In 1923-24, this house was operating as the Pershing Theatre, managed by Fred Meyn. Mr. Meyn wrote a letter to distributor Film Classics praising the Warner Brothers movies they distributed, which had been very popular at his theater. The letter was published in an ad for Film Classics in the January 19, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal.
The Royal Theatre was mentioned in the January 26, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal, which said that it was the only theater still operating in Hoisington following the closure of the Crystal Theatre, which was being dismantled for other uses.
It’s possible that the Royal was the proposed $40,000 theater mentioned in the June 1, 1916, issue of American Stone Trade: “Hoisington, Kan.—W. E. Hulse & Co., architects, Hutchinson Kan., preparing plans for theater building; $40,000: brick and stone.”
The Benton Theatre, at Independence and Benton Boulevards, was in operation at least as early as 1923. The Pathe Exchange in Kansas City received a letter from the theater’s operator, J. W. Watson, dated January 21, 1923, praising the Pathe serial “The Way of a Man.” The letter was published in the exchange’s advertisement in the February 2, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal.
The Casino was apparently a different theater from the Beyer. An NRHP form has a paragraph about an Excelsior Springs businessman named R. B. Christian, who was “…the owner/operator of the Casino and the Beyer Theaters.”
An Excelsior Springs house called the Beyer Theatre was mentioned in the February 2, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal. Its new manager, John Judd, had previously been associated with the Orpheum Theatre, also in Excelsior Springs.
This web page has three ads from the theater’s early days, and says that in 1924 it was called Byer’s Casino Theater.
3444 Broadway was the address given for a house called the Broadmour Theatre, mentioned in the February 2, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal. The item said that operator A. M. Eisner had closed the Broadmour Theatre for a few days to install a new heating plant.
The Broadmour Theatre was also mentioned in the November 19, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World.
The address 126 E. Lincoln must have been on the south side of the street just west of 5th Street. There’s a parking lot taking up the whole half block from 5th Street to the alley now. The Lincoln Theatre is gone.
The Taproot Theatre is open, but does not appear to be showing movies. Their web site lists only stage productions. In October, 2009, a fire destroyed an adjacent building owned by the theater company, and partly burned the roof of the theater itself, leading to extensive smoke and water damage. The theater reopened within a few months. The site of the destroyed building is now being developed with an annex that will include a cafe, an expanded lobby for the theater, and a small black box theater, among other facilities.
I should have said that the conversion of the building to a theater in 1940 was designed by Bjarne Moe. The expansion of the building took place much later, when the two additional screens were added.
The Varsity got an updating in the mid-1950s, which was handled by the B. F. Shearer Company. Boxoffice of October 22, 1955, featured a two-page article about the project, starting here.
The Meister Building was built in 1921, according to this historical site summary from the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods. The original architect of the building was William White. The expansion and conversion of the building into the Varsity Theatre took place in 1940, and was designed by theater architect Bjarne Moe.
When Ted Mann had the World Theatre remodeled in 1955, the project was designed by Liebenberg & Kaplan. Boxoffice of October 22, 1955, published a four-page article about the project, which begins here.
A four-page article about the remodeling of the Roxy Theatre, formerly the Pantages, appeared in Boxoffice of October 22, 1955. The remodeling project was designed by the architectural firm of Carlson, Eley, Grevstad.
I’m sure the photos of 4th Street in Hansford’s book are correctly captioned. The building that, in the 1914 photo, has “MILNES FRIEND GRO.CO” painted on the side of it is still there. It has a very distinctive parapet that can still be picked out in the Google view. The two-storey building just beyond it is still there, too, occupied by a business called Front Page.
The building the Delphus Theatre was in had to have been on the site of the one-storey building that now has a loan company and the Abbey Title Company in it. The Delphus was definitely on 4th Street, and is definitely gone. If the Roxy was actually on Main Street, then the Delphus Theatre is definitely not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The Theatre on Main Street that Hansford’s book calls the Electric (with a question mark) might have actually been called the Elite. There was a house of that name in Carthage, according to the book “Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915,” by Thomas J. Schlereth (Google preview.)
