This web page has some historic photos of Avoca, though the slide show doesn’t work as advertised (you can’t pause it, at least not with my browser.) Below the slide show are thumbnails of the photos with captions, but only some of the thumbnails can be clicked and enlarged. The first photo is of the Harris Theatre, and the caption mentions a few names connected with the house.
This May, 2023 article from the web site of The Daily Nonpariel tells of the acquisition of the Legion Hall by the City of Avoca and plans for restoring and renovating the building as a community center under the auspices of the Avoca Main Street preservation group. The Legion will continue to oversee daily operations of the center. The page has a period photo of the theater promoting two 1942 releases on the marquee.
A history of Pottawattamie County published in 1977 says that the Majestic was on Main street, which is an aka for Elm Street, so there is a possibility that this was the Majestic, especially considering that it was still a movie house on the 1920 Sanborn. In 1977 the Majestic’s building was occupied by a True Value hardware store, but I’ve been unable to confirm that store’s location.
Majestic and Harris are the only theater names noted in the history, but it says there was another silent era movie house, located on Lyon Street east of Elm, next to what was by 1977 Rubecks store. That one could have been either the Bijou, the Novelty, or the Unique. Rubeck’s (a regional grocery chain) is gone, but the only modern building that looks suitable for it is the one that now houses a Napa Auto Parts, with a bowling alley in the basement at 221 W. Lyon. The theater was probably on what is now a parking lot.
I found this 1906 photo of the Opera House block. The caption mentions a number of businesses that occupied the building over the years, but unfortunately the movie theater is not among them.
Information from the Pipestone Star of May 11, 1937:
“The name of the Alo Theatre is soon to be changed to the State Theatre and manager L.V. Feldman announces that along with this a very important improvement is to be made in the front of the theatre.
“The old canopy will be rebuilt and will be decorated with neon and other lights giving a very brilliant appearance. It will make a vast change in the front of the theatre both by day and by night.
“The new canopy, which will be constructed by a Sioux Falls neon sign company, will probably be put into place some time within the next ten days.”
The August 14, 1934 Star reported that L.V. Feldman, owner of the Orpheum and Alo, had leased the theaters to the American Amusement Company, effective September 1. The Alo, which had been dark several months, was to be reopened in advance of the change of management.
The newspaper’s web site has two other items about the Alo that turn up in search results, including one that appears to be about the opening of the house, but clicking the links only fetches a 521 “Web server is down” error. I don’t know if this is temporary or an ongoing situation.
The October 20, 1941 issue of Film Daily had an item listing several pieces of major equipment, including a screen and projection equipment, which had lately been installed at H. Jochim’s Pix Theatre in Luverne, Minnesota by the American Theatre Supply Co. of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. These were likely upgrades or updates, as the Pix was first listed in the FDY in 1937, suggesting an opening sometime in 1936. Herman Jochims (the correct spelling) had opened the Palace Theatre, aka New Opera House, in 1915.
Here is information about the Times Theatre from a history timeline on the city’s web site: “Construction on the Savanna Times Theater was started in 1941 and has been a fixture at 222 Main Street since the showing of ‘The Wife Takes a Flyer’ on July 28, 1942.”
The Times was built by James and August Marchesi, who sold the house to Robert Shrake of Savanna and Raymond Hoy of Fulton in 1963. The new partners re-opened the house on Christmas Day with “The Thrill of It All”.
Film Daily of October 10, 1941 had news about the Orpheum: “The Van Nomikos circuit in co-operation with Miller and Swanson, joint operators of the Orpheum and Webb Theaters in Savanna, Ill., are spending $20,000 for improvements to the Orpheum, enlarging the house to 750 seats, using Kroehler Push-Back chairs for the job, new front, and modernizing the stand in all departments. E. W. Wagner is the job’s architect.”
Scroll abut halfway down this web page to the section headed “Sleepy Eye Brewing” for information about the Pix Theatre. The building now houses a craft brewing company, opened in 2019. The text reveals that the Princess/Pix had “…closed for good in the early 1990s after being in almost continuous operation since the 1920s.”
The building has been extensively altered inside, and the floor leveled, but a slide show photo of the beautifully restored front shows the Pix marquee still intact and advertising the brewery’s latest beer releases. There is also a vintage movie projector displayed on the mezzanine, but it is not pictured on the web page.
