Mary Lee Sheftic (an Anglicized, semi-phonetic spelling of the original family surname, Szewczyk), 1937-2015. Obituary.
The family also owned a house in Boswell called the Sheftic Theatre. The October 2, 1954, issue of Boxoffice said that the Sheftic Theatre, remodeled and equipped for CinemaScope after having been closed for several years, had reopened on October 1, while the Mary Lee had been closed on September 30.
Back in the early 1920s, Boswell had a house called the Elden Theatre, operated by Frank Elden, who died in 1923. In the late 1930s a house called the Vernon Theatre operated in opposition to the Mary Lee. Charles Szewczyk bought the Vernon from its operator, V. F. Scott, in 1940, noted in the September 20 issue of The Film Daily. The Vernon probably became the Sheftic, and might have been the old Elden. Charles Szewczyk/Sheftic also owned a drive-in in the vicinity of Boswell in the 1950s.
The December 5, 1953, issue of Boxoffice ran a notice that a movie theater was being built at Powers Lake. The two-story building, 44x110 feet, on the east side of Main Street, would have a 400-seat theater and two storefronts on the ground floor and offices upstairs. The architect for the project was R.L. Ross.
The brick front of the building today shows marks where the marquee was removed. No address is displayed on the building, nor any business names, but it is on the lot south of the Country Store Fresh Foods, which is at 118 Main Street. If I had to guess I’d say the theater’s address was probably 114 Main, between the two storefronts which were probably 112 and 116.
Here is the new web site for the Dallas Cinema. Interestingly, it’s operated by an outfit called Cinema Treasures, LLC, who also operate the Star Cinema in Stayton.
The Majestic was a new theater built in 1916 by Crescent Amusement as a replacement for the Elite. As we don’t have an address for the Elite we don’t know if the Majestic was on the same site or not. It’s possible that the Elite was at another location and was merely closed and converted to another use when the Majestic opened.
The Nu Theatre became the Gentry Theatre on February 20, 1932, according to the February 18 issue of the Journal-Advance newspaper, which said the new owners would open the renamed house that day. Then for a while the house was called the Flint Theatre. The May 2, 1946, issue of the newspaper said that Mr. Harry Wachter had bought the Flint Theatre from S. M. Underbill and intended to rename it the New Gentry Theatre after making renovations.
As the house had been advertised as the Gentry Theatre in late 1944, and the earliest use of the name Flint Theatre I’ve found is from early 1946, It’s likely that the temporary name change took place sometime in 1945.
I found a 1998 photo by Charlie Bookout captioned “Gentry’s ruined main street movie theater” and, as it had a Facebook share button, posted it to Cinema Treasures' Facebook page. It’s an interior shot, unfortunately, so we can’t use it to spot the building in Google street view, if it is still standing.
This PDF from the Kansas Historic Route 66 Planning Committee, dated 2011, says that Sapp’s Opera House and the Maywood Theatre were two different buildings. The 900-seat Opera House was upstairs in a three-story brick building at the southeast corner of Seventh and Main Street, and opened on November 2, 1890. It was destroyed by a fire on March 8, 1931. The PDF has a photo of it.
The PDF says that the “Old Maywood Theatre” was at 320 Main Street, and describes it this way:
“This two story building has a parapet front wall with a gently curved shape and concrete coping. The top and sides of the façade wall are
covered with stucco, although the first story and second stories also have areas of clapboard siding. A series of vertical and diamond shaped elements decorate the stucco wall above the second story windows. A variety of double-hung and fixed windows have been installed at both levels. A flat metal canopy above the first story is anchored to the building wall by a series of cables. Centered on a block of early 20th
century commercial businesses, this building is part of the continuous street wall lining the west side of the block. A concrete sidewalk with a very shallow curb runs in front of the buildings. A variety of changes have been made to this building including replacing windows and siding in the first and second stories. This building appears on the 1918 Sanborn Insurance Map as a Motion Picture and Vaudeville theater.
A stage occupied the west end of the space, while a second story viewing gallery was located at the east end. By 1930 it functioned strictly as a movie theater, but was listed as Purkett’s Laundry & Master Cleaners in the 1944 directory. Estimated date of construction pre-1918.”
