A multi-page article about the Mikadow Theatre in Boxoffice, June 8, 1957, said that the theater had reopened in an entirely new building on January 19 that year after the original house, built on the same site in 1916, had burned to the ground in 1956. The rebuilt theater, designed by local architect Sylvester Schmidt, had 640 seats. The article has photos of both the interior and exterior of the new theater.
From the smattering of events listed on the calendar at the theater’s web site, it looks like the Totah is now actually open, if only for a few days each month.
The site also gives the current seating capacity as 300.
A January 12, 1946, Boxoffice article about the death of Tulsa exhibitor John Edward Feeney says “In 1914 he bought the Cozy Theatre at Okmulgee….” Was this an entirely different Cozy Theatre, or did it become the Rex and then later go back to the name Cozy? The building in the Historical Society photo certainly looks as though it would have been built before 1914, and that marquee could easily have dated from the early 20th century.
A photo of the Tennessee Theatre was on the frontispiece of the Modern Theatre section of Boxoffice, October 3, 1953. I believe it depicts the upper level foyer lounge, with a mirrored wall at the far end doubling the apparent length of the room.
A brief article with three small photos of the Niantic appeared in Boxoffice of November 4, 1950. The article said the house had opened recently with 660 seats.
This drive-in actually opened in 1953, not 1954. The July 11 issue of Boxoffice that year said “Management of the Markoff Circuit arranged an early July opening of the new Portland Drive-In.”
The Seneca Theatre closed in December, 1961, and was reopened in 1965, with its seating reduced to 1,332, according to this article in Boxoffice of April 19, 1965. There’s a small photo of the front of the theater.
I haven’t found out how long the Seneca survived as a movie house after this reopening, but the October 7, 1968, issue of Boxoffice gives the opening date of the Psycus, the discotheque-rock music club that was the theater’s later occupant, as September 27 that year.
The destructive behavior of a particularly delinquent generation of teenagers led to great distress among the elders of Buffalo, as told in one Boxoffice article about a wave of vandalism and rowdy behavior hitting the city’s theatres. According to one claim, almost every seat in the Seneca Theatre had been slashed or torn. One theater manager said “We’ve never had so much trouble trying to manage the youngsters. I’m sorry to say that the girls are worse than the boys.” The article appeared in Boxoffice of November 27, 1943. Kids those days!
The Village Opera House was opened as a reserved-seat roadshow house on May 15, 1969. The first attraction was “Sweet Charity.” The house was conceived by designer Peter Wolf as a “Victorian Jewel Box.” The house, initially operated by Tejas Theatres, was part of a themed project called 1849 Village, but the style of the theater building was much more later Queen Anne-Eastlake than it was the Greek Revival still predominating in the 1850s. If the theater was typical of the buildings in the project, 1879 Village would have been a more appropriate name.
The Broadway Theatre closed in June, 1952, and reopened as the Fox on March 6, 1953. The new operator was H.B. Meiselman, who ran a small regional circuit. The house was renovated and seating was reduced from 1,200 to 1000, according to a brief article in Boxoffice of March 14, 1953.
The June 26, 1926, issue of The Reel Journal said that H.L. Royster, managing director of Warner’s Broadway Theatre in Charlotte, was offering reserved seats for a 12-week summer season of movies and stage productions at the house. Royster said “…Charlotte citizens will be offered the best and latest New York musical comedy plays at the Broadway, starting Monday, June 7, with a change of program in both photoplays and stage plays on Mondays and Thursdays.”
The modern facade on the Palace in the 1950s photos was the work of local architect Robert Thomas Martin who designed the renovation of the house that took place in 1949. The third floor of the Palace building was removed as part of the project.
An interesting revelation in the July 9, 1949, Boxoffice item about the renovation was this:
“Midnight rambles were held on Thursday nights for whites at the Beale Street Palace for 21 years. Whites were seated in the balcony and Negro patrons downstairs. They were discontinued in 1941 because of the war, but will be resumed when the remodeling program is completed.”
I don’t know that the midnight rambles for whites ever were brought back after the renovation, as the African-American movie industry that made the films presented at such shows was already on its last legs in 1949.
The Utica Observer of November 23, 1915, ran an ad for the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company which claimed that the organ installed in the Avon Theatre was “…an exact duplicate of the one which received Gold Medal of Honor at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.”
