This project was announced in Boxoffice of August 4, 1970. It was one of four theaters planned in Iowa shopping centers being developed by developer Matthew Buckshaum. All three were to be operated by the Chicago-based L & M circuit. The Plaza Cinema I & II was the only twin among the three. The house was expected to be opened within eight months.
The August 24, 1970, issue of Boxoffice said that that the L & M Circuit was planning three new theaters in Iowa, all to be located in shopping centers that were being developed by Matthew Buckshaum.
The 400-seat, single screen Plaza Cinema in Keokuk’s Keosippi Plaza Shopping Center (now River City Mall) was to be located at the south end of the enclosed mall, adjacent to the entrance of a Montgomery Ward department store (now a Dollar General store.) A Christmas Day opening was planned.
The Plaza Cinema in Marshalltown was slated to be a single-screen house for the Chicago-based L & M Circuit when it was announced in Boxoffice of August 24, 1970. It was one of three projects L & M planned for locations in Iowa shopping centers being developed by Matthew Buckshaum.
The other projects were a single-screener in Keokuk and a twin in Muscatine. L & M hoped to have the Marshalltown house opened within a year of the announcement. The other two were slated to open earlier. L & M’s first twin theater had recently opened at Aurora, Illinois.
This twin was probably the house originally built for Highland Theatres. Construction on the project was about to begin, according to Boxoffice of August 24, 1970. The item didn’t give the name of the architect but, as Highland had recently opened the Campus West Twin, which had been designed for them by Mel Glatz & Associates, it’s likely the same firm designed the Foothills Twin.
I believe the Cooper Foundation took over Highland Theatres in 1975, but I’m not sure when Cooper-Highland was bought by Commonwealth Theatres, or when United Artists took over Commonwealth, but that seems a likely sequence of operators, unless Highland leased this house and the Campus West to UA at some earlier time. In the 1970s, Highland also operated the Aggie Theatre and two Fort Collins drive-in’s, the Starlite and the Sunset.
A short article about the Cinema 1&2, then under construction, appeared in the August 24, 1970, issue of Boxoffice. The project was designed by Gale Santocono, in conjunction with Spoakane architect William G. Fiedler.
The Plaza Theatre’s building now houses a thrift shop. It shows no indications of having ever been a theater or, for that matter, a post office. It’s an odd location for a movie house, the back street on which it is situated being mostly residential.
It’s unfortunate that we have no photos of the Glendora Theatre. Though architect John Cyril Bennett (his firm was, though 1923, billed as J. Cyril Bennett, Architect) was not known primarily for theater designs, he did design one of the region’s iconic movie houses, the Raymond Theatre in Pasadena, as well as the Pasadena Civic Auditorium (with Fitch Harrison Haskell, his partner in Bennett & Haskell, founded 1924) and collaborated with architect Elmer Grey on the design of the Pasadena Playhouse.
Construction on the Glendora (Mission) Theatre began around April 1, 1923. The town had had an earlier movie house, called the Glendora Theatre, which had been in operation by 1916, but I’ve been unable to discover what became of it. The second Glendora Theatre was closed in 1967 and was demolished in 1968.
The McDonald brothers, who sold the Beacon Theatre to H. E. Brookings in 1938, soon took over the hamburger stand their father had opened in nearby Monrovia in 1937, and it’s likely that the capital they got from selling the theater to Mr. Brookings helped them on their way to establishing their eponymous fast food chain.
The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory lists the Auditorium in Boise, but without an address. Interestingly, it lists the Isis Theatre at 111 10th Street, so unless it was on North 10th it must have been the Majestic’s next door neighbor.
I’ve come across an item in the May 27, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World which might or might not have to do with the Lyric Theatre, but does have something to do with its owner, Herman Kaiser. It says “Jack Mitchell has opened the old Kaiser theater at Boise and renamed it the Liberty.”
The Kaiser Theater was listed in the 1914 Gus Hill directory as a movie house with 408 seats, managed by Herman Kaiser. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists both the Lyric Theatre, Main Street, and the Kaiser Theatre, 7th and Main Streets, but the address we give for the Lyric, 625 W. Main, is in fact a building at the corner of 7th and Main, now occupied by Goldy’s Corner, a bakery and coffee shop.
