A list of buildings designed by architect Max Zev Blankstein includes the Rose Theatre on Sargent Avenue, but gives the year he designed the project as 1916.
Though the Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to gives the architect’s name as Blackstein, the architect for the conversion of the Pace Twin into the Polo Park Theatre was Cecil Blankstein. His father, Max Blankstein, was architect of at least seven theaters, including Winnipeg’s Palace Theatre. Cecil Nathan Blankstein was the lead architect for the entire Polo Park Shopping Centre, and also designed Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall.
The Capitol is long gone. It was situated in a building built in 1865 at the corner of Water Street and Market Square (near Winthrop Street.) It was converted into the Capitol Theatre in 1930. The building was demolished in 1983 after a major fire, the third in the building’s history.
The building is landmark #18 on this web page. There’s a small photo from the pre-Capitol period.
This house was called the Fox Commercial Theatre in 1930, when the January 19 issue of The Film Daily ran a piece about Fox’s (apparently aborted) intention to replace it with a new, larger theater on the same site. Here is the item:
“SEMI-ATMOSPHERE HOUSE FOR FOX IN CHICAGO AREA
“Chicago— Plans for a 3,000-seat semi-atmospheric theater and office building costing about $2,000,000, to replace the recently leased Fox Commercial at 92nd and Commercial Ave. are announced by Sidney Meyer, vice president and general manager of the Fox Chicago Theaters. The house, of Spanish architecture and especially adapted for talkers, will have a stage 30 feet deep for big productions. Work of tearing down the present structure will start immediately, and it is expected to have the new building completed by September.
“Among the unusual features of the house will be a main entrance and foyer, 5O feet wide and 100 feet long, completely cut off from the auditorium so that outside noises will not interfere with the performances; a bridge-like proscenium arch allowing performers to stroll across it apparently in the open air; one of the largest switchboards in the country, and other advanced ideas.”
The extravagance of demolishing and replacing a large theater not even ten years old was foregone, but William Fox’s empire soon collapsed anyway. Sic transit gloria.
Somerset Theatres, Inc. were the original operators of the Strand, according to an early 1930 issue of The Film Daily. The first manager was named Newall E. Ware.
I’m now thinking that Boxoffice might have had the correct spelling of the theater’s name. A court case in the 1970s consistently refers to the company operating this house as Beech Cinema Inc. or Twin Beech Cinema Inc. The law tends to place considerable importance on correct spelling. The theater was a considerable distance from any beach, but I have no doubt there are still plenty of beech trees in its neighborhood.
The theater was quite a way northeast of the spot where Google Maps has placed its pin and where Street View is currently set. In the absence of a correct address, Main Street and Dayton Lane would probably be a better location to list than Beach Shopping Center. Google Maps finds the intersection easily enough.
I got the name Ron Lesser Enterprises from the description of the CT page for the Beach Theatre in Peekskill. The caption of this photo of the Beach in Boxoffice, January 15, 1968, just says it was opened by Lesser Enterprises.
In any case, it’s possible that the Ronnie Lesser who was associated with Howard Lesser and Edmund Linder in the Lesser Enterprises theater chain in the 1960s (see the Boxoffice item linked in the earlier comment by Tinseltoes) was not the same Ron Lesser who, in 1974, founded the booking agency Lesser Theatre Services, but there is plenty of documentation that someone named Ron Lesser was developing and operating theaters in the state of New York in the 1960s, and the Triangle was one of his houses.
I think it’s likely that Ron the operator and Ron the booker were one and the same, though. Had Ron Lesser the booker never been a theater operator it seems unlikely that he would have become President of the Independent Theater Owners Association (ITOA) or served on the Board of Directors for National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), as noted in his brief biography on the web site of Andromeda Studios.
I’m not sure what the relationship between Howard and Ron Lesser was. They might have been father and son or they might have been brothers. A Howard Lesser was operating theaters around New York in partnership with Louis Kessler at least as early as 1928, but there could have been a Howard Lesser Jr. as well, and of course the operator from the 1920s might have been an entirely different Howard Lesser. Lesser is not that uncommon a name, especially in the movie business.
