The Liberty Theatre is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide as a ground floor house with 651 seats. The stage was only 25 from footlights to back wall, and 48 feet between side walls, and a proscenium 14x28 feet, which seems more suited to vaudeville than to traveling stage shows.
Nevertheless, an article called “Coalinga, a Workingman’s Paradise” in the June, 1912, issue of Western Engineering describes a single theater at Coalinga, though it doesn’t give the name:
“For amusements, the town has a theatre which is on the Cort theatre circuit of San Francisco. Such performances as ‘Polly of the Circus,’ ‘The Squaw Man,’ and ‘The Chocolate Soldier’ appear once or twice a week, while moving pictures and vaudeville run every night.”
The 1913 Cahn guide did say that John Cort was the New York representative of the Liberty Theatre. But prior to the opening of the Liberty, the 1909-1910 Cahn guide listed the Opera House in Coalinga, with 1,200 seats and a stage “ample for any productions,” but no other details. Perhaps the author of the article had been in Coalinga before the Liberty opened, and it was the Opera House he described.
Another photo of the State Theatre in ruins, but with the vertical sign still attached, appears on page 173 of Seismicity of the United States, 1568-1989 (revised), by Carl W. Stover and Jerry L. Coffman (Google Books scan.)
The October 17, 1936, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that the Liberty Theatre in Coalinga was being remodeled and would be reopened under the management of J. H. Partridge.
The June 8, 1935, issue of the same publication had named Partridge and George C. Moore as partners in Coalinga who planned to operate the new theater being built at Avenal. They must have been the operators of the State Theatre.
There are odd things going on with the site lately, Ed, but I hadn’t noticed this one until you pointed it out. It’s another thing for Ken to tell Patrick about. Have you noticed anything else?
The four other theaters known to have been built for Pacific States Theatres- the El Rey on Wilshire Boulevard, the San Clemente (Miriamar) in San Clemente, the La Mar in Manhattan Beach, and the Studio City in the San Fernando Valley- were all designed by architect Clifford Balch. Though I haven’t found any sources saying that Balch designed the Grand, I’d be very surprised if he didn’t.
Thanks, Ken. The missing comment is correct, by the way. The State did open as the Goodwin Opera House, but before 1909. I found it listed in the 1907-1908 edition of Henry’s Official Western Theatrical Guide, with 500 seats. It was probably renamed the State in 1919, when Southwest Builder & Contractor reported that a new owner intended to remodel the Opera House in Tempe.
There’s definitely something going wrong. I’d notify support about the issue, but my outgoing e-mail hasn’t worked for ages. I’ll just have to hope that Ken Roe sees the comment and lets Patrick know about the problem.
Something is wrong. Searching for information about the Goodwin Opera House in Tempe, Google gave me a link to this Cinema Treasures page displaying this result:
“Comments about State Theatre in Tempe, AZ – Cinema Treasures
“cinematreasures.org/theaters/14260/comments
“This opened as the Goodwin Opera House in 1909 as a theatre for movies and stage shows. It was also known as the Tempe Opera House. It wasn’t called the …”
Clicking on the link (no Google cache is offered), this theater’s “all comments” page appears with only five comments, and the one Google displayed is not among them. Did Google’s results come from a Cinema Treasures in an alternate universe?
Also, the photo TSLOEWS refers to in the comment of July 12, 2010, is probably the one I linked to in my previous comment. How did TSLOEWS see the photo before I linked to it? No link to the photo appears in any earlier comment, nor is it in the photo section for this theater. It must have been linked previously, but the comment with the link is gone, just like the partial comment about the Goodwin Opera House that Google’s search results displays.
Earlier, I was on another CT page (I’ve forgotten which theater it was) and it had only six comments, but after “Recent Comments” it said “view all 12 comments” and when I clicked the link there were only the same six as on the main page.
