Theatre Plaza is now a live music venue. Here is their web site (it’s in French, and I can’t find an English version.) The web site has a number of photos of events at the house, and a lot of the original auditorium decor appears to be intact.
The house opened on February 17, 1922, under the direction of United Amusement, the company that also had the Strand (1912), the Regent (1916), the Rialto (1924), the Seville (1929), the Monkland (1930), and the Snowdon (1937.) Construction had begun in 1921 for Northern Amusement, but the project was transfered to United later that year.
United hired their favorite architect, Daniel Crighton, to enlarge the uncompleted theater building, and later hired theater decorator Emmanuel Briffa, a frequent Crighton collaborator, to handle the interiors.
Mike Rivest’s list of Montreal theaters says that La Scala opened on May 7, 1949, and operated into 1981. The house became an adult theater called Cinema X for part of 1982, then closed and reopened again on August 27, 1982, as an art house called L'autre Cinema, and operated under that name into 1987.
The Weaver Theatre in Mountain Home was mentioned in the July 5, 1919 issue of The Moving Picture World. It was one of many theaters that was part of the just-formed Northwest Exhibitors' Circuit, a booking and buying organization of independent theater owners.
The People’s theater was being mentioned in the Adams County Leader at least as early as 1918. The paper’s issue of Oct 9, 1936 reported that the People’s Theater’s floor had been rebuilt on slant instead of flat as before, and that work on a new front was to start the next week. The December 4 edition reported that new seats had been installed in the theater. Another complete renovation was undertaken in 1940, reported in the February 16 issue.
On March 18, 1960, owner-operators of the house Mr. and Mrs. Joe Hancock reported that they might have to shut the theater down due to lack of patronage. But the June 23, 1961 issue of the Leader said that California theater operators Mr. and Mrs. George R. Cheverton and their son Richard had bought the People’s Theatre and the Rio Theatre in Cambridge and would move to Idaho to operated them.
A Mr. and Mrs. Richard Holliday bought both theaters from the Chevertons in 1967, as reported in the September 28 Leader. The People’s was still in operation at least as late as May, 1973, when yet another change of ownership was reported in the May 18 Leader:
“Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Wallace are taking over management of the People’s theater, beginning May 21. Mr. and Mrs. Robert DesMarias have made some improvements at the theater during his vacation, and Mrs. DesMarias will leave for their home in Anchorage, Alaska May 23.”
That was the last mention of the theater I’ve been able to find.
Ah, but this is a hipster drive-in, so attending it is ironic. Going to Puente or Paramount would evoke the wrong kind of irony. Plus out there they might see someone getting pregnant in a back seat, which would remind them of their grandparents conceiving their parents. ((shudder))
The Center was mentioned in the January 19, 1946 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review as one of five houses operated by Earl Stout and his son D. B. Stout. The other four houses in the Stout circuit were the newly-opened Arly at Arlington, Kentucky; the Wick, at Wickliffe, Kentucky; the Uptown, Cairo, Illinois; and the recently opened City Theatre at Mound City, Illinois.
First listed in the FDY in 1938, the Lyndel Theatre had 250 seats. In the 1939 FDY it had jumped up to 650 seats. This Facebook post says the house was run by Morran Lyndel Fondaw into the 1960s.
This rather pricey (cheapest ticket bought in advance is twelve bucks to sit on the astroturf, parking not included) outdoor venue, located on a community college campus, has an official web site with a schedule and information about the pricey prices. They don’t say how much the snacks cost, but my guess would be… pricey.
The August 15, 1926 Detroit Free Press said that the new Colony Theatre, under construction on Mack Avenue at Balfour Road, would on completion temporarily be used as a meeting place for the newly established Roman Catholic parish of St. Clare of Montefalco. A history of the parish says the first Sunday mass was held in the theater on October 3, 1926. Weekday masses were held at another location.
The parish school was completed by September, 1927 and Sunday services were moved to its auditorium until a new sanctuary was completed. What I’ve been unable to discover is if movies were shown at the Colony on weekdays while it was still serving as a church on Sundays, but either way it must have been operating as a movie theater full time by September, 1927.
The building has come full circle, as it is now the home of a Baptist church.
The most recent Google street views show this entire area being rebuilt with enormous, boring apartment projects. I hope I never have to see it in person.
An item in Motion Picture Herald from 1931 (I can’t find the date) says that Ben Pitts had recently taken over the Dixie Theatre in Manassas.
