The January 10, 1914, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide mentioned the project that became the Cumberland Theatre in an item about recent projects in Brooklyn’s Hill section:
“An
old coal yard, which has been an eyesore to the neighborhood has been removed to make way for a modern moving-picture theater, which is now under way at the southeast corner of Greene avenue and Cumberland street.
“The new owners have begun the erection of a theater on plans made by Architect William J. Dilthey of Manhattan. The architecture of the theater is a modern treatment of the Spanish mission style. The walls are to be of pearl-gray stucco with red tile covering the roof and canopies on the two street fronts.
“The theater has been leased through the realty company and William H. Allen for a long term to the Beacon Photoplay Corporation, an operating company, at an aggregate rental of about $84,000.
Andrew Craig Morrison’s Theatres says that the Majestic was built in 1910, and designed by Paterson architect Charles E. Sleight. Sleight designed at least one other theater in Paterson. His son, Alfred E. Sleight, designed the Plaza Theatre, built in 1921.
Paterson, by Philip M. Read, attributes the design of the Regent Theatre to architect Fred W. Wentworth, who later designed several more theaters for Jacob Fabian.
The Union Street on which the Regent Theatre was located had its name changed to Veterans Place ages ago. Google Maps will not find this downtown location unless the street name Veterans Place is used in the address field.
The April 2, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that contracts had been awarded for the theater being built at Union and Redwood Avenues. The owner of the theater was H. Grossman, and the architect was Albert E. Sleight, both of Paterson.
Albert E. Sleight was the son of architect Charles E. Sleight, who designed Paterson’s Majestic Theatre of 1910.
I came across two items in the July 17, 1915, issue of The American Contractor. Both mention the Electric Theatre in St. Joseph, but they describe two different projects. One is a theater remodeling and the other a theater addition. The first is in the block the Electric Theatre was on, but the second item gives no location. I really don’t know what to make of them. I’ve had the impression that the Electric Theatre was newly built in 1915, but perhaps it was in a remodeled building. Here is the first item:
“St. Joseph… Theater (rem.): 2- sty. & bas. 76x 120. $18M. Edmond betw. Seventh & Eighth sts., St. Joseph, Mo. Archt. Carl Boller & Co., Gayety bldg., Kansas City. Owner Tootle Estate, St. Joseph. Lessee Electric Theater Co., St. Joseph, Mo. Work started. Fdns. & re. conc. let to Du Bois Re. Conc. Constr. Co., Corby Forsee bldg., St. Joseph. Plastering to C. A. Felling, 118 N. Eighth st., St. Joseph.”
Here is the second item:
“Theater (add.): 2 sty. & bas. 50x 120. St. Joseph, Mo. Archts. Carl Boiler & Bro., Gayety bldg. Kansas City. Owner Electric Theater, N. Philley, secy., St. Joseph, will take bids until July 21. Brk. & terra cotta trim, comp, rf., struct. iron.”
So I won’t be the cause of any more hair loss for HogGravy, here is a fresh link to the photo of the Trail Theatre on the cover of Boxoffice, October 6, 1951.
The Pitt Theatre was again remodeled in 1936, after the Shuberts gave the house up. This is probably when it was renamed the Barry and began showing movies. Here’s the item from the “Pittsburgh Patter” column of The Film Daily for February 5, 1936:
“Victor Rigaumont, local architect
and member of the Variety Club, is in charge of the Pitt Theater remodeling work now under way.”
The original architect of the Fain Theatre was Roy A. Benjamin. Here is the announcement of the opening from the January 24, 1936, issue of The Film Daily:
“New Leesburg House Opens
“Leesburg, Fla. — The Fain Theater, new 500-seat motion picture house, was opened this week by Earle M. Fain, owner and manager. It was planned by R. A. Benjamin of Jacksonville, architect for E. J. Sparks, and cost about $25,000. Building includes separate balcony and ticket window for Negroes.”
A section about the Cayuga Theatre on this web page gives the theater’s opening year as 1911. It also says the house was renamed the Aardvark Theatre in the early 1950s. After closing in 1955, the building as a church for some time, and was eventually demolished to make way for expansion of the Roosevelt Expressway.
The Cayuga Theatre was at the corner of Germantown Avenue and Cayuga Street, which is the 4300 block- probably 4371 Germantown Avenue.
I’ve set Street View to the proper location, but the pin icon on the map is still a couple of miles off. The Fox Theatre building is currently occupied by Fakier’s Jewelers. The Fox was just west of Gabasse Street.