I’m thinking that Mr. Kaiser might have renamed the Lyric after himself around this time, and the 1914 AMPD could have double listed the house under both its old an new names. Of course it’s also possible that Mr. Kaiser opened a second theater on one of the other three corners of the intersection.
The Chadwick Theatre opened on January 26, 1925. The house was one of several new theaters featured in a portfolio in the March 28 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review (scan at Internet Archive.)
Though the article failed to name the architect, it did say that the interiors were inspired by 16th century English architecture. With their beamed ceilings the auditorium and foyer did resemble the Tudor style more than anything else, though the screens for the $25,000 Wurlitzer Hope-Jones unit orchestra were sufficiently elaborate that they might have been more of a nod to the later Jacobean style.
Given the opening date and the March, 1925 appearance of the announcement of the project, cited in my previous comment, I think we can safely assume that Victor J. DeFoe was indeed the architect of the El Rey.
As the item in The Reel Journal mentions only De Foe, I don’t know if Walter A. Besecke was involved in this project or not. The firm of DeFoe & Besecke was formed in 1925, and a biographical sketch of DeFoe says that the pair designed several theaters from 1925 to 1928, the years the partnership lasted, so it does seem likely. The El Rey did bear a strong resemblance to the firm’s Madrid Theatre, opened in 1926.
In 1967, Commonwealth Theatres' reopened the State Theatre on July 19 following an extensive remodeling project that had taken three months to complete. The house sported new seating, carpeting and decor, as well as remodeled lobby, concession stand, and lounges, and a new front and marquee. Paramount’s feature “El Dorado” was the opening attraction.
Construction would soon begin on Commonwealth Theatres' new house at Warrensburg, Missouri, according to the August 7, 1967, issue of Boxoffice. The project was designed by the Kansas City firm Milton Costlow & Associates, and would feature decoration by Chicago’s Hans Teichert studios.
The October 10, 1967 opening means Associated Theatres missed thier target date. The August 7 issue of Boxoffice had reported that the twin was expected to open in early September.
I’m wondering if the giant box of popcorn displayed on the Calder Way side of the building is an artifact left over from the theater operation. The theater closed over ten years ago and the building was converted for retail use, and though it is currently occupied mostly by restaurants I doubt any of them serve boxes of popcorn.
Associated Theatres' 650-seat Plaza Theatre in Butler was expected to open in early September, according to a brief article in the August 7, 1967, issue of Boxoffice.
The Plaza was one of four projects the chain had underway. In Pittsburgh, Associated was about to embark on a remodeling of its downtown Gateway Theatre, and the 550-seat Fiesta Theatre, on 6th Street downtown, was set to open on August 22. A new twin theater, as yet unnamed, was also to open in early September at State College, Pennsylvania.
CinemaTour lists the Apollo at 229 W. Sixth Street, which is now the site of B&B’s Majestic Theatre. The Apollo’s building was demolished in 2005 to make way for the new theater.
What I have not yet been able to discover is whether the Apollo was one of Concorida’s other old theaters reopened and renamed. It could have been the Strand, for which I’ve been unable to find an address. The Strand was in operation prior to 1948, and suffered a major fire in the spring of that year and had to be rebuilt. It was still in operation at least as late as 1951. The Apollo was open at least as early as 1979.
Concordia also had a house called the White Way Theatre, opened in 1914 and operating into the 1950s, but it was on Washington Street. There was also an early house called the Lyric, but I haven’t been able to find much about it. I’ve found even less about a theaater opened in 1916 as the Iris, and possibly later renamed the Isis, though that might have been a typo. There was also an early house called the Photo Play, gone by the mid-1920s.
David and Noelle’s list of known Boller theaters has the Alamo listed only as a 1944 remodeling project. It doesn’t list Boller Brothers as the original architects in 1910.
The restaurant occupies only the ground floor of the former theater building, and perhaps not all of that. According to a listing at Trulia, the remainder of the building has been converted into 8 residential apartments. The Summit Theatre was built in 1913, and was listed in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Moving Picture Directory.