There is conflicting information about the Dixie/Pitts' Theatre. The December 31, 1936 issue of The Manassas Journal (PDF here) advertises the Pitts Theatre, but a number of items about movies playing at the Dixie Theatre give the names and dates of the movies listed in the Pitts Theatre’s ad. As it seems unlikely that the same movies would be playing at two different theaters, what seems more likely is that the name Dixie remained in common use after the theater had been renamed Pitts. An ad published by Pitts Theatres in 1939 uses the name Pitts' for the Manassas house.
More troubling is a line in one article (upper right, front page) making reference to “… the square [the block] north of Center Street where the Pitts' Theatre is located….” The silent era Dixie Theatre was south of Center Street. Also giving the block north of Center Street as the location of Pitts' Theatre is the caption of a photo in the Arcadia Press book Manassas (Google books preview) saying “…the Olde Towne Inn opened in 1973 at the corner of Center and Main Streets, on the site of the old Pitts Theatre and Stonewall Jackson Hotel.” This is the block north of Center Street, and thus not the location of the silent era Dixie Theatre building, which is still standing.
It would appear then that a new theater was opened north of Center Street by 1936, and by that year was being advertised as Pitts' Theatre. However, the FDY continues to list the only house in Manassas as the Dixie through 1941, and the name Pitts (well, actually it first appears as “Titts”) doesn’t show up until 1942. The Pitts is then listed with only 200 seats until 1949, when it suddenly goes to 505 seats. The silent era Dixie building was never large enough for 505 seats, so this is more evidence that it has to have been the house north of Center Street, but I don’t know if this reflected a recent expansion or if the FDY was only belatedly catching up with a change made years earlier.
The Pinole 10 was about where the FedEx Office and Auto Zone stores are now. They are some distance east of the spot Google Maps is putting the pin icon. Views at Historic Aerials show that the theater had been demolished and construction started on the shopping center that replaced it by 2002.
The 1921 Fredericksburg city directory lists Pitts Leader Theatre at 915 Main Street. This web page says that Main Street was an aka for Caroline Street, so unless the lots have been renumbered since 1921 the Leader was just a few doors down from the site of the later Colonial Theatre. The only other theater listed in 1921 was the Opera House, corner of Main and Commerce (aka William) Street.
Like all the other theaters built for Century between 1964 and the early 1990s, Century’s Pinole 10 was designed by Vincent G. Raney. The Pinole 10 was very nearly identical to the Century 10 at Noor Avenue and Huntington Avenue in South San Francisco, which opened just a few months after the Pinole house.
The South San Francisco building is still standing, though it has been gutted for a bowling center project that was never completed. Still, Google’s satellite view of it still gives a good idea of what the Pinole multiplex looked like on the outside.
Red’s Showcase Twin Cinemas closed on February 28, 2007, according to this article from that day’s Curry Coastal Pilot. The article says that Thomas took over operation of the house in 1987, some time after the previous owners had twinned it.
I believe this theater was the house scheduled to open as the Pic Theatre on May 14, 1952. The May 13 issue of the Eureka daily newspaper, the Humboldt Times, reported that an early morning blast had occurred at the theatre, ripping a hole in the roof, damaging the marquee, and wrecking the ticket booth. Police suspected a deliberate act of sabotage, either a bomb or sticks of dynamite.
Owner of the Pic, Earl L. Boles, who also operated the Mecca Theatre, said that materials were being rushed to the site to repair the damage quickly so that the theater could open on schedule. The following day’s edition of the paper said that the damage had been estimated at $1,000, but that the 537-seat theater would open that night.
An article in the March 22, 1952 issue of Boxoffice said that operation of the downtown Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles had been taken over by United Paramount Theatres on March 18, at the end of a twenty year lease by Fanchon & Marco. United Paramount would undertake the remodeling job that began later that year.
F&M’s lease on the Hollywood Paramount continued, and though now under separate management, the day-and-date policy at the two houses would also continue. The first movie opened under the new regime was the Paramount release “Something to Live For,” on March 21.
This item from the June 27, 1919 issue of Pacific Builder and Engineer is most likely about the Dream Theatre:
“Snoqualmie, Wn-Archt E. W. Houghton, Seattle, is planning a conc. moving picture theatre for this pl. same to be 80x32 ft with timbered truss rf. Modern htg and vent plant will be installed.”
The dimensions of the building in street and satellite views do look to be about 32x80.
Though, for now, Century is still operating this house that the company no longer owns, the likelihood that it will in time be demolished for a new development without a theater in it remains high.
This article is from March, 2017, but the redevelopment proposal it describes is from the current owner of the building, so it seems likely that it will eventually get built in some form.
