Google Maps is way off on this theater’s location. Searching at Google Maps' own web site, the address 20396 Church Street fetches the correct location. That’s the address Google will have to be sent, even though the theater itself lists Bohemian Highway as the name of its street. I managed to find the Street View of the theater and update it, but it was a really long drive, at the corner of D Street a mile or more north of the location of the pin on the map.
An article about Muskogee’s movie theaters in the summer, 2000, issue of 3 Rivers Historian, published by the Three Rivers Museum, has a small photo of the Grand Theatre with the caption reading “The Grand, built in 1904, served Muskogee’s black community.”
Street View was updated too far east. The address 211 is displayed on the lower building that is just past the end of the building with the concrete canopy over the sidewalk.
An article on Muskogee’s theaters in the summer, 2000, edition of 3 Rivers Historian, published by the Three Rivers Museum, says that the Broadway Theatre was built in 1912 by Fred Turner, who hired George Procter to act as manager and Hugh Marsh to operate the projector. Procter and Marsh took a lease on the theater in 1923.
The article doesn’t mention the Broadway ever having been called the Muskogee Opera House, in addition to saying that it was built in 1912. Neither can I find any references to the Muskogee Opera House on the Internet, other than those at Cinema Treasures. Perhaps the 1904 Opera House project was only a proposal that was never carried out.
L.W. Brophy opened his first Yale Theatre in Muskogee in 1908, according to this source (scroll down to section headed “pgs 118-120”) which goes on to say that he built a new Yale in 1910. It says that the second Yale seated 1000, though, and the building at 208 W. Broadway today, though it looks to date from the 1910s, doesn’t look big enough to have housed a theater that large, so I don’t know if it’s the same one or not.
Google Maps puts the pin icon for this theater about three blocks south of the actual location, on a different street. I’ve moved Street View to the correct location, the north side of Broadway a few doors west of 2nd Street.
The list of known Boller Brothers theaters includes the Chief (with the aka Royal) in Hiawatha, as a 1929 remodeling project, and says it was operated by Dickinson Theatres. It also says the theater has been demolished.
I suspect that the Chief was on the lot next door east from the old brick building on the northeast corner of Oregon and 6th Street. The single-storey, modern building now on that lot looks to have been built in the 1970s or so. It’s also possible that the Chief’s auditorium was added behind the older brick building to the east, but that seems less likely to me.
I’ve been unable to find any vintage photos of this block of Oregon Street. I did find a single reference to a theater called the Victoria that was showing movies in Hiawatha in 1918. Possibly an earlier aka of the Royal/Chief?
There is now a web site for the California Theatre. Not all of its internal links work, but the photo and restoration links do.
The announcement in the October, 1918, issue of The Architect and Engineer that architect A. W. Cornelius had been engaged to design a new theater at Pittsburg for the Enea Brothers noted that the Eneas were already operating a theater in Pittsburg called the Palace.
The only other place on the Internet that I’ve found the Palace mentioned is this page at Silent Era. Does anyone have any additional information about it?
If it closed on the 12th, they didn’t lose any time bringing out the bulldozers. Demolition photos uploaded to Flickr are dated July 13th.
Here is a link to Boxoffice Magazine, August, 1991, which featured an article on the Atlantic Palace, with several photos, including one on the cover. The article begins on page 20. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the pages.
Ground was broken for the Edwards Atlantic Palace on September 7, 1990, and the house opened eight months later. This costly multiplex lasted barely twenty years. The original Alhambra Theatre, which the Atlantic Palace replaced, had operated for about fifty three years.
The page with the small photo of the Ratto Theatre I linked to in my first comment is no longer available, but the photo can still be seen at this link.
The previous comment is correct. The Town Theatre building is still standing. Its current occupant is a religious institution (possibly a church— the Internet isn’t saying) called the Jesus Evangelistic Center.
Pivot Street View 180 degrees for a view of the building.