There is confirmation that the Grand became the Cort Theatre, sometime after Glen Duggan got control of the Grand, noted in the August, 1919 MPW item cited in my previous comment. The evidence is in the Google search results for a page in the Rock County Star Herald which I can’t date as it requires a subscription to access, but the Google results include this: “…Duggan, formerly manager of the Cort theatre….” The Cort was still listed in the 1929 FDY, but I haven’t checked later editions. If the Cort did not close with the onset of the depression, it would surely have closed by the time the Pix opened.
The only theater listed at Luverne in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory is called the Opera House, which would seem a rather grandiose name for this modest storefront operation. When the Palace Theatre opened in 1915 it was called the New Opera House, implying that Luverne had an old Opera House, and I suppose it could have been this house, inappropos as it might seem, but over the longer term this house came to be known, still rather pretentiously, as the Grand Theatre. It is the only theater at Luverne other than the Palace to be mentioned in trade journals, and it was also named in this article from the March 1, 1918 issue of the Rock County Herald:
“GRAND THEATRE SOLD TO HERMAN JOCHIMS
“Owner of Palace Theatre Acquires Control of Grand and Will Operate Both Places.
“Through the provisions of a sale made Wednesday, Manager Herman Jochims, of the New Palace theatre, also becomes owner and manager of the Grand theatre, Luverne’s exclusive motion picture house. The transfer includes the good will, the equipment, and a two-years’ lease on the building occupied by the Grand, which is owned by C.M. LaDue. (This is the east half of the Arcade Building.)
“Possession will not be given by Manager Willert until next Monday morning, and during the three evenings remaining before he severs his connections with the theatre, he will endeavor to put on especially attractive programs as farewell offerings.
“For the present, at least, Mr. Jochims will continue to operate both amusement places, and will retain much the same bookings at the Grand as Mr. Willert presented. Monday evening’s offering will include a continuation of the serial that was started there a few weeks ago. But it is likely that the Grand will be closed during the middle of the week days, when attendance at theatres is naturally the smallest.
“The retiring manager-owner of the Grand has conducted this theatre for nearly four years, and has been accorded a liberal share of the public’s patronage. As yet he has made no definite arrangements for the future, but expects to engage in the motion picture theatre business elsewhere, and has several propositions under consideration.”
Photos of the building at this address captioned as the Arcade Building can be found on the Internet, so there’s no mistake. The 1926 FDY lists only two theaters at Luverne, and they are the Palace and a 250-seat house called the Cort Theatre. The latter seems most likely to have been a new name for the Grand. The last mention of the Grand I’ve found in trade journals is this item from Moving Picture World of August 2, 1919: “J. P. Coffey has leased the former Grand Theatre building at Luverne, Minnesota, to Glen Duggan, who will open it as a motion picture house in the near future.”
The Irem Temple Mosque was built by the Shriners in 1907-08, and until 1931 the main auditorium had flat floor. After it was reconfigured to a standard theatrical form it became Wilkes-Barre’s principal venue for touring live theater and concert events. Its Temple Theatre movie house period coincided with the WWII era boom in movie attendance, and after that period it returned to hosting live events until gradually being abandoned due to competition from more modern facilities. Current renovation plans include returning the main auditorium to its original flat-floored configuration.
The principal architect of the building was Francis Willard Puckey of the local firm of Olds & Puckey. When partner Frederick Lauren Olds, twenty years Puckey’s senior, died in 1912, Puckey moved to Chicago and formed the firm of Puckey & Jenkins.
The Cordelia Vien Theatre opened in 1910. A photo of the house appeared in the Evening Standard of February 18 that year with the caption “New Theatre Nearing Completion.” The house, also known simply as Vien’s Theatre, was designed by Worcester, MA architectural firm Fuller & Delano (James E. Fuller and Ward P. Delano.) The house was renamed the Strand by new owners in 1916, after which it operated primarily as a movie theater. It was bought by the E. M. Lowe chain in 1926. Last operated by independent owners as an adult house, the Center Theatre suffered interior damage in a fire in 1990, ending its run.
The theater was built with brick side and back walls, but the front was made of wood elaborately carved in the Italianate style. This was plastered over in one of the modern remodeling projects. Fuller & Delano’s original blueprints for the façade were discovered in the New Bedford City Hall, and Studio to Sustain, the architectural and design firm handling the renovations, is using them to help recreate the theater’s original look.
The Nickel Theater is mentioned in the October 10, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World. The management had just secured a lease on the World Theatre down the street, which had been closed for several months, and planned to reopen it with motion pictures that week.
