The Colonial Theatre must have suffered some delays in construction. The October 7, 1911, issue of The Billboard ran this item:
“Roesner and Mott, owners of the Princess Theatre at Winona, Minn., are building a $35,000 vaudeville house in that city, and expect to have the theatre finished by January 1. They will continue to run the Princess, which is a picture house.”
Other sources I’ve seen say that the Princess Theatre opened in 1912, but here it was already operating in 1911. Possibly it was moved to a new location in 1912.
There was a house called the Cozy Theater operating in Spirit Lake at least as early as 1919. That year, the February 12 issue of The Insurance Press reported that the building and contents of the Cozy Theater had been destroyed by a fire on January 18. It must not have been a costly building, as the loss was estimated at a mere $3,000. This might have been a predecessor of the Cozy Theatre in the Kregh building.
The May 26, 1936, issue of The Film Daily had this item:
“Marietta, O. — Shea’s new Ohio
Theater, seating 600, has been opened with an all-film policy. Forney Bowers, many years manager of the Shea-controlled theaters in New Philadelphia, is manager of the new house.”
Despite the vintage look of the current facade, the New Theatre once sported a streamline modern front, as seen in the photo on page 110 of New Baltimore, by Richard Gonyeau, Bob Mack, and Alan Naldrett (Google Books preview.)
The November 2, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item about the Broadway Theatre:
“The new Broadway Theatre
recently constructed at Winona, Minn., by H. A. Rolbiecki opened this week. The theatre has a seating capacity of 600. It is finished in golden rod brick and is modern in every respect. Mr. Rolbiecki opened the Strand at Winona two years ago, and also operated the Dream Theatre in that city. Both of these houses proved money makers.”
The Strand, by the way, was at either 71, 72, or 73 E. Third Street, according to a muddy scan of an item about it in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. I haven’t discovered where the Dream Theatre was, but it is supposed to have opened in 1912.
A house called the Colonial Theatre appears at old address 126 S. Scales Street on the 1922 Sanborn Fire Insurance map. Most likely it was the same building that later became the Broadway Theatre. DocSouth says that the Broadway Theatre was in operation in 1926, when it had 500 seats.
The Grand Theatre appears on the 1922 Sanborn map of Reidsville. It had a balcony and a stage, and presented moving pictures and vaudeville.
DocSouth lists C. W. Davis as the manager of the Grand. An item about the opening of the Rockingham Theatre that was published in the January 4, 1930, issue of Motion Picture News (left column) praises C. W. Davis’s promotion of the opening of the Rockingham. It reproduces a small scan of one page of a special newspaper section about the theater. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give the date of the edition.
The Rockingham’s web site says that the theater was designed by Western Electric, but as far as I know that company only designed theater sound systems, and worked with theater architects advising them on ways to get the best acoustics for amplified sound in their theaters. I haven’t been able to discover the actual architect of the Grand or the Rockingham. It might be given in the newspaper section mentioned in the Motion Picture News item.
Our interface with Google Maps has some quirks. If there is an incomplete address for a theater when it is first posted, or if street names have been changed or the street has been realigned or closed, or we post the wrong zip code, Google appears to make its best guess as to where the theater actually was, and that sometimes puts the pin icon and street view miles from the theater’s actual location. If a full address is later added, for some reason it doesn’t always fix the map.
Here is an actual street view of the Delta Athletic Club in the former Liberty Theatre building.
According to a tourist brochure about downtown Boise (PDF here), the building now housing the Blues Bouquet was built in 1910. The New Boz Theatre was on the ground floor, and the upper floors housed the Manitou Hotel. The Blues Bouquet moved in in 1975.
The brochure doesn’t mention any other names for the theater, but here is a 1937 photo from the Idaho State Historical Society with the name Granada on the marquee.
I agree with Stephen that this house should be listed as the Granada Theatre. If it were still set up as a theater I’d say go ahead and list it under the current name, even if it was strictly a live music venue, but as far as I can tell from the photos on the Internet, it has been completely reconfigured as a bar with no theater seating at all. Even the stage looks like a typical bar stage, not a theater stage.
The finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers indicates that the firm did remodeling work on the West End Theatre in 1931 and again in 1936. There’s no indication of the extent of the projects, but given that the house was only opened in 1925 they were probably not major.
The finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers indicates that the firm worked on the Winona Theatre during the years 1936-1940 and again in 1950. One of those projects was probably the one in which the original Romanesque Revival facade was covered by one in the Streamline Modern style.
Otherlyn, Cinema Treasures has a page for the State Theatre: Click here.
There are no pictures of the State there, though- only a Google Street View of the bowling alley you say was not the State, and a link to page with another photo of the bowling alley.
The August 6, 1926, issue of The Film Daily provides a period source about the name change from Apollo to State: “Winona, Minn. — Northwest Theaters, which recently acquired the Apollo theater, ending competition here, has changed the name of the house to ‘The State.’”
The magazine had first announced the purchase in its July 6 issue.
As the item says that the purchase “ended competition” in Winona, it must be that Lewis Roesner had already made some sort of deal with Northwest, possibly staying on as local manager after selling his interest (or a part interest) in the theaters.
It must also mean that the Beyerstedt brothers had left the theater business, at least in Winona, so they couldn’t have been operating another Apollo Theatre. Taking that into account, I don’t know what to make of the simultaneous ads for the State and the Apollo.
Finkelstein & Rubin’s Northwest Theatres became affiliated with Paramount-Publix in 1928, and in 1929 the larger company bought the chain out entirely.
I’ve also found references to the State Theatre in the finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers. The firm did remodeling work at the house in 1929 and in 1935-1937. They also worked on the the Winona Theatre (1936-1940 and 1950) and the West End Theatre (1931, 1936). In addition, the firm designed a drive-in at Winona.
More about the Strand: the January 7, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Strand Theatre in Winona had been closed and was being converted into retail space for McClellan Stores.
winonakid: as the Beyerstedt brothers owned other theaters in Winona at various times, it’s possible that they moved the name Apollo to one of them after selling this house to Louis Roesner.
Have you seen any advertisements for the Colonial Theatre? Bennick’s book has a photo of the Colonial’s opening in 1912 (on page 113.) The last mention of the Colonial I’ve found in a trade publication is from early 1926, saying that it was to be remodeled. Bennick says that the Colonial was at 168 Johnson Street, which would have put it on the same block as the State.
In fact, I have a suspicion that it might have been the same theater as the State, with the address shifted one number. Compare the photos of the two buildings in the book. Despite some differences, which could be accounted for by the 1926 remodeling, several details are remarkably similar. But then Bennick (published in 2012) also says that the Colonial building is still standing, but that can’t be the case if it was in the 100 block of Johnson Street, so maybe he got the address wrong.
I have come across a reference to a house called the New Strand Theatre, which opened in 1916, according to the July 15 issue of The Moving Picture World. It had 500 seats and was in a converted store building on E. Third Street. The scan of the magazine is a bit blurry, and I couldn’t make out the address, but it was either 71, 72, or 73 E. Third.
Arby, did you see this photo I linked to in an earlier comment? It shows the Colonial building in late 1960, and there is an angled marquee, quite different from the one in lostmemory’s 1954 photo. It looks like the name of the theater is on the narrow front of the marquee, but for me the angle makes it unreadable, so I don’t know if it says Colonial or not. You might recognize it, though.
I can’t recall my source for Rex Theatre being the opening name of this house, though there is a Rex Theatre at Winona listed as a Paramount-Publix house in the 1935 edition of The Film Daily Yearbook. As the yearbook probably went to press before the theater opened, but when it was already under construction, it’s likely that the owners simply decided not to use the name that was originally intended.
It’s possible that this house was never called the Colonial Theatre. Winona, by Walter Bennick, has a photo (bottom of page 113 of the Google Books preview) showing the opening of the Colonial Theatre on August 29, 1912. The Colonial Amusement Company leased the Winona Opera House in 1915, according to an item in the November 6 issue of The Moving Picture World, which said that the company was operating the house as a movie theater.
I’ve been unable to establish a timeline for the Colonial Theatre, but it appears to have still been operating in the mid-1930s when the Winona Theatre had already become a Paramount-Publix house.
Volume 4 of History of Dakota Territory by George W. Kingsbury says that Asher K. Pay opened the Colonial Theatre on June 13, 1914.
