The Lyric is not one of the three theaters listed at Sheldon in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The Scenic and Wonderland are listed, with their locations, but the third house is called the Bijou, with no location given. I wonder if this was an aka for the Lyric? A 630-seat Lyric Theatre is listed in the 1926 FDY, along with a house called the Gem, for which no details are provided.
Two more mystery names in Sheldon are the Strand, mentioned in the August 17, 1918 Moving Picture World, and a house called the Star Theatre, mentioned in Variety of January 6, 1937. Strand might also have been an aka for the Lyric.
The odd 1937 Variety item called the Star “newly constructed” but also said it had just been reopened. An ambiguously worded item in MPW of June 24, 1916, suggests that there was then a house called the Harvey Theatre in either Sheldon or in Anthon, Iowa.
The Wonderland Theatre of Sheldon, Iowa, is mentioned in the July 11, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World:
“Sheldon, Ia.-The managers of Wonderland have had crowded houses all the week, due to their billing the town that a former well-known resident was a leading character in the ‘Blue Bonnet.’ Sure enough, the audience recognized and cheered as Mrs. E. M. Stringfield was recognized as the kind-hearted mother in this beautiful picture story of the good work of the Salvation Army.”
The Liberty was one of three houses listed at Franklin in the 1926 FDY, and the only one listed in all capital letters, indicating that it ran first run movies (the Lincoln and the Victor were the names of the other two.) A Liberty Theatre, but possibly not the same one, was in operation at Franklin by 1922, when manager M. K. Harris had a capsule movie review published in the October 7 issue of Moving Picture World. The only house listed at Franklin in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Crystal. A May, 1913 Sanborn Map shows the Crystal Theatre on Main Street, on the east side of the town square. One local source says the Crystal was gone by 1918, and its building was demolished long ago.
This page about buildings on the west side of Franklin’s square (College Street) indicates that the Liberty Theatre occupied two different locations over the years. The building the first Liberty occupied was built in 1908 on the west side of the square, and later became known as the Hughes Hardware Building. The year the theater opened is not mentioned, but no motion picture theaters appear on the west side of the square on the May 1913 Sanborn map of Franklin, so it had to have been after that month. This house later became the Victor Theater, which had closed by 1933. As the Liberty and Victor are both listed in 1926, the second Liberty had to have been opened prior to that year. The first Liberty/Victor Theatre building was destroyed by a fire in 1988.
The June 25, 1949 Boxoffice reported that G. C. and T. H. Jones, owners of the Liberty Theatre, had a new drive-in theater under construction on Russellville Road near Franklin. An advertisement for a New Year’s Eve show at the Liberty Theatre appeared in the December 23, 1955 issue of The Franklin Favorite.
As Nubieber was only founded in 1931, the 1971 Boxoffice claim that the theater originally opened in 1927 seems unlikely. The earlier Motion Picture Herald report of a 1932 construction date is probably correct.
The Key Theatre is mentioned in the May 9, 1956 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor, in an item saying that J. R. McCloud had just acquired the house from Robert Mullis. Mr. Mullis later got the theater back, as the April 24, 1966 issue of Boxoffice said he had the Key, as well as drive-in theaters in High Springs and Lake City.
A history of Medicine Lodge’s Lincoln Library says that a fund raiser for construction of their original building was held in 1911 at the Pastime Theater, 106 S. Main Street. The house was then owned by one Oscar T. Thom.
However, this page from the Kansas Historical Society gives the Pastime’s address as 110 S. Main and its construction date as 1927. The building there actually looks older, so I suspect it might simply have been remodeled for theatrical use in 1927. The Pastime’s original building, at 106, has been demolished, but the 1927 location is still standing, though currently appears to be vacant, and has been significantly altered.
A Facebook page titled Pastime Inc, Indoor Theatre Restoration Project has existed since 2014, but has not been updated since August, 2019, so I suspect the project is moribund. Most of the posts concern fundraising activities, but a few are about the theater, including scans of a couple of monthly programs published in the 1950s. One post says the house closed in 1982. The last owner was named Owen “Frosty” Sill.