Houma, by Thomas Blum Cobb and Mara Currie, says that the Fox was built in 1936, and there’s a photo with the 1938 release Romance on the Run on the marquee (Google Books preview– scroll down past two photos of the Bijou.) The Fox had a bit of simplified Art Deco detailing, and a nice marquee. It has all been stripped away by remodeling.
Thomas Blum Cobb and Mara Currie’s book Houma (from Arcadia’s Images of America series) says that the Bijou was built in 1940. However, a Bijou Theatre was listed at Houma in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. The 1940 house might have been a remodel, or perhaps an entirely new building. The Google Books preview of the Arcadia Press book has two photos of the Bijou (scroll down a bit for the second) as well as one of the slightly more decorative Fox (opened in 1936, according to the book.) Both theaters had modern fronts.
Bill Ellzey’s Daily Comet column for June 16, 2012 has a question from a former resident of Houma asking for information about Houma’s movie theaters. Ellzey says that the Bijou, Fox, and Grand were all on the three-block stretch of Main Street between Goode Street and Gabasse Street. That’s a considerable distance southeast of the location where Google Maps has put its pin icon for this theater.
A 1973 source indicates that the Bijou was located where the drive-up area of the First National Bank was located by 1973. If the First National Bank is still in the same location it was then, then the approximate address of the Bijou was 7910 Main, which is the bank’s current address.
The modern address of the New Theatre should have four digits, as the Island Theatre’s address is 4074 Main Street and the address of the building that once housed Powell’s Theatre is 4098 Main Street, and all three theaters were close together.
In a 2006 interview of Anne Lumley Davis, which was part of the Chincoteague Island Library Oral History Project, Ms. Davis says this about the New Theatre:
“ Then we had what they called the New Theater and that was built – it was built in
the ‘40’s. But it seemed like – I don’t really know what happened to it but it was torn down. And it wasn’t old, it wasn’t an old building when it was torn down, but I don’t know whether – I don’t whether the ’62 flood got it or – I don’t know.”
Other sources indicate that the New Theatre was owned by the Powell family, and that they operated both it and Powell’s Theatre until both houses succumbed to competition from the Island Theatre in the 1950s.
The January 1, 1916 issue of The Moving Picture World featured a brief article about the Ditmas Theatre (an exterior view of which is therewith produced.)
The August 30, 1913, issue of The American Contractor said that the Ditmas Theatre had been designed by the local architectural firm of J. N. Pierson & Son. The theater was to be a combination moving picture and vaudeville house. Construction bids were being taken.
In addition to the article Tinseltoes linked to, that issue of Boxoffice features a photo of the foyer and main stairways of the remodeled Valentine used as the cover plate of the magazine’s The Modern Theatre section.
Yes, that’s the Fairmount in the ad, with the wrong location in the caption. The two-page article about the Fairmount in Boxoffice of September 12, 1942, begins at this link. There’s another photo of the auditorium on the second page, showing the opposite wall from the one in the ad, but it’s a bit washed out.
Here is what the NRHP registration form for the Clifton Forge Commercial Historic District has to say about the Ridge Theatre:
“Perhaps the most unusual building built on the street during the period Was the 1929 Ridge Theatre (418 East Ridgeway Street). In 1928 Samuel Sachs sold the Family Theatre to Warner Brothers Theatre Corporation which either remodeled the preexisting building or, more likely, built anew. The Ridge Theatre is a lively rendition of the Spanish Eclectic style. The theater’s facade relies on economical allusions to various stylistic elements for its effect. The parapet is coped with several courses of ceramic or metal mission tiles, suggesting a foreshortened tile roof. The second and third story windows have round-arched heads; the top two windows are connected by a decorative metal grille that projects slightly from the facade and is meant to evoke a balcony. The stuccoed facade is banded with bas-relief decoration suggestive of arched corbeling.”
The Family Theatre, which the Ridge Theatre replaced in 1929, had been called the Palace Theatre until the end of 1908. The December 26 issue of The Billboard that year said that new owner A. M. Houff had closed the house, planning to reopen it with movies as the Family Theatre on January 1. This photo depicts the Family Theatre in the 1910s.
Items from The Luddington Daily News indicate that the Pentwater Theatre was indeed the same house as the Miracle Theatre, built in 1930 on the site of the Tower Theatre which had been destroyed by fire.
The Tower Theatre burned in 1928, and again in 1929, according to this article in The Ludington Daily News, May 13, 1929.