I believe the Brea Theatre in the Boxoffice photo Tinseltoes linked to is this one. Despite the impression the caption gives that it was new construction, nobody was building theaters that looked like that in 1964, and they certainly weren’t making neon Art Deco marquees like that anymore. The Brea must have been closed for a few years, and Mr. Goodin must have renovateded and reopened it.
Although Google Street View shows the Improv comedy club with a marquee very like the one on the Brea Theater, I’m not sure it’s the same marquee. The aerial view shows that the building the Improv is in is not as deep as the theater must have been. It might be entirely new construction, though the Brea’s marquee might have been saved, reconditioned, and attached to the new building. I’m not even sure if the Improv’s entrance is in the same location the theater’s entrance was. The whole town has changed so drastically that it’s unrecognizable.
The Fresno Bee article CSWalczak linked to is no longer there, but this might be it, moved to the paper’s Historical Perspectives weblog. It says that construction of the Barton Opera House began in 1889, and the house opened on September 29, 1890.
The portion of the building fronting on Fulton Street, which had housed the armory, was demolished and replaced by an office block in 1914-1915, and the theater was renamed Theater Fresno. At some point between 1914 and 1917 the theater portion of the building was remodeled.
A book published in 1919, History of Fresno County, California, by Paul E. Vandor, says that the theater was leased to the Hippodrome company and converted to a vaudeville house in 1917.
The design of the Barton Opera House is attributed to Charles K. Kirby, Sr. and Charles K. Kirby, Jr. by A guide to Historic Architecture in Fresno. No clue yet to the architect of the remodeling in the 1910s.
The future Roxy is billed on this vintage postcard as Theater Nelson. Though a row of four Victorian commercial buildings survives on this block of Market Street today, everything else, including the theater, has vanished.
The 1908-1909 edition of the Cahn guide lists the “New Nelson Theatre. Just opened.” The house had 1,200 seats. Later editions of the Cahn guide indicate that about a third of those were in the gallery that was removed when the house was remodeled as the Roxy. The 1921 Cahn guide listed the house as the Luna Theatre.
I’ve now found a Broadway Theatre operating at Logansport as early as 1908, mentioned in the December 10 issue of The Billboard. Either there was an earlier house called the Broadway Theatre, or the name of the opera house was changed sooner than was thought. If it was the same theater, the name change must have been quite recent as Dowling Opera House is still listed in Julius Cahn’s ad for his affiliated theaters in the December 5 issue, and I haven’t found the Broadway mentioned before December.
The Crystal is also mentioned in 1908, playing vaudeville. The Ark Theatre is mentioned in the November 21 issue.
Early theater names I’ve found connected with Logansport include the Colonial, Nelson, Logan, Grand, Ark, Luna, and Crystal. The Nelson was a big theater, about the size of the Broadway, but newer, and was the town’s leading playhouse after the old opera house became the Broadway. The Ark was running vaudeville around 1911, and the Crystal was a movie house operating about the same time. They might be two of the four unknowns on the maps. The Ark was operating at least as late as 1924, when it was being run as a movie house by J. E. Dowling.
The fire that destroyed the Broadway took place in 1924, not 1926. It was reported in the February 23 issue of Exhibitors Herald, which featured a photo of the smoldering ruins.
This item from the June 4, 1921, issue of The American Contractor is probably about the Palace Theatre:
“Aurora, Ind.—Theater (moving picture & playhouse): 1 sty. & bas. 53x106. Aurora. Archts. Rendigs, Panzer & Martin, 507 Palace Theater bldg., Cincinnati, O. Owner Palace Theater Co. of Aurora. Mr. Swarthout. in charge. Aurora. Brk. walls & terra cotta trim., re. cone, slabs. Archt. will take bids about June 10. Drawing plans.”
George E. Rendigs, Robert R. Panzer, and James A. Martin formed their partnership in 1920. Prior to that, Rendigs had been the building engineer for the City of Cincinnati, while Panzer and Martin were his two principal assistants.
