They misspelled the name of the city, but the April 8, 1930, issue of The Film Daily did note the renovation of this house:
“Remodel Gardner Opera House
“Gardner, Me. — Russell Amusement Co., Publix subsidiary, operating the Johnson Opera House, reopened the house after completely redecorating and refurnishing it. Sound equipment was also installed.”
The Billings Gazette provides this web page about the theaters in Billings, and it says that the World was closed in 1978 and demolished to provide parking space for a bank. The following year Theatre Operators, Inc. opened the World West Theatre at Rimrock Mall, its name probably being a tribute to the chain’s lost downtown house.
According to the Dec 12, 2016, issue of the Billings Gazette, the former World West Theatres, located at 2520 Central Avenue (just off Stewart Park Road, at the northwest corner of the Rimrock Mall property), was being demolished. The building is still visible in Google’s satellite and street views, which have not yet been updated, and I’ve set street view to the proper location.
The Gazette says the house was operated by the same company that had the Rimrock 4 (later 5) inside the mall. That was a Theatre Operators, Inc. house, a chain that was later taken over by Carmike, so Carmike must have gotten the twin as well.
The World West was most likely named in tribute to Theatre Operators' World Theatre in downtown Billings, closed and demolished for a parking lot the year before the twin was opened.
Incidentally, the vintage photo uploaded by Predator indicates that the Ideal must have been open as late as 1960, as “Jazz Boat” (I have no idea why they added that H on the marquee) with Anthony Newley and Anne Aubrey was released that year.
An Ideal Theatre at Milford is mentioned in the October 4, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World, along with the Opera House and a house called the Lyceum Theatre. The Ideal was presenting “Quo Vadis” while a locally-made film called “Famous Granite Quarries” was appearing at the Lyceum. The Opera House was featuring talking movies.
A timeline of events in Milford on this web page says that the Ideal Theatre opened on April 20, 1912. The Ideal was not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which was not exhaustive, but was mentioned in trade journals occasionally through the 1910s and 1920s and as late as the 1940s.
The 1914-15 Directory did list the Lyceum, located on Main Street, and the Music Hall, which was an aka for the Opera house, as well as a Nipmuc Park Theatre (actually a seasonal operation in Mendon, Massachusetts) and a house called the Tripoli Theatre located at 12 E. Main Street.
The Capitol Theatre at Winchendon does not appear in the state’s Department of Public Safety annual reports until the one issued for the year ending November 30, 1928. That year, the Capitol Theatre, operated by Fred J. Sharby and J. Mathieu, recieved a rating of Good.
This indicates that the Capitol opened either in 1927, after the inspections were carried out, or early enough in 1928 to be included in that year’s theater inspections. The Capitol was probably the proposed theater noted in this item from Exhibitors Daily of January 25, 1927
“WINCHENDON, Mass. — Architect, J. A. Tuck, Inc., Park Square Building, Boston, making sketches for $160,000 theatre in Winchendon. Owner, F. Sharby, 249 Roxbury Street, Keene, N. H.”
I’ve been unable to find more about architect J. A. Tuck, but Fred Sharby had previously operated theaters in Winchendon called the Gem and the National.
Ram9214: I just reset the Google street view to what I believe was the location of the North Star Cinema, judging from the vintage photo uploaded by elmorovivo. The building occupied by Joske’s in the photo now houses a branch of Dillard’s. The center’s map on its web site shows several small shops flanking the new mall entrance (which can be seen in street view) that has been punched through the theater space. The stores displacing the theater include Lens Crafters, Pac Sun, Journeys, Gurinsky’s Jewelers, Justice, and Urban Cowboy.
The history page of the Center’s web site says that Jacob and Sarah Eskin hired Boscobel, Wisconsin architect Joseph G. Durrant to design the Eskin Theatre. Durrant had earlier designed the Blaine Theatre at Boscobel and the Fort Theatre at Montfort, Wisconsin. The Eskin Theatre opened on March 4, 1937. Sarah Eskin received title to the Eskin and the Richland Theatre in a divorce settlement granted on March 29.