The term “Nuevo Deco” used to describe the Washoe Theatre in the introduction to this page is a Spanish phrase apparently describing a neo-vintage style that has recently gained popularity in Latin America. The Washoe is simply Art Deco, though at the time it was built it would probably have been described as Art Moderne or Zig-Zag Modern (the term Art Deco was coined by English critic Bevis Hillier in the 1960s.)
The majority of web sites using the term Nuevo Deco are, not surprisingly, in Spanish, although the term has made its way into that demotic fount of misinformation, Wikipedia, so I suppose we can expect it to soon metastasize across the Internet.
Anaconda, Montana: Copper Smelting Boom Town on the Western Frontier, by Patrick F. Morris, says that the Margaret Theatre was inaugurated on September 28, 1897. The Margaret Theatre is listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as a ground-floor house with 1,246 seats. Frank Cullen’s Vaudeville, Old and New lists the Margaret as having been on the Ackerman & Harris vaudeville circuit, but there are numerous period references to the house presenting everything from road shows to prize fights.
There is one reference to an exhibition of movies at the Margaret as early 1905, but I haven’t found the house mentioned in the movie industry trade journals of the period. However, the January 10, 1930, issue of The Film Daily did have a brief item saying that the recently-burned Sundial Theatre would be replaced by a new house, so the Sundial must have operated as a movie theater during its brief life.
The Glendale Theatre opened on December 1, 1947, according to this page at Silent Toronto. The opening day ad credits the companies involved in the design and construction of the theater, including architects Kaplan & Sprachman.
Mandel Sprachman also designed a house in the area which Boxoffice of October 25, 1965, mentioned only in passing as the Don Mills Theatre. It was leased to Odeon and opened about 1963. I don’t think it’s listed here yet. Another Sprachman design apparently not yet listed was the Odeon Albion, which I believe was also in the northern part of Toronto.
The LakeRidge Theatre is not yet listed, Tinseltoes. Most of the sources I’ve found say it was in Lakewood, Colorado, though one source says it was in Wheat Ridge. The Boxoffice article says it was on Wadsworth Boulevard, and an item in a 1973 issue of the magazine Science of Mind says that the Denver Church of Religious Science was holding Sunday morning services at the Lakeridge Theatre, on Wadsworth and W. 17th Avenue. That puts it in the Edgewood district of Lakewood, just south of Wheat Ridge.
The American Classic Images page I linked to indicated only that the Barstow Theatre had been twinned by 1982.
I notice that all the American Classic Images pages have gone missing, and the links fetch only a register.com page requesting that the domain name registration be renewed. Does anybody know what became of the site and its operator? If it has shut down permanently, it’s going to leave a huge number of dead links all over Cinema Treasures.
The October 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World had an effusive description of Quinn’s Superba Theatre:
“QUINN’S SUPERBA, LOS ANGELES, CAL.
“IT is quite within the bounds of reason to say that in the past year there is no other city in the world that has gone ahead in motion picture theater construction as rapidly as Los Angeles. A short twelve months ago the average theater manager was well satisfied with a modest interior and an exterior outlined with lights placed at intervals of a foot or more and a fair sized electric sign. A good exemplification of what the public now demands is the new picture palace erected on Broadway, near Fifth, by J. A. Quinn, and called Quinn’s Superba.
“Mr. Quinn is a Los Angeles manager of recognized ability and was among the first to employ, to the exclusion of all others systems, the indirect lighting plan that enhances the beauty of Quinn’s Superba; he has also been highly complimented in having worked out the elaborate light decorations on the facade which make this beautiful edifice stand out. Mr. Quinn is in favor of making Los Angeles preeminently the ‘City of Lights,’ and he is certainly doing his share towards carrying out his favorite hobby. The mammoth electric working sign which surmounts the three-story structure is among the largest used by any theater in the west. On each side of the name is a unicorn of heroic proportion darting a fiery tongue at his companion; ribbons of light steam over the front of the building, which is carried out in the rennaissance style of architecture, in colors of cream and white. A massive cornice and frieze with theatrical figures modeled therein gives an appropriate touch to the whole. The markee is a solid mass of lights, art glass and copper.