Here is an item from the October 10, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World mentioning the World Theatre and the Nickel Theatre: “New Bedford, Mass.—The management of the Nickel Theater has secured a lease of the World Theater, situated on Purchase street, between Hillman and North streets, and the house will be opened for business with an up-to-date moving picture show this week. The World Theater has been closed for several months, following financial tangles in which the original lessees became involved.”
News reports dated June 25 this year indicate that the Capitol Theatre building will be renovated, but the project will apparently not include any dedicated entertainment venue. The building will house “…apartments, retail space, classrooms, business incubator space, a community kitchen, and office space for the Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation.” The project is already underway, so the building at least is safe, even though its historic theatrical use will be lost.
Also, if the theater building was replaced by a new medical facility recently, the only such building on that two-block stretch of Purchase street is at 874 Purchase, at the corner of Elm, so that must have been the theater’s address as well.
Hathaway’s Theatre was still listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but its principal business appears to have been live theatre. Lonergan Players' Magazine, a weekly program published by Hathaway’s Theatre, in its issue dated March 16, 1914, said that the company was presenting “The Blue Mouse” that week, and would present “As Ye Sow” the following week.
No, I haven’t found the Mars mentioned in any theater industry trade journals, and I don’t have access other than limited previews to any of the archives that have newspapers from Pendleton. I’ve only found it mentioned there once, in 1922.
Neither can I find an opening year for the Crescent, or whether it had any earlier names. It had to have opened after January, 1908 though, as there is a Sanborn map from that month and it shows a furniture store and funeral parlor in the theater’s location.
An item about new equipment recently installed in various houses around Indiana appeared in the May 23, 1951 issue of The Exhibitor, and included this: “…A. McCarty, Roxy, Pendleton, Ind., Peerless Magnarc lamps. National 404 rectifiers, Walker high intensity screen, Kollmorgan Snaplite lenses, and Altec Lansing ‘Voice of the Theatre’ speaker system.” This is the only mention of the Roxy I’ve been able to find in the trade journals. I haven’t found the Mars or the Pendleton at all.
But studying the vintage photo, I think we have the wrong address for the theater. The storefront at 106 has only an awning, while the canopy (presumably the one that fell in 1947) is above the entrance of the store next door, at 108. The vertical “Roxy” sign is also attached to that section of the three-bay IOOF building. This pushes the theater’s history back by almost a decade, as the 1914 Sanborn map of Pendleton shows “Motion Pictures” in that storefront, which was at that time numbered 12 W. State Street. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists a house called the Crescent Theatre at 12 W. State Street. Pendleton then also had a house called the Nickel Theatre, but no address was given for it, and it does not appear on the 1914 Sanborn. The Crescent could have opened before 1914, as the IOOF building was built in 1890.
The Auditorium was one of seven theaters listed at Vinita in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. No address was given for it. An earlier Grand theatre was also listed, at 104 Illinois Avenue. I think Vinita changed its numbering system at some point, as the Directory lists a Vaudette theatre at 22 Wilson Street, and there appear to be no two-digit addresses in the town today. The earlier Grand was thus probably at modern 204 Illinois, or thereabout.
The only theater listed at Stillwell in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Motion, and no details were given for it. The Grand was the only house listed at Stillwell in the 1926 and 1929 FDY’s, but it was listed with only 175 seats. The last listing of the Grand in 1933 shows 250 seats, while the first listing of the Eagle in 1934 has only 230.
The 1926 FDY lists only a 350-seat house called the Crescent at Audubon. The earliest mention of the Crescent I’ve found is in the March 4, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review: “AUDUBON, IOWA.— Dan Nelson is now operating the Crsecent.”
Although the theater in Audubon is consistently listed by the FDY with 350 seats, the name Rose does not appear until the 1941 edition, so that renaming must have accompanied the rebuilding in 1940. But there were earlier renamings. In the 1932 edition it is listed as the Audubon Theatre, it went back to Crescent in 1933, and in 1934 through 1940 it was listed as the Broadway Theatre.
The only theater listed at Audubon in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Gem. The Gem, run by a Paul Hoover, was also listed in Polk’s 1912-1913 Iowa Gazetteer. An item in the October 10, 1912 Audubon Republican made reference to “…the Hall west of the Gem Theatre….” I see a hall on the Sanborn map, but can’t tell what direction it is from the theater nearby. Not much to go on, though if this was the only theater shown on the map then odds are pretty good it was the Gem.
By 1922, a trade journal mentions a house called the Crescent Theatre in Audubon, and it is listed with 350 seats, so unless the building was considerably expanded it was probably not the same theater.