Although the document is dated 2011, I think the text must have been written long before. There is no building at 320 Main Street today, although there is one at 302 Main Street that somewhat resembles the theater as described in the article. Also, looking at historic aerials it has been decades since the west side of this block had a “continuous street wall” of buildings. There is also an issue with the 1944 directory listing of the theater’s location as a laundry, as the Maywood Theatre Company advertised in the local high school yearbooks in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Perhaps the theater moved to another location, or maybe just shared the original location with the laundry?
The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory listed three theaters at Galena: the Globe, the Midway, and the Pearl, which was the only one given an address, that being 705 S. Main Street. It’s possible that Pearl was an aka for Sapp’s Opera House.
The October 7, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had this item that could have been about the Maywood Theatre:
“Galena, Kans. — The finishing touches are being put on the new moving picture theater for L. H. Moore. It will have seating capacity of 800. A Wurlitzer pipe organ will also be installed.”
The 1920-1921 edition of Wid’s Year Book lists only the Palace Theatre, operated by N. W. Houston, at Galena. Perhaps an aka for the Maywood?
The building with the large cross above the entrance in Google street view was the location of the Oldham 8 Theatres. For the time being, the old theater facade can still be seen if you move street view left along First Street and then down Parker Drive.
Here is a quote from this article in the April 14, 2014 issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal:
“Before Oldham 8, there was Griffith Theater — named after D.W. Griffith — a cinema that opened in the 1930s on Main Street in La Grange. It burned down in the 1950s, said Nancy Stearns Theiss, executive director of the Oldham County Historical Society. It was never rebuilt.”
The fire actually took place on January 17, 1960, and a photo of the event was published in the following day’s edition of The Courier-Journal. Ms. Theiss' statement that the theater “burned down” was only a slight exaggeration. An article from 1960 says that the back wall and roof of the theater caved in, but it is clear that most of the facade survived.
Comparing the newspaper photo with Google’s current street view, it can be determined that the Griffith Theatre was at 123 E. Main Street, in a building now occupied by a dress shop called the Couture Closet. Some details of the building facade survived the fire, though a distinctive parapet was removed. Architectural details of the adjacent buildings are also recognizable.
The Griffith Theatre should not be confused with the D.W. Griffith Theatre, opened in 2017 in the local Peyton Samuel Head Family Museum, which shows movies related in some way to Oldham County, including movies directed by Griffith, twice a month. Silent era Director David Wark Griffith was a native of Oldham County.
The Griffith was not the first movie house in La Grange. A house called the Grand Theatre was mentioned in the September 7, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World.
Originally called the Princess Theatre, it was most likely opened in 1915 or 1916, as it was not listed in the 1914-15 edition of American Motion Picture Directory, which was published in early 1915, but was being mentioned in trade journals in 1916.
The El Rey, dark for some time, is reopening tomorrow night, Saturday, February 10, 2018, with live performances. Here is their web site. Proceeds from this event will go to continuing renovations of the house.
Sunday night the theater will present the 1938 film Robin Hood, much of which was filmed in Chico’s Bidwell Park.
The 808 seats we currently have listed for this house belonged to the Texas Theatre that burned in 1962. The Palace Theatre was listed in FDY with 525 seats from its first appearance in 1928 until the 1955 edition when it dropped to 519.
Prior to 1928 Ballinger had a house called the Maeroy Theatre, also with 525 seats, so I suspect its disappearance from the listings after 1927 and the appearance of the Palace in 1928 indicates a name change sometime before the 1928 FDY went to press. The Maeroy was mentioned in the January 13, 1923, issue of The Moving Picture World as having installed a new Wurlitzer organ, so it was in operation under that name at least that early.
The names I’ve found for theaters in Ballinger prior to 1923 are the Queen, the Cosy (which was on 7th Street), the White City Airdome, and the Princess, which was operated in 1916 by a Roy Reeder. A web page that has now gone missing said that today’s Texas Theatre (the former Palace) “… originated [as] Roy Reeder’s Princess Theater.” Unfortunately the snippet Google has saved from the missing page doesn’t provide any other details.
Though destroyed in 1946, the Ritz appears in the 1948 Film Daily Yearbook in the “Negro Theaters” listings. Most likely FDY simply hadn’t kept its records up-to-date, which was not unusual.
The Queen was one of three movie houses in Ballinger that was mentioned in an item in the July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Theaters Consolidate at Ballinger.