If the Spillane Theatre was indeed newly built around 1918, then it had a predecessor that was called the Roanoke Theatre earlier. The Roanoke Theatre was listed at 39th and Summit streets inthe 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory.
The Palace Theatre was listed at 932 Main Street in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, but the house opened no later than 1909, as it was listed in that year’s city directory. The Palace was on the ground floor of the St. George Hotel, built in 1895.
A Murray Theatre was operating in this neighborhood at least as early as 1915, when it was listed in The American Motion Picture Direcotry, though at 3202 E. 27th. Newspaper ads from 1915 give the location as 27th and Walrond Avenue. The Murray was at 3206 27th by the time the 1919 city directory was printed.
2317 Independence Avenue is on the south side of Independence opposite the end of Olive Street. There is a modern building there now which uses that number for a nondescript storefront in between the LB7 Insurance Agency and the Holy Land Halal Market.
In 1886 a hostelry called the Bonaventure Hotel was built at 2307 Independence Avenue, and I suspect that the theater was either part of the hotel project or a later addition to it. It might be that the theater’s building can be partly seen at far left in this undated photo of the hotel.
The photo looks to have been taken in the 1930s, judging from the streamlined style of one of the cars parked along the street. The theater might have been closed by the time this photo was made, but the building looks like it has an open lobby-style entrance flanked by a storefront that could have a matching storefront on the unseen far side. I can’t make out any sort of marquee, though.
The Bonaventure Theatre was listed in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, and in the 1912 Kansas City city directory.
The Ashland Theatre is listed at 24th and Elmwood in the 1914-1915 American Moving Picture Directory. David & Noelle’s list of known Boller theaters has it listed as a 1946 remodeling project.
The October 27, 1915, issue of Western Contractor had a notice about a planned remodeling of a theater at 2400 Elmwood, but didn’t name the architect or give the name of the theater itself.
This project was announced in Boxoffice of August 4, 1970. It was one of four theaters planned in Iowa shopping centers being developed by developer Matthew Buckshaum. All three were to be operated by the Chicago-based L & M circuit. The Plaza Cinema I & II was the only twin among the three. The house was expected to be opened within eight months.
The August 24, 1970, issue of Boxoffice said that that the L & M Circuit was planning three new theaters in Iowa, all to be located in shopping centers that were being developed by Matthew Buckshaum.
The 400-seat, single screen Plaza Cinema in Keokuk’s Keosippi Plaza Shopping Center (now River City Mall) was to be located at the south end of the enclosed mall, adjacent to the entrance of a Montgomery Ward department store (now a Dollar General store.) A Christmas Day opening was planned.
The Plaza Cinema in Marshalltown was slated to be a single-screen house for the Chicago-based L & M Circuit when it was announced in Boxoffice of August 24, 1970. It was one of three projects L & M planned for locations in Iowa shopping centers being developed by Matthew Buckshaum.
The other projects were a single-screener in Keokuk and a twin in Muscatine. L & M hoped to have the Marshalltown house opened within a year of the announcement. The other two were slated to open earlier. L & M’s first twin theater had recently opened at Aurora, Illinois.
This twin was probably the house originally built for Highland Theatres. Construction on the project was about to begin, according to Boxoffice of August 24, 1970. The item didn’t give the name of the architect but, as Highland had recently opened the Campus West Twin, which had been designed for them by Mel Glatz & Associates, it’s likely the same firm designed the Foothills Twin.
I believe the Cooper Foundation took over Highland Theatres in 1975, but I’m not sure when Cooper-Highland was bought by Commonwealth Theatres, or when United Artists took over Commonwealth, but that seems a likely sequence of operators, unless Highland leased this house and the Campus West to UA at some earlier time. In the 1970s, Highland also operated the Aggie Theatre and two Fort Collins drive-in’s, the Starlite and the Sunset.
This August, 2012, Google street view shows the Sears Auto Center, which I believe had previously been the location of the Foothills Twin.