If it was still around in 1914, this house might have been the Rex, the only theater listed at Perry without an address in the AMPD. The other two theaters listed, the Lyric and the Majestic, both had 2nd Street addresses.
The February 8, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World has this item: “Perry, Iowa, Jan. 23. — The Orpheum Moving Picture Theater is the name of a new amusement house that has been opened up in Perry by Dallas Center men. Worth Jenkins and Web Cramer are the proprietors. It is located in the Wimmer Building, west of the library.” I found one reference to the Wimmer Building being on 2nd Street, but the MPW item says it was west of the library, which would have given it a Willis Avenue address. Of course Mr. Wimmer might have had his name on more than one building at various times.
This web page has some historic photos of Avoca, though the slide show doesn’t work as advertised (you can’t pause it, at least not with my browser.) Below the slide show are thumbnails of the photos with captions, but only some of the thumbnails can be clicked and enlarged. The first photo is of the Harris Theatre, and the caption mentions a few names connected with the house.
This May, 2023 article from the web site of The Daily Nonpariel tells of the acquisition of the Legion Hall by the City of Avoca and plans for restoring and renovating the building as a community center under the auspices of the Avoca Main Street preservation group. The Legion will continue to oversee daily operations of the center. The page has a period photo of the theater promoting two 1942 releases on the marquee.
A history of Pottawattamie County published in 1977 says that the Majestic was on Main street, which is an aka for Elm Street, so there is a possibility that this was the Majestic, especially considering that it was still a movie house on the 1920 Sanborn. In 1977 the Majestic’s building was occupied by a True Value hardware store, but I’ve been unable to confirm that store’s location.
Majestic and Harris are the only theater names noted in the history, but it says there was another silent era movie house, located on Lyon Street east of Elm, next to what was by 1977 Rubecks store. That one could have been either the Bijou, the Novelty, or the Unique. Rubeck’s (a regional grocery chain) is gone, but the only modern building that looks suitable for it is the one that now houses a Napa Auto Parts, with a bowling alley in the basement at 221 W. Lyon. The theater was probably on what is now a parking lot.
I found this 1906 photo of the Opera House block. The caption mentions a number of businesses that occupied the building over the years, but unfortunately the movie theater is not among them.
Information from the Pipestone Star of May 11, 1937:
The August 14, 1934 Star reported that L.V. Feldman, owner of the Orpheum and Alo, had leased the theaters to the American Amusement Company, effective September 1. The Alo, which had been dark several months, was to be reopened in advance of the change of management.The newspaper’s web site has two other items about the Alo that turn up in search results, including one that appears to be about the opening of the house, but clicking the links only fetches a 521 “Web server is down” error. I don’t know if this is temporary or an ongoing situation.
The October 20, 1941 issue of Film Daily had an item listing several pieces of major equipment, including a screen and projection equipment, which had lately been installed at H. Jochim’s Pix Theatre in Luverne, Minnesota by the American Theatre Supply Co. of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. These were likely upgrades or updates, as the Pix was first listed in the FDY in 1937, suggesting an opening sometime in 1936. Herman Jochims (the correct spelling) had opened the Palace Theatre, aka New Opera House, in 1915.
Here is information about the Times Theatre from a history timeline on the city’s web site: “Construction on the Savanna Times Theater was started in 1941 and has been a fixture at 222 Main Street since the showing of ‘The Wife Takes a Flyer’ on July 28, 1942.”
The Times was built by James and August Marchesi, who sold the house to Robert Shrake of Savanna and Raymond Hoy of Fulton in 1963. The new partners re-opened the house on Christmas Day with “The Thrill of It All”.
Film Daily of October 10, 1941 had news about the Orpheum: “The Van Nomikos circuit in co-operation with Miller and Swanson, joint operators of the Orpheum and Webb Theaters in Savanna, Ill., are spending $20,000 for improvements to the Orpheum, enlarging the house to 750 seats, using Kroehler Push-Back chairs for the job, new front, and modernizing the stand in all departments. E. W. Wagner is the job’s architect.”
Scroll abut halfway down this web page to the section headed “Sleepy Eye Brewing” for information about the Pix Theatre. The building now houses a craft brewing company, opened in 2019. The text reveals that the Princess/Pix had “…closed for good in the early 1990s after being in almost continuous operation since the 1920s.”