The Parsons Theatre might have opened as early as 1921, when the February issue of The Bridgemen’s Magazine carried the following item: “Parsons—Theater and Office—Parsons Amusement Company having plans prepared by H. R. Primmer, architect, Nevada, Mo., for 3-story, 100 x 120-ft., reinforced concrete, steel and brick, reinforced concrete flooring, concrete foundation. About $250,000.” The building in the 1985 photo lostmemory linked to was certainly not 100 feet wide, but part of the building destroyed in the 1943 fire might not have been rebuilt.
The Reel Deal Theatre was designed by Santa Fe architect Karen Marsh. The theater was built using ICFs (insulated concrete forms,) and a few photos of it can be seen on this page of the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company that provided the forms.
The Cinemagic Atlantis 15 was designed by TK Architects. The Cinemagic is not featured on TK’s web site, but a few photos of it, mostly during construction, are featured on this page at the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company which provided the ICF blocks that were used in the construction of the project.
The page at FFKR Architects' web site is gone, but there is a photo here, at the web site of Yesco, the company that built the signage for the project.
There are a few photos, including some construction photos, on this page at the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company that provided the ICF blocks that were used in the construction of the theater.
There’s a bit of information about the history of the Crane Theatre in this item from a Carthage Press weblog. It says that the house opened around 1922, and had a Hope-Jones organ.
The 1955 Boxoffice article I linked to earlier is now available starting at this link. There are additional photos on the three subsequent pages.
In 1913 there was a movie theater called the Delphus located in this block of 4th Street. The August 2nd issue of The Moving Picture World said that a new airdome had been built at the rear of the Delphus Theatre in Carthage, and would be known as the Delphus Hippodrome. The operators of the theaters were J.P. Williams and Joseph Logan.
The Arcadia Publishing company’s book “Carthage, Missouri,” by Michele Newton Hansford, has a ca.1914 photo of the south side of the square in Carthage (Google Books preview,) and the caption says that the Delphus Theatre was located in the three-story Cassaday Building, about in the middle of the block. Goggle Street View shows that the building is no longer there. Is it possible that the Delphus Theatre was the house that eventually became the Roxy?
If the Roxy was not in the same building as the Delphus of 1913, it’s possible that it was the unnamed theater mentioned in the April 27, 1921, issue of The American Architect, which said that F.B. Logan was taking bids for construction of a two-story, 80x100-foot brick theater building on East 4th Street in Carthage. The project had been designed by a Kansas City architect named A.C. Wiser.
As both the Delphus and the 1921 theater project were connected with someone named Logan, it might be that the 1921 project was a replacement for the Delphus, which appears to have been located in a building dating from the 1870s or 1880s, judging from the photo in Hansford’s book.
The only problem I can see with the original Delphus or the 1921 project, assuming it was built, having become the Roxy is the difference in size. The 1922 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide listed the Delphus as a 1000-seat house, and the 1921 project was certainly a large building, so the 300 seats attributed to the Roxy here would be quite a way off.
Given gsmurph’s information that this house was located the Reliance Building, it’s clear that the Esquire was the Reliance Theatre that was mentioned in a list of current construction projects by the Van Sant-Houghton Company, published in the August, 1916, issue of The Architect and Engineer of California: “Reliance Theater and office building, Oakland (Seventeenth Street and San Pablo Avenue.)
The Reliance Theatre was mentioned in quite a few publications in 1916 and 1917, including the September 30, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, which said that the house had opened on September 2nd. An earlier issue of the same publication said of the theater, then under construction, that it was “…on the site of the old Rice Institute, but the old building has been practically rebuilt.”
The most effusive piece on the theater I’ve found is from the September issue of Pacific Service Magazine, the house organ of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company:
“Reliance Theatre, Oakland, threw open its doors to the public on Saturday evening, September 2d. The theatre is Oakland’s largest and one of the most attractive on the Pacific Coast, nothing having been spared that goes to make for the comfort, convenience and restfulness of a modern theatre.
“At the opening hour, the theatre stood forth, a blaze of light and color. Floodlighting projectors, located across the street, illuminated the three facades of the building. On the gore, a large vertical electric sign boldly announced the name of the new recreation place, and electric signs above the entrance parquet told of the high quality attractions to be seen there. In all, twelve hundred and fifty 5-watt sign lamps were used and the twinkling of the traveling borders produced the effect of a myriad of diamonds, sparkling in the white light.