A brief essay about the Melody Theatre on this web page says that the house opened in March, 1946, and was closed and the building converted into a church in 1952.
The primary cause of the Melody’s short life appears to have been the rivalry of the East Side Theatre, which a 1948 lawsuit alleged had an unfair advantage due to its relationship with distributors, as told in this article from Motion Picture Herald of September 18, 1948:
“Files Trust Suit In Savannah
“Charging there was a conspiracy to force him out of business and to monopolize product for rival Negro theatres, Mose Portman, Melody Theatre Co., and East Broad Investment Co., last week filed a $957,264 anti-trust action in Federal Court at Savannah, Ga. Defendants include: Bijou Amusement Co., Savannah East Side Corp., Dunbar Theatre Corp., Fred G. Weis, president of Savannah East Side; G. T. Bailey, Harold T. Spears, Alfred Starr and Milton Starr of Bijou, and seven major motion picture distributors.
“The distributors named are Paramount, Warners, Columbia, Republic, RKO, Loew’s and United Artists.
“The complaint charges that Savannah East Side built a theatre for Negroes in opposition to Mr. Portman’s Melody, built in 1946, and that Melody Theatre Company was forced to sell the house because the distributors conspired to divert first class product to the opposition theatre interests, thus depriving the Melody of product.”
I haven’t found anything about the outcome of the suit, but given that the Melody closed by 1952 I’m guessing it didn’t help.
The opening of the Bijou was noted in the January 8, 1910 issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror:
“SAVANNAH.—BIJOU R. G. Herndon, mgr.) : The new Bijou was auspiciously opened Dec. 25 with a presentation of When We Were Twenty-One: the new theatre is modern in every respect and the management has taken pains to look after every comfort of patrons: the decorations both interior and exterior are very handsome : there are two entrances, one on Broughton and one on Congress street; for the present Schiller’s Stock co. will present standard plays at popular prices.”
The Bijou was listed in the 1912-1913 Cahn guide, and in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Over the years it served as a legitimate theater, a movie house and a vaudeville theater, and was for a time part of the B. F.Keith circuit.
Given the name Bijou it’s possible that the house was originally built for Jake Wells' Bijou circuit, as Wells was planning to build a new theater in Savannah in 1909, according to the June 10 issue of Manufacturers' Record.
The December, 1911 issue of Motography had this news about the Arcadia Theatre:
“The Arcadia theater, recently opened at Savannah by the Savannah Picture Plays Company of that city, is one of the nicest and most up-to-date moving picture houses in the South. The house has a seating capacity of almost 800 and was constructed at a cost of $40,000. The cost of admission is 10 cents.”
The Folly Theatre was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It was one of five movie houses listed for Savannah, the others being the Bijou, the Odeon and the Princess, all on Broughton Street, and the Pekin Theatre on Broad Street.
The Folly is listed in the FDY through 1929, with 350 seats. It then vanishes, reappearing in 1934 with 500 seats. From 1935 through 1942 it is listed with 600 seats. In 1943 the 600-seat Bandbox Theatre makes its first appearance. The Bandbox is listed through 1947, and in 1948 the Avon first appears.
Theatre Plaza is now a live music venue. Here is their web site (it’s in French, and I can’t find an English version.) The web site has a number of photos of events at the house, and a lot of the original auditorium decor appears to be intact.
The house opened on February 17, 1922, under the direction of United Amusement, the company that also had the Strand (1912), the Regent (1916), the Rialto (1924), the Seville (1929), the Monkland (1930), and the Snowdon (1937.) Construction had begun in 1921 for Northern Amusement, but the project was transfered to United later that year.
United hired their favorite architect, Daniel Crighton, to enlarge the uncompleted theater building, and later hired theater decorator Emmanuel Briffa, a frequent Crighton collaborator, to handle the interiors.
Mike Rivest’s list of Montreal theaters says that La Scala opened on May 7, 1949, and operated into 1981. The house became an adult theater called Cinema X for part of 1982, then closed and reopened again on August 27, 1982, as an art house called L'autre Cinema, and operated under that name into 1987.
The Weaver Theatre in Mountain Home was mentioned in the July 5, 1919 issue of The Moving Picture World. It was one of many theaters that was part of the just-formed Northwest Exhibitors' Circuit, a booking and buying organization of independent theater owners.
The People’s theater was being mentioned in the Adams County Leader at least as early as 1918. The paper’s issue of Oct 9, 1936 reported that the People’s Theater’s floor had been rebuilt on slant instead of flat as before, and that work on a new front was to start the next week. The December 4 edition reported that new seats had been installed in the theater. Another complete renovation was undertaken in 1940, reported in the February 16 issue.
