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.
Cinema Treasures currently says that the Southern Theatre has been demolished, but I wonder if the building is still standing? A May, 2011, obituary for Mr. Raymond L. Spayne says that he was the owner and operator of the Southern Theater and Southern Tap Room in Akron.
The Southern Tap Room is located at 1169 Grant Street. Here’s a photo. The door to the upstairs of the building has the address 1165. There is an adjacent storefront, with no address on display, that might have been the theater entrance at one time. The building looks a bit too small for the listed seating capacity of 550, though.
If the theater was not in the same building as the bar, then it must have been on what is now a parking lot next door. The driveway apron there looks very old and worn, so if the theater was on that lot it must have been demolished ages ago.
212 E. Main Street is now occupied by offices of the City of Cuero.
The little building next door to the theater looks to small to have been the Palace/Rex Theatre that was operating in the 1920s and 1930s, so that house must have been where the parking lot is now.
The aka Normana Theatre still needs to be added to the additional info.
A book called “Rantoul and Chanute Air Force Base” by Mark D. Hanson says that this house was operating in the 1920s as the Blackstone Theatre. Another house also called the Home Theatre was closed down when the Blackstone was renamed the New Home Theatre. The book doesn’t say when the renaming took place, nor when the “New” was dropped, but a 1942 photo in the book shows the same marquee that is currently on the building.
If you move Street View down 17th Avenue to the alley, you can see some glass block windows at the corner of the building. These would not have been installed as late as 1956, so they must be part of the original design. That indicates that the theater was probably built in the 1930s, when the streamline modern style first came into vogue. The upstairs corner windows with steel sash were also characteristic of the 1930s style.
If there’s a record of this theater existing in 1934, that’s probably the year it opened. A book called “A Guide to Historic Hollywood: A Tour Through Place and Time” by Joan Mickelson says that a Hollywood Theatre built in 1923 at 1921 Hollywood Boulevard was remodeled and reopened as the Ritz Theatre in 1935. Presumably the name change was prompted by the opening of this new house.
The Grand Theatre page at PSTOS says that the house was located on Cedar Street. A 1915 magazine item gave the location as Cedar and 5th. One of the photos at PSTOS shows that the theater building was the first structure in the 500 block, so the entrance was probably 503 Cedar. The site is now a parking lot.
The Grand Theatre was built in 1915, and opened November 10 that year. An article about the opening of the house appeared in the January 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. The Grand Theatre was designed by Spokane architect Lewis R. Stritesky.
Construction must have been rapid, as an announcement that Stritesky was preparing plans for the theater appeared in The Moving Picture World of August 14, 1915. Originally intended as a movie house, stage facilities were added to the plans when the town’s Masonic Temple Opera House was destroyed by fire.
The July, 1921, issue of Architecture and Building has a brief article about the Central Theatre and a portfolio of several photographs. I now think that E. C. Horne and Sons must have designed only the building the theater was in, as the article identifies the architect of the theater itself to Eugene De Rosa.
I suspected that the claim about Todd-AO was wrong. There was a lot of hype flying around about the original Todd-AO format in the mid-1950s, and it pretty much all came to nothing.
Pickford Center is located in a building which originally served as offices and studios for the Mutual-Don Lee Broadcasting System’s radio and television network. It was dedicated in 1948, and was designed by Los Angeles architect Claud Beelman.
The complex originally featured four theater-style sound stages which could be used as studios for telecasts with what the television industry rather disturbingly calls live audiences (as opposed, I guess, to audiences of the undead.) Presumably, the Linwood Dunn Theater occupies one of those four studios.
Hollywood Heritage provides this history of the building (but misspells architect’s Beelman’s first name as Claude, a common mistake. He used the spelling Claud.)
As the Manos Theatre is a three-story building, not very wide, and appears to have an iron cornice, perhaps it was the proposed house mentioned in the May 21, 1910, issue of The American Contractor:
“Tarentum, Pa.—Theater: 3 sty. 136x 33. Architect Ira F. Cutshall. Owner J. H. Oppenheimer. Plans completed; taking figures. Brick, stone, composition roof, large skylight, galv. iron cornice, struct. & orn. iron, yellow pine finish, tile & hardwood floors, marble tiling, gas & electric fixtures, lavatories, water closets, bath tubs.”