This web page about Sanborn’s buildings has a paragraph about the Paradox/Harker Block, and says that the Princess closed in the late 1940s. They could be mistaken, of course, but perhaps not coincidentally, the FDY for 1946 lists the Princess with 274 seats and by 1947 it was listed with only 200. Could it be that the theater was relocated sometime in 1946?
The statewide “Moving Picture Theatres” section of Polk’s 1918 Iowa directory list the American, Empress and Happy Hour theaters at Cherokee, though the local listings for Cherokee itself don’t include the American but do include the Grand Opera House. In the Cherokee listings, a J. T. Cummings is listed as proprietor of the Empress, and an M. G. Grone (probably a misspelling of Groen) as manager of the Happy Hour. Mr. Ferris was listed as proprietor of the Grand Opera House. Unfortunately no addresses were provided for any of the theaters. A Mrs. Allie Groen was the other party in the 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris which I noted in my earlier comment. A March 24, 1917 Moving Picture World item said that an F. W. Groen had bought the Happy Hour Theatre from A. G. Ferris.
A ca. 1930 photo of the Empress is found on this page at Flickr, posted by user Historic Cherokee, Iowa. The caption says that the Empress closed on June 1, 1916 and reopened two weeks later as the Happy Hour. I haven’t been able to discover when the name Empress was restored to the house, but it was certainly by 1926, as the Empress is one of three houses listed at Cherokee in the FDY that year, along with the American and the Rialto (aka Grand Theatre/Grand Opera House.)
If this house was indeed the Wonderland (which seems likely) then it had an earlier (and rather odd) name. The May 1, 1909 Moving Picture World said: “Cherokee, Ia.-Henry Ling has purchased the Cynic Theater here, and has taken possession.” The April 17, 1909 issue of The Lemars Globe Post provided more details:
“Henry Ling, former proprietor of the Family theatre in this City, has purchased the Cynic theatre at Cherokee and takes possession of the same Monday next. The place will be named Wonderland and will be closed until the first of May, and in the interim Ling will renovate and remodel the building making it over to suit his ideas of a modern moving picture establishment. He will also install the latest machinery and says he will have an establishment there second to none of its kind in this section of the country. The Lings have made many friends here who wish them prosperity and happiness in their new home.”
This item, from the July 22, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions both the Empress and the Happy Hour/American Theatre:
“Exhibitor Ferris Prospers
“Cherokee, Ia.-A. G. Ferris of Cherokee, Iowa, recently bought the Empress theater, which was three doors from his former house, the Happy Hour. He sold the Happy Hour to Sisk & James, with the understanding that the name was to be changed; that theater is now the American. Mr. Ferris took the name Happy Hour with him to his new theater, where he is continuing his former policy as to pictures. He is refurnishing the Grand, and will open it in the fall with spoken drama and feature pictures. Another instance of Mr. Ferris’s enterprise is the fact that he will present the ‘Birth of a Nation’ during July at the Grand for four days-as long a run as the picture had in the largest cities of the immediate territory.”
A 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris and the Happy Hour and Grand gives the address of the Happy Hour as 222 Main Street, so it seems he did take the name with him, but as the only theaters listed at Cherokee in the 1926 FDY are the American, the Rialto and the Empress, this house must have gotten its earlier name back.
The Happy Hour Theater at Cherokee, Iowa was mentioned in the March 8, 1913 issue of The Billboard. A vaudeville duo named Helistrom (sp?) and Mybre were appearing there.
The NRHP form I mentioned in the comment above is not linked on this page, but in an earlier comment I made on the Palace Theatre page. It’s getting late and my brain has already gone to sleep.
The September 12, 1908 Moving Picture World has two items datelined Nevada, Iowa, one of which might be about this theater. One of them also has what is apparently another variant misspelling of the old street name.
The first item says “[t]he Electric Theater is the name of a new amusement house which has been opened for the public.” The second item, which appears a short way down the same page, says “Fred H. Klove has fitted up the Briggs room, on Lyon Street, and has opened a moving picture and vaudeville house. Both of these items could be about the same theater, as the trade journals were prone to doing that sort of thing in their early days. Also, and October 30 item in the same journal says that Klove had sold his theater to ”…Messrs. Coates and Ball….“ so he didn’t operate it for very long.