“Ballinger, Tex. — Two picture houses in Ballinger have been consolidated recently and now operate under one management. Roy Reeder, who operated the Princess theater and the White City airdome, and D. Cohen, who managed the Queen theater.”
The Queen was also one of two houses listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, though no address was given (the other house was the Cosy, 127 Seventh Street.) The Queen was listed in issues of Film Daily Yearbook in the later 1920s, but always with 400 seats.
The Queen was still listed in the FDY from 1937 through 1943, but with only 300 seats, and always listed as closed. It vanished from the listings in 1944. I suspect that the Queen was closed when the first Texas Theatre opened in 1936, and never reopened. The streamline modern facade on the building now probably dates from the building’s conversion to retail use sometime in the 1940s.
The ground floor retail shop (a shoe store in current Google street view) and the martial arts studio upstairs are still located in the Ironbound Theatre’s entrance building fronting on Ferry Street. The bakery, parking garage (and perhaps some other uses unidentified by any signage) occupy various parts of the former auditorium along Jackson Street.
The side wall Ironbound Theatre’s large former auditorium can be seen in street view from Jackson Street. It has been subdivided into a number of spaces, one of which is a garage for a bank and another the Maranatha Bakery.
In satellite view the structure appears to be about 80x100 feet, which indicates that it is probably the theater project of that size at Jackson and Ferry streets that was noted in the March 12, 1921, issue of The American Contractor. Newark Architect John B. Acocella was preparing the plans.
The building in which Smalley’s Theatre was located was built in 1885 as Klinkhart Hall, with retail space and the local post office on the ground floor and an opera house upstairs. Today it is under restoration as Klinkhart Hall Arts Center, and is located at 191 Main Street. A movie theater was first established on the ground floor in 1925. The auditorium, though in rough shape, still has its seats in place today. There is a photo at the link.
William Smalley called this house the Cameo Theatre or Smalley’s Cameo Theatre until sometime in 1933. The October 18, 1939, issue of the St. Johnsville Enterprise and News says that the former Rex reopened as the Cameo on October 15, 1924.
The earliest ad calling it simply Smalley’s Theatre that I’ve seen in the Enterprise and News is in the November 22, 1933 edition, though it might have been renamed anytime after the previous ad I’ve seen for Smalley’s Cameo, which appeared in February.
The Rex Theatre was in operation by 1917, the year the October 24 issue of the Enterprise said that the price of an adult admission was being raised to fifteen cents. Smalley’s Theatre was extensively rebuilt in 1939.
A 1995 article about the history of Mount Vernon’s theaters can be found on this web page. It says that the groundbreaking ceremony for the Granada was held on June 7, 1937, and the theater had its grand opening on December 16.
In 1971, the Granada and the Stadium were taken over by Kerasotes Theatres, which had for some time already operated the Mount Vernon Drive-In. The Granada was twinned in 1981. In 1995, Kerasotes built an 8-screen multiplex in an outlet mall on the outskirts of Mount Vernon, still open now as the AMC Classic Mount Vernon 8, and the Granada was closed after a run of almost sixty years.
Broan’s comment above, saying that the correct address of the Plaza is 118 S. Ninth Street, is indeed correct. However, a Plaza Theatre is listed at Mount Vernon in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, and its address was 116 S. Ninth.
The December 25, 1919, opening of the Plaza must have been for a new Plaza Theatre replacing the old house— which had undoubtedly been a storefront conversion, given the age of the building still standing on that lot— next door.
A “40 years ago” feature in the January 8, 1960, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News noted that the owners of the Plaza Theatre had purchased the Star Theatre and would operate both houses.
This web page has an article about the history of Mount Vernon’s theaters which says that the Majestic/Royal building survived the 1945 fire and was rebuilt as the Stadium Theatre, which opened on May 15, 1947.
The article says that the Stadium was twinned in 1985. It also gives the impression, though does not explicitly say, that both the Granada and Stadium were still in operation at the time the article was written in 1995, though a new eight-screen house which would replace them was under construction on the outskirts of Mount Vernon at that time.
Interestingly, the article does not mention a single-screen house opened by Kerasotes Theatres in the Times Square Shopping Mall in 1975, which suggests that the Times Square Cinema did not last very long and had been forgotten by 1995. CinemaTour has the mall house listed as the Times Square Cinema Four, aka Cinema Times Square, in operation from 1975 to 1987.