There was an Alcazar Theatre in Grand Rapids as early as 1918, when it was mentioned in the February 26 issue of Michigan Film Review. I don’t know if it was this theater or an earlier house of the same name, but the style of the theater’s building was certainly in vogue during the late 1910s.
Thanks to mattnhormann for digging up that splendid photo. I always wondered what this theater looked like inside before the Balch-designed remodeling— and what it looked like as a theater, as when I first saw it, it had already been converted into the Salvation Army Thrift Shop.
It now looks as though the theater was not on the church site after all. This web page at Historic Evansville says that the Woodlawn Theatre was demolished in 1963, after closing in 1957. At the “View all Images” link there is an aerial view from 1947, and the enlarged version of it includes the Woodlawn Theatre, outlined at lower left. It does look like the theater was too far north to have been under what is now the church’s footprint. Also, it had a flat roof, unlike the northern section of the church that I thought might have been what was left of the theater.
The site says that a branch of Hardee’s is on the site of the Woodlawn Theatre. Unfortunately, I updated Street View with a view of the church before I found the Historic Evansville page. Pan the view left to see the Hardee’s. The theater was most likely sited on what is now the parking lot between Hardee’s and the church.
I’m not sure that any part of the Woodlawn Theatre is still standing as part of the church now on its site. Part of the north sidewall of the building looks like it could be fairly old, and that section of the building has a gabled roof, characteristic of theaters built during the 1910s and early 1920s, but most of the building is of unmistakably modern construction.
The Woodlawn was definitely in operation by the early 1920s. A page at the Willard Library dates the photo seen at Chuck’s link as c. 1920. It’s obvious from the outfits the people in the photo are wearing, too. The ankle-length dress on the woman could have dated from the late 1910s.
It looks like the Washington Theatre has been demolished. The only structure on the odd-numbered side of the 900 block is a neo-colonial style building which the Internet lists as the location of Old National Bank, 961 Washington.
There are a couple of early photos of the Washington Theatre near the bottom of this web page, from Willard Library. The caption of one says that the theater opened on November 24, 1936.
The February 21 (not 25,) 1966, Boxoffice item about the Cinema 35 that I linked to in my previous comment has been moved to this link.
Google Maps is off base again. The pin icon on the map looks to be about half a mile west of the theater’s actual location. Street View is from the adjacent expressway, not from the street itself. After I updated it, I discovered that it is possible to get a view from Division Street itself, but only by moving the view eastward, then going off the expressway via an on-ramp just east of Willow Road, then doubling back along Division Street.
This web page from the Willard Library has photos of the Columbia Theatre before and after the 1939 Streamline Modern remodeling job, as well as photos of many other Evansville theaters. The thumbnails are in alphabetical order, so the Columbia photos are near the top of the page.
The web site Historic Evansville says that the New Majestic Theater was built in 1909 to replace an earlier Majestic Theater on the same site. The New Majestic opened in Christmas Day, 1909, and was demolished in 1974.
An item in the July 31, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Switlow Amusement Company of Louisville, Kentucky, had bought the New Majestic Theater in Evansville. The theater had apparently been operating as a legitimate house, as Switlow intended to convert the Majestic to a movie and vaudeville combination house. The architectural firm of Joseph & Joseph had been hired to design a $20,000 remodeling.
Coate and orange are right. I conflated the Cinema 70 with the Cooper 70 in my earlier comment. The Cooper 70 and Ute 70 are not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The 1952 Boxoffice Magazine page with the photo of the Esquire’s sign has been moved to this link. Here’s a shortcut to the rendering of the Melrose matt54 linked to.
The Esquire’s vertical sign is obviously not, as I had suspected it might be, a reworking of the Melrose sign. It’s much bigger, and is even in a different location on the facade than the Melrose sign was. Now that I’ve seen the Melrose as it was before the remodeling, with all its Art Deco detailing, I have to say I preferred it to the Esquire.