The Blaine Theatre was designed by local architect Joseph G. Durrant. Durrant established his practice in Boscobel in 1933, and the Blaine was one of two theater/community center projects he designed the following year, the other being at Montfort, Wisconsin. The Montfort building has been (insensitively) remodeled and its Fort Theatre converted into a post office, but the only desecration at Boscobel is a bland addition to the community center building.
The Fort Theatre was part of the Montfort Community Center, built in 1934-35 with funding from the Works Progress Administration. It was designed by architect Joseph G. Durrant of Boscobel, Wisconsin. Durrant designed another streamline modern community center/theater project for Boscobel the same year. Unlike the Fort Theatre, Boscobel’s Blaine Theatre is still in operation and largely intact.
The Monroe Theatre has an active Facebook page, and posts items about the ongoing efforts to renovate the house and reopen it as a performing arts theater. This post from March 8 reproduces an article from the Monroe County Beacon noting a $20,000 grant to the Monroe Theatre Committee from the local Baker Foundation. The grant will be used to fund a feasibility study.
Another post reveals that the Monroe Theatre opened on December 2, 1939.
MSC77: A brief article in Boxoffice of May 14, 1962, did say that the new Forman-Nace house in suburban Phoenix was called the Bethany West Theatre, but didn’t say why.
I just checked CinemaTour and they list houses called the Amusu at both 122 E. Main and 106 W. Main. If they were two different theaters we can’t be sure which of them it was that was listed in the 1922 Cahn guide.
The Amusu was in operation at least as early as 1921, as it was listed in the moving picture theaters section of the 1922 Cahn-Hill guide, published in late 1921.
There might be a problem with the address we have listed for the Amusu. The last building on the even-numbered side of the 100 block of E. Main Street is at 110, currently occupied by the Hart Gallery. East of it is a triangular parking lot at the corner of Rossville Street, beyond which is the 200 block. I don’t think the numbers would have jumped all the way to 122 in one lot.
To add more confusion, Mike Rivest’s list of Chattanooga theaters has the Amusu at 106 West Main. It would be helpful if somebody could get hold of an old city directory, telephone book, or a Sanborn map of the area.
The Princess Theater building is at 120 N. Main Street. It actually looks to be in pretty good shape, in both street view and satellite photos.
The March 13, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item about thenew theater being built at White Hall:
“White Hall, Ill—Theater & Two Stores: 1 sty. & bas. 40x135. Archt. C. W. Buckingham, Morrison blk., Jacksonville, Ill. Owner White Hall Theater Co., C. Lowenstein, mgr., White Hall. Gen. contr. let to F. L. Grant, White Hall.”
This item is from the November 6, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“PRINCESS THEATER, WHITE HALL, ILL.
“On August 28, last, the White Hall Theater Company, Inc., of White Hall, Ill., opened its Princess theater. The initial picture to be played at the house was the feature entitled ‘The Christian,’ and the ticket office registered 1,037 paid admissions for the first day of business.
“The outside dimensions of the structure are 40 x 138 feet.
It has a seating capacity of 500 and cost $19,000 to erect.
It has been equipped with a 25-foot stage. The manager of
the Princess is Carl Lowenstein.”
In 1911 White Hall had a movie house called the Bungalow Theatre. I haven’t found any details about it, or what became of it.
Information about Syracuse is very thin in the theater industry trade journals, and researching it is complicated by the fact that it shares its name with a much larger city in New York. Except for the single mention of the Theatorium in 1917, I haven’t found the town mentioned until 1937, when the Pickwick was built. Syracuse does not appear in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, which might not signify that the Theatorium was not yet in operation then, as the directory was not exhaustive.
The Film Daily’s yearbooks are not sufficiently detailed to determine if the Theatorium was the same house as the Oakland, or the Oakland the same house as the Community, but Syracuse being as small as it was it does seem likely that these were all sequential names for the same theater. In any case, the early theaters in Syracuse had to have been far smaller than the Pickwick. Assuming that they were on the same site as the Pickwick, they must have originated as a storefront conversion and occupied only a portion of the ground floor of that building.