The Royal burned on Armistice Day (November 11), 1945, with a loss estimated at $30,000, according to an article in the January 6, 1956, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News.
The following paragraph from an article about the history of Mt. Vernon’s theaters on this web page conveys the impression that the Majestic/Royal building actually survived the 1945 fire, at least in part, and that the Stadium Theatre was built inside the shell of the original building:
“On Thanksgiving Day 1911, what was to become the first permanent theater, the Majestic, opened. This theater was known for showing many epic movies, such as, The Birth of a Nation. Many vaudeville acts were performed on the Majestic stage. During the remodeling, the theater was gutted by fire, and a new movie theater was built and named the Royal. The Royal was also destroyed by fire. But it was redesigned and reopened on May 15, 1947, as the Stadium Theater.”
Mary Lee Sheftic (an Anglicized, semi-phonetic spelling of the original family surname, Szewczyk), 1937-2015. Obituary.
The family also owned a house in Boswell called the Sheftic Theatre. The October 2, 1954, issue of Boxoffice said that the Sheftic Theatre, remodeled and equipped for CinemaScope after having been closed for several years, had reopened on October 1, while the Mary Lee had been closed on September 30.
Back in the early 1920s, Boswell had a house called the Elden Theatre, operated by Frank Elden, who died in 1923. In the late 1930s a house called the Vernon Theatre operated in opposition to the Mary Lee. Charles Szewczyk bought the Vernon from its operator, V. F. Scott, in 1940, noted in the September 20 issue of The Film Daily. The Vernon probably became the Sheftic, and might have been the old Elden. Charles Szewczyk/Sheftic also owned a drive-in in the vicinity of Boswell in the 1950s.
The December 5, 1953, issue of Boxoffice ran a notice that a movie theater was being built at Powers Lake. The two-story building, 44x110 feet, on the east side of Main Street, would have a 400-seat theater and two storefronts on the ground floor and offices upstairs. The architect for the project was R.L. Ross.
The brick front of the building today shows marks where the marquee was removed. No address is displayed on the building, nor any business names, but it is on the lot south of the Country Store Fresh Foods, which is at 118 Main Street. If I had to guess I’d say the theater’s address was probably 114 Main, between the two storefronts which were probably 112 and 116.
Here is the new web site for the Dallas Cinema. Interestingly, it’s operated by an outfit called Cinema Treasures, LLC, who also operate the Star Cinema in Stayton.
The Majestic was a new theater built in 1916 by Crescent Amusement as a replacement for the Elite. As we don’t have an address for the Elite we don’t know if the Majestic was on the same site or not. It’s possible that the Elite was at another location and was merely closed and converted to another use when the Majestic opened.
The Nu Theatre became the Gentry Theatre on February 20, 1932, according to the February 18 issue of the Journal-Advance newspaper, which said the new owners would open the renamed house that day. Then for a while the house was called the Flint Theatre. The May 2, 1946, issue of the newspaper said that Mr. Harry Wachter had bought the Flint Theatre from S. M. Underbill and intended to rename it the New Gentry Theatre after making renovations.
As the house had been advertised as the Gentry Theatre in late 1944, and the earliest use of the name Flint Theatre I’ve found is from early 1946, It’s likely that the temporary name change took place sometime in 1945.
I found a 1998 photo by Charlie Bookout captioned “Gentry’s ruined main street movie theater” and, as it had a Facebook share button, posted it to Cinema Treasures' Facebook page. It’s an interior shot, unfortunately, so we can’t use it to spot the building in Google street view, if it is still standing.
This PDF from the Kansas Historic Route 66 Planning Committee, dated 2011, says that Sapp’s Opera House and the Maywood Theatre were two different buildings. The 900-seat Opera House was upstairs in a three-story brick building at the southeast corner of Seventh and Main Street, and opened on November 2, 1890. It was destroyed by a fire on March 8, 1931. The PDF has a photo of it.
