Someone named Joseph Modi was listed as the operator of a 500-seat house in Barnesville called the Acme Strand Theatre in the supplement to the 1922 edition of The Julius Cahn-Gus Hill Theatrical Guide and Moving Picture Directory. It must have been the predecessor of the Modi Theatre.
An Edward Joseph Modi and a Paul Gregory Modi were both listed in a 1921 directory of students at Ohio State University. A 1925 publication about former Ohio State students mentions P. G. Modi as manager of a popular movie theater at Barnesville. I would surmise that these two were Joseph Modi’s sons. If he could put two sons through college in the early 1920s, he must have been fairly prosperous.
The April 30, 1910, issue of The American Contractor said that the Dubuque Opera House was to be remodeled. The architects for the $70,000 project were C.W. and G.L. Rapp.
When J.D. Sugg died in 1925, the Waurika News-Democrat published an article noting some of the bequests made in his will. Among them was a bequest “…to MRS. BELL MCCOWN of Fort Worth, a niece and her children, the Sugg Theatre building in Chickasha and $5,000 each….”
There was also a reference to another theater in Chickasha that Mr. Sugg owned: “The Kozy Theatre building in Chickasha goes to J. D. LINDSAY of that city for life, reverting to the estate on his death.”
Either the Kozy is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures, or is listed under another name and is missing the aka. The Kozy was mentioned in the July 29, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, so it was at least that old.
I think it’s possible that the building currently on the site of the Sugg Theatre incorporates the lower portions of the theater’s side and back walls. Brick is pretty good at surviving fires. But as the theater had both a balcony and a gallery, and the current building is a single floor structure, the upper parts of the walls at least have clearly been demolished. The front is obviously post-fire construction, as it is mostly glass show windows.
The June 12, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Broadway Theatre in Everett had changed hands. N. Parentin and G. W. Vaughan had sold their interests in the house to C. F. Rollins, who planned to make improvements.
Google Maps puts its pin at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 17th Street. The Illinois Theatre was actually a block west, at the southeast corner of 2nd Avenue and 16th Street. Street View has been set to the proper location. The theater was in the three-story building diagonally across the intersection.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide follows its listing of the Nevada Theatre at Nevada City with the addition of “Broadway Theatre—Pictures.” During that period, the guide usually listed movie houses at the end of the entries for a given city, following the town’s stage houses. At least in 1912, there must have been both a Nevada Theatre and a Broadway Theatre in Nevada City.
I don’t know if there was a relationship to the Broadway Theatre at 409 Broad Street listed in the FDYs in the 1940s and early 1950s. Is it possible that Broadway Theatre was never an aka for the Nevada/Cedar Theatre? 409 Broad would have been a few doors up the hill from the Nevada Theatre. The buildings on that site now look like old houses converted to shops, but they could be newer construction in a vintage style.
Here is a photo of the auditorium of the Victory Theatre, with a note on it indicating that it was taken on the opening night, February 6, 1914.
I’m wondering if this theater might have actually been built a few years earlier and operated for a while as the Ukiah Opera House. A house of that name is listed in the 1912 Cahn guide, with 400 seats on the main floor and 250 in the balcony. The photo of the Victory shows that it had just about 400 seats on the main floor. The balcony is a bit harder to count, as the seats are smaller and the rows of different lengths, but it does appear to seat about 250.
There was an earlier opera house in Ukiah, but it was probably not the one listed in the Cahn guide, as it was a single-floor building, and appears much too small to have held 650 seats. Here’s a photo of it.
The September 2, 1908, issue of The American Architect and Building News has an item saying that San Francisco architects Banks & Copeland were preparing plans for a brick and concrete theater to be built at Ukiah. This could have been the Opera House.
I’ve been unable to find any mention of any other theater in Ukiah before the Victory opened, and 1912 is the last mention of the Ukiah Opera House I’ve found. It seems possible that the Opera House was equipped for movies and renamed the Victory in 1914, and that its first few years of operation as a live theater have since been forgotten.