“The lobby, foyer and auditorium are carried out in the classic style of architecture. The woodwork of the foyer is selected mahogany of beautiful grain, and the walls are paneled with large beveled plate mirrors. The floor is carpeted in deep red Wilton velvet.
“In the auditorium the walls and ceiling are held in soft light green tones, trimmed with cream and gray effects and high-lighted in orange. The sounding cove over the proscenium arch has a beautiful mural painting by a well-known local artist. This cove, aside from its decorative effect, assures such perfect accoustic properties that the faintest whisper from the proscenium area can be distinctly heard in any part of the house. On each side of the proscenium and midway between the footlight line and the cornice, are balconies with draped French windows, adaptable for singing-specialties. The stage itself is well equipped in spite of the fact that it is a miniature one.
“The floor of the auditorium is bowled and the seats are arranged in circular form. The carpets, luxurious upholstered leather opera chairs, silk velour drapes and velvet stage curtains are of a deep red. An efficient ventilating system assures the air’s changing completely every few moments, it being estimated that there is supplied thirty cubic feet of fresh air to each person, each minute, allowing for a capacity audience at all times.
“The Superba is using the best available pictures and the equipment for its proper projection is unsurpassed.
“Their soloists provide high-class musical numbers on each program and an orchestra of twelve pieces under the direction of Miss Mae Gates plays accompaniments for both pictures and the vocal numbers.”
According to Orfordville’s official web site, this theater was called the Star Opera House in 1900, when it was the site of an election held to determine whether or not Orfordville would incorporate as a village.
The June 10, 1905, issue of the Janesville Daily Gazette said that T. O. Wee had bought the Star Opera House and planned to make improvements to it.
The October 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World carried this notice: “Wee’s Opera House at Orfordville has installed a machine and will give picture shows.”
This article from the February 5, 2011, issue of the Gazette says that the old white brick building at Beloit and Brodhead Streets, now a store called Donna’s Gas & Grocery, has over the years served as an opera house, bus garage, and service station. Maybe the Triangle Theatre has not been demolished, although in Street View the current building looks too small to have ever housed a theater.
As noted in the article vokoban quoted in the previous comment, this house was called the Madrid Theatre when it opened in 1926. The house operated under that name at least into the early 1930s. It had been renamed the Park Theatre by 1966.
As the Grand Theatre that opened at 513 Cedar Street in 1915 is already listed at Cinema Treasures, Maybe we could make this page for the first Grand, seen in the photo on this page at the PSTOS web site.
A building at 518 Cedar Street now housing part of Fonk’s General Store might or might not be the same building that housed the first Grand. As the theater probably closed when the new Grand opened, the building now on the site might have been built after that, or it might be the theater’s building remodeled.
Street View currently shows the wrong location. The Madrid was on the northeast corner of Vermont and 82nd Street, in the building that now houses the Tires R-Us store. The building is not recognizable as a former theater from the front, but one of the rear exits can still be seen opening onto the alley off of 82nd Street.
I was never in the Uptown after the 1964 renovation, but I don’t think there were any significant changes to the auditorium. I saw a couple of movies there in 1962, and it looked pretty much as it does in the photos on the CinemaTour page, except for the paint job. In 1962 it was all quite dark.
A list of buildings designed by architect Max Zev Blankstein includes the Rose Theatre on Sargent Avenue, but gives the year he designed the project as 1916.
Though the Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to gives the architect’s name as Blackstein, the architect for the conversion of the Pace Twin into the Polo Park Theatre was Cecil Blankstein. His father, Max Blankstein, was architect of at least seven theaters, including Winnipeg’s Palace Theatre. Cecil Nathan Blankstein was the lead architect for the entire Polo Park Shopping Centre, and also designed Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall.
Here is an updated link to architect Erwin G. Fredrick’s rendering of the new theater for Hartford in Boxoffice of August 17, 1946.
