The April 20, 1907, issue of the Chicago financial journal The Economist had this item:
“George 0. Garnsey has completed plans and will take figures for a three-story addition, 43x90, to the front of a theater in Urbana, Ohio, for the Clifford Amusement Company. The first floor will contain the main entrance, a store and restaurant, and the upper floors will contain an armory. It will cost $25,000.”
As George Otis Garnsey (1840-1923) was a fairly well-known theater architect (some forty theaters and opera houses, mostly in smaller midwestern cities), it’s possible that he also designed the Clifford Theatre as it was originally built in 1905.
The August 7, 1915, issue of The American Contractor said that contracts were being let for a 50'x135' theater building at East Chicago for Joseph Hartley. The project had been designed by architect L. Harry Warriner.
The October, 1907, issue of the trade journal Concrete had this item about the Princess Theatre:
“The Princess theater, just completed, enjoys the distinction of being the only theater structure in the city which is constructed entirely of reinforced concrete. It has a seating capacity of 1,600 and its total cost was in the neighborhood of $180,000.”
This web site has abstracts from early issues of the Richford Gazette. There is a gap between 1917 and 1925. The 1925 paper mentions theaters called the Park and the Colonial, but the 1917 paper mentions only the Colonial, so the Park must have opened sometime between 1918 and 1925.
The 1915 papers indicate that the Colonial was in the Town Hall, and showed its first movies in April that year. The August 14, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World also mentioned a theater in Richford, but it was called the Lyric.
Also, I’ve found the exact location of the Park Theatre, thanks to the two buildings behind it in the vintage photo, both of which are still standing at the west end of Church Street at the L-shaped corner of Elm Avenue, though the view of them from River Street is now blocked by trees.
The Park was on what is now a parking lot on the north side of River Street about midway between Town Street and North Avenue. It is in between an old grey house to the west and a small frame building occupied by the Wash-N-Save laundromat to the east. The United Methodist Church up the block to the west is at 86 River Street, so I’d estimate the theater’s address as approximately 62 River Street.
Brandt Studio Theatres planned to build fifteen new houses in 1970, according to a brief item in Boxoffice of January 26 that year, but I think the Nashua location might have been the only one completed. John J. McNamara was the architect for the projects.
All were to have been small houses of the automated type. The only other locations mentioned in the item were 350-seat single-screeners in Greenport and Plattsburgh, New York. The Nashua location was to be a twin. The Nashua Telegraph of June 11, 1970, said that the twin was nearing completion.
General Cinema was issued a permit to build two more screens at its Brockton Westgate complex on December 29, 1969, according to an article in Boxoffice of January 26, 1970. Construction (by L. E. Hogg Construction of Hartford, Connecticut) was slated to begin as soon as the weather permitted. Estimated cost of the project was $400,000.
The Four Seasons Cinemas were a fourplex being operated by Esquire Theaters of America in 1970, when the January 26 issue of Boxoffice reported that cinemas 5 and 6 were then under construction, slated for a March 5 opening date.
Esquire had two other projects underway; a second screen for the Paris Cinema in Providence, and a two-screen house for Boston, which ended up being the single screen Garden Theatre. The architect for the Garden was Burt W. Federman, and it seems likely that Esquire would have chosen the same architect for its other projects. Federman designed or remodeled theaters totaling over 1,000 screens between 1966 and 1983, according to a 1983 article in The New York Times.
Esquire Theaters of America was the original operator of the Paris Cinema, according to Boxoffice of January 26, 1970. The Paris Cinema 2 was under construction at that time, with a projected opening date of February 16.
It was one of three projects Esquire had underway, including an expansion of the chain’s multiplex in East Providence and the Garden Theatre in Boston. The Architect for the Garden Theatre was Burt W. Federman, so it seems likely Esquire would have had him design their other projects as well.
Boxoffice of January 26, 1970, said that Esquire Cinemas of America was building a twin cinema at 19 Arlington Street in Boston. Target dates for completion were March 15 for Cinema 1 and May 15 for Cinema 2, access for which was to be provided both by stairs and an elevator.