The 2002 article about the Capitol Theatre published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to which I linked a few years ago, has been relocated this link. It has two photos, neither of which can be enlarged, unfortunately.
Dismal news about the Capitol appeared in this newspaper article published on January 26, 2011. The company which bought the theater from the City of New London for one dollar in 2006 not only failed to carry out the promised renovations, but has lost the building due to non-payment of taxes. The Capitol has been sold at auction to a New York City developer whose intentions are unknown.
The biographical listing of architect John C. Monroe in the 1962 AIA Directory lists the Fairyland Drive-In, Kansas City, Mo., as one of his 1961 projects.
The drive-in was associated with an adjacent amusement park, Fairyland Park, which dated back to the 1920s. Here is a 1987 photo of the drive-in’s sign and attraction board, by Flickr user Darrell James.
One of the names in the “Firms” field above is currently misspelled. Architect Donald H. Moeller’s biographical listing in the 1962 AIA Directory says that the Hollywood Theatre remodeling was a 1956 project. The senior partner in the firm was named Cedric Start.
According to the biographical listing of Queens architect Leon A. Miller in the 1962 AIA Directory, he designed the Wantagh Theatre in 1960. He also designed the Glen Cove Theatre and Town Theatre in Glen Cove, NY.
The Town and the adjacent Glen Cove were both designed by Queens architect Leon A. Miller, according to his biographical listing in the 1962 AIA Directory. The Glen Cove was the earlier project, built in 1959. The Town was built in 1961.
The Glen Cove Theatre and Town Theatre were both designed by the same architect, Leon A. Miller. His listing in the 1962 AIA Directory mentions both theaters, saying that the Glen Cove was built in 1959 and the Town in 1961. Miller also designed the Wantagh Theatre at Wantagh, NY, a 1960 project.
Google Maps is way off on this theater’s location. Searching at Google Maps' own web site, the address 20396 Church Street fetches the correct location. That’s the address Google will have to be sent, even though the theater itself lists Bohemian Highway as the name of its street. I managed to find the Street View of the theater and update it, but it was a really long drive, at the corner of D Street a mile or more north of the location of the pin on the map.
An article about Muskogee’s movie theaters in the summer, 2000, issue of 3 Rivers Historian, published by the Three Rivers Museum, has a small photo of the Grand Theatre with the caption reading “The Grand, built in 1904, served Muskogee’s black community.”
Here is a Google Documents Quick View of the issue with the article.
Street View was updated too far east. The address 211 is displayed on the lower building that is just past the end of the building with the concrete canopy over the sidewalk.
An article on Muskogee’s theaters in the summer, 2000, edition of 3 Rivers Historian, published by the Three Rivers Museum, says that the Broadway Theatre was built in 1912 by Fred Turner, who hired George Procter to act as manager and Hugh Marsh to operate the projector. Procter and Marsh took a lease on the theater in 1923.
The article doesn’t mention the Broadway ever having been called the Muskogee Opera House, in addition to saying that it was built in 1912. Neither can I find any references to the Muskogee Opera House on the Internet, other than those at Cinema Treasures. Perhaps the 1904 Opera House project was only a proposal that was never carried out.
Google Documents Quick View of the issue with the article.
L.W. Brophy opened his first Yale Theatre in Muskogee in 1908, according to this source (scroll down to section headed “pgs 118-120”) which goes on to say that he built a new Yale in 1910. It says that the second Yale seated 1000, though, and the building at 208 W. Broadway today, though it looks to date from the 1910s, doesn’t look big enough to have housed a theater that large, so I don’t know if it’s the same one or not.
Google Maps puts the pin icon for this theater about three blocks south of the actual location, on a different street. I’ve moved Street View to the correct location, the north side of Broadway a few doors west of 2nd Street.