Updated link to the 1930 Boxoffice article about the Carlton Theatre.
Here is an updated link to the page with the photo of the Ross Theatre’s auditorium in Boxoffice of May 6, 1950.
The Capitol is long gone. It was situated in a building built in 1865 at the corner of Water Street and Market Square (near Winthrop Street.) It was converted into the Capitol Theatre in 1930. The building was demolished in 1983 after a major fire, the third in the building’s history.
The building is landmark #18 on this web page. There’s a small photo from the pre-Capitol period.
The Boxoffice article Tinsetoes linked to says that Richard L. Crowther & Associates were the on-site architects for this theater.
This house was called the Fox Commercial Theatre in 1930, when the January 19 issue of The Film Daily ran a piece about Fox’s (apparently aborted) intention to replace it with a new, larger theater on the same site. Here is the item:
The extravagance of demolishing and replacing a large theater not even ten years old was foregone, but William Fox’s empire soon collapsed anyway. Sic transit gloria.Direct link to the issue of Life rivest266 cites. Thank goodness Mason City was protected from porn! (Or not.)
Somerset Theatres, Inc. were the original operators of the Strand, according to an early 1930 issue of The Film Daily. The first manager was named Newall E. Ware.
I’m now thinking that Boxoffice might have had the correct spelling of the theater’s name. A court case in the 1970s consistently refers to the company operating this house as Beech Cinema Inc. or Twin Beech Cinema Inc. The law tends to place considerable importance on correct spelling. The theater was a considerable distance from any beach, but I have no doubt there are still plenty of beech trees in its neighborhood.
The theater was quite a way northeast of the spot where Google Maps has placed its pin and where Street View is currently set. In the absence of a correct address, Main Street and Dayton Lane would probably be a better location to list than Beach Shopping Center. Google Maps finds the intersection easily enough.
I got the name Ron Lesser Enterprises from the description of the CT page for the Beach Theatre in Peekskill. The caption of this photo of the Beach in Boxoffice, January 15, 1968, just says it was opened by Lesser Enterprises.
In any case, it’s possible that the Ronnie Lesser who was associated with Howard Lesser and Edmund Linder in the Lesser Enterprises theater chain in the 1960s (see the Boxoffice item linked in the earlier comment by Tinseltoes) was not the same Ron Lesser who, in 1974, founded the booking agency Lesser Theatre Services, but there is plenty of documentation that someone named Ron Lesser was developing and operating theaters in the state of New York in the 1960s, and the Triangle was one of his houses.
I think it’s likely that Ron the operator and Ron the booker were one and the same, though. Had Ron Lesser the booker never been a theater operator it seems unlikely that he would have become President of the Independent Theater Owners Association (ITOA) or served on the Board of Directors for National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), as noted in his brief biography on the web site of Andromeda Studios.
I’m not sure what the relationship between Howard and Ron Lesser was. They might have been father and son or they might have been brothers. A Howard Lesser was operating theaters around New York in partnership with Louis Kessler at least as early as 1928, but there could have been a Howard Lesser Jr. as well, and of course the operator from the 1920s might have been an entirely different Howard Lesser. Lesser is not that uncommon a name, especially in the movie business.
The term “Nuevo Deco” used to describe the Washoe Theatre in the introduction to this page is a Spanish phrase apparently describing a neo-vintage style that has recently gained popularity in Latin America. The Washoe is simply Art Deco, though at the time it was built it would probably have been described as Art Moderne or Zig-Zag Modern (the term Art Deco was coined by English critic Bevis Hillier in the 1960s.)
The majority of web sites using the term Nuevo Deco are, not surprisingly, in Spanish, although the term has made its way into that demotic fount of misinformation, Wikipedia, so I suppose we can expect it to soon metastasize across the Internet.
Anaconda, Montana: Copper Smelting Boom Town on the Western Frontier, by Patrick F. Morris, says that the Margaret Theatre was inaugurated on September 28, 1897. The Margaret Theatre is listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as a ground-floor house with 1,246 seats. Frank Cullen’s Vaudeville, Old and New lists the Margaret as having been on the Ackerman & Harris vaudeville circuit, but there are numerous period references to the house presenting everything from road shows to prize fights.