On March 18, 1960, owner-operators of the house Mr. and Mrs. Joe Hancock reported that they might have to shut the theater down due to lack of patronage. But the June 23, 1961 issue of the Leader said that California theater operators Mr. and Mrs. George R. Cheverton and their son Richard had bought the People’s Theatre and the Rio Theatre in Cambridge and would move to Idaho to operated them.
A Mr. and Mrs. Richard Holliday bought both theaters from the Chevertons in 1967, as reported in the September 28 Leader. The People’s was still in operation at least as late as May, 1973, when yet another change of ownership was reported in the May 18 Leader:
That was the last mention of the theater I’ve been able to find.It looks like there are rust streaks below the three vertical black panels, but the rest of it just looks like dirt.
Ah, but this is a hipster drive-in, so attending it is ironic. Going to Puente or Paramount would evoke the wrong kind of irony. Plus out there they might see someone getting pregnant in a back seat, which would remind them of their grandparents conceiving their parents. ((shudder))
The Center was mentioned in the January 19, 1946 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review as one of five houses operated by Earl Stout and his son D. B. Stout. The other four houses in the Stout circuit were the newly-opened Arly at Arlington, Kentucky; the Wick, at Wickliffe, Kentucky; the Uptown, Cairo, Illinois; and the recently opened City Theatre at Mound City, Illinois.
The Septmeber 26, 1925 issue of Exhibitors Herald said “[t]he Barlow theatre, Barlow, Ky., is closed for repairs and alterations.”
First listed in the FDY in 1938, the Lyndel Theatre had 250 seats. In the 1939 FDY it had jumped up to 650 seats. This Facebook post says the house was run by Morran Lyndel Fondaw into the 1960s.
This rather pricey (cheapest ticket bought in advance is twelve bucks to sit on the astroturf, parking not included) outdoor venue, located on a community college campus, has an official web site with a schedule and information about the pricey prices. They don’t say how much the snacks cost, but my guess would be… pricey.
The August 15, 1926 Detroit Free Press said that the new Colony Theatre, under construction on Mack Avenue at Balfour Road, would on completion temporarily be used as a meeting place for the newly established Roman Catholic parish of St. Clare of Montefalco. A history of the parish says the first Sunday mass was held in the theater on October 3, 1926. Weekday masses were held at another location.
The parish school was completed by September, 1927 and Sunday services were moved to its auditorium until a new sanctuary was completed. What I’ve been unable to discover is if movies were shown at the Colony on weekdays while it was still serving as a church on Sundays, but either way it must have been operating as a movie theater full time by September, 1927.
The building has come full circle, as it is now the home of a Baptist church.
The most recent Google street views show this entire area being rebuilt with enormous, boring apartment projects. I hope I never have to see it in person.
An item in Motion Picture Herald from 1931 (I can’t find the date) says that Ben Pitts had recently taken over the Dixie Theatre in Manassas.
There is conflicting information about the Dixie/Pitts' Theatre. The December 31, 1936 issue of The Manassas Journal (PDF here) advertises the Pitts Theatre, but a number of items about movies playing at the Dixie Theatre give the names and dates of the movies listed in the Pitts Theatre’s ad. As it seems unlikely that the same movies would be playing at two different theaters, what seems more likely is that the name Dixie remained in common use after the theater had been renamed Pitts. An ad published by Pitts Theatres in 1939 uses the name Pitts' for the Manassas house.
More troubling is a line in one article (upper right, front page) making reference to “… the square [the block] north of Center Street where the Pitts' Theatre is located….” The silent era Dixie Theatre was south of Center Street. Also giving the block north of Center Street as the location of Pitts' Theatre is the caption of a photo in the Arcadia Press book Manassas (Google books preview) saying “…the Olde Towne Inn opened in 1973 at the corner of Center and Main Streets, on the site of the old Pitts Theatre and Stonewall Jackson Hotel.” This is the block north of Center Street, and thus not the location of the silent era Dixie Theatre building, which is still standing.
It would appear then that a new theater was opened north of Center Street by 1936, and by that year was being advertised as Pitts' Theatre. However, the FDY continues to list the only house in Manassas as the Dixie through 1941, and the name Pitts (well, actually it first appears as “Titts”) doesn’t show up until 1942. The Pitts is then listed with only 200 seats until 1949, when it suddenly goes to 505 seats. The silent era Dixie building was never large enough for 505 seats, so this is more evidence that it has to have been the house north of Center Street, but I don’t know if this reflected a recent expansion or if the FDY was only belatedly catching up with a change made years earlier.