Indiana Memory says that the Oakland was on the site of the Pickwick, but doesn’t mention the Theatorium or the Community Theatre. It also mistakenly says that the house first burned in 1927 rather than 1925, which reduces their credibility.
That the Pickwick would have used part of the original brick walls of the Victorian building does seem likely, but it also seems likely that much of the Pickwick’s 1937 auditorium would have been new construction. The upper floor of the back part of the building was probably removed entirely and the walls cut down quite a bit. Also, judging from the early photo with the group of men standing in front of the original building it looks to me like it was not as deep as the Pickwick building is. For one thing, the early building does not extend to the part of the side alley that runs steeply uphill, but the Pickwick’s building does. The chimney does look like it was in the same place, but that place was about halfway back on the original building while it is less than a third of the way back on the Pickwick’s building.
Also, though there was probably a lot of wood used in the construction of the original building on the site, that facade in the old photo doesn’t look much like wood to me. The nature of the detailing and of the finish looks very much like the cast iron that was used on tens of thousands of buildings in the last half of the 19th century and even into the early years of the 20th century. Builders could select from a vast array of pre-cast structural and decorative modular elements featured in catalogs and have them delivered to the building site. Just bolt them together and attach them to the rest of the structure and there’s your front, as fancy or as plain as you please.
The Texan Theatre’s first public event (other than the open house) will a free country music concert on Friday, May 20. The official web site is listing three more free events over the next couple of months, and two that will charge admission (click the “SHOWS” link at the top of the home page.)
This article from the Tyler Morning Telegraph has a slide show with a few current photos. The auditorium has a flat floor, portable seating, and the stage end is all glass. Essentially, only three walls of the original building remain. The renovation was designed by the Austin/Dallas architectural firm Architexas.
This item is from the February 6, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Hamilton, Ohio. — C. J. Kilian, formerly half owner of the Princess, is now the sole owner of this pretty little playhouse. Mr. Kilian bought the half interest of Dr. J. B. Scott, who acquired it from Lou Wittman some five months ago. The new owner is not a stranger in Hamilton; having come from Dayton about sixteen months ago, he formed a co-partnership with Lou Wittman and established the first successful moving picture theater in Hamilton. At this time Mr. Kilian also owned the Dreamland Theater in Dayton, which he sold last October and since then has been devoting his time and attention to the Princess. It was due to Mr. Kilian’s knowledge of the moving picture business which made the Princess a success from the start. The theater will be under his personal management and the latest and best motion pictures and illustrated songs will be shown.”
Schwalm and Rothleder were the operators of the Jewel Theatre in 1907, and Schwalm was in the movie theater business in several cities from 1905 until retiring in 1931, but I’ve found no evidence that either of them was ever an architect.
Rothleder was in the piano business, according to this item from the phonograph industry trade publication Talking Machine World:
“Dayton, O., Feb. 1, 1909.
C. F. Rothleder, a prominent piano dealer of Pittsburg, Pa., and a member of the firm of Rothleder & Schwalm, who own several of the largest picture theaters throughout the country, including the Jewel and the Third Street Theater in this city, was recently in the city looking after his business interests. Mr. Rothleder is optimistic over business conditions.”
The January 26, 1971, issue of the Hamilton Daily News and Journal ran an article about the Jewel Theatre building, which was about to be demolished. It said that John A. Schwalm and John H. Broomball, directors of the Jewel Photoplay Company, opened the Jewel on May 1, 1909, and the house closed in March, 1926.
The Jewel Photoplay Company had taken over operation of the Grand Theatre in 1918, and had built and opened the Rialto Theatre in 1920. In 1931 the company leased the Grand (renamed the Regent by 1924) and the Rialto to Paramount-Publix. Publix operated the Rialto, but kept the Regent closed.
When the Jewel Theatre building was demolished in 1971, the January 26 issue of the Hamilton Daily News and Journal published an article about it that included information about Hamilton’s other early theaters. One thing it said was that in 1926, when the Jewel closed, the Grand Theatre had already been renamed the Regent Theatre. In fact, Hamilton’s newspapers were advertising the Regent Theatre at least as early as 1924.