The Majestic Theatre was open by 1911, when it was mentioned in an August 26 item in The Rounder, headed “Season Opens in Redlands.”
The Majestic was showing movies by 1914, when it was mentioned in several issues of The Moving Picture World in connection with a proposal to forbid the exhibition of movies on Sunday, and another proposal to establish a local board for censoring movies. Another of the three movie houses then operating in Redlands, the Grand Theatre, was also mentioned.
The July 8, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Family Theater in Rock Island would “…open for a summer run of moving pictures and illustrated songs.”
Drive-Ins.com gives the address of the Village Drive-In as 6695 Coddington, Santa Rosa, CA 95405. However, there is apparently no street called Coddington in Santa Rosa, though there is a shopping center called Coddingtown Mall. I’ve been unable to track down the name of the street the drive-in was actually on.
In any case, the drive-in’s zip code should be changed to 95405. Giving Google Maps the wrong zip code has sent this theater to Stockton, a hundred miles from its actual location.
Looking at the map of Moberly, I have to reconsider my belief that this theater could not have been the Baby Grand. 4th Street is one block west of Williams Street, and 5th Street is two blocks west. It looks as though Williams Street was probably called 3rd Street at one time. The next two streets east have names rather than numbers, too, and most likely they were once called 2nd Street and 1st Street.
If the Star was not the same house as the Wheaton Theatre, it reopens the question of when the Star was built. If it was opened by 1921, it could have been the Star that had the organ installed that year.
I came across a 1909 reference to a lecture held at the Wheaton Theatre, so the 1916 Music Trade Review announcement I cited must have marked its conversion into a movie theater. Judging from the photo I linked to, it looks like the Wheaton might have been a second-floor theater. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find it listed in any edition of the Cahn guide.
Although the 1908-1909 edition of Julius Cahn’s Theatrical Guide listed the Page Theatre at Medford as “under construction,” there was a long delay in getting the project underway. Various issues of Pacific Coast Architect from late 1912 and early 1913 said that local architects Power & West were designing a theater for Dr. F. C. Page. (Some early references to the firm call it Powers & West, but I believe that is an error. Two newspaper items calling for construction bids on projects, presumably placed by the firm itself, use Power & West, and give the firm’s address.)
This web page about the Page Theatre has excerpts from multiple newspaper articles about the theater, dating from its opening on May 19, 1913, through its destruction by fire in late December, 1923.
The Page Theatre showed movies from the year it opened, though it was also the principal venue in Medford for travelling stage shows and vaudeville. A 1920 remodeling included the installation of an organ to provide musical accompaniment for silent movies.
The gutted ruin of the Page Theatre stood for a number of years, but the house was never rebuilt. In 1932, the considerably smaller Roxy Theatre was built on the Page Theatre’s site. The Roxy was at 420 E. Main, so the Page most likely had the same address.
matt54: The contact link, leading to the site’s e-mail addresses for various purposes, including theater updates, is now in the “About” section, which is linked in the banner at the top of each page.
The map can only be fixed by having a Cinema Treasures moderator add the correct full address of the theater to this page, although sometimes even that doesn’t work. There’s some problem with the interface between Cinema Treasures and Google Maps. Whatever it is, I hope they fix it eventually. It’s frustrating to see so many theaters misplaced on the maps, so far from their actual locations.
Judging from the postcard Don Lewis uploaded, the Mission was across the street and up a few doors from the Border Theatre. Comparing it with Google Street View (you can use the Street View feature on the Border page,) it appears to have been about where Edelstein’s furniture store is now, which would be 922 N. Conway.
Bing Maps has a bird’s-eye view for the location, and though the front of the building has been remodeled, the back wall and roof both look old, so if the theater was there it could still be standing— although I don’t see any evidence of theater-style rear exits on that building. If the Mission was any farther south, though, it must have been demolished to make way for the Texas State Bank building.