The building has been extensively altered inside, and the floor leveled, but a slide show photo of the beautifully restored front shows the Pix marquee still intact and advertising the brewery’s latest beer releases. There is also a vintage movie projector displayed on the mezzanine, but it is not pictured on the web page.
There is confirmation that the Grand became the Cort Theatre, sometime after Glen Duggan got control of the Grand, noted in the August, 1919 MPW item cited in my previous comment. The evidence is in the Google search results for a page in the Rock County Star Herald which I can’t date as it requires a subscription to access, but the Google results include this: “…Duggan, formerly manager of the Cort theatre….” The Cort was still listed in the 1929 FDY, but I haven’t checked later editions. If the Cort did not close with the onset of the depression, it would surely have closed by the time the Pix opened.
The only theater listed at Luverne in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory is called the Opera House, which would seem a rather grandiose name for this modest storefront operation. When the Palace Theatre opened in 1915 it was called the New Opera House, implying that Luverne had an old Opera House, and I suppose it could have been this house, inappropos as it might seem, but over the longer term this house came to be known, still rather pretentiously, as the Grand Theatre. It is the only theater at Luverne other than the Palace to be mentioned in trade journals, and it was also named in this article from the March 1, 1918 issue of the Rock County Herald:
Photos of the building at this address captioned as the Arcade Building can be found on the Internet, so there’s no mistake. The 1926 FDY lists only two theaters at Luverne, and they are the Palace and a 250-seat house called the Cort Theatre. The latter seems most likely to have been a new name for the Grand. The last mention of the Grand I’ve found in trade journals is this item from Moving Picture World of August 2, 1919: “J. P. Coffey has leased the former Grand Theatre building at Luverne, Minnesota, to Glen Duggan, who will open it as a motion picture house in the near future.”The Irem Temple Mosque was built by the Shriners in 1907-08, and until 1931 the main auditorium had flat floor. After it was reconfigured to a standard theatrical form it became Wilkes-Barre’s principal venue for touring live theater and concert events. Its Temple Theatre movie house period coincided with the WWII era boom in movie attendance, and after that period it returned to hosting live events until gradually being abandoned due to competition from more modern facilities. Current renovation plans include returning the main auditorium to its original flat-floored configuration.
The principal architect of the building was Francis Willard Puckey of the local firm of Olds & Puckey. When partner Frederick Lauren Olds, twenty years Puckey’s senior, died in 1912, Puckey moved to Chicago and formed the firm of Puckey & Jenkins.
The Cordelia Vien Theatre opened in 1910. A photo of the house appeared in the Evening Standard of February 18 that year with the caption “New Theatre Nearing Completion.” The house, also known simply as Vien’s Theatre, was designed by Worcester, MA architectural firm Fuller & Delano (James E. Fuller and Ward P. Delano.) The house was renamed the Strand by new owners in 1916, after which it operated primarily as a movie theater. It was bought by the E. M. Lowe chain in 1926. Last operated by independent owners as an adult house, the Center Theatre suffered interior damage in a fire in 1990, ending its run.
The theater was built with brick side and back walls, but the front was made of wood elaborately carved in the Italianate style. This was plastered over in one of the modern remodeling projects. Fuller & Delano’s original blueprints for the façade were discovered in the New Bedford City Hall, and Studio to Sustain, the architectural and design firm handling the renovations, is using them to help recreate the theater’s original look.
The Nickel Theater is mentioned in the October 10, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World. The management had just secured a lease on the World Theatre down the street, which had been closed for several months, and planned to reopen it with motion pictures that week.
Here is an item from the October 10, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World mentioning the World Theatre and the Nickel Theatre: “New Bedford, Mass.—The management of the Nickel Theater has secured a lease of the World Theater, situated on Purchase street, between Hillman and North streets, and the house will be opened for business with an up-to-date moving picture show this week. The World Theater has been closed for several months, following financial tangles in which the original lessees became involved.”
News reports dated June 25 this year indicate that the Capitol Theatre building will be renovated, but the project will apparently not include any dedicated entertainment venue. The building will house “…apartments, retail space, classrooms, business incubator space, a community kitchen, and office space for the Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation.” The project is already underway, so the building at least is safe, even though its historic theatrical use will be lost.
Also, if the theater building was replaced by a new medical facility recently, the only such building on that two-block stretch of Purchase street is at 874 Purchase, at the corner of Elm, so that must have been the theater’s address as well.