Although Boxoffice reported that a permit had been issued for a twin, it appears that only the one auditorium was completed. Bert Fedderman [sic] was the architect and decorator for the project, Boxoffice said. An article in The New York Times of November 7, 1983, quoted architect Burt Federman as saying that he had built more than 1,000 theaters, all of them multi-screen, since 1966. Maybe he forgot that the Garden Theatre ended up as a single-screen house.
The former Lisbon Playhouse reopened as the Lisbon Cinema on December 19, 1969, as noted in the January 26, 1970, issue of Boxoffice. The new lessee was long-time Massachusetts exhibitor Karl Doran. The theater had been bought by Anthony Corey in October, 1956, who had operated the house until 1963, after which it had been used only intermittently for community events.
Google’s street view shows a bowling alley at this intersection now. I wonder if it’s the same building, and it reverted to its earlier use after theater closed? Though perhaps the bowling alley’s old building became available for conversion to a theater in 1969 because that was when the bowling alley moved to the building it’s now in?
The Windsor is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The directory was not exhaustive, though, many small theaters being left out, so the Windsor might still have been in operation that late.
This twin had a brief life. It had already been closed when the October 20, 1985 issue of the Albuquerque Journal reported that it was to be removed to make way for a new 53,000 square foot shopping center to be built on its site at 4200 Wyoming Blvd. NE.
Rather than being slated for demolition, the article said, the theater building was to be moved to a site at Yale Blvd. SE and Southern Ave. SE. How the developer proposed to move a large precast concrete building more than seven miles I don’t know, unless perhaps it was dismantled and reassembled. I’ve checked Google street view of the area around Yale and Southern, and there are a couple of buildings that might have been built using the theater’s parts, but there’s no way to tell if one of them actually was.
The Tepee Theatre was mentioned in the August 17, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Red Cloud, Neb. — Geo. J. Warren has again come into control of the Teepe [sic] theatre here, as well as the Orpheum.”
411 N. Webster is the address of the Red Cloud Opera House, so 413 must be either the storefront on the ground floor of the Opera House and to the right of its entrance, or the building immediately north of the Opera house. I can’t read the addresses in Google’s street view at this location.
A. J. Inks, who had the Crystal Theatre rebuilt in 1924, had taken over the house in 1909, as noted in the July 9 issue of The Moving Picture World that year:
“Ligonier, Ind. — A. J. Inks, of Toledo, has purchased the Crystal Theater here from Baum & Regula, and has taken possession.”
Albert John “Bert” Inks (misspelled as “Jinks” in the trade journal item I cited in my previous comment) was a native of Ligonier, and was a professional baseball player in the late 19th century. A couple of books with biographical sketches of early baseball players say that Inks operated the Crystal until his death in 1941.
The August 17, 1918 issue of The Moving Picture World said that Inks had also taken over the White Light Theatre in Ligonier, and planned to make improvements to the house.
An 1897 directory for Portland has several businesses with quarters in the Auditorium block on West Walnut Street, and the only theater listed at Portland in the Cahn guides for over a decade is the Auditorium. That had to be the Opera House.
Cahn guides list the Auditorium as a 1,000-seat, second floor house with a stage 66x32 feet. The theater was probably gutted and converted for a ground floor auditorium when it became a full-time movie house.
The Worcester Memorial Auditorium was designed by New York architect Frederic Charles Hirons in collaboration with the Worcester firm L. W. Briggs Company (Lucius Wallace Briggs.)
The “Little Theatre” sign is still in place above the entrance to the house. The approximate address would be 62 Harvard Street.
Konrad Schiecke’s Historic Movie Theatres in Illinois, 1883–1960 says that the Plaza Theatre opened in 1915 and closed in 1929. This is probably correct, as the Plaza advertised in The Dispatch, Moline’s daily paper, in the early 1920s.
The book also says that the theater has been demolished, but from Google’s satellite view it looks like the auditorium is still there, but the original entrance building has been replaced by a modern structure.