On page 127 of the book Akron, by David W. Francis and Diane DeMali Francis, there’s a 1920s photo of the Allen Theatre, and it appears to fit the description of a house then ready for construction according to the following item from the June 10, 1920, issue of Engineering News-Record:
“O., Akron—Theatre—Akron Theatre Co., c/o Frank, Wagner & Mitchell, archts.. 602 Perm Title & Trust Bldg., let contract building 3 and 6 story, 130 x 160 ft. rein.con., brick and steel, rein.-con. flooring, concrete foundation, on South Main St., to Carmichael Constr. Co., 524 Hamilton Bldg. About $500,000.”
Partner G. Evans Mitchell withdrew from the firm later that year, and the successor firm Frank & Wagner were local associates of the New York firm George G. Post & Sons. They designed a theater that was to have been built at Ravenna, Ohio, in 1921, but I’ve been unable to discover if that project was carried out.
The August, 1922, issue of The Architect and Engineer says that architect G. A. Lansburgh had “…completed plans for the new Pajaro Theatre at Watsonville, to cost $60,000.”
OldJody: You were seeing Warnor’s Theatre in the Street View photo because the 1100 block of Fulton Street is a pedestrian mall and not accessible to Google’s camera truck. The Strand was an entirely different house on Fulton Street south of Fresno Street.
Google would have done better to show the view at the corner of Fulton Mall and Fresno Street. I’ve adjusted Street View to that location and updated it, to prevent further confusion. The Strand would have been on the left side of the mall as you look south from Fresno Street. The pin icon on the Google map is still in the wrong location, at Tuolumne Street.
I’m not sure how long ago the Strand was closed. The only photo I can find showing a Strand Theatre in Fresno is this one, taken way back when Fulton Street was still called J Street. I’m not even sure it’s the same Strand Theatre, as everything on Fulton Street has changed since then.
A list of U.S. radio stations broadcasting as of May, 1923, includes station WOAG, located in the Apollo Theatre, Belvidere, Illinois. A chronology of early radio says that WOAG began broadcasting in October, 1922. The Federal government began licensing radio stations for commercial broadcasts in late 1920, so WOAG was one of the fairly early ones.
I’ve come across references to a late 19th-early 20th century theater in Belvidere called the Derthick Opera House. Some sources say that it was next to the river. I think it might have been on the same site as the Apollo. The November, 1917, issue of Safety Engineering reported that the “Dorthic” Opera House at Belvidere, Illinois, had been destroyed by fire on October 1, 1917. This publication also said that the theater was next to the river.
The December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Zimperhoff Brothers, of Chicago, had been negotiating a two-year leas on the “Derthofk” Opera House in Belvidere, with the intention of operating it as a movie house. I’ve been unable to discover if they got the lease, but given the state of the theater business in the 1910s, odds are good that the Derthick did show movies in its last years.
It’s possible that the Hetrick dated from the very early 20th century. The earliest reference to it I can find in Julius Chan’s guides is in the edition of 1904-1905.
The Hetrick Theatre dated to the late 19th century, and was also known as the Hetrick Opera House. The 1904 Cahn Guide lists it as a 1,050-seat second-floor theater. This photo shows that it was a three-story building in the Romanesque Revival style.
The Emporia Gazette of July 20, 1925, reported that half a block of business buildings at Chanute, Illinois, had been destroyed on July 10 by fire that had started in the Hetrick Theatre. The total loss was estimated at $500,000.
If the Capri was on the same site as the theater it replaced, the La Nora, then it must have been at the same address of 114 N. Cuyler Street. The building at that address is currently occupied by the Heard & Jones Health Mart, a drug store and pharmacy. It’s a midcentury modern building and looks to be about 1961 vintage, and it could have been a theater.
There’s another building in Pampa, at the northeast corner of Cuyler and Francis Avenue, which looks like it was once a theater. It has a vertical sign with spots for five letters, but all are missing except the bottom one, and that’s an E. If the E is original, it might have been the State Theatre, but the letter might have been left by some other occupant, so the building could also have been the Capri. The Overview here doesn’t make it clear if the Capri was on the same site as the La Noya or not, and the State is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
Someone named Joseph Modi was listed as the operator of a 500-seat house in Barnesville called the Acme Strand Theatre in the supplement to the 1922 edition of The Julius Cahn-Gus Hill Theatrical Guide and Moving Picture Directory. It must have been the predecessor of the Modi Theatre.