The reference to “Briggs room” in the one item is interesting, as this theater in the J. Ray Block was apparently next door to the Briggs Block, which was (and is) at 1102-1104 6th Street and, according to its description in a downtown Nevada walking tour (PDF here) once housed “…a newsstand with art sales….” It could be that the Briggs family, who were quite prominent in town, had bought the Ray Block prior to 1908, or the reference in MPW might have simply been a mistake.
Incidentally, the NRHP form does have a mistake, as it says that the 1928 Circle was the third movie theater opened in Nevada. The well documented Palace Theatre of 1913, with the evidence of two even earlier theaters appearing on the Sanborn Maps, proves that he Circle was at least the fourth movie house opened in Nevada.
The NRHP documentation form for the historic Nevada Central Business District (PDF here) says that the Palace Theatre opened in the corner space of the Alderman brothers' new building on December 20, 1913.
The house was originally leased to A. H. Donhowe of Story City. Warner Grossman took over operation in 1921.
A North Manchester history web page has this information about the Marshall Theatre: “…Clarence Helvey and Earl Scott announced the opening of the Marshall Theater here [126 E. Main St.] on September 2, 1934. Wayne Garman, who owned the Ritz Theater, later acquired the Marshall Theater – possibly when a "new management” ad was run on March 4, 1935. The Marshall Theater remained here for the rest of our study period, and actually outlasted the Ritz."
This fragment from a North Manchester history web page gives the address of the Ritz, and its earlier name: “There was a theater at this location [128 E. Main St.] called the Gem theater, owned by C.M. Walters. In October 1931, Mr. Walters reopened the theater and changed the name to the Ritz. In 1933, Wayne Garman took over ownership of the Ritz Theater.”
A letter published in the “Projection Department” column of Moving Picture World for October 25, 1913 says in part “Mr. Leslie K. Moore, Paulding, Ohio… says: I recently opened a new theater, ‘The Amusu,’ in a fireproof building, erected in accordance with the Ohio State Building Laws.”
The Amusu was the only theater listed at Paulding in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but a book called A Paulding Journal: 1870-1950 by Jeanne Bennett Calvert, which consists mostly of snippets from the local newspaper, mentions a couple of other theater names. An August, 1914 item mentions a Family Motion Picture Theatre, and a June, 1915 item mentions both the Amusu and a house called the Palace, which had just been taken over by the owner of the Amusu.
There was also a mention of the Amusu after 1916, but I cant find the exact year (Google Books has no full view of this book.) The only house other than the Grand listed in the 1926 FDY is called the Lincoln, and it was no longer listed by 1929. A March 17, 1917 Moving Picture World item notes a Paulding Theatre Company had plans and capital to build a new movie house there immediately, but I’ve found no later items about it. If it was built it could have ben the Lincoln, and if not then the Lincoln might have been the Amusu under a new name.
A post about the recent demolition of the Paulding Theatre on the Facebook page of the John Paulding Historical Society says that the building was built in 1893. A period source says that it was slated to open on February 19, 1894. Another new theatre, called the Model Opera House, had opened in January.
The side walls of the Grand survived the 1946 fire, and the 1949 Paulding Theatre was essentially a steel framed structure built inside the brick shell of the old Grand. Part of the Grand’s front wall also survived the fire and was revealed under the newer building as it was demolished, seen for the first time in 75 years.
The Historical Society seems to think that the building was extended back to the alley for the first time after the fire, as that part of the building had cinder block walls, but I think the cinder block portion of the building must have occupied the location of the old stage house, which either didn’t survive the fire, or was simply too tall for the new, stage-less movie theater and thus was demolished.
The Paulding Theatre was originally built for Jack O'Connell’s Community Theatres circuit of Toledo, Ohio, according to the February 26, 1949 issue of Boxoffice.
The side walls of the Grand Theatre, which the Paulding replaced, survived the 1946 fire and were incorporated into the 1949 structure, which was essentially a steel framed building built inside the old walls dating to 1893. Part of the front wall also survived, but the back wall was removed so the building could be extended with a new concrete block addition, providing increased seating capacity.
Sadly, demolition of the Paulding Theatre building began less than one month short of the 75th anniversary of its opening, on February 21, 2024. The John Paulding Historical Society provided a last look at what was left of the theater interior in a video posted to their Facebook page on February 20. Watch it here.