The end of Brotman’s Mirror Theatre was reported in the January 7, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News:
“The Mirror Theatre at Moline,
Illinois, owned by I. Brotman and Son, was totally destroyed by fire last week. Whether or not the house will be rebuilt is as yet undetermined.”
As it turned out, the house was not rebuilt. The building on the site now was built instead, and originally housed a Montgomery Ward department store.
This item appeared in the January 14, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Moline’s new picture house, at Sixth avenue and Fifteenth street, has been named The Mirror, a prize of $5 has been awarded to Miss Bernice Oppenheimer, in a contest. A mirror screen is a feature.”
“Runaway June” which is advertised on a banner in the vintage photo of the Mirror was a serial released in 1915. The Domino Film Company’s short “Tricked” was also a 1915 release.
Konrad Schiecke’s Historic Movie Theatres in Illinois, 1883–1960 says that the Abby Theatre opened in 1949 and closed in 1965, with a hiatus in operation between 1961 and late 1963. I did find an ad for a live concert at the Abby in the Galesburg Register-Mail of February 28, 1974, so the theater was still intact at least that late.
Schiecke also gives the location as S. Main Street, not N. Main, and says the building is still standing but the exterior has been altered, as it originally featured three colors of glass tiles. It was also the town’s first theater built specifically for movies, Abingdon’s earlier houses having all been converted storefronts, except for the old Opera House, built in 1906.
Almost all of downtown Abingdon’s surviving buildings are obviously quite old, but there is one building at 114 S. Main which would be a likely location for the Abby Theatre. It even looks as though the walls were built of concrete block instead of the red brick that prevails in most of the district. Although there are a couple of other buildings with modernized fronts in the area, none of them look as though they’d have been built as late as 1948.
I’ve been unable to find any photos of the Abby’s exterior, but this Facebook page has a photo of an audience of children inside the darkened auditorium, dating from around 1958.
I just noticed that the 1950 newspaper article Brian Paris uploaded to the photo page says that the Texan opened on April 23, 1948, so the completion of renovations just missed the theater’s 70th anniversary.
The Texan Theatre opened in 1948 and closed in 1984, according to this article about the recent renovations and imminent reopening.
An entirely new roof had to be built on the structure, which had been vacant for more than three decades. Nothing remains of the original interior, but the vintage “Texan” sign has been refurbished and reinstalled on the facade.
An open house will be held on May 15, 2018, but there is no word yet on what sort of events the theater might host. It will be available for private rentals, so perhaps for now it should be classified as an event center.
The April 20, 1907, issue of the Chicago financial journal The Economist had this item:
As George Otis Garnsey (1840-1923) was a fairly well-known theater architect (some forty theaters and opera houses, mostly in smaller midwestern cities), it’s possible that he also designed the Clifford Theatre as it was originally built in 1905.The August 7, 1915, issue of The American Contractor said that contracts were being let for a 50'x135' theater building at East Chicago for Joseph Hartley. The project had been designed by architect L. Harry Warriner.
The October, 1907, issue of the trade journal Concrete had this item about the Princess Theatre:
It’s still a hotel and even has a web site.
This web site has abstracts from early issues of the Richford Gazette. There is a gap between 1917 and 1925. The 1925 paper mentions theaters called the Park and the Colonial, but the 1917 paper mentions only the Colonial, so the Park must have opened sometime between 1918 and 1925.
The 1915 papers indicate that the Colonial was in the Town Hall, and showed its first movies in April that year. The August 14, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World also mentioned a theater in Richford, but it was called the Lyric.
Also, I’ve found the exact location of the Park Theatre, thanks to the two buildings behind it in the vintage photo, both of which are still standing at the west end of Church Street at the L-shaped corner of Elm Avenue, though the view of them from River Street is now blocked by trees.
The Park was on what is now a parking lot on the north side of River Street about midway between Town Street and North Avenue. It is in between an old grey house to the west and a small frame building occupied by the Wash-N-Save laundromat to the east. The United Methodist Church up the block to the west is at 86 River Street, so I’d estimate the theater’s address as approximately 62 River Street.