A short article about the Cinema 1&2, then under construction, appeared in the August 24, 1970, issue of Boxoffice. The project was designed by Gale Santocono, in conjunction with Spoakane architect William G. Fiedler.
The Plaza Theatre’s building now houses a thrift shop. It shows no indications of having ever been a theater or, for that matter, a post office. It’s an odd location for a movie house, the back street on which it is situated being mostly residential.
It’s unfortunate that we have no photos of the Glendora Theatre. Though architect John Cyril Bennett (his firm was, though 1923, billed as J. Cyril Bennett, Architect) was not known primarily for theater designs, he did design one of the region’s iconic movie houses, the Raymond Theatre in Pasadena, as well as the Pasadena Civic Auditorium (with Fitch Harrison Haskell, his partner in Bennett & Haskell, founded 1924) and collaborated with architect Elmer Grey on the design of the Pasadena Playhouse.
Construction on the Glendora (Mission) Theatre began around April 1, 1923. The town had had an earlier movie house, called the Glendora Theatre, which had been in operation by 1916, but I’ve been unable to discover what became of it. The second Glendora Theatre was closed in 1967 and was demolished in 1968.
The McDonald brothers, who sold the Beacon Theatre to H. E. Brookings in 1938, soon took over the hamburger stand their father had opened in nearby Monrovia in 1937, and it’s likely that the capital they got from selling the theater to Mr. Brookings helped them on their way to establishing their eponymous fast food chain.
The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory lists the Auditorium in Boise, but without an address. Interestingly, it lists the Isis Theatre at 111 10th Street, so unless it was on North 10th it must have been the Majestic’s next door neighbor.
I’ve come across an item in the May 27, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World which might or might not have to do with the Lyric Theatre, but does have something to do with its owner, Herman Kaiser. It says “Jack Mitchell has opened the old Kaiser theater at Boise and renamed it the Liberty.”
The Kaiser Theater was listed in the 1914 Gus Hill directory as a movie house with 408 seats, managed by Herman Kaiser. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists both the Lyric Theatre, Main Street, and the Kaiser Theatre, 7th and Main Streets, but the address we give for the Lyric, 625 W. Main, is in fact a building at the corner of 7th and Main, now occupied by Goldy’s Corner, a bakery and coffee shop.
I’m thinking that Mr. Kaiser might have renamed the Lyric after himself around this time, and the 1914 AMPD could have double listed the house under both its old an new names. Of course it’s also possible that Mr. Kaiser opened a second theater on one of the other three corners of the intersection.
The Chadwick Theatre opened on January 26, 1925. The house was one of several new theaters featured in a portfolio in the March 28 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review (scan at Internet Archive.)
Though the article failed to name the architect, it did say that the interiors were inspired by 16th century English architecture. With their beamed ceilings the auditorium and foyer did resemble the Tudor style more than anything else, though the screens for the $25,000 Wurlitzer Hope-Jones unit orchestra were sufficiently elaborate that they might have been more of a nod to the later Jacobean style.
Given the opening date and the March, 1925 appearance of the announcement of the project, cited in my previous comment, I think we can safely assume that Victor J. DeFoe was indeed the architect of the El Rey.
As the item in The Reel Journal mentions only De Foe, I don’t know if Walter A. Besecke was involved in this project or not. The firm of DeFoe & Besecke was formed in 1925, and a biographical sketch of DeFoe says that the pair designed several theaters from 1925 to 1928, the years the partnership lasted, so it does seem likely. The El Rey did bear a strong resemblance to the firm’s Madrid Theatre, opened in 1926.
In 1967, Commonwealth Theatres' reopened the State Theatre on July 19 following an extensive remodeling project that had taken three months to complete. The house sported new seating, carpeting and decor, as well as remodeled lobby, concession stand, and lounges, and a new front and marquee. Paramount’s feature “El Dorado” was the opening attraction.
Construction would soon begin on Commonwealth Theatres' new house at Warrensburg, Missouri, according to the August 7, 1967, issue of Boxoffice. The project was designed by the Kansas City firm Milton Costlow & Associates, and would feature decoration by Chicago’s Hans Teichert studios.