There are several articles about the Avon in issues of the Observer right around the time the house opened, and they can be found in the database of New York (mostly upstate) newspapers at the rather misleadingly named web site Old Fulton NY Post Cards. I read several in vain hope that the name of the architect would be mentioned. If it was, it must have been in one of the blurry sections that inevitably plague scans of old newspapers.
The earliest mention of the Palma Ceia Theatre I’ve found in Boxoffice is from April 3, 1943, an item mentioning the failure of its operators to renew a 90-day lease they’d taken. The place was apparently fairly new then. As late as 1947 one Boxoffice item referred to it as one of Tampa’s newest neighborhood houses. I’d surmise that it was an early 1940s house, completed or at least underway before the war began and building restrictions were imposed.
By the late 1940s the Palma Ceia was being operated by Claughton Theatres. A 1953 Boxoffice item said that the Palma Ceia had launched a program of foreign movies two nights a week. The house was still being run by Claughton Theatres when Boxoffice of February 15, 1955, reported that CinemaScope was being installed. The last mention of the Palma Ceia I’ve found in Boxoffice is in an April 28, 1956, item about a lawsuit filed by State Theatres, which was seeking a leasehold interest in this house and two other Tampa theaters.
I found an un-updated web site with the old address of Mason’s lodge 317, and it was at 2309 S. MacDill. The building, at the northwest corner of San Carlos, has been thoroughly remodeled and no traces of its theatrical past is identifiable in Google Street View.
From a tiny fragment of the former facade wall seen in one of two photos at the Catalano Engineering website (the company that handled the conversion to office space) it looks like the entire top was taken off of the building and a new second floor added. The line in the accompanying text about how the building “…needed to be preserved….” might have been meant ironically. Do they still have irony in Florida?
This prototype of the UltraVision theaters (that is the way it was spelled in an ad for the projection system’s developers, Wil-Kin Inc., in the September 29, 1969, issue of Boxoffice) opened in September, 1969. A small photo appeared in Boxoffice’s issue of September 15.
Various issues of the magazine say that the house was designed by Wil-Kin, a division of the Paramount-ABC affiliate Wilby-Kincey chain of theaters. In fact, the company did hire an architect who worked very closely with the developers of the innovative projection system to make sure the UltraVision Theatre would have the optimum form to show the system to full advantage.
Two Boxoffice items give the name of the architect, but with different spellings, both of which turn out to be wrong. The November 2, 1970, issue, in an item about the opening of two more UltraVision houses, says that the Charleston theater, on which their designs were based, was designed by Bill McGhee, but a September 8, 1969 item gave his name as William McGee.
Correcting the errors in Boxoffice, the AIA’s Historical Directory of American Architects lists a William Bringhurst McGehee as a member of the Asheville, N.C., firm Six Associates. A 1972 Boxoffice item notes a William B. McGee of Six Associates as having done preliminary work on the twinning of the Carolina Theatre at Hendersonville, North Carolina.
I think we can safely identify the lead architect of the UltraVision Theatre as William B. McGehee, of the firm Six Associates. His listing in the 1970 AIA Directory also lists the Phipps Plaza Theatre in Atlanta, another Wilby-Kincey house with UltraVision equipment, among his works.
The architect(s) who adapted McGehee’s original design for the later UltraVision theaters might also have worked at Six Associates, but I haven’t yet been able to confirm that.
On the subject of the UltraVision projection system itself, projectionists in particular will probably be interested in this October, 1991, Boxoffice article commemorating the 25th anniversary of this innovative development. The article mentions that UltraVision equipment was eventually installed in 60 theaters.
Long-time Paramount-ABC regional affiliate Wilby-Kincey Theatres' announcement of plans to build the Phipps Plaza Theatre appeared in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of February 3, 1969. The new house was to be equipped with the UltraVison 70 projection equipment developed by Wilby-Kincey subsidiary Wil-Kin Theatre Supply Company, and the auditorium would feature a continental seating arrangement with rows 45 inches front to back. I haven’t found the exact opening date, but the July 14, 1969, issue of Boxoffice said construction was underway and the house was expected to open that fall.
The Phipps Plaza Theatre was designed by Asheville, N.C. architectural firm Six Associates. Though Boxoffice didn’t mention his name, the lead architect on the project was William B. McGehee, who filled the same role for the first UltraVision Theatre built for Wilby-Kincey at Charleston, North Carolina. The Phipps Plaza Theatre is listed among McGehee’s works in his entry in the 1970 AIA Directory.