I’ve found this theater listed as the Dolan Opera House as late as 1900. In 1902, it appears in trade publications as the Dowling Opera House, and it is advertised as Dowling’s Theatre in the 1905-1906 Cahn guide.
During the early days of drive-ins, combination indoor-outdoor theaters were fairly common in regions where winters are harsh. I was a bit surprised to hear that there had been such a theater in palmy Sacramento until I remembered the winter tule fogs that often plague the Central Valley. There were probably many nights when the outdoor screen would have been hard to see even from the front rows, and even assuming that the image from the projector could have reached the screen without fading and blurring.
The Southgate Indoor-Outdoor Theatre is one of several drive-ins featured on this page at Historic Aerials. The United Artists operation opened in 1964 and closed in 1979, according to the author of the caption of the aerial view taken during the early stage of construction. There is now a discount department store on the site.
The March 27, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World ran this item about the Colonial Theatre:
“Rutland, Vt. — The Colonial Theater, a handsome and substantial building on West street, opened on March 10, less than three months after the ground was broken for the foundation. Messrs. Lincoln and Fuller are the owners, and they started in with a fine programme — one of the Biograph ‘Jones’s’ series and some Pathe subjects. The show will consist of pictures and songs exclusively, and the attendance so far has been most encouraging.”
Apparently there were two locations of the Colonial Theatre, but neither of them was at 131 West Street, nor in the building described in our current introduction. The Colonial in the building next door to the Grand Theatre was operating around 1915, so must have been the second location.
An article about the Paramount Theatre published in the Rutland Historical Society Quarterly in 2004 (PDF here) has this line: “Other motion picture theatres in the area, who also reached their demise, were the Shrine which became the Strand at 73-77 Wales Street, the Colonial at 107-109 West Street and the Grand at 112 West Street.”
Another source mentions a cigar store opened in 1913 in the Colonial Theatre Building at the corner of West and Cottage Streets. That means that the original Colonial Theatre was on the site of what is now the parking lot of the church across the street from the Grand Theatre.
Why there was a Colonial Theatre in the building next door to the Grand by 1915 I don’t know. The original theater might have been destroyed by a fire, or converted to some other use, or perhaps continued to operate after 1915 under a different name, but I’ve found nothing on the Internet to confirm any of these surmises. In any case, the Colonial Theatre opened at 107-109 West Street on March 10, 1909, and the building has been demolished.
I’ve finally found the Little Grand Theatre mentioned by another source. It was on a list of nickelodeons that was published in the July 18, 1908, issue of The Billboard (PDF here.) It is listed at 857 “Broadway.” As there is no street called Broadway in Augusta, they must have meant Broad Street. Little Grand Theatre must be an early aka of the Star. No house called the Star appears on the 1908 list.
David: Cinema Treasures supports Markdown, a simplified substitute for HTML code. If you want to use inline links all you need are square brackets and parentheses. It is described in the LINKS section of this page.
I have a suspicion (but no firm evidence) that either the State or the Trail was at 148 W. Mountain, in the building now occupied by the Trail Head Tavern (Street View), which still sports a theater-style marquee.
The first America Theatre was supposed to have been at 150 W. Mountain. It’s possible that the address of that building the theater was in was shifted to 148 at some point, or it might be that the America (which might have become the State), was in the building next door to the tavern, now housing the Steak-Out Saloon (with secondary sign saying Scrivner’s Grocery & Market.)
Even if the State was in the building at 150, the Trail might still have been in the building at 148, of course. The building isn’t very wide, but it’s deep enough that it could have accommodated 400 seats, though probably with very little leg room.
But until somebody finds an old city directory or telephone book or other source with the addresses, or somebody who remembers seeing the theaters themselves turns up, we can’t be sure which theaters were where.
This item from the February 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World could be about this theater:
“New Isis at Victor, Col.
“W. C. Lemaster, of Victor, Col., has sold his Isis theater and will soon open a house to be known as the New Isis. This will give Victor four motion picture theaters.”
