Uptown Theater
2730 Market Street,
Youngstown,
OH
44507
2730 Market Street,
Youngstown,
OH
44507
2 people
favorited this theater
The Uptown Theater dates back to at least 1940. It was last used as a live performance theater.
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Lost Memory
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Recent comments (view all 16 comments)
Youngatown was blessed with a number of quality neighborhood theatres prior to the flight to suburbia. One one level there was the Regent, Home, Schenley and Mahoning theatres. The next level up contained Wellman’s Newport and Belmont along with the independently owned Poster and Uptown.
The uptown was owned by Stephen Foster (not the song writer) and family who maintained the Uptown as a true “shabby-chic” gem. For many years they featured the silent version of The King Of Kings at Easter time. In ‘65 it was beautifully remodeled for the opening of a long run of The Graduate. It was then billed as “Youngstown’s Luxury Theatre” and continued as a major first-run venue. Associated Theatres of Pittsburgh took over operations of the Liberty Plaza and Uptown in the early 70’s. Associated morphed into Cinemette, Under John Harper, in the mid-70'a
I noticed looking at a Youngstown paper in the early seventies they had quite a few DRive-ins.I couldn’t find many of them when i went to SEARCH on CT.Maybe Name changes.
Mike, I sent you an email thru CT with the drive-ins for Youngstown. Did you get the email?
Here are some Uptown related articles. Unfortunately Google doesn’t have the issue telling of the opening of the Uptown in its original opening Nov. 26, 1926.
Stephen G. Foster
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Nov. 5 1987
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July 18, 1965
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July 2, 1927
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Nov. 10, 1983
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Photos of Youngstown’s Uptown Theatre before and after its 1956 remodeling were featured on the cover of Boxoffice, May 1, 1967.
Joe, In a scrapbook that I put together of theater ads for Youngstown I have representative ads for some 30 theaters just in the downtown area going back to the early 1900’s, but can’t find much information about them in the local paper.
Some were both movies and Vaudville, while others were just movies.
Examples:
Lyric Theater – West Federal St.
Bijou – There were two by this name, one on the Square and the other on East Federal St.
Alvin
Rex
Erdelic Theatre
Royal Theater – East Federal
Palace (Not the one that has its own listing on CT. this one was east of the Square and was closed by the city because it didn’t meet code in the early 1900’s.)
At one point in the early 1900’s there were no fewer than 12 downtown theaters.
Can you or anyone else find more information about these theaters?
wolfgirl500: The sources I’ve found on the Internet provide very little information about early theaters in Youngstown. Various issues of The Moving Picture World from the 1900s and 1910s have brief notices that one exhibitor or another is planning to open a new theater somewhere in town, but the theater names are rarely mentioned. A typical example is this item from the issue of October 24, 1908: “Youngstown, O.â€"James McFarlin and E. B. Blott have leased a room in the Hartzell Block to open up a moving picture house.”
Another example is this one from November 7 the same year: “Youngstown, Ohio.â€"A new moving picture show is rapidly being constructed in the building on Liberty street by Thomas Dempsey.”
However, I did manage to find the Royal mentioned in The Motion Picture World of August 21, 1915, and the item even gave the address of the house as 224 E. Federal, and gave the manager’s name as G.M. Westley.
I have come across a few other theater names for Youngstown. The Moving Picture World of August 19, 1913, had this item: “Peter G. Atsalas, owner of the Orpheum Theater, at Youngstown, Ohio, was a recent visitor in Philadelphia, looking after some big features for his theater. He claims that the censorship law in Ohio makes it impossible for exhibitors to get any kind of high class features, and that most of them must send to other cities out of that state for their supply.”
The December 13, 1913, issue of the same publication mentions a Princess Theatre in Youngstown, and the August 7, 1915, issue mentions a South Side Theatre, managed by Max Shagrin. A 1916 issue mentions a Colonial Theatre, but I couldn’t read the item as it was in one of the issues for which Google inexplicably displays only snippet views, despite it being in the public domain.
A snippet view of the 1921 edition of Wid’s Year Book lists the Bijou and the Rex, and also lists a theater called the Victory. A snippet of the 1930 Film Daily Yearbook lists the Astor, Cameo and Dome. Those lists are both incomplete due to the snippeting.
So far, Boxoffice has posted online only its issues from 1936 on, and I’ve been unable to find in those any of the Youngstown theater names you listed.
I recall reading in a biography of the Warner brothers that they chose to go to New Castle to open their first theater in 1907 because Youngstown already had so many movie houses in operation. I also recall a paper citing a Moving Picture World item that said Youngstown had twenty movie theaters operating in 1908. Many of them probably lasted less than a year, though, and most likely didn’t even get listed in the annual city directory. Movie theaters were like mayflies in those days.
Thanks much Joe. I did find a large ad telling about the opemimg of the building that the Bijou was in, but no details about the theater itself other than a few ads in the theater page. There were two Bijou theaters over the course of the years, The first Bijou was on Central Square and the other on the far end of East Federal Street.
I also read somewhere that the Warners at one point owned or had intrest in a Bijou Theater here but it wasn’t clear which Bijou was meant.
I guess from what you discovered that mosst of them were nicolodians.
There were a number of strictly vaudeville houses along Federal Street during that era that came and went not being able to compete with the Park, Princess, the Hippodrome and Grand Opera House which were both Movie and Vaudeville as well as bringing in plays and concerts.
The Rex was owned by the same folks that owned the Dome Theatre, and also had an interest in Idora Park, and when the Dome was remodeled, they exibited the films that normally would run at the Dome at the Rex which was just down the street.
By the way, the Dome was the first theater in Youngstown to introduce “talkies” in Youngstown.
Here is some information that I did find but unfortunately not enough to give them their own listing:
Bijou Theater
November 11, 1908
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November 12, 1908
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Dome
Dome Theater
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Grand Opera House
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I didn’t mean to double post the Dome here since it has its own page.