Hathaway’s Theatre was still listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but its principal business appears to have been live theatre. Lonergan Players' Magazine, a weekly program published by Hathaway’s Theatre, in its issue dated March 16, 1914, said that the company was presenting “The Blue Mouse” that week, and would present “As Ye Sow” the following week.
No, I haven’t found the Mars mentioned in any theater industry trade journals, and I don’t have access other than limited previews to any of the archives that have newspapers from Pendleton. I’ve only found it mentioned there once, in 1922.
Neither can I find an opening year for the Crescent, or whether it had any earlier names. It had to have opened after January, 1908 though, as there is a Sanborn map from that month and it shows a furniture store and funeral parlor in the theater’s location.
An item about new equipment recently installed in various houses around Indiana appeared in the May 23, 1951 issue of The Exhibitor, and included this: “…A. McCarty, Roxy, Pendleton, Ind., Peerless Magnarc lamps. National 404 rectifiers, Walker high intensity screen, Kollmorgan Snaplite lenses, and Altec Lansing ‘Voice of the Theatre’ speaker system.” This is the only mention of the Roxy I’ve been able to find in the trade journals. I haven’t found the Mars or the Pendleton at all.
But studying the vintage photo, I think we have the wrong address for the theater. The storefront at 106 has only an awning, while the canopy (presumably the one that fell in 1947) is above the entrance of the store next door, at 108. The vertical “Roxy” sign is also attached to that section of the three-bay IOOF building. This pushes the theater’s history back by almost a decade, as the 1914 Sanborn map of Pendleton shows “Motion Pictures” in that storefront, which was at that time numbered 12 W. State Street. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists a house called the Crescent Theatre at 12 W. State Street. Pendleton then also had a house called the Nickel Theatre, but no address was given for it, and it does not appear on the 1914 Sanborn. The Crescent could have opened before 1914, as the IOOF building was built in 1890.
Ah, then it must have been double listed, under both names.
The Auditorium was one of seven theaters listed at Vinita in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. No address was given for it. An earlier Grand theatre was also listed, at 104 Illinois Avenue. I think Vinita changed its numbering system at some point, as the Directory lists a Vaudette theatre at 22 Wilson Street, and there appear to be no two-digit addresses in the town today. The earlier Grand was thus probably at modern 204 Illinois, or thereabout.
The only theater listed at Stillwell in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Motion, and no details were given for it. The Grand was the only house listed at Stillwell in the 1926 and 1929 FDY’s, but it was listed with only 175 seats. The last listing of the Grand in 1933 shows 250 seats, while the first listing of the Eagle in 1934 has only 230.
The 1926 FDY lists only a 350-seat house called the Crescent at Audubon. The earliest mention of the Crescent I’ve found is in the March 4, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review: “AUDUBON, IOWA.— Dan Nelson is now operating the Crsecent.”
Although the theater in Audubon is consistently listed by the FDY with 350 seats, the name Rose does not appear until the 1941 edition, so that renaming must have accompanied the rebuilding in 1940. But there were earlier renamings. In the 1932 edition it is listed as the Audubon Theatre, it went back to Crescent in 1933, and in 1934 through 1940 it was listed as the Broadway Theatre.
The only theater listed at Audubon in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Gem. The Gem, run by a Paul Hoover, was also listed in Polk’s 1912-1913 Iowa Gazetteer. An item in the October 10, 1912 Audubon Republican made reference to “…the Hall west of the Gem Theatre….” I see a hall on the Sanborn map, but can’t tell what direction it is from the theater nearby. Not much to go on, though if this was the only theater shown on the map then odds are pretty good it was the Gem.
By 1922, a trade journal mentions a house called the Crescent Theatre in Audubon, and it is listed with 350 seats, so unless the building was considerably expanded it was probably not the same theater.
Okay, this wasn’t the Rex. I just saw the entry for the Dallas Theatre, a later aka for the Rex. As Emily Litella used to say, never mind.
If it was still around in 1914, this house might have been the Rex, the only theater listed at Perry without an address in the AMPD. The other two theaters listed, the Lyric and the Majestic, both had 2nd Street addresses.
The February 8, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World has this item: “Perry, Iowa, Jan. 23. — The Orpheum Moving Picture Theater is the name of a new amusement house that has been opened up in Perry by Dallas Center men. Worth Jenkins and Web Cramer are the proprietors. It is located in the Wimmer Building, west of the library.” I found one reference to the Wimmer Building being on 2nd Street, but the MPW item says it was west of the library, which would have given it a Willis Avenue address. Of course Mr. Wimmer might have had his name on more than one building at various times.