The operator’s correct name was William Clifford LeMaster, according to this weblog post written by one of his modern relations.
LeMaster was mentioned as manager of the Opera House at Victor in the July 5, 1919, issue of Motion Picture News. The Opera House had been converted into a movie theater by the Hall brothers the same year the New Isis opened, according to an item in the February 5 issue of The Moving Picture World. The fourth theater in Victor in 1916 was the Fox, formerly owned by the Hall brothers but sold to Jesse E. Jones in 1916.
The Liberty Theatre is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide as a ground floor house with 651 seats. The stage was only 25 from footlights to back wall, and 48 feet between side walls, and a proscenium 14x28 feet, which seems more suited to vaudeville than to traveling stage shows.
Nevertheless, an article called “Coalinga, a Workingman’s Paradise” in the June, 1912, issue of Western Engineering describes a single theater at Coalinga, though it doesn’t give the name:
The 1913 Cahn guide did say that John Cort was the New York representative of the Liberty Theatre. But prior to the opening of the Liberty, the 1909-1910 Cahn guide listed the Opera House in Coalinga, with 1,200 seats and a stage “ample for any productions,” but no other details. Perhaps the author of the article had been in Coalinga before the Liberty opened, and it was the Opera House he described.Another photo of the State Theatre in ruins, but with the vertical sign still attached, appears on page 173 of Seismicity of the United States, 1568-1989 (revised), by Carl W. Stover and Jerry L. Coffman (Google Books scan.)
The October 17, 1936, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that the Liberty Theatre in Coalinga was being remodeled and would be reopened under the management of J. H. Partridge.
The June 8, 1935, issue of the same publication had named Partridge and George C. Moore as partners in Coalinga who planned to operate the new theater being built at Avenal. They must have been the operators of the State Theatre.
There are odd things going on with the site lately, Ed, but I hadn’t noticed this one until you pointed it out. It’s another thing for Ken to tell Patrick about. Have you noticed anything else?
The four other theaters known to have been built for Pacific States Theatres- the El Rey on Wilshire Boulevard, the San Clemente (Miriamar) in San Clemente, the La Mar in Manhattan Beach, and the Studio City in the San Fernando Valley- were all designed by architect Clifford Balch. Though I haven’t found any sources saying that Balch designed the Grand, I’d be very surprised if he didn’t.
Thanks, Ken. The missing comment is correct, by the way. The State did open as the Goodwin Opera House, but before 1909. I found it listed in the 1907-1908 edition of Henry’s Official Western Theatrical Guide, with 500 seats. It was probably renamed the State in 1919, when Southwest Builder & Contractor reported that a new owner intended to remodel the Opera House in Tempe.
There’s definitely something going wrong. I’d notify support about the issue, but my outgoing e-mail hasn’t worked for ages. I’ll just have to hope that Ken Roe sees the comment and lets Patrick know about the problem.
Something is wrong. Searching for information about the Goodwin Opera House in Tempe, Google gave me a link to this Cinema Treasures page displaying this result:
Clicking on the link (no Google cache is offered), this theater’s “all comments” page appears with only five comments, and the one Google displayed is not among them. Did Google’s results come from a Cinema Treasures in an alternate universe?Also, the photo TSLOEWS refers to in the comment of July 12, 2010, is probably the one I linked to in my previous comment. How did TSLOEWS see the photo before I linked to it? No link to the photo appears in any earlier comment, nor is it in the photo section for this theater. It must have been linked previously, but the comment with the link is gone, just like the partial comment about the Goodwin Opera House that Google’s search results displays.
Earlier, I was on another CT page (I’ve forgotten which theater it was) and it had only six comments, but after “Recent Comments” it said “view all 12 comments” and when I clicked the link there were only the same six as on the main page.
Stuff is going missing! What gives?
Linkrot repair: The 1998 Boxoffice article about Harkins Theatres is now here.