Page 14 of Eric Renshaw’s Forgotten Sioux Falls (Google Books preview has photos of the theater before and after its Egyptian-style remodeling, which the caption says took place in 1926.
Renshaw says that the Colonial opened on January 30, 1915, but I’m inclined to trust Kingsbury, whose book was actually published in 1915. There is also the record of a lawsuit that indicates that at least one of the Colonial’s roof trusses was already in place on February 23, 1914. That would be consistent with a June, 1914, opening.
A December 4, 1926, item in Motion Picture News said: “L. G. Roesner has installed a new heating plant in his State Theatre, at Winona, Minn.”
Winona, by Walter Bennick (Google Books preview) says that the State Theatre was opened in January, 1926, as the Apollo Theatre. It was initially operated by the Beyerstedt brothers, but about six months after the house opened they sold it to Louis Roesner, who renamed it the State Theatre. The book has a ca. 1944 photo of the State.
The Princess Theatre got a paragraph in an article about Detroit’s movie theaters that appeared in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“And just a few more words about the Princess theater, on Woodward avenue, between Congress and Larned streets.
“It is now operated by the Princess Amusement Company, of which J. E. Thomas is president. The theater is in charge of L. A. Chapeton, who formerly was operator at the same house. The Princess was erected in about 1907 and was the first strictly motion picture theater in the city—that is showing pictures exclusively, both the Casino and Bijou showing pictures and a little vaudeville. The Princess seats 316 and the original embellishments are still there, although each year or two they are done over. The Princess was the first house to put in Universal service, and it has been a Universal patron continuously ever since the beginning.”
Earlier in the article, it is noted that the Princess Theatre was originally operated by Mitchell Mark.
The 1919 Sharon directory has the Gable Theatre listed in the alphabetical section (at 58 S. Railroad Avenue), but not in the list of theaters. It also has the Thomas Theatre listed only in the alphabetical section. The only houses on the theater list are the Alpha, Family, Luna, Morgan Grand, and Orpheum, and the Orpheum’s address covers the street number given for the Thomas.
I’ve found another odd thing, this in the May 13, 1921, issue of Variety:
“SHARON QUICK CLOSING
“The Strand, Sharon, Pa. which opened with vaudeville April 20 closed May 7.
“The house plays five sets twice weekly, hooked by Billy Delaney, of the Keith office. Business has been light since the newest change of policy with the early closing following.”
Note that the proposed theater in the April, 1920, magazine article I quoted in a comment yesterday says that the new theater was to be built for the Strand Amusement Company, the same company that owned the Liberty, as noted in the Billboard item cited in the very first comment in this thread. One company building two large theaters in the same small city at the same time doesn’t make sense, so the Strand and the Liberty had to have been the same house. Variety must have confused the name of the operating company for the name of the theater itself, while The Billboard got it right.
The Colonial Theatre must have suffered some delays in construction. The October 7, 1911, issue of The Billboard ran this item:
Other sources I’ve seen say that the Princess Theatre opened in 1912, but here it was already operating in 1911. Possibly it was moved to a new location in 1912.There was a house called the Cozy Theater operating in Spirit Lake at least as early as 1919. That year, the February 12 issue of The Insurance Press reported that the building and contents of the Cozy Theater had been destroyed by a fire on January 18. It must not have been a costly building, as the loss was estimated at a mere $3,000. This might have been a predecessor of the Cozy Theatre in the Kregh building.
The May 26, 1936, issue of The Film Daily had this item:
Despite the vintage look of the current facade, the New Theatre once sported a streamline modern front, as seen in the photo on page 110 of New Baltimore, by Richard Gonyeau, Bob Mack, and Alan Naldrett (Google Books preview.)
The November 2, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item about the Broadway Theatre:
The Strand, by the way, was at either 71, 72, or 73 E. Third Street, according to a muddy scan of an item about it in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. I haven’t discovered where the Dream Theatre was, but it is supposed to have opened in 1912.A house called the Colonial Theatre appears at old address 126 S. Scales Street on the 1922 Sanborn Fire Insurance map. Most likely it was the same building that later became the Broadway Theatre. DocSouth says that the Broadway Theatre was in operation in 1926, when it had 500 seats.
The Grand Theatre appears on the 1922 Sanborn map of Reidsville. It had a balcony and a stage, and presented moving pictures and vaudeville.