The PDF says that the “Old Maywood Theatre” was at 320 Main Street, and describes it this way:
Although the document is dated 2011, I think the text must have been written long before. There is no building at 320 Main Street today, although there is one at 302 Main Street that somewhat resembles the theater as described in the article. Also, looking at historic aerials it has been decades since the west side of this block had a “continuous street wall” of buildings. There is also an issue with the 1944 directory listing of the theater’s location as a laundry, as the Maywood Theatre Company advertised in the local high school yearbooks in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Perhaps the theater moved to another location, or maybe just shared the original location with the laundry?The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory listed three theaters at Galena: the Globe, the Midway, and the Pearl, which was the only one given an address, that being 705 S. Main Street. It’s possible that Pearl was an aka for Sapp’s Opera House.
The October 7, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had this item that could have been about the Maywood Theatre:
The 1920-1921 edition of Wid’s Year Book lists only the Palace Theatre, operated by N. W. Houston, at Galena. Perhaps an aka for the Maywood?The Flamingo Theatre opened the week of January 10, 1947, according to an item in that day’s issue of Film Daily.
The building with the large cross above the entrance in Google street view was the location of the Oldham 8 Theatres. For the time being, the old theater facade can still be seen if you move street view left along First Street and then down Parker Drive.
Here is a quote from this article in the April 14, 2014 issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal:
The fire actually took place on January 17, 1960, and a photo of the event was published in the following day’s edition of The Courier-Journal. Ms. Theiss' statement that the theater “burned down” was only a slight exaggeration. An article from 1960 says that the back wall and roof of the theater caved in, but it is clear that most of the facade survived.Comparing the newspaper photo with Google’s current street view, it can be determined that the Griffith Theatre was at 123 E. Main Street, in a building now occupied by a dress shop called the Couture Closet. Some details of the building facade survived the fire, though a distinctive parapet was removed. Architectural details of the adjacent buildings are also recognizable.
The Griffith Theatre should not be confused with the D.W. Griffith Theatre, opened in 2017 in the local Peyton Samuel Head Family Museum, which shows movies related in some way to Oldham County, including movies directed by Griffith, twice a month. Silent era Director David Wark Griffith was a native of Oldham County.
The Griffith was not the first movie house in La Grange. A house called the Grand Theatre was mentioned in the September 7, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World.
Originally called the Princess Theatre, it was most likely opened in 1915 or 1916, as it was not listed in the 1914-15 edition of American Motion Picture Directory, which was published in early 1915, but was being mentioned in trade journals in 1916.
The El Rey, dark for some time, is reopening tomorrow night, Saturday, February 10, 2018, with live performances. Here is their web site. Proceeds from this event will go to continuing renovations of the house.
Sunday night the theater will present the 1938 film Robin Hood, much of which was filmed in Chico’s Bidwell Park.
The 808 seats we currently have listed for this house belonged to the Texas Theatre that burned in 1962. The Palace Theatre was listed in FDY with 525 seats from its first appearance in 1928 until the 1955 edition when it dropped to 519.
Prior to 1928 Ballinger had a house called the Maeroy Theatre, also with 525 seats, so I suspect its disappearance from the listings after 1927 and the appearance of the Palace in 1928 indicates a name change sometime before the 1928 FDY went to press. The Maeroy was mentioned in the January 13, 1923, issue of The Moving Picture World as having installed a new Wurlitzer organ, so it was in operation under that name at least that early.
The names I’ve found for theaters in Ballinger prior to 1923 are the Queen, the Cosy (which was on 7th Street), the White City Airdome, and the Princess, which was operated in 1916 by a Roy Reeder. A web page that has now gone missing said that today’s Texas Theatre (the former Palace) “… originated [as] Roy Reeder’s Princess Theater.” Unfortunately the snippet Google has saved from the missing page doesn’t provide any other details.
Though destroyed in 1946, the Ritz appears in the 1948 Film Daily Yearbook in the “Negro Theaters” listings. Most likely FDY simply hadn’t kept its records up-to-date, which was not unusual.
The Queen was one of three movie houses in Ballinger that was mentioned in an item in the July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The Queen was also one of two houses listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, though no address was given (the other house was the Cosy, 127 Seventh Street.) The Queen was listed in issues of Film Daily Yearbook in the later 1920s, but always with 400 seats.The Queen was still listed in the FDY from 1937 through 1943, but with only 300 seats, and always listed as closed. It vanished from the listings in 1944. I suspect that the Queen was closed when the first Texas Theatre opened in 1936, and never reopened. The streamline modern facade on the building now probably dates from the building’s conversion to retail use sometime in the 1940s.
