove Theatre’s building is still standing at the corner of Grove Avenue and Prairie Street, as seen in Street View. Part of the building is still occupied by the Prairie Rock Grill, reopened in 2012. The former auditorium, however, once the location of the microbrewery, is now occupied by Discover Church. A new entrance was built for the church at 200 Prairie Street.
OCRon: BigScreen has a complete list of the Muvico locations acquired by Carmike.
A newspaper page from the Norwood News, dated November 7, without a year displayed but from the period 1903-1905, has this item about the Hetrick Opera House:
As the Hetrick Opera House is mentioned in the February 13, 1904, issue of The Billboard, it must have opened either in 1903 or in early 1904.The 1929 article in Motion Picture News that Tinseltoes linked to earlier was written by Victor A. Rigaumont, architect of the remodeling job that had recently been done at the Avon Theatre.
It is possible that the part of the building the theater was in dated from 1905 and was incorporated into the 1917 project. In the early photo at the Rialto Cafe, the theater part of the building, given a fancy new facade when converted into a bank in 1930, and the office and commercial building on the corner, remodeled in a simpler style at some point, then had a single, unified facade.
The Rohs Theatre, in the photo above, now the home of The Cynthiana-Harrison County Museum, is at 134 S. Walnut Street. This is the museum’s web site.
Cynthiana is also the home of The Rohs Opera House, an entirely different theater located at 133 E. Pike Street. The two are conflated all over the Internet, and we don’t want to be adding to the confusion. According to various web sites, the Opera House dates back to 1871, but a movie theater was installed on the ground floor (the Opera House was upstairs) in 1941.
The Rohs Theatre is mentioned in the trade publications a few times, though the earliest I’ve found so far is from 1929, but there is also an item in the May 10, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World announcing the recent opening of the 400-seat “Prows Theater” in Cynthiana. It’s possible that a typesetter scanning hastily scribbled notes misread “Rohs” as Prows, but it’s also possible that there was a Prows Theater, as an Internet search brings up quite a few people with the surname Prows in that region of Kentucky. The latter seems less likely than the former to me, though. Plus, from its architectural style, the Rohs Theatre building looks quite likely to have been built in the early 1910s.
The January 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World listed the Crown Theatre as one of six Louisville movie houses being operated by the Broadway Amusement Company. The Crown was also mentioned in the January 4, 1913, issue of the magazine.
Here is an indoor Google Street View of a photo hanging on the wall of the Rialto Cafe, 108 W. Wilshire Avenue in Fullerton. The photo shows the Rialto at the left, probably about the time it opened. This is the only photo of the Rialto I’ve found on the Internet.
Unless the project incorporated an existing building (which it might have done), the building dates from 1917, not 1905. The Rialto itself certainly opened in 1917, though, and the project of which it was a part was mentioned in issues of Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer that year.
The first mention of the project was in the issue of February 3, and did not include the theater, but the March 17 issue described an expanded project in which a theater was now included:
The April 28 issue of the magazine says that ground had been broken for the project, and notes the location as the corner of Wilshire Avenue and Spadra Avenue (now Harbor Boulevard.) The theater was to have a frontage of forty feet and extend the depth of the building.Frank K. Benchley was probably Fullerton’s most active architect during this period, and a number of his buildings are still standing.
I don’t think that Walker & Eisen should be credited as architects of the Rialto. The only work they did on the building was after the theater had closed, when it was converted into a bank in 1930. The splendid Art Deco facade they designed would have made a nice front for a theater, but it never was.
The Alhambra Theatre, playing motion pictures, is the only San Pedro house listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide. No details were given.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of April 11, 1924, had an item about the Barton Theatre:
The Foss Designing & Building Company was a Pasadena firm established by builder Robert Francis Foss in 1911. The San Pedro branch office was opened in 1923. Operating both as a general contractor for projects designed by other architects and as one of the region’s leading design-build firms, Foss Designing & Building Company was active at least into the 1980s as The Foss Company. The firm’s architectural and business records are held at the Huntington Library in San Marino. It’s possible that the plans for the Barton Theatre are among them, though it is also possible that this was only a contracting project. I’ve found a reference to the Foss company being the builders of the Strand Theatre in San Pedro as well, so it also might have been a Foss design.For those who might be interested, this PDF of a document prepared by Tim Gregory is about a Foss-designed house in Altadena, but about half of the document is devoted to information about the Foss company.
The April 13, 1937, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Carter Theatre in Cleveland, which had not operated as a movie house for a year, was being redecorated by Community Circuit Theatres and would reopen with films on May 1.