DocSouth lists C. W. Davis as the manager of the Grand. An item about the opening of the Rockingham Theatre that was published in the January 4, 1930, issue of Motion Picture News (left column) praises C. W. Davis’s promotion of the opening of the Rockingham. It reproduces a small scan of one page of a special newspaper section about the theater. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give the date of the edition.
The Rockingham’s web site says that the theater was designed by Western Electric, but as far as I know that company only designed theater sound systems, and worked with theater architects advising them on ways to get the best acoustics for amplified sound in their theaters. I haven’t been able to discover the actual architect of the Grand or the Rockingham. It might be given in the newspaper section mentioned in the Motion Picture News item.
The June 23, 1917, issue of The Music Trade Review said: “M. Weigel has opened a new theatre, bearing his name, at Idaho City.”
Our interface with Google Maps has some quirks. If there is an incomplete address for a theater when it is first posted, or if street names have been changed or the street has been realigned or closed, or we post the wrong zip code, Google appears to make its best guess as to where the theater actually was, and that sometimes puts the pin icon and street view miles from the theater’s actual location. If a full address is later added, for some reason it doesn’t always fix the map.
Here is an actual street view of the Delta Athletic Club in the former Liberty Theatre building.
According to a tourist brochure about downtown Boise (PDF here), the building now housing the Blues Bouquet was built in 1910. The New Boz Theatre was on the ground floor, and the upper floors housed the Manitou Hotel. The Blues Bouquet moved in in 1975.
The brochure doesn’t mention any other names for the theater, but here is a 1937 photo from the Idaho State Historical Society with the name Granada on the marquee.
I agree with Stephen that this house should be listed as the Granada Theatre. If it were still set up as a theater I’d say go ahead and list it under the current name, even if it was strictly a live music venue, but as far as I can tell from the photos on the Internet, it has been completely reconfigured as a bar with no theater seating at all. Even the stage looks like a typical bar stage, not a theater stage.
The finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers indicates that the firm did remodeling work on the West End Theatre in 1931 and again in 1936. There’s no indication of the extent of the projects, but given that the house was only opened in 1925 they were probably not major.
The finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers indicates that the firm worked on the Winona Theatre during the years 1936-1940 and again in 1950. One of those projects was probably the one in which the original Romanesque Revival facade was covered by one in the Streamline Modern style.
Otherlyn, Cinema Treasures has a page for the State Theatre: Click here.
There are no pictures of the State there, though- only a Google Street View of the bowling alley you say was not the State, and a link to page with another photo of the bowling alley.
The August 6, 1926, issue of The Film Daily provides a period source about the name change from Apollo to State: “Winona, Minn. — Northwest Theaters, which recently acquired the Apollo theater, ending competition here, has changed the name of the house to ‘The State.’”
The magazine had first announced the purchase in its July 6 issue.
As the item says that the purchase “ended competition” in Winona, it must be that Lewis Roesner had already made some sort of deal with Northwest, possibly staying on as local manager after selling his interest (or a part interest) in the theaters.
It must also mean that the Beyerstedt brothers had left the theater business, at least in Winona, so they couldn’t have been operating another Apollo Theatre. Taking that into account, I don’t know what to make of the simultaneous ads for the State and the Apollo.
Finkelstein & Rubin’s Northwest Theatres became affiliated with Paramount-Publix in 1928, and in 1929 the larger company bought the chain out entirely.
I’ve also found references to the State Theatre in the finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers. The firm did remodeling work at the house in 1929 and in 1935-1937. They also worked on the the Winona Theatre (1936-1940 and 1950) and the West End Theatre (1931, 1936). In addition, the firm designed a drive-in at Winona.
More about the Strand: the January 7, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Strand Theatre in Winona had been closed and was being converted into retail space for McClellan Stores.
winonakid: as the Beyerstedt brothers owned other theaters in Winona at various times, it’s possible that they moved the name Apollo to one of them after selling this house to Louis Roesner.
Have you seen any advertisements for the Colonial Theatre? Bennick’s book has a photo of the Colonial’s opening in 1912 (on page 113.) The last mention of the Colonial I’ve found in a trade publication is from early 1926, saying that it was to be remodeled. Bennick says that the Colonial was at 168 Johnson Street, which would have put it on the same block as the State.