Brandt Studio Theatres planned to build fifteen new houses in 1970, according to a brief item in Boxoffice of January 26 that year, but I think the Nashua location might have been the only one completed. John J. McNamara was the architect for the projects.
All were to have been small houses of the automated type. The only other locations mentioned in the item were 350-seat single-screeners in Greenport and Plattsburgh, New York. The Nashua location was to be a twin. The Nashua Telegraph of June 11, 1970, said that the twin was nearing completion.
General Cinema was issued a permit to build two more screens at its Brockton Westgate complex on December 29, 1969, according to an article in Boxoffice of January 26, 1970. Construction (by L. E. Hogg Construction of Hartford, Connecticut) was slated to begin as soon as the weather permitted. Estimated cost of the project was $400,000.
The Four Seasons Cinemas were a fourplex being operated by Esquire Theaters of America in 1970, when the January 26 issue of Boxoffice reported that cinemas 5 and 6 were then under construction, slated for a March 5 opening date.
Esquire had two other projects underway; a second screen for the Paris Cinema in Providence, and a two-screen house for Boston, which ended up being the single screen Garden Theatre. The architect for the Garden was Burt W. Federman, and it seems likely that Esquire would have chosen the same architect for its other projects. Federman designed or remodeled theaters totaling over 1,000 screens between 1966 and 1983, according to a 1983 article in The New York Times.
Esquire Theaters of America was the original operator of the Paris Cinema, according to Boxoffice of January 26, 1970. The Paris Cinema 2 was under construction at that time, with a projected opening date of February 16.
It was one of three projects Esquire had underway, including an expansion of the chain’s multiplex in East Providence and the Garden Theatre in Boston. The Architect for the Garden Theatre was Burt W. Federman, so it seems likely Esquire would have had him design their other projects as well.
Boxoffice of January 26, 1970, said that Esquire Cinemas of America was building a twin cinema at 19 Arlington Street in Boston. Target dates for completion were March 15 for Cinema 1 and May 15 for Cinema 2, access for which was to be provided both by stairs and an elevator.
Although Boxoffice reported that a permit had been issued for a twin, it appears that only the one auditorium was completed. Bert Fedderman [sic] was the architect and decorator for the project, Boxoffice said. An article in The New York Times of November 7, 1983, quoted architect Burt Federman as saying that he had built more than 1,000 theaters, all of them multi-screen, since 1966. Maybe he forgot that the Garden Theatre ended up as a single-screen house.
The former Lisbon Playhouse reopened as the Lisbon Cinema on December 19, 1969, as noted in the January 26, 1970, issue of Boxoffice. The new lessee was long-time Massachusetts exhibitor Karl Doran. The theater had been bought by Anthony Corey in October, 1956, who had operated the house until 1963, after which it had been used only intermittently for community events.
Google’s street view shows a bowling alley at this intersection now. I wonder if it’s the same building, and it reverted to its earlier use after theater closed? Though perhaps the bowling alley’s old building became available for conversion to a theater in 1969 because that was when the bowling alley moved to the building it’s now in?
The Windsor is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The directory was not exhaustive, though, many small theaters being left out, so the Windsor might still have been in operation that late.
This twin had a brief life. It had already been closed when the October 20, 1985 issue of theAlbuquerque Journal reported that it was to be removed to make way for a new 53,000 square foot shopping center to be built on its site at 4200 Wyoming Blvd. NE.
Rather than being slated for demolition, the article said, the theater building was to be moved to a site at Yale Blvd. SE and Southern Ave. SE. How the developer proposed to move a large precast concrete building more than seven miles I don’t know, unless perhaps it was dismantled and reassembled. I’ve checked Google street view of the area around Yale and Southern, and there are a couple of buildings that might have been built using the theater’s parts, but there’s no way to tell if one of them actually was.