A 1962 city directory for Hammond, including Ponchatoula, lists the Pic Theatre at 162 N. 6th street, but this address no longer appears to exist. The numbering system is a bit of a pig’s breakfast, with a bar called Stray Cats at 132 N. 6th, something called Landstar in a small building next door numbered 165, and next to that, at the end of the block, an old brick house occupied by an accountant’s office with the address 180. Across 6th Street is a very modern building housing the town’s police station, and it uses the number 195.
The only surviving building among those on the east side of the street that is big enough to have held a 400-seat theater is the bar at 132, and it looks as though its ceiling would be too low. Unless a photo or someone who actually saw the theater turns up I fear the closest we can get to knowing the Pic’s location is the block of 6th Street north of Pine Street, and we can’t even be sure it hasn’t been demolished. But at least the directory reveals that the Pic was still in operation in 1962.
Here is an item about the Strand from Moving Picture World of November 20, 1915:
“The Strand, Chattanooga’s new 5-cent motion picture theater, was thrown open to the public on Friday, Nov. 5, with the William Fox production, ‘A Celebrated Scandal,’ for the opening exhibit. Arrangements have been made to show Fox, Kleine, Edison and Pathe Gold Rooster films at the new theater.
“A. J. Alper and A. Solomon, two well known young South Side business men, have charge of the theater, which they built under a partnership agreement. Two Powers 6A machines have been installed in a fireproof operators' room, and a $3,500 photo-play orchestra has been installed. The concern gave considerable attention to building a perfect ventilating system, and the house is heated by means of a gas furnace.
“The bills will be changed daily. The South Side of Chattanooga has been in need of just such a theater for some time, and the new house should prove a successful venture. On the opening day at the theater free toy balloons were given to every woman and child who attended, J. P. Wilhoite, a local contractor, built the theater. The building is handsomely decorated inside and out and has a large seating capacity.”
The last year in which the Strand was listed in the FDY was 1926.
Here is an item from Moving Picture World of November 20, 1915:
“Fine New House in Elkins, W. Va. R. H. Talbott, Elkins, West Va.. is building a new theater, to play highclass photoplays exclusively. The building completed will cost $30,000. It is of white sandstone, handsomely finished both inside and out. A big attractive lobby is one of its features, and a balcony seating 300, the seating capacity for the house will be 1,120. The interior decoration is now nearing completion, and is very handsome. G. B. Harvey is the contractor, and the house is to be opened Nov. 10 next. The house is named the Hippodrome.”
The claim (on November 20) that the house was to open on November 15 might well have been accurate. Publication was often delayed in trade journals of the time, and this wouldn’t be the first time an “upcoming” event had been announced after it had already happened. The same goes for the January 15, 1916 announcement in Music Trade Review of the Hippodrome’s impending opening.
Here is an item from the November 20, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World:
“New House At Marion Virginia
“A new theater is now under construction at Marion, Va., which, when completed, will be leased and operated by J. B. Eccles. The city of Marion can boast of but slightly more than two thousand inhabitants, but it will have a theater as modern, well-equipped and up-to-date as any of those of the larger cities in this section.
“‘The Marion,’ as it is to be known, will have a seating capacity of about 350. Of this number fifty seats will be contained in the balcony, arranged to accommodate the colored inhabitants. To this there is to be a separate entrance from the main lobby.
“Arrangements have been made for the installation of a Mirror screen, Power’s 6B projecting machines and a compensarc. The present plans are for the opening of the Marion on Thanksgiving Day. A four-reel daily program is contemplated. The Marion is the second place of amusement for the city, for D. Hutton has operated the Pastime here for many years. Both he and Mr. Eccles are well known in this section, both having been in the field for a considerable period of time.”
An October 16 item in the same journal had noted that a new theater was being built at Marion by J. J. Coyner, owner of the Marion Hotel.
The Theatorium was one of two houses listed at Pocahontas in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the other being the Opera House. The Opera House was above the City Hall, which was also on St. Clair Street.
The Lyric is not one of the three theaters listed at Sheldon in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The Scenic and Wonderland are listed, with their locations, but the third house is called the Bijou, with no location given. I wonder if this was an aka for the Lyric? A 630-seat Lyric Theatre is listed in the 1926 FDY, along with a house called the Gem, for which no details are provided.