Plans for the Egyptian Theatre at Maywood were announced in the March 7, 1924, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor. Owned by developer M. Needer, the house was to be leased to West Coast Theatres.
The architect for the project was Evan Jones, who also did the original design of the Meralta Theatre in Downey, later remodeled by Clarence Smale. A few years later Jones was the associate architect (with George Burnett) in the design of the Allen Theatre in South Gate. I’ve been unable to track down any other theaters designed by Jones, who had his office in Huntington Park.
I notice that in that photo an establishment called Tokay Grocers is located next door to the Lodi Theatre. This makes me wonder if perhaps the Lodi was the Tokay Theatre, renamed. The Tokay is mentioned on three cards in the California Index, all dated 1937, the year the house was taken over by the T&D chain.
Of course Tokay is a pretty common name around Lodi, so it might be coincidence (there’s now even a Tokay High School, named for this variety of wine grape. I wonder if they considered the Wino as their school mascot?) Does anybody have a listing for the Tokay Theatre, with address, in an old Film Daily Yearbook or other source? It could be an aka for the Lodi, which was clearly in a fairly old building.
This house is probably the one called the Gem Theatre. Boxoffice of September 14, 1957, reported that the International Chemical Workers Council had bought the Gem Theatre in Mulberry from its operators, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Arnold. The equipment was not included in the $20,000 sale price, but the Council was considering purchasing that as well and reopening the theater.
The Gem was not very old at the time of its sale. Boxoffice of April 5, 1947, reported under the dateline Mulberry, Fla., “R. T. Arnold’s new 450-seat Gem Theatre here is now open.” This was apparently a replacement for (or perhaps an extreme remodeling of) an earlier Gem Theatre operated at Mulberry by the Arnolds which was mentioned in a July, 1946 issue of Boxoffice.
The manager who brought the film revival policy to the Rivoli in the 1970s was Thomas H. Ferree. Boxoffice Magazine of September 25, 1972, quoted excerpts from a recent Indianapolis News item about the Rivoli written by columnist David Mannweiler.
Ferree inaugurated the Rivoli’s classic film policy with Chaplin’s “City Lights,” which was to be followed by Olivier’s “Hamlet” and then a program of Busby Berkeley’s “Gold Diggers of 1935” and “Footlight Parade.”
Ferree also announced his intention to book some of the less commercially viable foreign films into the Rivoli, such fare having been unavailable in Indianapolis since the closing of the Esquire Theatre in 1969.
The Broadmoor was built by the Commonwealth circuit in 1969. Boxoffice of June 2 said the plans were “…for an intimate, de luxe, jewel-box theatre….” of about 400 seats. The target for the completion of the project was around Thanksgiving.
ksutterfield: I’ve been searching Boxoffice Magazine for info about the Esquire, which is apparently not yet listed at Cinema Treasures, but so far I’ve only found a few references. The May 18, 1946, issue mentions in passing that the Esquire Theatre in Stockton was “nearly completed.” Work was delayed, though, and a short article in the December 14 issue that year announced that the Esquire had finally opened after thirteen months of construction.
The house had cost $200,000 to build and equip, and would be Stockton’s fourth first run theater. Boxoffice gave the seating capacity as 1190, and described the auditorium as being decorated with fluorescent murals having a Chinese theme. The article didn’t give the name of the architect, but the mention of blacklight murals makes me wonder if it might have been designed by Gale Santocono, who was very active at the time and used blacklight in theater decorations frequently. Even if he wasn’t the architect, he might have done the decoration for the Esquire.
I’ll keep looking for more info, but I don’t think Boxoffice ran any articles with photos of the theater. If they had, I’d probably have found them by now.
The Esquire was apparently an art house in its last years. A September 25, 1972, Boxoffice item about the Rivoli Theatre and manager Thomas Ferree’s intention to experiment with running foreign films quoted him saying “When the Esquire Theatre died in 1969 those films died with it.”
The Boxoffice item didn’t give the names of the theaters, only their locations. In addition to the $50,000 job at Sag Harbor, Prudential had remodeled houses at Amityville ($50,000), Patchogue ($28,000), Babylon ($14,000), and Bay Shore ($8,000.)