The FDY’s from 1927 through 1929 double-list the house both as the Grand and the Regent. Only the Palace and the Rialto are listed for Hamilton in 1930— quite a comedown for a city that had nine theaters (not including the double listing for the Grand) in 1929. The Regent is then listed from 1931 through 1937, but except for 1931 is always listed as closed. It was apparently never wired for sound.
The reason for the Regent’s long desuetude might have been revealed in a June 19, 1931, article in the Hamilton Evening Journal, which said that the Jewel Photoplay Company had sublet the Rialto and Regent Theatres to Paramount-Publix, the Rialto for ten years and the Regent for one year with an option to renew annually.
The rent on the Regent was quite low, $2,750 a year, and the agreement allowed Publix to use the house for such events as boxing and wrestling matches. It could be that Publix simply kept renewing its lease in order to prevent any other company from reopening and operating the 700-seat Regent in competition with its new Paramount Theatre and the Rialto, which Publix was also operating. It essentially cost them nothing to keep the Regent closed, as the agreement stipulated that if the lease on the Regent was terminated the $13,001 rent on the Rialto would automatically increase by the $2,750 amount of the rent on the Regent.
This item from The Moving Picture World of March 14, 1925, mentions the Lyric Theatre and another house that is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures (unless it is just a missing aka for another theater):<blockquote.“C. Zost, who operates the Lyric Theatre, Hamilton, Ohio, has acquired the Gem in that city.”
It is still possible, though increasingly unlikely, that the Princess Theatre will come back to life in a new building. This article posted to the Oxford Patch on May 18, 2018, says that the construction of a new Princess Theatre building took place in 2015, but that the ground floor, intended as a location for the theater, remains incomplete. If financing to finish the theater cannot be found the owner of the building is likely to lease the space for some other use.
These abstracts of articles from issues of The Rochester Sentinel published in 1913 pertain to the second Kai-Gee Theatre. The first item is from the issue of Thursday, May 8:
“New Theater to be Most Modern
“Rochester will be able to boast of a really high class vaudeville and MOTION PICTURE THEATER, as well as a handsome addition to the business district of the city, when the J. F. DYSERT building for which excavating is now being done just north of the DILLON BLOCK, is completed. W. H. KENDRICK is the architect.
“… . will be conducted by Mr. & Mrs. Roy SHANKS, who have for some time had the KAI GEE and STAR theaters… . . [building described]
“The basement will be large and exceedingly well lighted, and will be a splendid location for a restaurant. A stairway leads down to it from the main lobby … . .”
The second item is from the issue of Tuesday, December 16:
“New Theater to Open Dec. 24
“Final arrangements have been made for the opening of the new K. G. THEATER on Christmas eve, Wednesday, December 24th. The initial performance will be featured with vaudeville acts, three reels of motion pictures and music by an orchestra of 14 pieces.
“The new house when finished, will present a splendid appearance. The room will accommodate 300 seats far enough apart that no one will have to arise to let people pass. The lighting is made as nearly perfect as possible. A heavy velvet rug will cover the entire length of the aisle.
“People in all parts of the house will have a good view of the stage as it is elevated about six feet. The pictures will be cast upon a mirror screen which can be rolled up when the stage is needed for vaudeville acts. Mr. SHANKS has purchased one of the best motion picture machines made. It contains a double magazine feed which enables the operator to handle a two reel picture without stoppping.
“The doors on Christmas eve will be opened at 6:30 o'clock.”
I’ve been unable to find anything about architect W. H. Kendrick. A moderately famous architect of that name practiced in England in the late 19th century, and a builder/architect named William H. Kendrick practiced in Tampa, Florida, in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, but the Rochester architect does not appear to have been either of them.
Google Maps is loopy from this address. It is fetching Hamilton, Illinois. This is probably because there is no Main Street in Hamilton, Missouri. The correct address is most likely 302 N. Davis Street, which is now the site of a parking lot on the northeast corner of Davis and Bird Street.