Two more mystery names in Sheldon are the Strand, mentioned in the August 17, 1918 Moving Picture World, and a house called the Star Theatre, mentioned in Variety of January 6, 1937. Strand might also have been an aka for the Lyric.
The odd 1937 Variety item called the Star “newly constructed” but also said it had just been reopened. An ambiguously worded item in MPW of June 24, 1916, suggests that there was then a house called the Harvey Theatre in either Sheldon or in Anthon, Iowa.
The Wonderland Theatre of Sheldon, Iowa, is mentioned in the July 11, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World:
The Liberty was one of three houses listed at Franklin in the 1926 FDY, and the only one listed in all capital letters, indicating that it ran first run movies (the Lincoln and the Victor were the names of the other two.) A Liberty Theatre, but possibly not the same one, was in operation at Franklin by 1922, when manager M. K. Harris had a capsule movie review published in the October 7 issue of Moving Picture World. The only house listed at Franklin in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Crystal. A May, 1913 Sanborn Map shows the Crystal Theatre on Main Street, on the east side of the town square. One local source says the Crystal was gone by 1918, and its building was demolished long ago.
This page about buildings on the west side of Franklin’s square (College Street) indicates that the Liberty Theatre occupied two different locations over the years. The building the first Liberty occupied was built in 1908 on the west side of the square, and later became known as the Hughes Hardware Building. The year the theater opened is not mentioned, but no motion picture theaters appear on the west side of the square on the May 1913 Sanborn map of Franklin, so it had to have been after that month. This house later became the Victor Theater, which had closed by 1933. As the Liberty and Victor are both listed in 1926, the second Liberty had to have been opened prior to that year. The first Liberty/Victor Theatre building was destroyed by a fire in 1988.
The June 25, 1949 Boxoffice reported that G. C. and T. H. Jones, owners of the Liberty Theatre, had a new drive-in theater under construction on Russellville Road near Franklin. An advertisement for a New Year’s Eve show at the Liberty Theatre appeared in the December 23, 1955 issue of The Franklin Favorite.
As Nubieber was only founded in 1931, the 1971 Boxoffice claim that the theater originally opened in 1927 seems unlikely. The earlier Motion Picture Herald report of a 1932 construction date is probably correct.
The Key Theatre is mentioned in the May 9, 1956 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor, in an item saying that J. R. McCloud had just acquired the house from Robert Mullis. Mr. Mullis later got the theater back, as the April 24, 1966 issue of Boxoffice said he had the Key, as well as drive-in theaters in High Springs and Lake City.
A history of Medicine Lodge’s Lincoln Library says that a fund raiser for construction of their original building was held in 1911 at the Pastime Theater, 106 S. Main Street. The house was then owned by one Oscar T. Thom.
However, this page from the Kansas Historical Society gives the Pastime’s address as 110 S. Main and its construction date as 1927. The building there actually looks older, so I suspect it might simply have been remodeled for theatrical use in 1927. The Pastime’s original building, at 106, has been demolished, but the 1927 location is still standing, though currently appears to be vacant, and has been significantly altered.
A Facebook page titled Pastime Inc, Indoor Theatre Restoration Project has existed since 2014, but has not been updated since August, 2019, so I suspect the project is moribund. Most of the posts concern fundraising activities, but a few are about the theater, including scans of a couple of monthly programs published in the 1950s. One post says the house closed in 1982. The last owner was named Owen “Frosty” Sill.
This web page about Sanborn’s buildings has a paragraph about the Paradox/Harker Block, and says that the Princess closed in the late 1940s. They could be mistaken, of course, but perhaps not coincidentally, the FDY for 1946 lists the Princess with 274 seats and by 1947 it was listed with only 200. Could it be that the theater was relocated sometime in 1946?
The statewide “Moving Picture Theatres” section of Polk’s 1918 Iowa directory list the American, Empress and Happy Hour theaters at Cherokee, though the local listings for Cherokee itself don’t include the American but do include the Grand Opera House. In the Cherokee listings, a J. T. Cummings is listed as proprietor of the Empress, and an M. G. Grone (probably a misspelling of Groen) as manager of the Happy Hour. Mr. Ferris was listed as proprietor of the Grand Opera House. Unfortunately no addresses were provided for any of the theaters. A Mrs. Allie Groen was the other party in the 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris which I noted in my earlier comment. A March 24, 1917 Moving Picture World item said that an F. W. Groen had bought the Happy Hour Theatre from A. G. Ferris.