A multi-page article about the Mikadow Theatre in Boxoffice, June 8, 1957, said that the theater had reopened in an entirely new building on January 19 that year after the original house, built on the same site in 1916, had burned to the ground in 1956. The rebuilt theater, designed by local architect Sylvester Schmidt, had 640 seats. The article has photos of both the interior and exterior of the new theater.
From the smattering of events listed on the calendar at the theater’s web site, it looks like the Totah is now actually open, if only for a few days each month.
The site also gives the current seating capacity as 300.
A January 12, 1946, Boxoffice article about the death of Tulsa exhibitor John Edward Feeney says “In 1914 he bought the Cozy Theatre at Okmulgee….” Was this an entirely different Cozy Theatre, or did it become the Rex and then later go back to the name Cozy? The building in the Historical Society photo certainly looks as though it would have been built before 1914, and that marquee could easily have dated from the early 20th century.
A photo of the Tennessee Theatre was on the frontispiece of the Modern Theatre section of Boxoffice, October 3, 1953. I believe it depicts the upper level foyer lounge, with a mirrored wall at the far end doubling the apparent length of the room.
A brief article with three small photos of the Niantic appeared in Boxoffice of November 4, 1950. The article said the house had opened recently with 660 seats.
This drive-in actually opened in 1953, not 1954. The July 11 issue of Boxoffice that year said “Management of the Markoff Circuit arranged an early July opening of the new Portland Drive-In.”
A glimpse of the interior of the Beach Theatre appeared as the frontispiece to the Modern Theatre section of Boxoffice, November 4, 1950.
The Seneca Theatre closed in December, 1961, and was reopened in 1965, with its seating reduced to 1,332, according to this article in Boxoffice of April 19, 1965. There’s a small photo of the front of the theater.
I haven’t found out how long the Seneca survived as a movie house after this reopening, but the October 7, 1968, issue of Boxoffice gives the opening date of the Psycus, the discotheque-rock music club that was the theater’s later occupant, as September 27 that year.
The destructive behavior of a particularly delinquent generation of teenagers led to great distress among the elders of Buffalo, as told in one Boxoffice article about a wave of vandalism and rowdy behavior hitting the city’s theatres. According to one claim, almost every seat in the Seneca Theatre had been slashed or torn. One theater manager said “We’ve never had so much trouble trying to manage the youngsters. I’m sorry to say that the girls are worse than the boys.” The article appeared in Boxoffice of November 27, 1943. Kids those days!
The Village Opera House was opened as a reserved-seat roadshow house on May 15, 1969. The first attraction was “Sweet Charity.” The house was conceived by designer Peter Wolf as a “Victorian Jewel Box.” The house, initially operated by Tejas Theatres, was part of a themed project called 1849 Village, but the style of the theater building was much more later Queen Anne-Eastlake than it was the Greek Revival still predominating in the 1850s. If the theater was typical of the buildings in the project, 1879 Village would have been a more appropriate name.
Rendering here in Boxoffice Magazine.
The May 26, 1969, Boxoffice item about the opening failed to mention the seating capacity but said that the screen was 20x46 feet.
The Broadway Theatre closed in June, 1952, and reopened as the Fox on March 6, 1953. The new operator was H.B. Meiselman, who ran a small regional circuit. The house was renovated and seating was reduced from 1,200 to 1000, according to a brief article in Boxoffice of March 14, 1953.
The June 26, 1926, issue of The Reel Journal said that H.L. Royster, managing director of Warner’s Broadway Theatre in Charlotte, was offering reserved seats for a 12-week summer season of movies and stage productions at the house. Royster said “…Charlotte citizens will be offered the best and latest New York musical comedy plays at the Broadway, starting Monday, June 7, with a change of program in both photoplays and stage plays on Mondays and Thursdays.”
The modern facade on the Palace in the 1950s photos was the work of local architect Robert Thomas Martin who designed the renovation of the house that took place in 1949. The third floor of the Palace building was removed as part of the project.
An interesting revelation in the July 9, 1949, Boxoffice item about the renovation was this:
I don’t know that the midnight rambles for whites ever were brought back after the renovation, as the African-American movie industry that made the films presented at such shows was already on its last legs in 1949.The Utica Observer of November 23, 1915, ran an ad for the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company which claimed that the organ installed in the Avon Theatre was “…an exact duplicate of the one which received Gold Medal of Honor at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.”