“The exterior of the building is finished in white, the entrance and ticket-booth being of marble and white tile. Throughout the interior, a color scheme of old ivory, pink and blue harmonizes with the heavy blue carpet and draperies. Massive indirect lighting fixtures add to the richness of the interior decorations. The organ lofts are located on both sides of the picture screen, and in the near future a $20,000 organ will be installed; a small organ temporarily serving.
“The building itself is a Class A structure with main floor and balcony, and seats 1800 people. Located on a gore, it has exits on two streets besides a private court, and in an emergency can be emptied in less than two minutes. The ventilation system is a departure from established custom. A large electrically driven fan forces the air into a large air chamber in the basement of the building, from which pipes lead to outlets placed under every alternating seat on the main floor of the theatre. Exhaust fans, located at the rear of the theatre, carry out the vitiated air; a complete change taking place every ten minutes. A furnace heats the incoming air when desired. Outlets from a stationary vacuum plant are installed throughout for cleaning.
“The operating room is of reinforced concrete lined with galvanized iron and is fireproof throughout. Three Simplex projecting machines are installed, one being used for emergency only. All electrical apparatus is in duplicate, there being two mercury arc-rectifiers and a motor-generator set for supplying direct current to the picture machines. Full assurance of a reliable and continuous source of electric supply is given. A 3-phase, 4-wire, overhead service supplies the motor-generator set, emergency lighting and the power load throughout the building; single phase, 3-wire, underground service supplies the general lighting of the building and the two rectifiers. Both lines are supplied from the 30,000-h.p. steam plant, thereby backing up all that the name ‘Pacific Service’ implies. The total installed load at present is as follows: 3-phase power, 15 h. p.; rectifiers, 6.5 k. w.; lighting, 22.8 k.w.
“The ticket office is equipped with electrical ticket-selling machines and automatic change-making apparatus. Pretty girls in uniform do the ushering and distribute programs. The Reliance Theatre is a credit to the city and to the people who promoted it. ‘Pacific Service’ welcomes it to its list of consumers.”
Despite the many mentions of the Reliance Theatre on the Internet, I’ve so far been unable to track down the name of its architect.
The October, 1916, issue of The Architect and Engineer of California has an item concerning what must be the Theatre St. Francis, although it calls it the St. Francis Theater. The item also names a different architect for this house than the description does. Here is the relevant part of the item:
“It is announced that plans for the big moving picture theater at Fourth and Market Streets, San Francisco, are being made by Alfred Henry Jacobs, architect of the recently completed St. Francis Theater on Geary Street. The latter theater has occasioned some favorable comment on account of certain unique features, one of which is the placing of the picture screen at the entrance end of the theater, instead of forward. The seats all face the rear, the idea being to avoid the glare of the pictures when entering the theater.
The magazine might have been mistaken about Jacobs being the architect, but that doesn’t seem likely as this publication was usually quite reliable, and the item was published about the same time the house opened. It’s also interesting that the item reveals the St. Francis to have been a reverse theater. Perhaps evidence of the theater’s original projection booth still exists at the back of the building?
The May 9, 1960, issue of Boxoffice featured a photo on the front of the Modern Theatre section depicting the auditorium of the recently-renovated Art La Brea Theatre.
A fuzzier version of the same photo was one of several that illustrated an article about the opening of the house, which had been closed for some time, in the June 6 issue of Boxoffice.
In 1923-24, this house was operating as the Pershing Theatre, managed by Fred Meyn. Mr. Meyn wrote a letter to distributor Film Classics praising the Warner Brothers movies they distributed, which had been very popular at his theater. The letter was published in an ad for Film Classics in the January 19, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal.
The Royal Theatre was mentioned in the January 26, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal, which said that it was the only theater still operating in Hoisington following the closure of the Crystal Theatre, which was being dismantled for other uses.
It’s possible that the Royal was the proposed $40,000 theater mentioned in the June 1, 1916, issue of American Stone Trade: “Hoisington, Kan.—W. E. Hulse & Co., architects, Hutchinson Kan., preparing plans for theater building; $40,000: brick and stone.”