This article from the same newspaper’s issue of January 21, 1939, is about the remodeling of the Pentwater Theatre, formerly the Miracle Theatre.
The Miracle Theatre opened in July, 1930, and was closed as the Pentwater Theatre in 1986.
The description says that the Elmwood Theatre was near Gunderson Avenue, which is three blocks east of the location at which Google Maps placed its pin icon. It might not be Google’s fault this time. The address of the theater might have been in the 400 block of Harrison Street, not the 600 block.
Although the following item was in the February 27 issue of Construction News in 1915, not 1913 when the Elmwood is supposed to have opened, I think it could be about the Elmwood Theatre:
“Motion Picture Theatre- 2 stores & 6 flats, $35,000, Oak Park, Ill., Elmwood & Harrison. Mason, W. Pillinger, 118 N. La Salle St. Carpt., Diegley & Campbell, 139 N. Clark St. Archt. Frank O. DeMoney, 19 S. La Salle St. Owner, C. H. Kessler, 725 S. Elmwood Av. Pressed brk. & terra cotta trim, 2 stys. & bsm., 100x125. Excavating.”
Elmwood Avenue is one block east of Gunderson Avenue. As for the 1915 construction date, if there was an Elmwood Theatre as early as 1913, it’s possible that the house opened as a small storefront operation and moved to new quarters two years later.
The January 10, 1914, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide mentioned the project that became the Cumberland Theatre in an item about recent projects in Brooklyn’s Hill section:
Andrew Craig Morrison’s Theatres says that the Majestic was built in 1910, and designed by Paterson architect Charles E. Sleight. Sleight designed at least one other theater in Paterson. His son, Alfred E. Sleight, designed the Plaza Theatre, built in 1921.
Paterson, by Philip M. Read, attributes the design of the Regent Theatre to architect Fred W. Wentworth, who later designed several more theaters for Jacob Fabian.
The Union Street on which the Regent Theatre was located had its name changed to Veterans Place ages ago. Google Maps will not find this downtown location unless the street name Veterans Place is used in the address field.
The April 2, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that contracts had been awarded for the theater being built at Union and Redwood Avenues. The owner of the theater was H. Grossman, and the architect was Albert E. Sleight, both of Paterson. Albert E. Sleight was the son of architect Charles E. Sleight, who designed Paterson’s Majestic Theatre of 1910.
I came across two items in the July 17, 1915, issue of The American Contractor. Both mention the Electric Theatre in St. Joseph, but they describe two different projects. One is a theater remodeling and the other a theater addition. The first is in the block the Electric Theatre was on, but the second item gives no location. I really don’t know what to make of them. I’ve had the impression that the Electric Theatre was newly built in 1915, but perhaps it was in a remodeled building. Here is the first item:
Here is the second item:So I won’t be the cause of any more hair loss for HogGravy, here is a fresh link to the photo of the Trail Theatre on the cover of Boxoffice, October 6, 1951.
The Trenton Theatre was in the planning stage in early 1936, when the March 10 issue of The Film Daily ran this item:
The Pitt Theatre was again remodeled in 1936, after the Shuberts gave the house up. This is probably when it was renamed the Barry and began showing movies. Here’s the item from the “Pittsburgh Patter” column of The Film Daily for February 5, 1936:
The original architect of the Fain Theatre was Roy A. Benjamin. Here is the announcement of the opening from the January 24, 1936, issue of The Film Daily:
A section about the Cayuga Theatre on this web page gives the theater’s opening year as 1911. It also says the house was renamed the Aardvark Theatre in the early 1950s. After closing in 1955, the building as a church for some time, and was eventually demolished to make way for expansion of the Roosevelt Expressway.
The Cayuga Theatre was at the corner of Germantown Avenue and Cayuga Street, which is the 4300 block- probably 4371 Germantown Avenue.
Here is a photo of the Rex Theatre.
I’ve set Street View to the proper location, but the pin icon on the map is still a couple of miles off. The Fox Theatre building is currently occupied by Fakier’s Jewelers. The Fox was just west of Gabasse Street.
Houma, by Thomas Blum Cobb and Mara Currie, says that the Fox was built in 1936, and there’s a photo with the 1938 release Romance on the Run on the marquee (Google Books preview– scroll down past two photos of the Bijou.) The Fox had a bit of simplified Art Deco detailing, and a nice marquee. It has all been stripped away by remodeling.