There is one reference to an exhibition of movies at the Margaret as early 1905, but I haven’t found the house mentioned in the movie industry trade journals of the period. However, the January 10, 1930, issue of The Film Daily did have a brief item saying that the recently-burned Sundial Theatre would be replaced by a new house, so the Sundial must have operated as a movie theater during its brief life.
The Glendale Theatre opened on December 1, 1947, according to this page at Silent Toronto. The opening day ad credits the companies involved in the design and construction of the theater, including architects Kaplan & Sprachman.
Mandel Sprachman also designed a house in the area which Boxoffice of October 25, 1965, mentioned only in passing as the Don Mills Theatre. It was leased to Odeon and opened about 1963. I don’t think it’s listed here yet. Another Sprachman design apparently not yet listed was the Odeon Albion, which I believe was also in the northern part of Toronto.
The LakeRidge Theatre is not yet listed, Tinseltoes. Most of the sources I’ve found say it was in Lakewood, Colorado, though one source says it was in Wheat Ridge. The Boxoffice article says it was on Wadsworth Boulevard, and an item in a 1973 issue of the magazine Science of Mind says that the Denver Church of Religious Science was holding Sunday morning services at the Lakeridge Theatre, on Wadsworth and W. 17th Avenue. That puts it in the Edgewood district of Lakewood, just south of Wheat Ridge.
The American Classic Images page I linked to indicated only that the Barstow Theatre had been twinned by 1982.
I notice that all the American Classic Images pages have gone missing, and the links fetch only a register.com page requesting that the domain name registration be renewed. Does anybody know what became of the site and its operator? If it has shut down permanently, it’s going to leave a huge number of dead links all over Cinema Treasures.
The October 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World had an effusive description of Quinn’s Superba Theatre:
According to Orfordville’s official web site, this theater was called the Star Opera House in 1900, when it was the site of an election held to determine whether or not Orfordville would incorporate as a village.
The June 10, 1905, issue of the Janesville Daily Gazette said that T. O. Wee had bought the Star Opera House and planned to make improvements to it.
The October 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World carried this notice: “Wee’s Opera House at Orfordville has installed a machine and will give picture shows.”
This article from the February 5, 2011, issue of the Gazette says that the old white brick building at Beloit and Brodhead Streets, now a store called Donna’s Gas & Grocery, has over the years served as an opera house, bus garage, and service station. Maybe the Triangle Theatre has not been demolished, although in Street View the current building looks too small to have ever housed a theater.
As noted in the article vokoban quoted in the previous comment, this house was called the Madrid Theatre when it opened in 1926. The house operated under that name at least into the early 1930s. It had been renamed the Park Theatre by 1966.
As the Grand Theatre that opened at 513 Cedar Street in 1915 is already listed at Cinema Treasures, Maybe we could make this page for the first Grand, seen in the photo on this page at the PSTOS web site.
A building at 518 Cedar Street now housing part of Fonk’s General Store might or might not be the same building that housed the first Grand. As the theater probably closed when the new Grand opened, the building now on the site might have been built after that, or it might be the theater’s building remodeled.
Street View currently shows the wrong location. The Madrid was on the northeast corner of Vermont and 82nd Street, in the building that now houses the Tires R-Us store. The building is not recognizable as a former theater from the front, but one of the rear exits can still be seen opening onto the alley off of 82nd Street.
I was never in the Uptown after the 1964 renovation, but I don’t think there were any significant changes to the auditorium. I saw a couple of movies there in 1962, and it looked pretty much as it does in the photos on the CinemaTour page, except for the paint job. In 1962 it was all quite dark.
An early photo of the Ruskin Theatres is on this page of Boxoffice, January 15, 1968.
In the photo on this page of Boxoffice, January 15, 1968, the name on the theater’s marquee is RKO Twin Rockaway Boulevard.