They misspelled the name of the city, but the April 8, 1930, issue of The Film Daily did note the renovation of this house:
The Billings Gazette provides this web page about the theaters in Billings, and it says that the World was closed in 1978 and demolished to provide parking space for a bank. The following year Theatre Operators, Inc. opened the World West Theatre at Rimrock Mall, its name probably being a tribute to the chain’s lost downtown house.
According to the Dec 12, 2016, issue of the Billings Gazette, the former World West Theatres, located at 2520 Central Avenue (just off Stewart Park Road, at the northwest corner of the Rimrock Mall property), was being demolished. The building is still visible in Google’s satellite and street views, which have not yet been updated, and I’ve set street view to the proper location.
The Gazette says the house was operated by the same company that had the Rimrock 4 (later 5) inside the mall. That was a Theatre Operators, Inc. house, a chain that was later taken over by Carmike, so Carmike must have gotten the twin as well.
The World West was most likely named in tribute to Theatre Operators' World Theatre in downtown Billings, closed and demolished for a parking lot the year before the twin was opened.
Incidentally, the vintage photo uploaded by Predator indicates that the Ideal must have been open as late as 1960, as “Jazz Boat” (I have no idea why they added that H on the marquee) with Anthony Newley and Anne Aubrey was released that year.
An Ideal Theatre at Milford is mentioned in the October 4, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World, along with the Opera House and a house called the Lyceum Theatre. The Ideal was presenting “Quo Vadis” while a locally-made film called “Famous Granite Quarries” was appearing at the Lyceum. The Opera House was featuring talking movies.
A timeline of events in Milford on this web page says that the Ideal Theatre opened on April 20, 1912. The Ideal was not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which was not exhaustive, but was mentioned in trade journals occasionally through the 1910s and 1920s and as late as the 1940s.
The 1914-15 Directory did list the Lyceum, located on Main Street, and the Music Hall, which was an aka for the Opera house, as well as a Nipmuc Park Theatre (actually a seasonal operation in Mendon, Massachusetts) and a house called the Tripoli Theatre located at 12 E. Main Street.
The Capitol Theatre at Winchendon does not appear in the state’s Department of Public Safety annual reports until the one issued for the year ending November 30, 1928. That year, the Capitol Theatre, operated by Fred J. Sharby and J. Mathieu, recieved a rating of Good.
This indicates that the Capitol opened either in 1927, after the inspections were carried out, or early enough in 1928 to be included in that year’s theater inspections. The Capitol was probably the proposed theater noted in this item from Exhibitors Daily of January 25, 1927
I’ve been unable to find more about architect J. A. Tuck, but Fred Sharby had previously operated theaters in Winchendon called the Gem and the National.Ram9214: I just reset the Google street view to what I believe was the location of the North Star Cinema, judging from the vintage photo uploaded by elmorovivo. The building occupied by Joske’s in the photo now houses a branch of Dillard’s. The center’s map on its web site shows several small shops flanking the new mall entrance (which can be seen in street view) that has been punched through the theater space. The stores displacing the theater include Lens Crafters, Pac Sun, Journeys, Gurinsky’s Jewelers, Justice, and Urban Cowboy.
The history page of the Center’s web site says that Jacob and Sarah Eskin hired Boscobel, Wisconsin architect Joseph G. Durrant to design the Eskin Theatre. Durrant had earlier designed the Blaine Theatre at Boscobel and the Fort Theatre at Montfort, Wisconsin. The Eskin Theatre opened on March 4, 1937. Sarah Eskin received title to the Eskin and the Richland Theatre in a divorce settlement granted on March 29.
The Blaine Theatre was designed by local architect Joseph G. Durrant. Durrant established his practice in Boscobel in 1933, and the Blaine was one of two theater/community center projects he designed the following year, the other being at Montfort, Wisconsin. The Montfort building has been (insensitively) remodeled and its Fort Theatre converted into a post office, but the only desecration at Boscobel is a bland addition to the community center building.
The Fort Theatre was part of the Montfort Community Center, built in 1934-35 with funding from the Works Progress Administration. It was designed by architect Joseph G. Durrant of Boscobel, Wisconsin. Durrant designed another streamline modern community center/theater project for Boscobel the same year. Unlike the Fort Theatre, Boscobel’s Blaine Theatre is still in operation and largely intact.