The Tepee Theatre was mentioned in the August 17, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World:
411 N. Webster is the address of the Red Cloud Opera House, so 413 must be either the storefront on the ground floor of the Opera House and to the right of its entrance, or the building immediately north of the Opera house. I can’t read the addresses in Google’s street view at this location.A. J. Inks, who had the Crystal Theatre rebuilt in 1924, had taken over the house in 1909, as noted in the July 9 issue of The Moving Picture World that year:
Albert John “Bert” Inks (misspelled as “Jinks” in the trade journal item I cited in my previous comment) was a native of Ligonier, and was a professional baseball player in the late 19th century. A couple of books with biographical sketches of early baseball players say that Inks operated the Crystal until his death in 1941.The August 17, 1918 issue of The Moving Picture World said that Inks had also taken over the White Light Theatre in Ligonier, and planned to make improvements to the house.
This theater’s ads in the Ligonier Leader use the name White Light Theatre, not Whitelite.
An 1897 directory for Portland has several businesses with quarters in the Auditorium block on West Walnut Street, and the only theater listed at Portland in the Cahn guides for over a decade is the Auditorium. That had to be the Opera House.
Cahn guides list the Auditorium as a 1,000-seat, second floor house with a stage 66x32 feet. The theater was probably gutted and converted for a ground floor auditorium when it became a full-time movie house.
The Worcester Memorial Auditorium was designed by New York architect Frederic Charles Hirons in collaboration with the Worcester firm L. W. Briggs Company (Lucius Wallace Briggs.)
The “Little Theatre” sign is still in place above the entrance to the house. The approximate address would be 62 Harvard Street.
Konrad Schiecke’s Historic Movie Theatres in Illinois, 1883–1960 says that the Plaza Theatre opened in 1915 and closed in 1929. This is probably correct, as the Plaza advertised in The Dispatch, Moline’s daily paper, in the early 1920s.
The book also says that the theater has been demolished, but from Google’s satellite view it looks like the auditorium is still there, but the original entrance building has been replaced by a modern structure.
The end of Brotman’s Mirror Theatre was reported in the January 7, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News:
As it turned out, the house was not rebuilt. The building on the site now was built instead, and originally housed a Montgomery Ward department store.This item appeared in the January 14, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Runaway June” which is advertised on a banner in the vintage photo of the Mirror was a serial released in 1915. The Domino Film Company’s short “Tricked” was also a 1915 release.Konrad Schiecke’s Historic Movie Theatres in Illinois, 1883–1960 says that the Abby Theatre opened in 1949 and closed in 1965, with a hiatus in operation between 1961 and late 1963. I did find an ad for a live concert at the Abby in the Galesburg Register-Mail of February 28, 1974, so the theater was still intact at least that late.
Schiecke also gives the location as S. Main Street, not N. Main, and says the building is still standing but the exterior has been altered, as it originally featured three colors of glass tiles. It was also the town’s first theater built specifically for movies, Abingdon’s earlier houses having all been converted storefronts, except for the old Opera House, built in 1906.
Almost all of downtown Abingdon’s surviving buildings are obviously quite old, but there is one building at 114 S. Main which would be a likely location for the Abby Theatre. It even looks as though the walls were built of concrete block instead of the red brick that prevails in most of the district. Although there are a couple of other buildings with modernized fronts in the area, none of them look as though they’d have been built as late as 1948.
I’ve been unable to find any photos of the Abby’s exterior, but this Facebook page has a photo of an audience of children inside the darkened auditorium, dating from around 1958.
I just noticed that the 1950 newspaper article Brian Paris uploaded to the photo page says that the Texan opened on April 23, 1948, so the completion of renovations just missed the theater’s 70th anniversary.
The Texan Theatre opened in 1948 and closed in 1984, according to this article about the recent renovations and imminent reopening.
An entirely new roof had to be built on the structure, which had been vacant for more than three decades. Nothing remains of the original interior, but the vintage “Texan” sign has been refurbished and reinstalled on the facade.
An open house will be held on May 15, 2018, but there is no word yet on what sort of events the theater might host. It will be available for private rentals, so perhaps for now it should be classified as an event center.