What the theater needed bathtubs for I don’t know. Perhaps they were a feature of the dressing rooms.
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.
Cinema Treasures currently says that the Southern Theatre has been demolished, but I wonder if the building is still standing? A May, 2011, obituary for Mr. Raymond L. Spayne says that he was the owner and operator of the Southern Theater and Southern Tap Room in Akron.
The Southern Tap Room is located at 1169 Grant Street. Here’s a photo. The door to the upstairs of the building has the address 1165. There is an adjacent storefront, with no address on display, that might have been the theater entrance at one time. The building looks a bit too small for the listed seating capacity of 550, though.
If the theater was not in the same building as the bar, then it must have been on what is now a parking lot next door. The driveway apron there looks very old and worn, so if the theater was on that lot it must have been demolished ages ago.
212 E. Main Street is now occupied by offices of the City of Cuero.
The little building next door to the theater looks to small to have been the Palace/Rex Theatre that was operating in the 1920s and 1930s, so that house must have been where the parking lot is now.
The aka Normana Theatre still needs to be added to the additional info.
A book called “Rantoul and Chanute Air Force Base” by Mark D. Hanson says that this house was operating in the 1920s as the Blackstone Theatre. Another house also called the Home Theatre was closed down when the Blackstone was renamed the New Home Theatre. The book doesn’t say when the renaming took place, nor when the “New” was dropped, but a 1942 photo in the book shows the same marquee that is currently on the building.
If you move Street View down 17th Avenue to the alley, you can see some glass block windows at the corner of the building. These would not have been installed as late as 1956, so they must be part of the original design. That indicates that the theater was probably built in the 1930s, when the streamline modern style first came into vogue. The upstairs corner windows with steel sash were also characteristic of the 1930s style.
If there’s a record of this theater existing in 1934, that’s probably the year it opened. A book called “A Guide to Historic Hollywood: A Tour Through Place and Time” by Joan Mickelson says that a Hollywood Theatre built in 1923 at 1921 Hollywood Boulevard was remodeled and reopened as the Ritz Theatre in 1935. Presumably the name change was prompted by the opening of this new house.
The Grand Theatre page at PSTOS says that the house was located on Cedar Street. A 1915 magazine item gave the location as Cedar and 5th. One of the photos at PSTOS shows that the theater building was the first structure in the 500 block, so the entrance was probably 503 Cedar. The site is now a parking lot.
The Grand Theatre was built in 1915, and opened November 10 that year. An article about the opening of the house appeared in the January 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. The Grand Theatre was designed by Spokane architect Lewis R. Stritesky.
Construction must have been rapid, as an announcement that Stritesky was preparing plans for the theater appeared in The Moving Picture World of August 14, 1915. Originally intended as a movie house, stage facilities were added to the plans when the town’s Masonic Temple Opera House was destroyed by fire.
The July, 1921, issue of Architecture and Building has a brief article about the Central Theatre and a portfolio of several photographs. I now think that E. C. Horne and Sons must have designed only the building the theater was in, as the article identifies the architect of the theater itself to Eugene De Rosa.
I suspected that the claim about Todd-AO was wrong. There was a lot of hype flying around about the original Todd-AO format in the mid-1950s, and it pretty much all came to nothing.
Here is a fresh link to the 1955 Boxoffice article about the Fox Theatre in Trona.
Pickford Center is located in a building which originally served as offices and studios for the Mutual-Don Lee Broadcasting System’s radio and television network. It was dedicated in 1948, and was designed by Los Angeles architect Claud Beelman.
The complex originally featured four theater-style sound stages which could be used as studios for telecasts with what the television industry rather disturbingly calls live audiences (as opposed, I guess, to audiences of the undead.) Presumably, the Linwood Dunn Theater occupies one of those four studios.
Hollywood Heritage provides this history of the building (but misspells architect’s Beelman’s first name as Claude, a common mistake. He used the spelling Claud.)
Here is a link to photographer Edmund J. Kowalski’s photos of the Washington Theatre taken June 25, 2005, before the house was restored.
As the Manos Theatre is a three-story building, not very wide, and appears to have an iron cornice, perhaps it was the proposed house mentioned in the May 21, 1910, issue of The American Contractor:
What the theater needed bathtubs for I don’t know. Perhaps they were a feature of the dressing rooms.