An Edward Joseph Modi and a Paul Gregory Modi were both listed in a 1921 directory of students at Ohio State University. A 1925 publication about former Ohio State students mentions P. G. Modi as manager of a popular movie theater at Barnesville. I would surmise that these two were Joseph Modi’s sons. If he could put two sons through college in the early 1920s, he must have been fairly prosperous.
The theater in the photo is still in operation as the Cameo Cinema, and is in the Napa County town of St. Helena.
Helena, California, is a tiny hamlet in Trinity County, and has no theaters.
The April 30, 1910, issue of The American Contractor said that the Dubuque Opera House was to be remodeled. The architects for the $70,000 project were C.W. and G.L. Rapp.
When J.D. Sugg died in 1925, the Waurika News-Democrat published an article noting some of the bequests made in his will. Among them was a bequest “…to MRS. BELL MCCOWN of Fort Worth, a niece and her children, the Sugg Theatre building in Chickasha and $5,000 each….”
There was also a reference to another theater in Chickasha that Mr. Sugg owned: “The Kozy Theatre building in Chickasha goes to J. D. LINDSAY of that city for life, reverting to the estate on his death.”
Either the Kozy is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures, or is listed under another name and is missing the aka. The Kozy was mentioned in the July 29, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, so it was at least that old.
I think it’s possible that the building currently on the site of the Sugg Theatre incorporates the lower portions of the theater’s side and back walls. Brick is pretty good at surviving fires. But as the theater had both a balcony and a gallery, and the current building is a single floor structure, the upper parts of the walls at least have clearly been demolished. The front is obviously post-fire construction, as it is mostly glass show windows.
Two interior photos of the Halsey Theatre appear on page 39 of the January, 1913, issue of the trade journal Architecture and Building.
The June 12, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Broadway Theatre in Everett had changed hands. N. Parentin and G. W. Vaughan had sold their interests in the house to C. F. Rollins, who planned to make improvements.
Google Maps puts its pin at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 17th Street. The Illinois Theatre was actually a block west, at the southeast corner of 2nd Avenue and 16th Street. Street View has been set to the proper location. The theater was in the three-story building diagonally across the intersection.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide follows its listing of the Nevada Theatre at Nevada City with the addition of “Broadway Theatre—Pictures.” During that period, the guide usually listed movie houses at the end of the entries for a given city, following the town’s stage houses. At least in 1912, there must have been both a Nevada Theatre and a Broadway Theatre in Nevada City.
I don’t know if there was a relationship to the Broadway Theatre at 409 Broad Street listed in the FDYs in the 1940s and early 1950s. Is it possible that Broadway Theatre was never an aka for the Nevada/Cedar Theatre? 409 Broad would have been a few doors up the hill from the Nevada Theatre. The buildings on that site now look like old houses converted to shops, but they could be newer construction in a vintage style.
Here is a photo of the auditorium of the Victory Theatre, with a note on it indicating that it was taken on the opening night, February 6, 1914.
I’m wondering if this theater might have actually been built a few years earlier and operated for a while as the Ukiah Opera House. A house of that name is listed in the 1912 Cahn guide, with 400 seats on the main floor and 250 in the balcony. The photo of the Victory shows that it had just about 400 seats on the main floor. The balcony is a bit harder to count, as the seats are smaller and the rows of different lengths, but it does appear to seat about 250.
There was an earlier opera house in Ukiah, but it was probably not the one listed in the Cahn guide, as it was a single-floor building, and appears much too small to have held 650 seats. Here’s a photo of it.
The September 2, 1908, issue of The American Architect and Building News has an item saying that San Francisco architects Banks & Copeland were preparing plans for a brick and concrete theater to be built at Ukiah. This could have been the Opera House.