The Benton Theatre, at Independence and Benton Boulevards, was in operation at least as early as 1923. The Pathe Exchange in Kansas City received a letter from the theater’s operator, J. W. Watson, dated January 21, 1923, praising the Pathe serial “The Way of a Man.” The letter was published in the exchange’s advertisement in the February 2, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal.
The Casino was apparently a different theater from the Beyer. An NRHP form has a paragraph about an Excelsior Springs businessman named R. B. Christian, who was “…the owner/operator of the Casino and the Beyer Theaters.”
Here’s a web page with ads for the Casino Theatre.
The “Orpheum” mentioned in the 1924 Reel Journal item was probably the Orpheus Theatre in this ad.
An Excelsior Springs house called the Beyer Theatre was mentioned in the February 2, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal. Its new manager, John Judd, had previously been associated with the Orpheum Theatre, also in Excelsior Springs.
This web page has three ads from the theater’s early days, and says that in 1924 it was called Byer’s Casino Theater.
Also, it’s obvious from Street View that the Vogue has been demolished. The midcentury modern building now on the site looks to date from the 1950s.
3444 Broadway was the address given for a house called the Broadmour Theatre, mentioned in the February 2, 1924, issue of The Reel Journal. The item said that operator A. M. Eisner had closed the Broadmour Theatre for a few days to install a new heating plant.
The Broadmour Theatre was also mentioned in the November 19, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World.
The address 126 E. Lincoln must have been on the south side of the street just west of 5th Street. There’s a parking lot taking up the whole half block from 5th Street to the alley now. The Lincoln Theatre is gone.
The Taproot Theatre is open, but does not appear to be showing movies. Their web site lists only stage productions. In October, 2009, a fire destroyed an adjacent building owned by the theater company, and partly burned the roof of the theater itself, leading to extensive smoke and water damage. The theater reopened within a few months. The site of the destroyed building is now being developed with an annex that will include a cafe, an expanded lobby for the theater, and a small black box theater, among other facilities.
I should have said that the conversion of the building to a theater in 1940 was designed by Bjarne Moe. The expansion of the building took place much later, when the two additional screens were added.
The Varsity got an updating in the mid-1950s, which was handled by the B. F. Shearer Company. Boxoffice of October 22, 1955, featured a two-page article about the project, starting here.
The Meister Building was built in 1921, according to this historical site summary from the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods. The original architect of the building was William White. The expansion and conversion of the building into the Varsity Theatre took place in 1940, and was designed by theater architect Bjarne Moe.
Photos showing the Community Theatre as it was remodeled in 1953 can be seen on this page of Boxoffice, October 22, 1955.
When Ted Mann had the World Theatre remodeled in 1955, the project was designed by Liebenberg & Kaplan. Boxoffice of October 22, 1955, published a four-page article about the project, which begins here.
A four-page article about the remodeling of the Roxy Theatre, formerly the Pantages, appeared in Boxoffice of October 22, 1955. The remodeling project was designed by the architectural firm of Carlson, Eley, Grevstad.
I’m sure the photos of 4th Street in Hansford’s book are correctly captioned. The building that, in the 1914 photo, has “MILNES FRIEND GRO.CO” painted on the side of it is still there. It has a very distinctive parapet that can still be picked out in the Google view. The two-storey building just beyond it is still there, too, occupied by a business called Front Page.
The building the Delphus Theatre was in had to have been on the site of the one-storey building that now has a loan company and the Abbey Title Company in it. The Delphus was definitely on 4th Street, and is definitely gone. If the Roxy was actually on Main Street, then the Delphus Theatre is definitely not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The Theatre on Main Street that Hansford’s book calls the Electric (with a question mark) might have actually been called the Elite. There was a house of that name in Carthage, according to the book “Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915,” by Thomas J. Schlereth (Google preview.)
The Parsons Theatre might have opened as early as 1921, when the February issue of The Bridgemen’s Magazine carried the following item: “Parsons—Theater and Office—Parsons Amusement Company having plans prepared by H. R. Primmer, architect, Nevada, Mo., for 3-story, 100 x 120-ft., reinforced concrete, steel and brick, reinforced concrete flooring, concrete foundation. About $250,000.” The building in the 1985 photo lostmemory linked to was certainly not 100 feet wide, but part of the building destroyed in the 1943 fire might not have been rebuilt.