The October 10, 1967 opening means Associated Theatres missed thier target date. The August 7 issue of Boxoffice had reported that the twin was expected to open in early September.
I’m wondering if the giant box of popcorn displayed on the Calder Way side of the building is an artifact left over from the theater operation. The theater closed over ten years ago and the building was converted for retail use, and though it is currently occupied mostly by restaurants I doubt any of them serve boxes of popcorn.
Associated Theatres' 650-seat Plaza Theatre in Butler was expected to open in early September, according to a brief article in the August 7, 1967, issue of Boxoffice.
The Plaza was one of four projects the chain had underway. In Pittsburgh, Associated was about to embark on a remodeling of its downtown Gateway Theatre, and the 550-seat Fiesta Theatre, on 6th Street downtown, was set to open on August 22. A new twin theater, as yet unnamed, was also to open in early September at State College, Pennsylvania.
CinemaTour lists the Apollo at 229 W. Sixth Street, which is now the site of B&B’s Majestic Theatre. The Apollo’s building was demolished in 2005 to make way for the new theater.
What I have not yet been able to discover is whether the Apollo was one of Concorida’s other old theaters reopened and renamed. It could have been the Strand, for which I’ve been unable to find an address. The Strand was in operation prior to 1948, and suffered a major fire in the spring of that year and had to be rebuilt. It was still in operation at least as late as 1951. The Apollo was open at least as early as 1979.
Concordia also had a house called the White Way Theatre, opened in 1914 and operating into the 1950s, but it was on Washington Street. There was also an early house called the Lyric, but I haven’t been able to find much about it. I’ve found even less about a theaater opened in 1916 as the Iris, and possibly later renamed the Isis, though that might have been a typo. There was also an early house called the Photo Play, gone by the mid-1920s.
David and Noelle’s list of known Boller theaters has the Alamo listed only as a 1944 remodeling project. It doesn’t list Boller Brothers as the original architects in 1910.
The restaurant occupies only the ground floor of the former theater building, and perhaps not all of that. According to a listing at Trulia, the remainder of the building has been converted into 8 residential apartments. The Summit Theatre was built in 1913, and was listed in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Moving Picture Directory.
This house was still listed as the Star Theatre in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory.
If the Spillane Theatre was indeed newly built around 1918, then it had a predecessor that was called the Roanoke Theatre earlier. The Roanoke Theatre was listed at 39th and Summit streets inthe 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory.
The Palace Theatre was listed at 932 Main Street in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, but the house opened no later than 1909, as it was listed in that year’s city directory. The Palace was on the ground floor of the St. George Hotel, built in 1895.
A Murray Theatre was operating in this neighborhood at least as early as 1915, when it was listed in The American Motion Picture Direcotry, though at 3202 E. 27th. Newspaper ads from 1915 give the location as 27th and Walrond Avenue. The Murray was at 3206 27th by the time the 1919 city directory was printed.
The Lyric Theatre is listed at 622 Main Street in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory.
2317 Independence Avenue is on the south side of Independence opposite the end of Olive Street. There is a modern building there now which uses that number for a nondescript storefront in between the LB7 Insurance Agency and the Holy Land Halal Market.
In 1886 a hostelry called the Bonaventure Hotel was built at 2307 Independence Avenue, and I suspect that the theater was either part of the hotel project or a later addition to it. It might be that the theater’s building can be partly seen at far left in this undated photo of the hotel.
The photo looks to have been taken in the 1930s, judging from the streamlined style of one of the cars parked along the street. The theater might have been closed by the time this photo was made, but the building looks like it has an open lobby-style entrance flanked by a storefront that could have a matching storefront on the unseen far side. I can’t make out any sort of marquee, though.
The Bonaventure Theatre was listed in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, and in the 1912 Kansas City city directory.
The Ashland Theatre is listed at 24th and Elmwood in the 1914-1915 American Moving Picture Directory. David & Noelle’s list of known Boller theaters has it listed as a 1946 remodeling project.
The October 27, 1915, issue of Western Contractor had a notice about a planned remodeling of a theater at 2400 Elmwood, but didn’t name the architect or give the name of the theater itself.