The Pinole 10 was about where the FedEx Office and Auto Zone stores are now. They are some distance east of the spot Google Maps is putting the pin icon. Views at Historic Aerials show that the theater had been demolished and construction started on the shopping center that replaced it by 2002.
The 1921 Fredericksburg city directory lists Pitts Leader Theatre at 915 Main Street. This web page says that Main Street was an aka for Caroline Street, so unless the lots have been renumbered since 1921 the Leader was just a few doors down from the site of the later Colonial Theatre. The only other theater listed in 1921 was the Opera House, corner of Main and Commerce (aka William) Street.
Like all the other theaters built for Century between 1964 and the early 1990s, Century’s Pinole 10 was designed by Vincent G. Raney. The Pinole 10 was very nearly identical to the Century 10 at Noor Avenue and Huntington Avenue in South San Francisco, which opened just a few months after the Pinole house.
The South San Francisco building is still standing, though it has been gutted for a bowling center project that was never completed. Still, Google’s satellite view of it still gives a good idea of what the Pinole multiplex looked like on the outside.
Red’s Showcase Twin Cinemas closed on February 28, 2007, according to this article from that day’s Curry Coastal Pilot. The article says that Thomas took over operation of the house in 1987, some time after the previous owners had twinned it.
I believe this theater was the house scheduled to open as the Pic Theatre on May 14, 1952. The May 13 issue of the Eureka daily newspaper, the Humboldt Times, reported that an early morning blast had occurred at the theatre, ripping a hole in the roof, damaging the marquee, and wrecking the ticket booth. Police suspected a deliberate act of sabotage, either a bomb or sticks of dynamite.
Owner of the Pic, Earl L. Boles, who also operated the Mecca Theatre, said that materials were being rushed to the site to repair the damage quickly so that the theater could open on schedule. The following day’s edition of the paper said that the damage had been estimated at $1,000, but that the 537-seat theater would open that night.
An article in the March 22, 1952 issue of Boxoffice said that operation of the downtown Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles had been taken over by United Paramount Theatres on March 18, at the end of a twenty year lease by Fanchon & Marco. United Paramount would undertake the remodeling job that began later that year.
F&M’s lease on the Hollywood Paramount continued, and though now under separate management, the day-and-date policy at the two houses would also continue. The first movie opened under the new regime was the Paramount release “Something to Live For,” on March 21.
This item from the June 27, 1919 issue of Pacific Builder and Engineer is most likely about the Dream Theatre:
The dimensions of the building in street and satellite views do look to be about 32x80.Though, for now, Century is still operating this house that the company no longer owns, the likelihood that it will in time be demolished for a new development without a theater in it remains high.
This article is from March, 2017, but the redevelopment proposal it describes is from the current owner of the building, so it seems likely that it will eventually get built in some form.
The Odeon was one of the five movie theaters listed at Savannah in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
A brief essay about the Melody Theatre on this web page says that the house opened in March, 1946, and was closed and the building converted into a church in 1952.
The primary cause of the Melody’s short life appears to have been the rivalry of the East Side Theatre, which a 1948 lawsuit alleged had an unfair advantage due to its relationship with distributors, as told in this article from Motion Picture Herald of September 18, 1948:
I haven’t found anything about the outcome of the suit, but given that the Melody closed by 1952 I’m guessing it didn’t help.The opening of the Bijou was noted in the January 8, 1910 issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror:
The Bijou was listed in the 1912-1913 Cahn guide, and in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Over the years it served as a legitimate theater, a movie house and a vaudeville theater, and was for a time part of the B. F.Keith circuit.Given the name Bijou it’s possible that the house was originally built for Jake Wells' Bijou circuit, as Wells was planning to build a new theater in Savannah in 1909, according to the June 10 issue of Manufacturers' Record.
The December, 1911 issue of Motography had this news about the Arcadia Theatre:
The Folly Theatre was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It was one of five movie houses listed for Savannah, the others being the Bijou, the Odeon and the Princess, all on Broughton Street, and the Pekin Theatre on Broad Street.
The Folly is listed in the FDY through 1929, with 350 seats. It then vanishes, reappearing in 1934 with 500 seats. From 1935 through 1942 it is listed with 600 seats. In 1943 the 600-seat Bandbox Theatre makes its first appearance. The Bandbox is listed through 1947, and in 1948 the Avon first appears.