The list of known Boller Brothers theaters includes the Chief (with the aka Royal) in Hiawatha, as a 1929 remodeling project, and says it was operated by Dickinson Theatres. It also says the theater has been demolished.
I suspect that the Chief was on the lot next door east from the old brick building on the northeast corner of Oregon and 6th Street. The single-storey, modern building now on that lot looks to have been built in the 1970s or so. It’s also possible that the Chief’s auditorium was added behind the older brick building to the east, but that seems less likely to me.
I’ve been unable to find any vintage photos of this block of Oregon Street. I did find a single reference to a theater called the Victoria that was showing movies in Hiawatha in 1918. Possibly an earlier aka of the Royal/Chief?
The Casino Theatre was designed by architect Benjamin G. McDougall, according to the November, 1917, issue of The Architect & Engineer of California.
There is now a web site for the California Theatre. Not all of its internal links work, but the photo and restoration links do.
The announcement in the October, 1918, issue of The Architect and Engineer that architect A. W. Cornelius had been engaged to design a new theater at Pittsburg for the Enea Brothers noted that the Eneas were already operating a theater in Pittsburg called the Palace.
The only other place on the Internet that I’ve found the Palace mentioned is this page at Silent Era. Does anyone have any additional information about it?
If it closed on the 12th, they didn’t lose any time bringing out the bulldozers. Demolition photos uploaded to Flickr are dated July 13th.
Here is a link to Boxoffice Magazine, August, 1991, which featured an article on the Atlantic Palace, with several photos, including one on the cover. The article begins on page 20. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the pages.
Ground was broken for the Edwards Atlantic Palace on September 7, 1990, and the house opened eight months later. This costly multiplex lasted barely twenty years. The original Alhambra Theatre, which the Atlantic Palace replaced, had operated for about fifty three years.
The page with the small photo of the Ratto Theatre I linked to in my first comment is no longer available, but the photo can still be seen at this link.
The previous comment is correct. The Town Theatre building is still standing. Its current occupant is a religious institution (possibly a church— the Internet isn’t saying) called the Jesus Evangelistic Center.
Pivot Street View 180 degrees for a view of the building.
There was an Alcazar Theatre in Grand Rapids as early as 1918, when it was mentioned in the February 26 issue of Michigan Film Review. I don’t know if it was this theater or an earlier house of the same name, but the style of the theater’s building was certainly in vogue during the late 1910s.
Thanks to mattnhormann for digging up that splendid photo. I always wondered what this theater looked like inside before the Balch-designed remodeling— and what it looked like as a theater, as when I first saw it, it had already been converted into the Salvation Army Thrift Shop.
It now looks as though the theater was not on the church site after all. This web page at Historic Evansville says that the Woodlawn Theatre was demolished in 1963, after closing in 1957. At the “View all Images” link there is an aerial view from 1947, and the enlarged version of it includes the Woodlawn Theatre, outlined at lower left. It does look like the theater was too far north to have been under what is now the church’s footprint. Also, it had a flat roof, unlike the northern section of the church that I thought might have been what was left of the theater.
The site says that a branch of Hardee’s is on the site of the Woodlawn Theatre. Unfortunately, I updated Street View with a view of the church before I found the Historic Evansville page. Pan the view left to see the Hardee’s. The theater was most likely sited on what is now the parking lot between Hardee’s and the church.
I’m not sure that any part of the Woodlawn Theatre is still standing as part of the church now on its site. Part of the north sidewall of the building looks like it could be fairly old, and that section of the building has a gabled roof, characteristic of theaters built during the 1910s and early 1920s, but most of the building is of unmistakably modern construction.
The Woodlawn was definitely in operation by the early 1920s. A page at the Willard Library dates the photo seen at Chuck’s link as c. 1920. It’s obvious from the outfits the people in the photo are wearing, too. The ankle-length dress on the woman could have dated from the late 1910s.