I’ve been unable to find any mention of any other theater in Ukiah before the Victory opened, and 1912 is the last mention of the Ukiah Opera House I’ve found. It seems possible that the Opera House was equipped for movies and renamed the Victory in 1914, and that its first few years of operation as a live theater have since been forgotten.
The Majestic Theatre was open by 1911, when it was mentioned in an August 26 item in The Rounder, headed “Season Opens in Redlands.”
The Majestic was showing movies by 1914, when it was mentioned in several issues of The Moving Picture World in connection with a proposal to forbid the exhibition of movies on Sunday, and another proposal to establish a local board for censoring movies. Another of the three movie houses then operating in Redlands, the Grand Theatre, was also mentioned.
The July 8, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Family Theater in Rock Island would “…open for a summer run of moving pictures and illustrated songs.”
Drive-Ins.com gives the address of the Village Drive-In as 6695 Coddington, Santa Rosa, CA 95405. However, there is apparently no street called Coddington in Santa Rosa, though there is a shopping center called Coddingtown Mall. I’ve been unable to track down the name of the street the drive-in was actually on.
In any case, the drive-in’s zip code should be changed to 95405. Giving Google Maps the wrong zip code has sent this theater to Stockton, a hundred miles from its actual location.
Looking at the map of Moberly, I have to reconsider my belief that this theater could not have been the Baby Grand. 4th Street is one block west of Williams Street, and 5th Street is two blocks west. It looks as though Williams Street was probably called 3rd Street at one time. The next two streets east have names rather than numbers, too, and most likely they were once called 2nd Street and 1st Street.
I finally found the Wheaton listed in the 1914 Cahn guide, and it was indeed a second-floor house. Cahn listed it as having 567 seats.
The Onion Skin Players, current occupants of the Star Theatre, have a web site.
If the Star was not the same house as the Wheaton Theatre, it reopens the question of when the Star was built. If it was opened by 1921, it could have been the Star that had the organ installed that year.
I came across a 1909 reference to a lecture held at the Wheaton Theatre, so the 1916 Music Trade Review announcement I cited must have marked its conversion into a movie theater. Judging from the photo I linked to, it looks like the Wheaton might have been a second-floor theater. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find it listed in any edition of the Cahn guide.
Here is the PSTOS page about the Pythian/Star Theatre. It has three photos.
Although the 1908-1909 edition of Julius Cahn’s Theatrical Guide listed the Page Theatre at Medford as “under construction,” there was a long delay in getting the project underway. Various issues of Pacific Coast Architect from late 1912 and early 1913 said that local architects Power & West were designing a theater for Dr. F. C. Page. (Some early references to the firm call it Powers & West, but I believe that is an error. Two newspaper items calling for construction bids on projects, presumably placed by the firm itself, use Power & West, and give the firm’s address.)
This web page about the Page Theatre has excerpts from multiple newspaper articles about the theater, dating from its opening on May 19, 1913, through its destruction by fire in late December, 1923.
The Page Theatre showed movies from the year it opened, though it was also the principal venue in Medford for travelling stage shows and vaudeville. A 1920 remodeling included the installation of an organ to provide musical accompaniment for silent movies.
The gutted ruin of the Page Theatre stood for a number of years, but the house was never rebuilt. In 1932, the considerably smaller Roxy Theatre was built on the Page Theatre’s site. The Roxy was at 420 E. Main, so the Page most likely had the same address.
matt54: The contact link, leading to the site’s e-mail addresses for various purposes, including theater updates, is now in the “About” section, which is linked in the banner at the top of each page.
The map can only be fixed by having a Cinema Treasures moderator add the correct full address of the theater to this page, although sometimes even that doesn’t work. There’s some problem with the interface between Cinema Treasures and Google Maps. Whatever it is, I hope they fix it eventually. It’s frustrating to see so many theaters misplaced on the maps, so far from their actual locations.
Judging from the postcard Don Lewis uploaded, the Mission was across the street and up a few doors from the Border Theatre. Comparing it with Google Street View (you can use the Street View feature on the Border page,) it appears to have been about where Edelstein’s furniture store is now, which would be 922 N. Conway.