A ca. 1930 photo of the Empress is found on this page at Flickr, posted by user Historic Cherokee, Iowa. The caption says that the Empress closed on June 1, 1916 and reopened two weeks later as the Happy Hour. I haven’t been able to discover when the name Empress was restored to the house, but it was certainly by 1926, as the Empress is one of three houses listed at Cherokee in the FDY that year, along with the American and the Rialto (aka Grand Theatre/Grand Opera House.)
The paper that mentioned Mr. Ling’s Family Theatre “…in this city….” was from Lemars (or Le Mars) so that’s where the theater must have been.
If this house was indeed the Wonderland (which seems likely) then it had an earlier (and rather odd) name. The May 1, 1909 Moving Picture World said: “Cherokee, Ia.-Henry Ling has purchased the Cynic Theater here, and has taken possession.” The April 17, 1909 issue of The Lemars Globe Post provided more details:
This item, from the July 22, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions both the Empress and the Happy Hour/American Theatre:
A 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris and the Happy Hour and Grand gives the address of the Happy Hour as 222 Main Street, so it seems he did take the name with him, but as the only theaters listed at Cherokee in the 1926 FDY are the American, the Rialto and the Empress, this house must have gotten its earlier name back.The Happy Hour Theater at Cherokee, Iowa was mentioned in the March 8, 1913 issue of The Billboard. A vaudeville duo named Helistrom (sp?) and Mybre were appearing there.
The NRHP form I mentioned in the comment above is not linked on this page, but in an earlier comment I made on the Palace Theatre page. It’s getting late and my brain has already gone to sleep.
The September 12, 1908Moving Picture World has two items datelined Nevada, Iowa, one of which might be about this theater. One of them also has what is apparently another variant misspelling of the old street name.
The first item says “[t]he Electric Theater is the name of a new amusement house which has been opened for the public.” The second item, which appears a short way down the same page, says “Fred H. Klove has fitted up the Briggs room, on Lyon Street, and has opened a moving picture and vaudeville house. Both of these items could be about the same theater, as the trade journals were prone to doing that sort of thing in their early days. Also, and October 30 item in the same journal says that Klove had sold his theater to ”…Messrs. Coates and Ball….“ so he didn’t operate it for very long.
The reference to “Briggs room” in the one item is interesting, as this theater in the J. Ray Block was apparently next door to the Briggs Block, which was (and is) at 1102-1104 6th Street and, according to its description in a downtown Nevada walking tour (PDF here) once housed “…a newsstand with art sales….” It could be that the Briggs family, who were quite prominent in town, had bought the Ray Block prior to 1908, or the reference in MPW might have simply been a mistake.
Incidentally, the NRHP form does have a mistake, as it says that the 1928 Circle was the third movie theater opened in Nevada. The well documented Palace Theatre of 1913, with the evidence of two even earlier theaters appearing on the Sanborn Maps, proves that he Circle was at least the fourth movie house opened in Nevada.
The NRHP documentation form for the historic Nevada Central Business District (PDF here) says that the Palace Theatre opened in the corner space of the Alderman brothers' new building on December 20, 1913.
The house was originally leased to A. H. Donhowe of Story City. Warner Grossman took over operation in 1921.
A North Manchester history web page has this information about the Marshall Theatre: “…Clarence Helvey and Earl Scott announced the opening of the Marshall Theater here [126 E. Main St.] on September 2, 1934. Wayne Garman, who owned the Ritz Theater, later acquired the Marshall Theater – possibly when a "new management” ad was run on March 4, 1935. The Marshall Theater remained here for the rest of our study period, and actually outlasted the Ritz."
This fragment from a North Manchester history web page gives the address of the Ritz, and its earlier name: “There was a theater at this location [128 E. Main St.] called the Gem theater, owned by C.M. Walters. In October 1931, Mr. Walters reopened the theater and changed the name to the Ritz. In 1933, Wayne Garman took over ownership of the Ritz Theater.”