There are several articles about the Avon in issues of the Observer right around the time the house opened, and they can be found in the database of New York (mostly upstate) newspapers at the rather misleadingly named web site Old Fulton NY Post Cards. I read several in vain hope that the name of the architect would be mentioned. If it was, it must have been in one of the blurry sections that inevitably plague scans of old newspapers.
The earliest mention of the Palma Ceia Theatre I’ve found in Boxoffice is from April 3, 1943, an item mentioning the failure of its operators to renew a 90-day lease they’d taken. The place was apparently fairly new then. As late as 1947 one Boxoffice item referred to it as one of Tampa’s newest neighborhood houses. I’d surmise that it was an early 1940s house, completed or at least underway before the war began and building restrictions were imposed.
By the late 1940s the Palma Ceia was being operated by Claughton Theatres. A 1953 Boxoffice item said that the Palma Ceia had launched a program of foreign movies two nights a week. The house was still being run by Claughton Theatres when Boxoffice of February 15, 1955, reported that CinemaScope was being installed. The last mention of the Palma Ceia I’ve found in Boxoffice is in an April 28, 1956, item about a lawsuit filed by State Theatres, which was seeking a leasehold interest in this house and two other Tampa theaters.
I found an un-updated web site with the old address of Mason’s lodge 317, and it was at 2309 S. MacDill. The building, at the northwest corner of San Carlos, has been thoroughly remodeled and no traces of its theatrical past is identifiable in Google Street View.
From a tiny fragment of the former facade wall seen in one of two photos at the Catalano Engineering website (the company that handled the conversion to office space) it looks like the entire top was taken off of the building and a new second floor added. The line in the accompanying text about how the building “…needed to be preserved….” might have been meant ironically. Do they still have irony in Florida?
This prototype of the UltraVision theaters (that is the way it was spelled in an ad for the projection system’s developers, Wil-Kin Inc., in the September 29, 1969, issue of Boxoffice) opened in September, 1969. A small photo appeared in Boxoffice’s issue of September 15.
Various issues of the magazine say that the house was designed by Wil-Kin, a division of the Paramount-ABC affiliate Wilby-Kincey chain of theaters. In fact, the company did hire an architect who worked very closely with the developers of the innovative projection system to make sure the UltraVision Theatre would have the optimum form to show the system to full advantage.
Two Boxoffice items give the name of the architect, but with different spellings, both of which turn out to be wrong. The November 2, 1970, issue, in an item about the opening of two more UltraVision houses, says that the Charleston theater, on which their designs were based, was designed by Bill McGhee, but a September 8, 1969 item gave his name as William McGee.
Correcting the errors in Boxoffice, the AIA’s Historical Directory of American Architects lists a William Bringhurst McGehee as a member of the Asheville, N.C., firm Six Associates. A 1972 Boxoffice item notes a William B. McGee of Six Associates as having done preliminary work on the twinning of the Carolina Theatre at Hendersonville, North Carolina.
I think we can safely identify the lead architect of the UltraVision Theatre as William B. McGehee, of the firm Six Associates. His listing in the 1970 AIA Directory also lists the Phipps Plaza Theatre in Atlanta, another Wilby-Kincey house with UltraVision equipment, among his works.
The architect(s) who adapted McGehee’s original design for the later UltraVision theaters might also have worked at Six Associates, but I haven’t yet been able to confirm that.
On the subject of the UltraVision projection system itself, projectionists in particular will probably be interested in this October, 1991, Boxoffice article commemorating the 25th anniversary of this innovative development. The article mentions that UltraVision equipment was eventually installed in 60 theaters.
Long-time Paramount-ABC regional affiliate Wilby-Kincey Theatres' announcement of plans to build the Phipps Plaza Theatre appeared in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of February 3, 1969. The new house was to be equipped with the UltraVison 70 projection equipment developed by Wilby-Kincey subsidiary Wil-Kin Theatre Supply Company, and the auditorium would feature a continental seating arrangement with rows 45 inches front to back. I haven’t found the exact opening date, but the July 14, 1969, issue of Boxoffice said construction was underway and the house was expected to open that fall.
The Phipps Plaza Theatre was designed by Asheville, N.C. architectural firm Six Associates. Though Boxoffice didn’t mention his name, the lead architect on the project was William B. McGehee, who filled the same role for the first UltraVision Theatre built for Wilby-Kincey at Charleston, North Carolina. The Phipps Plaza Theatre is listed among McGehee’s works in his entry in the 1970 AIA Directory.