A vintage photo of the State Theatre appears on page 60 of Mexicans in Scottsdale, by José María Burruel (Google Books preview.)
I believe the Brea Theatre in the Boxoffice photo Tinseltoes linked to is this one. Despite the impression the caption gives that it was new construction, nobody was building theaters that looked like that in 1964, and they certainly weren’t making neon Art Deco marquees like that anymore. The Brea must have been closed for a few years, and Mr. Goodin must have renovateded and reopened it.
Although Google Street View shows the Improv comedy club with a marquee very like the one on the Brea Theater, I’m not sure it’s the same marquee. The aerial view shows that the building the Improv is in is not as deep as the theater must have been. It might be entirely new construction, though the Brea’s marquee might have been saved, reconditioned, and attached to the new building. I’m not even sure if the Improv’s entrance is in the same location the theater’s entrance was. The whole town has changed so drastically that it’s unrecognizable.
The Fresno Bee article CSWalczak linked to is no longer there, but this might be it, moved to the paper’s Historical Perspectives weblog. It says that construction of the Barton Opera House began in 1889, and the house opened on September 29, 1890.
The portion of the building fronting on Fulton Street, which had housed the armory, was demolished and replaced by an office block in 1914-1915, and the theater was renamed Theater Fresno. At some point between 1914 and 1917 the theater portion of the building was remodeled.
A book published in 1919, History of Fresno County, California, by Paul E. Vandor, says that the theater was leased to the Hippodrome company and converted to a vaudeville house in 1917.
The design of the Barton Opera House is attributed to Charles K. Kirby, Sr. and Charles K. Kirby, Jr. by A guide to Historic Architecture in Fresno. No clue yet to the architect of the remodeling in the 1910s.
The future Roxy is billed on this vintage postcard as Theater Nelson. Though a row of four Victorian commercial buildings survives on this block of Market Street today, everything else, including the theater, has vanished.
The 1908-1909 edition of the Cahn guide lists the “New Nelson Theatre. Just opened.” The house had 1,200 seats. Later editions of the Cahn guide indicate that about a third of those were in the gallery that was removed when the house was remodeled as the Roxy. The 1921 Cahn guide listed the house as the Luna Theatre.
I’ve now found a Broadway Theatre operating at Logansport as early as 1908, mentioned in the December 10 issue of The Billboard. Either there was an earlier house called the Broadway Theatre, or the name of the opera house was changed sooner than was thought. If it was the same theater, the name change must have been quite recent as Dowling Opera House is still listed in Julius Cahn’s ad for his affiliated theaters in the December 5 issue, and I haven’t found the Broadway mentioned before December.
The Crystal is also mentioned in 1908, playing vaudeville. The Ark Theatre is mentioned in the November 21 issue.
Early theater names I’ve found connected with Logansport include the Colonial, Nelson, Logan, Grand, Ark, Luna, and Crystal. The Nelson was a big theater, about the size of the Broadway, but newer, and was the town’s leading playhouse after the old opera house became the Broadway. The Ark was running vaudeville around 1911, and the Crystal was a movie house operating about the same time. They might be two of the four unknowns on the maps. The Ark was operating at least as late as 1924, when it was being run as a movie house by J. E. Dowling.
The fire that destroyed the Broadway took place in 1924, not 1926. It was reported in the February 23 issue of Exhibitors Herald, which featured a photo of the smoldering ruins.
This item from the June 4, 1921, issue of The American Contractor is probably about the Palace Theatre:
George E. Rendigs, Robert R. Panzer, and James A. Martin formed their partnership in 1920. Prior to that, Rendigs had been the building engineer for the City of Cincinnati, while Panzer and Martin were his two principal assistants.Here is a modern photo of the Palace Theatre in Aurora.
I’ve found this theater listed as the Dolan Opera House as late as 1900. In 1902, it appears in trade publications as the Dowling Opera House, and it is advertised as Dowling’s Theatre in the 1905-1906 Cahn guide.