The Monroe Theatre has an active Facebook page, and posts items about the ongoing efforts to renovate the house and reopen it as a performing arts theater. This post from March 8 reproduces an article from the Monroe County Beacon noting a $20,000 grant to the Monroe Theatre Committee from the local Baker Foundation. The grant will be used to fund a feasibility study.
Another post reveals that the Monroe Theatre opened on December 2, 1939.
MSC77: A brief article in Boxoffice of May 14, 1962, did say that the new Forman-Nace house in suburban Phoenix was called the Bethany West Theatre, but didn’t say why.
I just checked CinemaTour and they list houses called the Amusu at both 122 E. Main and 106 W. Main. If they were two different theaters we can’t be sure which of them it was that was listed in the 1922 Cahn guide.
The Amusu was in operation at least as early as 1921, as it was listed in the moving picture theaters section of the 1922 Cahn-Hill guide, published in late 1921.
There might be a problem with the address we have listed for the Amusu. The last building on the even-numbered side of the 100 block of E. Main Street is at 110, currently occupied by the Hart Gallery. East of it is a triangular parking lot at the corner of Rossville Street, beyond which is the 200 block. I don’t think the numbers would have jumped all the way to 122 in one lot.
To add more confusion, Mike Rivest’s list of Chattanooga theaters has the Amusu at 106 West Main. It would be helpful if somebody could get hold of an old city directory, telephone book, or a Sanborn map of the area.
The Princess Theater building is at 120 N. Main Street. It actually looks to be in pretty good shape, in both street view and satellite photos.
The March 13, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item about thenew theater being built at White Hall:
This item is from the November 6, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World:In 1911 White Hall had a movie house called the Bungalow Theatre. I haven’t found any details about it, or what became of it.Information about Syracuse is very thin in the theater industry trade journals, and researching it is complicated by the fact that it shares its name with a much larger city in New York. Except for the single mention of the Theatorium in 1917, I haven’t found the town mentioned until 1937, when the Pickwick was built. Syracuse does not appear in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, which might not signify that the Theatorium was not yet in operation then, as the directory was not exhaustive.
The Film Daily’s yearbooks are not sufficiently detailed to determine if the Theatorium was the same house as the Oakland, or the Oakland the same house as the Community, but Syracuse being as small as it was it does seem likely that these were all sequential names for the same theater. In any case, the early theaters in Syracuse had to have been far smaller than the Pickwick. Assuming that they were on the same site as the Pickwick, they must have originated as a storefront conversion and occupied only a portion of the ground floor of that building.
Indiana Memory says that the Oakland was on the site of the Pickwick, but doesn’t mention the Theatorium or the Community Theatre. It also mistakenly says that the house first burned in 1927 rather than 1925, which reduces their credibility.
That the Pickwick would have used part of the original brick walls of the Victorian building does seem likely, but it also seems likely that much of the Pickwick’s 1937 auditorium would have been new construction. The upper floor of the back part of the building was probably removed entirely and the walls cut down quite a bit. Also, judging from the early photo with the group of men standing in front of the original building it looks to me like it was not as deep as the Pickwick building is. For one thing, the early building does not extend to the part of the side alley that runs steeply uphill, but the Pickwick’s building does. The chimney does look like it was in the same place, but that place was about halfway back on the original building while it is less than a third of the way back on the Pickwick’s building.
Also, though there was probably a lot of wood used in the construction of the original building on the site, that facade in the old photo doesn’t look much like wood to me. The nature of the detailing and of the finish looks very much like the cast iron that was used on tens of thousands of buildings in the last half of the 19th century and even into the early years of the 20th century. Builders could select from a vast array of pre-cast structural and decorative modular elements featured in catalogs and have them delivered to the building site. Just bolt them together and attach them to the rest of the structure and there’s your front, as fancy or as plain as you please.
The Texan Theatre’s first public event (other than the open house) will a free country music concert on Friday, May 20. The official web site is listing three more free events over the next couple of months, and two that will charge admission (click the “SHOWS” link at the top of the home page.)