It might have been 1937 when the Opera House was renamed the Holyoke Theatre. The April 7 issue of Motion Picture News ran this item:
knadles: The second page of the Boxoffice article I linked to in my previous comment has a black and white photo of the Coral’s auditorium (here) though it is small and the scan is rather blurry.
The April 1, 1937, issue of Motion Picture Daily said that the opening of the newsreel theater being built inside Grand Central Station had been set for May 3.
The Majestic apparently became the Loyal in 1937. The April 1 issue of Motion Picture Daily said that Springer & Cocalis would reopen the Loyal Theatre, formerly the Majestic, in Washington Heights, on April 2.
The Schuyler Theatre’s name was misspelled by Motion Picture Daily in its item of April 1, 1937, about the opening of the house: “Zimmerman, Noble and Yoost will open the new Schuler at 84th St. and Columbus Avenue tomorrow night.”
The Coyle Theatre was listed in various editions of Julius Cahn’s guide from the 1890s through the 1910s as a second floor house. The alterations in the 1920s must have been virtually a complete rebuilding to turn it into a modern movie theater.
The house apparently underwent additional alterations in 1934. An item in the April 8 issue of The Film Daily said, under the heading “Coyle Theater Enlarged” that “R. S. Coyle’s theater here is now called the New Coyle, with seating capacity increased to 999.”
Robert Coyle was still operating the house at least as late as 1945, when the July 16 issue of Motion Picture Daily mentioned him as the “…oldest Paramount exhibitor in this territory.”
The Palace Theatre building is now occupied by Dee’s, a record and video store that also sells Cricket Wireless services.
The Turn Hall which was burned in 1954 was replaced by a new building on the same site which is still occupied by the Syracuse Turners. The original hall was opened to the public on December 26, 1869. The Turn Hall Theatre was showing movies at least as early as 1911, when the July 15 issue of The Moving Picture World published a letter dated June 3 from the manager of the house, J.J. Murphy.
A photo of the auditorium of the Ohio Theatre, plus a photo of the exterior after it had become Rex Humbard’s Calvary Temple, and a photo of the projection booth can be seen in a slide show on this page of the Akron Beacon Journal web site. The accompanying article (click link at lower left of photos) by Mark J. Price says that the Ohio Theatre was designed by an Akron Engineer, John W. Egan. That probably accounts for the rather plain style of the front. I haven’t found who designed the interior, which was rather old fashioned for 1936.
The Shakespeare festival presented at the house in 1961 was mounted by Arthur Lithgow, father of actor John Lithgow. It had been scheduled for Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, where it had been presented the previous year, but by a narrow vote the Board of Directors of the Hall Foundation had ousted Lithgow, and he moved the performances to the Ohio Theatre, then still owned by television evangelist Rex Humbard, who let the festival use the theater rent-free, according to John Lithgow’s memoir, Drama: An Actor’s Education.
The Lyric Theatre is at 221 High Street. A photo of the Lyric Theatre about 1954 appears on page 53 of Fairport Harbor from the Arcadia Publishing Company (Google Books preview.) The theater was located in the Lawrence Block. Various issues of The American Contractor from late 1920 and early 1921 reported that Cleveland architect R. H. Hinsdale was designing a theater, store, and office building at Fairport for E. E. Lawrence. It must have been the Lyric.
The theater probably opened before the end of 1921. This newspaper article in which I found the address said that the Lyric closed in 1961, so it had a run of forty years.
The caption of a 1949 photo of the Aereon Theatre on this web page says that it was built in 1948. I remember the 1949 re-release of the movie San Francisco advertised on the Aereon’s marquee. It also played at my neighborhood theater around that time.
The RKO Palace was actually at 320 W. Sheridan Avenue (which was called Grand Avenue when the house opened.) The number 322 can be seen on the door to the upstairs offices at right in the 1911 photo missmelbatoast linked to.
Though the Metropolitan began presenting vaudeville at the end of March, 1909, the house had opened on January 28 with a stock company. The January 29 issue of Oklahoma State Labor News published an item about the opening.
The February 21, 1909, issue of the Oklahoma City Daily Pointer featured a large ad for the Metropolitan Theatre with, just below it, a photo of the Metropolitan Stock Company’s leading man, Hayden Stevenson.
Given the later troubles the theater had with labor organizations (in 1929, when it was theonly non-union theater in Oklahoma City, it was damaged by a bomb during a dispute with the projectionists and stage hands unions) this item from the October 29, 1910, issue of The Oklahoma Labor Unit is a bit ironic. It recommends a play called Lost Paradise to union members, noting that the producers, the North Brothers Stock Company, had made a sizable contribution to the Labor Temple fund. “The Metropolitan is fair to union labor,” it said, “and for this reason has always been liberally patronized by union people….”