During the early days of drive-ins, combination indoor-outdoor theaters were fairly common in regions where winters are harsh. I was a bit surprised to hear that there had been such a theater in palmy Sacramento until I remembered the winter tule fogs that often plague the Central Valley. There were probably many nights when the outdoor screen would have been hard to see even from the front rows, and even assuming that the image from the projector could have reached the screen without fading and blurring.
The Southgate Indoor-Outdoor Theatre is one of several drive-ins featured on this page at Historic Aerials. The United Artists operation opened in 1964 and closed in 1979, according to the author of the caption of the aerial view taken during the early stage of construction. There is now a discount department store on the site.
The March 27, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World ran this item about the Colonial Theatre:
Apparently there were two locations of the Colonial Theatre, but neither of them was at 131 West Street, nor in the building described in our current introduction. The Colonial in the building next door to the Grand Theatre was operating around 1915, so must have been the second location.An article about the Paramount Theatre published in the Rutland Historical Society Quarterly in 2004 (PDF here) has this line: “Other motion picture theatres in the area, who also reached their demise, were the Shrine which became the Strand at 73-77 Wales Street, the Colonial at 107-109 West Street and the Grand at 112 West Street.”
Another source mentions a cigar store opened in 1913 in the Colonial Theatre Building at the corner of West and Cottage Streets. That means that the original Colonial Theatre was on the site of what is now the parking lot of the church across the street from the Grand Theatre.
Why there was a Colonial Theatre in the building next door to the Grand by 1915 I don’t know. The original theater might have been destroyed by a fire, or converted to some other use, or perhaps continued to operate after 1915 under a different name, but I’ve found nothing on the Internet to confirm any of these surmises. In any case, the Colonial Theatre opened at 107-109 West Street on March 10, 1909, and the building has been demolished.
I’ve finally found the Little Grand Theatre mentioned by another source. It was on a list of nickelodeons that was published in the July 18, 1908, issue of The Billboard (PDF here.) It is listed at 857 “Broadway.” As there is no street called Broadway in Augusta, they must have meant Broad Street. Little Grand Theatre must be an early aka of the Star. No house called the Star appears on the 1908 list.
David: Cinema Treasures supports Markdown, a simplified substitute for HTML code. If you want to use inline links all you need are square brackets and parentheses. It is described in the LINKS section of this page.
I have a suspicion (but no firm evidence) that either the State or the Trail was at 148 W. Mountain, in the building now occupied by the Trail Head Tavern (Street View), which still sports a theater-style marquee.
The first America Theatre was supposed to have been at 150 W. Mountain. It’s possible that the address of that building the theater was in was shifted to 148 at some point, or it might be that the America (which might have become the State), was in the building next door to the tavern, now housing the Steak-Out Saloon (with secondary sign saying Scrivner’s Grocery & Market.)
Even if the State was in the building at 150, the Trail might still have been in the building at 148, of course. The building isn’t very wide, but it’s deep enough that it could have accommodated 400 seats, though probably with very little leg room.
But until somebody finds an old city directory or telephone book or other source with the addresses, or somebody who remembers seeing the theaters themselves turns up, we can’t be sure which theaters were where.
DavidAE’s links to photos of the Orpheum:
Roof
1914
1927
1935
“F.W. Bailey has opened a motion picture show in the opera house at DeWitt,” said the Iowa notes section of Moving Picture World for August 14, 1915.
This item from the February 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World could be about this theater:
The operator’s correct name was William Clifford LeMaster, according to this weblog post written by one of his modern relations.LeMaster was mentioned as manager of the Opera House at Victor in the July 5, 1919, issue of Motion Picture News. The Opera House had been converted into a movie theater by the Hall brothers the same year the New Isis opened, according to an item in the February 5 issue of The Moving Picture World. The fourth theater in Victor in 1916 was the Fox, formerly owned by the Hall brothers but sold to Jesse E. Jones in 1916.