I should add that the name Delphus Theatre was in use in Carthage at least as late as 1946, when it was mentioned in an issue of The Billboard.
The Reel Deal Theatre was designed by Santa Fe architect Karen Marsh. The theater was built using ICFs (insulated concrete forms,) and a few photos of it can be seen on this page of the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company that provided the forms.
The Cinemagic Atlantis 15 was designed by TK Architects. The Cinemagic is not featured on TK’s web site, but a few photos of it, mostly during construction, are featured on this page at the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company which provided the ICF blocks that were used in the construction of the project.
The page at FFKR Architects' web site is gone, but there is a photo here, at the web site of Yesco, the company that built the signage for the project.
There are a few photos, including some construction photos, on this page at the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company that provided the ICF blocks that were used in the construction of the theater.
There’s a bit of information about the history of the Crane Theatre in this item from a Carthage Press weblog. It says that the house opened around 1922, and had a Hope-Jones organ.
The 1955 Boxoffice article I linked to earlier is now available starting at this link. There are additional photos on the three subsequent pages.
In 1913 there was a movie theater called the Delphus located in this block of 4th Street. The August 2nd issue of The Moving Picture World said that a new airdome had been built at the rear of the Delphus Theatre in Carthage, and would be known as the Delphus Hippodrome. The operators of the theaters were J.P. Williams and Joseph Logan.
The Arcadia Publishing company’s book “Carthage, Missouri,” by Michele Newton Hansford, has a ca.1914 photo of the south side of the square in Carthage (Google Books preview,) and the caption says that the Delphus Theatre was located in the three-story Cassaday Building, about in the middle of the block. Goggle Street View shows that the building is no longer there. Is it possible that the Delphus Theatre was the house that eventually became the Roxy?
If the Roxy was not in the same building as the Delphus of 1913, it’s possible that it was the unnamed theater mentioned in the April 27, 1921, issue of The American Architect, which said that F.B. Logan was taking bids for construction of a two-story, 80x100-foot brick theater building on East 4th Street in Carthage. The project had been designed by a Kansas City architect named A.C. Wiser.
As both the Delphus and the 1921 theater project were connected with someone named Logan, it might be that the 1921 project was a replacement for the Delphus, which appears to have been located in a building dating from the 1870s or 1880s, judging from the photo in Hansford’s book.
The only problem I can see with the original Delphus or the 1921 project, assuming it was built, having become the Roxy is the difference in size. The 1922 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide listed the Delphus as a 1000-seat house, and the 1921 project was certainly a large building, so the 300 seats attributed to the Roxy here would be quite a way off.
Given gsmurph’s information that this house was located the Reliance Building, it’s clear that the Esquire was the Reliance Theatre that was mentioned in a list of current construction projects by the Van Sant-Houghton Company, published in the August, 1916, issue of The Architect and Engineer of California: “Reliance Theater and office building, Oakland (Seventeenth Street and San Pablo Avenue.)
The Reliance Theatre was mentioned in quite a few publications in 1916 and 1917, including the September 30, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, which said that the house had opened on September 2nd. An earlier issue of the same publication said of the theater, then under construction, that it was “…on the site of the old Rice Institute, but the old building has been practically rebuilt.”
The most effusive piece on the theater I’ve found is from the September issue of Pacific Service Magazine, the house organ of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company:
Despite the many mentions of the Reliance Theatre on the Internet, I’ve so far been unable to track down the name of its architect.The October, 1916, issue of The Architect and Engineer of California has an item concerning what must be the Theatre St. Francis, although it calls it the St. Francis Theater. The item also names a different architect for this house than the description does. Here is the relevant part of the item:
The magazine might have been mistaken about Jacobs being the architect, but that doesn’t seem likely as this publication was usually quite reliable, and the item was published about the same time the house opened. It’s also interesting that the item reveals the St. Francis to have been a reverse theater. Perhaps evidence of the theater’s original projection booth still exists at the back of the building?The May 9, 1960, issue of Boxoffice featured a photo on the front of the Modern Theatre section depicting the auditorium of the recently-renovated Art La Brea Theatre.
A fuzzier version of the same photo was one of several that illustrated an article about the opening of the house, which had been closed for some time, in the June 6 issue of Boxoffice.