In fact, I have a suspicion that it might have been the same theater as the State, with the address shifted one number. Compare the photos of the two buildings in the book. Despite some differences, which could be accounted for by the 1926 remodeling, several details are remarkably similar. But then Bennick (published in 2012) also says that the Colonial building is still standing, but that can’t be the case if it was in the 100 block of Johnson Street, so maybe he got the address wrong.
I have come across a reference to a house called the New Strand Theatre, which opened in 1916, according to the July 15 issue of The Moving Picture World. It had 500 seats and was in a converted store building on E. Third Street. The scan of the magazine is a bit blurry, and I couldn’t make out the address, but it was either 71, 72, or 73 E. Third.
Arby, did you see this photo I linked to in an earlier comment? It shows the Colonial building in late 1960, and there is an angled marquee, quite different from the one in lostmemory’s 1954 photo. It looks like the name of the theater is on the narrow front of the marquee, but for me the angle makes it unreadable, so I don’t know if it says Colonial or not. You might recognize it, though.
I can’t recall my source for Rex Theatre being the opening name of this house, though there is a Rex Theatre at Winona listed as a Paramount-Publix house in the 1935 edition of The Film Daily Yearbook. As the yearbook probably went to press before the theater opened, but when it was already under construction, it’s likely that the owners simply decided not to use the name that was originally intended.
It’s possible that this house was never called the Colonial Theatre. Winona, by Walter Bennick, has a photo (bottom of page 113 of the Google Books preview) showing the opening of the Colonial Theatre on August 29, 1912. The Colonial Amusement Company leased the Winona Opera House in 1915, according to an item in the November 6 issue of The Moving Picture World, which said that the company was operating the house as a movie theater.
I’ve been unable to establish a timeline for the Colonial Theatre, but it appears to have still been operating in the mid-1930s when the Winona Theatre had already become a Paramount-Publix house.
Volume 4 of History of Dakota Territory by George W. Kingsbury says that Asher K. Pay opened the Colonial Theatre on June 13, 1914.
Page 14 of Eric Renshaw’s Forgotten Sioux Falls (Google Books preview has photos of the theater before and after its Egyptian-style remodeling, which the caption says took place in 1926.
Renshaw says that the Colonial opened on January 30, 1915, but I’m inclined to trust Kingsbury, whose book was actually published in 1915. There is also the record of a lawsuit that indicates that at least one of the Colonial’s roof trusses was already in place on February 23, 1914. That would be consistent with a June, 1914, opening.
A December 4, 1926, item in Motion Picture News said: “L. G. Roesner has installed a new heating plant in his State Theatre, at Winona, Minn.”
Winona, by Walter Bennick (Google Books preview) says that the State Theatre was opened in January, 1926, as the Apollo Theatre. It was initially operated by the Beyerstedt brothers, but about six months after the house opened they sold it to Louis Roesner, who renamed it the State Theatre. The book has a ca. 1944 photo of the State.
Documents published by the City of Paso Robles indicate that the Park Cinema was designed by local architect Nick Gilman.
This timeline from the Walnut Creek Historical Society says that the Ramona Theatre opened on March 6, 1920.
The Princess Theatre got a paragraph in an article about Detroit’s movie theaters that appeared in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
Earlier in the article, it is noted that the Princess Theatre was originally operated by Mitchell Mark.The 1919 Sharon directory has the Gable Theatre listed in the alphabetical section (at 58 S. Railroad Avenue), but not in the list of theaters. It also has the Thomas Theatre listed only in the alphabetical section. The only houses on the theater list are the Alpha, Family, Luna, Morgan Grand, and Orpheum, and the Orpheum’s address covers the street number given for the Thomas.
I’ve found another odd thing, this in the May 13, 1921, issue of Variety:
Note that the proposed theater in the April, 1920, magazine article I quoted in a comment yesterday says that the new theater was to be built for the Strand Amusement Company, the same company that owned the Liberty, as noted in the Billboard item cited in the very first comment in this thread. One company building two large theaters in the same small city at the same time doesn’t make sense, so the Strand and the Liberty had to have been the same house. Variety must have confused the name of the operating company for the name of the theater itself, while The Billboard got it right.