If comments are removed by members, the number in the “view all comments” field is automatically reduced. I found a page (I can’t remember which one it was now) that was displaying six comments, but had a “view all 12 comments” link at the top. Clicking on the link, the new page displayed only the same six comments that were on the first page. That has to be a technical issue.
It is likely, though, that the comment on the State Theatre in Tempe that I found in the Google cache but not on the CT page itself was one that had been removed by a member. Google’s cache usually lags a bit behind changes in the pages that have been cached. But probably not all of those comments have vanished entirely from the Internet. At least some of them are bound to have been preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
This PDF from the Waseca County Historical Society has an article about the theaters in the area, and it features two photos of the Princess, one of the front and one of the auditorium.
The text says that the building housing the Princess was remodeled to accommodate the theater in 1933, but the style of the theater indicates that it was operating much earlier than that. In fact, the same exterior photo appears in a book called As We Were: American Photographic Postcards, 1905-1930, by Rosamond B. Vaule (Google Books preview), and Vaule dates the photo to 1913. As the caption has the message that was written on the postcard, I would imagine that the date comes from the postmark. The message refers to the “new” Princess Theatre, so 1913 is probably when it opened.
It’s possible that the Princess Theatre was the same house that was listed in the 1909-1910 Cahn guide as the Opera House, managed by C.F. Strunk. The first digit of the seating capacity given in the guide is unreadable, but the number was only three digits, and it was a ground-floor house. 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Opera House at Janesville had been leased by H. G. Karzbein and Louy Bartelmhs (the second guy’s names were probably both misspelled.) The fact that MPW mentioned the event suggests that the Opera House was probably already running movies by that time.
Well, I should have known that it was Google Maps that had gotten the numbers wrong, but the Historical Society newsletter saying that the Star was on South Main threw me off. I should probably remove that comment, to avoid perpetuating the confusion.
It does sound as though the Princess was reseated in the 1920s, renamed the Star in the 1930s, and then the Star name was moved to a new location in the 1940s.
The Fall, 2007, issue of the Waseca County Historical Society’s newsletter (PDF here) has an article about Waseca County’s movie theaters, and it says that the Star Theatre was at 113 South Main Street. It also says that, in 2007, the building was occupied by Jethro’s Soda Shop. Jethro’s Soda Shop has gone out of business, but it still shows up in Google Street View.
Google shows Jethro’s on South Main, but Internet search results list the Janesville Community Food Shelf as being located in Jethro’s Soda Shop at 113 North Main. For now, I’m going with Google and the Historical Society, and I’ve set Street View to Jethro’s at 113 South Main. The newsletter cites as its source Ruth Walther, presumably related to Sully Walther, who operated the Star with his sons Curt and Vern during the 1940s and 1950s, so I guess she would know where the theater had been located.
The Sun Theatre was in the area that is now the parking lot for the church. The photo I linked to in my previous comment shows its entrance one lot up from the corner of 89th Street. Views at Historic Aerials show that the building was still there in 1962, but gone by 1970.
The default to open theaters when searching is a new feature of the site, and not in itself a bug. The introduction of that feature, and the division into theaters that are open, closed, etc., probably has something to do with the bugs that have turned up since the change was made, though. Changing a lot of code at once sometimes leads to unintended consequences. The comments, photos, and listings that have gone missing or don’t go where they should are still on the server. They just aren’t all being fetched properly when requested. I’m sure Patrick will be able to get the problem fixed once he returns from his holiday.
Well, it wasn’t the Opera House that was described in the article. It burned in a general conflagration that wiped out much of downtown Coalinga in July, 1910, so the article must have been describing the Liberty.
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.
If comments are removed by members, the number in the “view all comments” field is automatically reduced. I found a page (I can’t remember which one it was now) that was displaying six comments, but had a “view all 12 comments” link at the top. Clicking on the link, the new page displayed only the same six comments that were on the first page. That has to be a technical issue.
It is likely, though, that the comment on the State Theatre in Tempe that I found in the Google cache but not on the CT page itself was one that had been removed by a member. Google’s cache usually lags a bit behind changes in the pages that have been cached. But probably not all of those comments have vanished entirely from the Internet. At least some of them are bound to have been preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
This PDF from the Waseca County Historical Society has an article about the theaters in the area, and it features two photos of the Princess, one of the front and one of the auditorium.
The text says that the building housing the Princess was remodeled to accommodate the theater in 1933, but the style of the theater indicates that it was operating much earlier than that. In fact, the same exterior photo appears in a book called As We Were: American Photographic Postcards, 1905-1930, by Rosamond B. Vaule (Google Books preview), and Vaule dates the photo to 1913. As the caption has the message that was written on the postcard, I would imagine that the date comes from the postmark. The message refers to the “new” Princess Theatre, so 1913 is probably when it opened.
It’s possible that the Princess Theatre was the same house that was listed in the 1909-1910 Cahn guide as the Opera House, managed by C.F. Strunk. The first digit of the seating capacity given in the guide is unreadable, but the number was only three digits, and it was a ground-floor house. 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Opera House at Janesville had been leased by H. G. Karzbein and Louy Bartelmhs (the second guy’s names were probably both misspelled.) The fact that MPW mentioned the event suggests that the Opera House was probably already running movies by that time.
Well, I should have known that it was Google Maps that had gotten the numbers wrong, but the Historical Society newsletter saying that the Star was on South Main threw me off. I should probably remove that comment, to avoid perpetuating the confusion.
It does sound as though the Princess was reseated in the 1920s, renamed the Star in the 1930s, and then the Star name was moved to a new location in the 1940s.
The Fall, 2007, issue of the Waseca County Historical Society’s newsletter (PDF here) has an article about Waseca County’s movie theaters, and it says that the Star Theatre was at 113 South Main Street. It also says that, in 2007, the building was occupied by Jethro’s Soda Shop. Jethro’s Soda Shop has gone out of business, but it still shows up in Google Street View.
Google shows Jethro’s on South Main, but Internet search results list the Janesville Community Food Shelf as being located in Jethro’s Soda Shop at 113 North Main. For now, I’m going with Google and the Historical Society, and I’ve set Street View to Jethro’s at 113 South Main. The newsletter cites as its source Ruth Walther, presumably related to Sully Walther, who operated the Star with his sons Curt and Vern during the 1940s and 1950s, so I guess she would know where the theater had been located.
The most recent entry on their Facebook page is from December, 2011. I’d guess closed. Digital is going to kill off a lot of small town theaters.
It’s open from May to December, according to the description. You probably just missed the last show of the year.
The Sun Theatre was in the area that is now the parking lot for the church. The photo I linked to in my previous comment shows its entrance one lot up from the corner of 89th Street. Views at Historic Aerials show that the building was still there in 1962, but gone by 1970.
The default to open theaters when searching is a new feature of the site, and not in itself a bug. The introduction of that feature, and the division into theaters that are open, closed, etc., probably has something to do with the bugs that have turned up since the change was made, though. Changing a lot of code at once sometimes leads to unintended consequences. The comments, photos, and listings that have gone missing or don’t go where they should are still on the server. They just aren’t all being fetched properly when requested. I’m sure Patrick will be able to get the problem fixed once he returns from his holiday.
Well, it wasn’t the Opera House that was described in the article. It burned in a general conflagration that wiped out much of downtown Coalinga in July, 1910, so the article must have been describing the Liberty.
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.