This article from the Tyler Morning Telegraph has a slide show with a few current photos. The auditorium has a flat floor, portable seating, and the stage end is all glass. Essentially, only three walls of the original building remain. The renovation was designed by the Austin/Dallas architectural firm Architexas.
This item is from the February 6, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World:
Schwalm and Rothleder were the operators of the Jewel Theatre in 1907, and Schwalm was in the movie theater business in several cities from 1905 until retiring in 1931, but I’ve found no evidence that either of them was ever an architect.
Rothleder was in the piano business, according to this item from the phonograph industry trade publication Talking Machine World:
The January 26, 1971, issue of the Hamilton Daily News and Journal ran an article about the Jewel Theatre building, which was about to be demolished. It said that John A. Schwalm and John H. Broomball, directors of the Jewel Photoplay Company, opened the Jewel on May 1, 1909, and the house closed in March, 1926.
The Jewel Photoplay Company had taken over operation of the Grand Theatre in 1918, and had built and opened the Rialto Theatre in 1920. In 1931 the company leased the Grand (renamed the Regent by 1924) and the Rialto to Paramount-Publix. Publix operated the Rialto, but kept the Regent closed.
When the Jewel Theatre building was demolished in 1971, the January 26 issue of the Hamilton Daily News and Journal published an article about it that included information about Hamilton’s other early theaters. One thing it said was that in 1926, when the Jewel closed, the Grand Theatre had already been renamed the Regent Theatre. In fact, Hamilton’s newspapers were advertising the Regent Theatre at least as early as 1924.
The FDY’s from 1927 through 1929 double-list the house both as the Grand and the Regent. Only the Palace and the Rialto are listed for Hamilton in 1930— quite a comedown for a city that had nine theaters (not including the double listing for the Grand) in 1929. The Regent is then listed from 1931 through 1937, but except for 1931 is always listed as closed. It was apparently never wired for sound.
The reason for the Regent’s long desuetude might have been revealed in a June 19, 1931, article in the Hamilton Evening Journal, which said that the Jewel Photoplay Company had sublet the Rialto and Regent Theatres to Paramount-Publix, the Rialto for ten years and the Regent for one year with an option to renew annually.
The rent on the Regent was quite low, $2,750 a year, and the agreement allowed Publix to use the house for such events as boxing and wrestling matches. It could be that Publix simply kept renewing its lease in order to prevent any other company from reopening and operating the 700-seat Regent in competition with its new Paramount Theatre and the Rialto, which Publix was also operating. It essentially cost them nothing to keep the Regent closed, as the agreement stipulated that if the lease on the Regent was terminated the $13,001 rent on the Rialto would automatically increase by the $2,750 amount of the rent on the Regent.
This item from The Moving Picture World of March 14, 1925, mentions the Lyric Theatre and another house that is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures (unless it is just a missing aka for another theater):<blockquote.“C. Zost, who operates the Lyric Theatre, Hamilton, Ohio, has acquired the Gem in that city.”
It is still possible, though increasingly unlikely, that the Princess Theatre will come back to life in a new building. This article posted to the Oxford Patch on May 18, 2018, says that the construction of a new Princess Theatre building took place in 2015, but that the ground floor, intended as a location for the theater, remains incomplete. If financing to finish the theater cannot be found the owner of the building is likely to lease the space for some other use.
These abstracts of articles from issues of The Rochester Sentinel published in 1913 pertain to the second Kai-Gee Theatre. The first item is from the issue of Thursday, May 8:
The second item is from the issue of Tuesday, December 16:I’ve been unable to find anything about architect W. H. Kendrick. A moderately famous architect of that name practiced in England in the late 19th century, and a builder/architect named William H. Kendrick practiced in Tampa, Florida, in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, but the Rochester architect does not appear to have been either of them.Google Maps is loopy from this address. It is fetching Hamilton, Illinois. This is probably because there is no Main Street in Hamilton, Missouri. The correct address is most likely 302 N. Davis Street, which is now the site of a parking lot on the northeast corner of Davis and Bird Street.