It looks like the Washington Theatre has been demolished. The only structure on the odd-numbered side of the 900 block is a neo-colonial style building which the Internet lists as the location of Old National Bank, 961 Washington.
There are a couple of early photos of the Washington Theatre near the bottom of this web page, from Willard Library. The caption of one says that the theater opened on November 24, 1936.
The February 21 (not 25,) 1966, Boxoffice item about the Cinema 35 that I linked to in my previous comment has been moved to this link.
Google Maps is off base again. The pin icon on the map looks to be about half a mile west of the theater’s actual location. Street View is from the adjacent expressway, not from the street itself. After I updated it, I discovered that it is possible to get a view from Division Street itself, but only by moving the view eastward, then going off the expressway via an on-ramp just east of Willow Road, then doubling back along Division Street.
This web page from the Willard Library has photos of the Columbia Theatre before and after the 1939 Streamline Modern remodeling job, as well as photos of many other Evansville theaters. The thumbnails are in alphabetical order, so the Columbia photos are near the top of the page.
The web site Historic Evansville says that the New Majestic Theater was built in 1909 to replace an earlier Majestic Theater on the same site. The New Majestic opened in Christmas Day, 1909, and was demolished in 1974.
An item in the July 31, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Switlow Amusement Company of Louisville, Kentucky, had bought the New Majestic Theater in Evansville. The theater had apparently been operating as a legitimate house, as Switlow intended to convert the Majestic to a movie and vaudeville combination house. The architectural firm of Joseph & Joseph had been hired to design a $20,000 remodeling.
Coate and orange are right. I conflated the Cinema 70 with the Cooper 70 in my earlier comment. The Cooper 70 and Ute 70 are not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The 1952 Boxoffice Magazine page with the photo of the Esquire’s sign has been moved to this link. Here’s a shortcut to the rendering of the Melrose matt54 linked to.
The Esquire’s vertical sign is obviously not, as I had suspected it might be, a reworking of the Melrose sign. It’s much bigger, and is even in a different location on the facade than the Melrose sign was. Now that I’ve seen the Melrose as it was before the remodeling, with all its Art Deco detailing, I have to say I preferred it to the Esquire.
The 2002 article about the Capitol Theatre published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to which I linked a few years ago, has been relocated this link. It has two photos, neither of which can be enlarged, unfortunately.
Dismal news about the Capitol appeared in this newspaper article published on January 26, 2011. The company which bought the theater from the City of New London for one dollar in 2006 not only failed to carry out the promised renovations, but has lost the building due to non-payment of taxes. The Capitol has been sold at auction to a New York City developer whose intentions are unknown.
The biographical listing of architect John C. Monroe in the 1962 AIA Directory lists the Fairyland Drive-In, Kansas City, Mo., as one of his 1961 projects.
The drive-in was associated with an adjacent amusement park, Fairyland Park, which dated back to the 1920s. Here is a 1987 photo of the drive-in’s sign and attraction board, by Flickr user Darrell James.
One of the names in the “Firms” field above is currently misspelled. Architect Donald H. Moeller’s biographical listing in the 1962 AIA Directory says that the Hollywood Theatre remodeling was a 1956 project. The senior partner in the firm was named Cedric Start.
According to the biographical listing of Queens architect Leon A. Miller in the 1962 AIA Directory, he designed the Wantagh Theatre in 1960. He also designed the Glen Cove Theatre and Town Theatre in Glen Cove, NY.
The Town and the adjacent Glen Cove were both designed by Queens architect Leon A. Miller, according to his biographical listing in the 1962 AIA Directory. The Glen Cove was the earlier project, built in 1959. The Town was built in 1961.
The Glen Cove Theatre and Town Theatre were both designed by the same architect, Leon A. Miller. His listing in the 1962 AIA Directory mentions both theaters, saying that the Glen Cove was built in 1959 and the Town in 1961. Miller also designed the Wantagh Theatre at Wantagh, NY, a 1960 project.