Bing Maps has a bird’s-eye view for the location, and though the front of the building has been remodeled, the back wall and roof both look old, so if the theater was there it could still be standing— although I don’t see any evidence of theater-style rear exits on that building. If the Mission was any farther south, though, it must have been demolished to make way for the Texas State Bank building.
On page 127 of the book Akron, by David W. Francis and Diane DeMali Francis, there’s a 1920s photo of the Allen Theatre, and it appears to fit the description of a house then ready for construction according to the following item from the June 10, 1920, issue of Engineering News-Record:
Partner G. Evans Mitchell withdrew from the firm later that year, and the successor firm Frank & Wagner were local associates of the New York firm George G. Post & Sons. They designed a theater that was to have been built at Ravenna, Ohio, in 1921, but I’ve been unable to discover if that project was carried out.The August, 1922, issue of The Architect and Engineer says that architect G. A. Lansburgh had “…completed plans for the new Pajaro Theatre at Watsonville, to cost $60,000.”
OldJody: You were seeing Warnor’s Theatre in the Street View photo because the 1100 block of Fulton Street is a pedestrian mall and not accessible to Google’s camera truck. The Strand was an entirely different house on Fulton Street south of Fresno Street.
Google would have done better to show the view at the corner of Fulton Mall and Fresno Street. I’ve adjusted Street View to that location and updated it, to prevent further confusion. The Strand would have been on the left side of the mall as you look south from Fresno Street. The pin icon on the Google map is still in the wrong location, at Tuolumne Street.
I’m not sure how long ago the Strand was closed. The only photo I can find showing a Strand Theatre in Fresno is this one, taken way back when Fulton Street was still called J Street. I’m not even sure it’s the same Strand Theatre, as everything on Fulton Street has changed since then.
A list of U.S. radio stations broadcasting as of May, 1923, includes station WOAG, located in the Apollo Theatre, Belvidere, Illinois. A chronology of early radio says that WOAG began broadcasting in October, 1922. The Federal government began licensing radio stations for commercial broadcasts in late 1920, so WOAG was one of the fairly early ones.
I’ve come across references to a late 19th-early 20th century theater in Belvidere called the Derthick Opera House. Some sources say that it was next to the river. I think it might have been on the same site as the Apollo. The November, 1917, issue of Safety Engineering reported that the “Dorthic” Opera House at Belvidere, Illinois, had been destroyed by fire on October 1, 1917. This publication also said that the theater was next to the river.
The December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Zimperhoff Brothers, of Chicago, had been negotiating a two-year leas on the “Derthofk” Opera House in Belvidere, with the intention of operating it as a movie house. I’ve been unable to discover if they got the lease, but given the state of the theater business in the 1910s, odds are good that the Derthick did show movies in its last years.
It’s possible that the Hetrick dated from the very early 20th century. The earliest reference to it I can find in Julius Chan’s guides is in the edition of 1904-1905.
The Hetrick Theatre dated to the late 19th century, and was also known as the Hetrick Opera House. The 1904 Cahn Guide lists it as a 1,050-seat second-floor theater. This photo shows that it was a three-story building in the Romanesque Revival style.
The Emporia Gazette of July 20, 1925, reported that half a block of business buildings at Chanute, Illinois, had been destroyed on July 10 by fire that had started in the Hetrick Theatre. The total loss was estimated at $500,000.
If the Capri was on the same site as the theater it replaced, the La Nora, then it must have been at the same address of 114 N. Cuyler Street. The building at that address is currently occupied by the Heard & Jones Health Mart, a drug store and pharmacy. It’s a midcentury modern building and looks to be about 1961 vintage, and it could have been a theater.
There’s another building in Pampa, at the northeast corner of Cuyler and Francis Avenue, which looks like it was once a theater. It has a vertical sign with spots for five letters, but all are missing except the bottom one, and that’s an E. If the E is original, it might have been the State Theatre, but the letter might have been left by some other occupant, so the building could also have been the Capri. The Overview here doesn’t make it clear if the Capri was on the same site as the La Noya or not, and the State is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.