Thomas Blum Cobb and Mara Currie’s book Houma (from Arcadia’s Images of America series) says that the Bijou was built in 1940. However, a Bijou Theatre was listed at Houma in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. The 1940 house might have been a remodel, or perhaps an entirely new building. The Google Books preview of the Arcadia Press book has two photos of the Bijou (scroll down a bit for the second) as well as one of the slightly more decorative Fox (opened in 1936, according to the book.) Both theaters had modern fronts.
Bill Ellzey’s Daily Comet column for June 16, 2012 has a question from a former resident of Houma asking for information about Houma’s movie theaters. Ellzey says that the Bijou, Fox, and Grand were all on the three-block stretch of Main Street between Goode Street and Gabasse Street. That’s a considerable distance southeast of the location where Google Maps has put its pin icon for this theater.
A 1973 source indicates that the Bijou was located where the drive-up area of the First National Bank was located by 1973. If the First National Bank is still in the same location it was then, then the approximate address of the Bijou was 7910 Main, which is the bank’s current address.
Here is a fresh link to the 1949 Boxoffice item with the photo of the Park Theatre’s collapsed ceiling.
The modern address of the New Theatre should have four digits, as the Island Theatre’s address is 4074 Main Street and the address of the building that once housed Powell’s Theatre is 4098 Main Street, and all three theaters were close together.
In a 2006 interview of Anne Lumley Davis, which was part of the Chincoteague Island Library Oral History Project, Ms. Davis says this about the New Theatre:
Other sources indicate that the New Theatre was owned by the Powell family, and that they operated both it and Powell’s Theatre until both houses succumbed to competition from the Island Theatre in the 1950s.The January 1, 1916 issue of The Moving Picture World featured a brief article about the Ditmas Theatre (an exterior view of which is therewith produced.)
The August 30, 1913, issue of The American Contractor said that the Ditmas Theatre had been designed by the local architectural firm of J. N. Pierson & Son. The theater was to be a combination moving picture and vaudeville house. Construction bids were being taken.
In addition to the article Tinseltoes linked to, that issue of Boxoffice features a photo of the foyer and main stairways of the remodeled Valentine used as the cover plate of the magazine’s The Modern Theatre section.
The original look of the Shaker Theatre’s auditorium can be seen in the photo at upper left of this page of Boxoffice, November 14, 1936.
Here is a 1959 photo showing the Shaker Theatre during a major flood on June 1. The name of the movie featured on the marquee is interesting.
Yes, that’s the Fairmount in the ad, with the wrong location in the caption. The two-page article about the Fairmount in Boxoffice of September 12, 1942, begins at this link. There’s another photo of the auditorium on the second page, showing the opposite wall from the one in the ad, but it’s a bit washed out.
Here is an updated link to the 1965 photo of the Squire Theatre in Boxoffice.
Here is what the NRHP registration form for the Clifton Forge Commercial Historic District has to say about the Ridge Theatre:
The Family Theatre, which the Ridge Theatre replaced in 1929, had been called the Palace Theatre until the end of 1908. The December 26 issue of The Billboard that year said that new owner A. M. Houff had closed the house, planning to reopen it with movies as the Family Theatre on January 1. This photo depicts the Family Theatre in the 1910s.Items from The Luddington Daily News indicate that the Pentwater Theatre was indeed the same house as the Miracle Theatre, built in 1930 on the site of the Tower Theatre which had been destroyed by fire.
The Tower Theatre burned in 1928, and again in 1929, according to this article in The Ludington Daily News, May 13, 1929.
This article from the same newspaper’s issue of January 21, 1939, is about the remodeling of the Pentwater Theatre, formerly the Miracle Theatre.
The Miracle Theatre opened in July, 1930, and was closed as the Pentwater Theatre in 1986.
A photo of the lobby of the Harper Theatre appeared in Boxoffice of December 2, 1950.
The description says that the Elmwood Theatre was near Gunderson Avenue, which is three blocks east of the location at which Google Maps placed its pin icon. It might not be Google’s fault this time. The address of the theater might have been in the 400 block of Harrison Street, not the 600 block.
Although the following item was in the February 27 issue of Construction News in 1915, not 1913 when the Elmwood is supposed to have opened, I think it could be about the Elmwood Theatre:
Elmwood Avenue is one block east of Gunderson Avenue. As for the 1915 construction date, if there was an Elmwood Theatre as early as 1913, it’s possible that the house opened as a small storefront operation and moved to new quarters two years later.