A letter published in the “Projection Department” column of Moving Picture World for October 25, 1913 says in part “Mr. Leslie K. Moore, Paulding, Ohio… says: I recently opened a new theater, ‘The Amusu,’ in a fireproof building, erected in accordance with the Ohio State Building Laws.”
The Amusu was the only theater listed at Paulding in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but a book called A Paulding Journal: 1870-1950 by Jeanne Bennett Calvert, which consists mostly of snippets from the local newspaper, mentions a couple of other theater names. An August, 1914 item mentions a Family Motion Picture Theatre, and a June, 1915 item mentions both the Amusu and a house called the Palace, which had just been taken over by the owner of the Amusu.
There was also a mention of the Amusu after 1916, but I cant find the exact year (Google Books has no full view of this book.) The only house other than the Grand listed in the 1926 FDY is called the Lincoln, and it was no longer listed by 1929. A March 17, 1917 Moving Picture World item notes a Paulding Theatre Company had plans and capital to build a new movie house there immediately, but I’ve found no later items about it. If it was built it could have ben the Lincoln, and if not then the Lincoln might have been the Amusu under a new name.
A post about the recent demolition of the Paulding Theatre on the Facebook page of the John Paulding Historical Society says that the building was built in 1893. A period source says that it was slated to open on February 19, 1894. Another new theatre, called the Model Opera House, had opened in January.
The side walls of the Grand survived the 1946 fire, and the 1949 Paulding Theatre was essentially a steel framed structure built inside the brick shell of the old Grand. Part of the Grand’s front wall also survived the fire and was revealed under the newer building as it was demolished, seen for the first time in 75 years.
The Historical Society seems to think that the building was extended back to the alley for the first time after the fire, as that part of the building had cinder block walls, but I think the cinder block portion of the building must have occupied the location of the old stage house, which either didn’t survive the fire, or was simply too tall for the new, stage-less movie theater and thus was demolished.
The Paulding Theatre was originally built for Jack O'Connell’s Community Theatres circuit of Toledo, Ohio, according to the February 26, 1949 issue of Boxoffice.
The side walls of the Grand Theatre, which the Paulding replaced, survived the 1946 fire and were incorporated into the 1949 structure, which was essentially a steel framed building built inside the old walls dating to 1893. Part of the front wall also survived, but the back wall was removed so the building could be extended with a new concrete block addition, providing increased seating capacity.
Sadly, demolition of the Paulding Theatre building began less than one month short of the 75th anniversary of its opening, on February 21, 2024. The John Paulding Historical Society provided a last look at what was left of the theater interior in a video posted to their Facebook page on February 20. Watch it here.
A 1962 city directory for Hammond, including Ponchatoula, lists the Pic Theatre at 162 N. 6th street, but this address no longer appears to exist. The numbering system is a bit of a pig’s breakfast, with a bar called Stray Cats at 132 N. 6th, something called Landstar in a small building next door numbered 165, and next to that, at the end of the block, an old brick house occupied by an accountant’s office with the address 180. Across 6th Street is a very modern building housing the town’s police station, and it uses the number 195.
The only surviving building among those on the east side of the street that is big enough to have held a 400-seat theater is the bar at 132, and it looks as though its ceiling would be too low. Unless a photo or someone who actually saw the theater turns up I fear the closest we can get to knowing the Pic’s location is the block of 6th Street north of Pine Street, and we can’t even be sure it hasn’t been demolished. But at least the directory reveals that the Pic was still in operation in 1962.
Here is an item about the Strand from Moving Picture World of November 20, 1915:
The last year in which the Strand was listed in the FDY was 1926.Here is an item from Moving Picture World of November 20, 1915:
The claim (on November 20) that the house was to open on November 15 might well have been accurate. Publication was often delayed in trade journals of the time, and this wouldn’t be the first time an “upcoming” event had been announced after it had already happened. The same goes for the January 15, 1916 announcement in Music Trade Review of the Hippodrome’s impending opening.Here is an item from the November 20, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World:
An October 16 item in the same journal had noted that a new theater was being built at Marion by J. J. Coyner, owner of the Marion Hotel.The Theatorium was one of two houses listed at Pocahontas in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the other being the Opera House. The Opera House was above the City Hall, which was also on St. Clair Street.