Plans for the Egyptian Theatre at Maywood were announced in the March 7, 1924, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor. Owned by developer M. Needer, the house was to be leased to West Coast Theatres.
The architect for the project was Evan Jones, who also did the original design of the Meralta Theatre in Downey, later remodeled by Clarence Smale. A few years later Jones was the associate architect (with George Burnett) in the design of the Allen Theatre in South Gate. I’ve been unable to track down any other theaters designed by Jones, who had his office in Huntington Park.
I notice that in that photo an establishment called Tokay Grocers is located next door to the Lodi Theatre. This makes me wonder if perhaps the Lodi was the Tokay Theatre, renamed. The Tokay is mentioned on three cards in the California Index, all dated 1937, the year the house was taken over by the T&D chain.
Of course Tokay is a pretty common name around Lodi, so it might be coincidence (there’s now even a Tokay High School, named for this variety of wine grape. I wonder if they considered the Wino as their school mascot?) Does anybody have a listing for the Tokay Theatre, with address, in an old Film Daily Yearbook or other source? It could be an aka for the Lodi, which was clearly in a fairly old building.
Three photos and a brief description of the original Norridge Twin can be seen in Boxoffice, November 2, 1970.
This house is probably the one called the Gem Theatre. Boxoffice of September 14, 1957, reported that the International Chemical Workers Council had bought the Gem Theatre in Mulberry from its operators, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Arnold. The equipment was not included in the $20,000 sale price, but the Council was considering purchasing that as well and reopening the theater.
The Gem was not very old at the time of its sale. Boxoffice of April 5, 1947, reported under the dateline Mulberry, Fla., “R. T. Arnold’s new 450-seat Gem Theatre here is now open.” This was apparently a replacement for (or perhaps an extreme remodeling of) an earlier Gem Theatre operated at Mulberry by the Arnolds which was mentioned in a July, 1946 issue of Boxoffice.
The manager who brought the film revival policy to the Rivoli in the 1970s was Thomas H. Ferree. Boxoffice Magazine of September 25, 1972, quoted excerpts from a recent Indianapolis News item about the Rivoli written by columnist David Mannweiler.
Ferree inaugurated the Rivoli’s classic film policy with Chaplin’s “City Lights,” which was to be followed by Olivier’s “Hamlet” and then a program of Busby Berkeley’s “Gold Diggers of 1935” and “Footlight Parade.”
Ferree also announced his intention to book some of the less commercially viable foreign films into the Rivoli, such fare having been unavailable in Indianapolis since the closing of the Esquire Theatre in 1969.
The Broadmoor was built by the Commonwealth circuit in 1969. Boxoffice of June 2 said the plans were “…for an intimate, de luxe, jewel-box theatre….” of about 400 seats. The target for the completion of the project was around Thanksgiving.
ksutterfield: I’ve been searching Boxoffice Magazine for info about the Esquire, which is apparently not yet listed at Cinema Treasures, but so far I’ve only found a few references. The May 18, 1946, issue mentions in passing that the Esquire Theatre in Stockton was “nearly completed.” Work was delayed, though, and a short article in the December 14 issue that year announced that the Esquire had finally opened after thirteen months of construction.
The house had cost $200,000 to build and equip, and would be Stockton’s fourth first run theater. Boxoffice gave the seating capacity as 1190, and described the auditorium as being decorated with fluorescent murals having a Chinese theme. The article didn’t give the name of the architect, but the mention of blacklight murals makes me wonder if it might have been designed by Gale Santocono, who was very active at the time and used blacklight in theater decorations frequently. Even if he wasn’t the architect, he might have done the decoration for the Esquire.
I’ll keep looking for more info, but I don’t think Boxoffice ran any articles with photos of the theater. If they had, I’d probably have found them by now.
The Esquire was apparently an art house in its last years. A September 25, 1972, Boxoffice item about the Rivoli Theatre and manager Thomas Ferree’s intention to experiment with running foreign films quoted him saying “When the Esquire Theatre died in 1969 those films died with it.”
Here is a weblog post by the late Bob Wilkins with several photos of the Stockton Empire both before and after its renovation.
The Boxoffice item didn’t give the names of the theaters, only their locations. In addition to the $50,000 job at Sag Harbor, Prudential had remodeled houses at Amityville ($50,000), Patchogue ($28,000), Babylon ($14,000), and Bay Shore ($8,000.)