The ground floor retail shop (a shoe store in current Google street view) and the martial arts studio upstairs are still located in the Ironbound Theatre’s entrance building fronting on Ferry Street. The bakery, parking garage (and perhaps some other uses unidentified by any signage) occupy various parts of the former auditorium along Jackson Street.
The side wall Ironbound Theatre’s large former auditorium can be seen in street view from Jackson Street. It has been subdivided into a number of spaces, one of which is a garage for a bank and another the Maranatha Bakery.
In satellite view the structure appears to be about 80x100 feet, which indicates that it is probably the theater project of that size at Jackson and Ferry streets that was noted in the March 12, 1921, issue of The American Contractor. Newark Architect John B. Acocella was preparing the plans.
The building in which Smalley’s Theatre was located was built in 1885 as Klinkhart Hall, with retail space and the local post office on the ground floor and an opera house upstairs. Today it is under restoration as Klinkhart Hall Arts Center, and is located at 191 Main Street. A movie theater was first established on the ground floor in 1925. The auditorium, though in rough shape, still has its seats in place today. There is a photo at the link.
William Smalley called this house the Cameo Theatre or Smalley’s Cameo Theatre until sometime in 1933. The October 18, 1939, issue of the St. Johnsville Enterprise and News says that the former Rex reopened as the Cameo on October 15, 1924.
The earliest ad calling it simply Smalley’s Theatre that I’ve seen in the Enterprise and News is in the November 22, 1933 edition, though it might have been renamed anytime after the previous ad I’ve seen for Smalley’s Cameo, which appeared in February.
The Rex Theatre was in operation by 1917, the year the October 24 issue of the Enterprise said that the price of an adult admission was being raised to fifteen cents. Smalley’s Theatre was extensively rebuilt in 1939.
The Kerasotes ShowPlace 8 in Mount Vernon was built in 1995.
A 1995 article about the history of Mount Vernon’s theaters can be found on this web page. It says that the groundbreaking ceremony for the Granada was held on June 7, 1937, and the theater had its grand opening on December 16.
In 1971, the Granada and the Stadium were taken over by Kerasotes Theatres, which had for some time already operated the Mount Vernon Drive-In. The Granada was twinned in 1981. In 1995, Kerasotes built an 8-screen multiplex in an outlet mall on the outskirts of Mount Vernon, still open now as the AMC Classic Mount Vernon 8, and the Granada was closed after a run of almost sixty years.
Broan’s comment above, saying that the correct address of the Plaza is 118 S. Ninth Street, is indeed correct. However, a Plaza Theatre is listed at Mount Vernon in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, and its address was 116 S. Ninth.
The December 25, 1919, opening of the Plaza must have been for a new Plaza Theatre replacing the old house— which had undoubtedly been a storefront conversion, given the age of the building still standing on that lot— next door.
A “40 years ago” feature in the January 8, 1960, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News noted that the owners of the Plaza Theatre had purchased the Star Theatre and would operate both houses.
This web page has an article about the history of Mount Vernon’s theaters which says that the Majestic/Royal building survived the 1945 fire and was rebuilt as the Stadium Theatre, which opened on May 15, 1947.
The article says that the Stadium was twinned in 1985. It also gives the impression, though does not explicitly say, that both the Granada and Stadium were still in operation at the time the article was written in 1995, though a new eight-screen house which would replace them was under construction on the outskirts of Mount Vernon at that time.
Interestingly, the article does not mention a single-screen house opened by Kerasotes Theatres in the Times Square Shopping Mall in 1975, which suggests that the Times Square Cinema did not last very long and had been forgotten by 1995. CinemaTour has the mall house listed as the Times Square Cinema Four, aka Cinema Times Square, in operation from 1975 to 1987.
The Royal burned on Armistice Day (November 11), 1945, with a loss estimated at $30,000, according to an article in the January 6, 1956, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News.
The following paragraph from an article about the history of Mt. Vernon’s theaters on this web page conveys the impression that the Majestic/Royal building actually survived the 1945 fire, at least in part, and that the Stadium Theatre was built inside the shell of the original building:
The Plaza Theatre opened on Christmas Day, 1919, according to an article in the July 29, 1972, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News.