An enormous apartment complex has been built on the site of the Aquarius Theatres IV. For the time being Google’s satellite views still show the theater if you zoom in, but they probably won’t last long.
When the original Italian Baroque interior of the Strand was partly torn out and replaced by the more modern look of the Michigan Theatre in 1941, the architects who handled the job were… John and Drew Eberson. The ornate original facade was simplified at the same time.
The Bijou Theatre originally opened at a location on East Ottawa Street in 1905, but moved into its new quarters in the Oakland Building in 1907. The new house was set to open on Monday, April 8, according to an article in the April 6, 1907, issue of The State Republican (scan at Flickr.) The address of the Oakland Building was 125-129 West Michigan Avenue. If the theater entrance was in the center bay its address must have been 127 W. Michigan.
The location of the Bijou was the southeast corner of West Michigan Avenue and South Capitol Avenue. The 1907 newspaper article mentions some of the theater’s emergency exits debouching onto Capitol Avenue. This web page has a postcard showing the Bijou building, and is captioned “South side Michigan Ave., between Capitol and Washington Aves., Lansing, Mich.” The grassy areas in the foreground were on the grounds of the State Capitol Building.
The fire which gutted and partly collapsed the Oakland Building took place in the early morning hours of December 22, 1923. After the ruins were demolished the 300-room Hotel Olds was built on the site. The hotel building, still standing, has been converted to offices for the State of Michigan and is called the George W. Romney Building.
This weblog post from Preservation Austin credits architect Jack Corgan with the design of the Chief Drive-In. There’s a nice black and white photo of the screen tower, featuring a Texas longhorn painted by Dallas muralist H. R. McBride.
A telephone directory listing I found online doesn’t give the Rodeo’s exact address, but lists it on West Main Street. I’ve checked Google’s street views of downtown Hartselle, and though a few of the old buildings are the right size to have accommodated a theater, none have any distinguishing characteristics that could identify it as such.
The Rodeo was most likely somewhere in the three block stretch between Railroad Street and Corsbie Street, now a thriving district of restored buildings, many of them housing antiques dealers.
The October 18, 1952, issue of Motion Picture Herald had this news from Louisiana:
“Billy Fox Johnson’s Joy in Marksville burnt to the ground, October 9, the same night he and his family were at the opening of their new drive-in, the Fox, in Bunkie, La.”
The “Construction” column of the November 29, 1952, issue of Boxoffice reported that construction of the Kenmore Drive-In was scheduled to begin on February 1, 1953, with a target date for completion of April 1. There must have been delays, as Drive-Ins.com’s page for the Kenmore says it opened on May 20, 1953, with a double feature of Ma & Pa Kettle At The Fair and Destination Gobi. The theater was demolished in 1985.
Boxoffice of May 5, 1956, reported that a fire had damaged the long-closed Powhattan Theatre in Maplewood on Friday, April 27. This item, like several other sources, gives the address as 3111 Sutton. I suspect that there might have been more than one Powhatan Theatre on this block, the one at 3111 replacing the older one at 3107.
The Strand of 1944 must have been either a rebuild of or replacement for an earlier house of the same name which was in operation by 1932. The Strand’s manager, Adam P. Howell, was quoted in the January 14, 1933, issue of Universal Weekly saying that attendance for the studio’s movie “The Mummy” had broken his house record for 1932.
The Hartselle Enquirer has frequently published a column called “A look back” which often mentions the town’s theaters, but the earliest mentions of the Strand are from 1937, and there are no items about a rebuilding or a new theater in 1944.
In its later years the Strand became the Rodeo Theatre, as noted in this item:
“June 18, 1956 -The Strand (soon to be the Rodeo) Theatre is getting a $50,000 interior overhaul and redecoration. A new cry-room has its own speaker so that the baby tender can keep up with the picture if she can hear the sound above her babe.”
The May 5, 1956, issue of Boxoffice also noted the name change and remodel, saying that the owner, Hubert Mitchell, had adopted a western motif for the Rodeo, which he had also used at his Ranch Drive-In. I’ve found one more mention of the name Strand in the newspaper, incongruously from 1958, but by 1960 the house is called the Rodeo again. The theater was closed by 1967, when a June 28 item said that “[t]he vacant Rodeo Theatre building on Main Street is being offered for lease.”
Hubert R. Mitchell bought the Strand in 1955, but had lived in Hartselle for quite some time and was noted in the October 13, 1956, issue of Motion Picture Herald as “…the owner of Hubert Mitchell Industries, one of the largest manufacturers of stage fittings, decorations and props, as well as theatre auditorium drapes, seat cushions and accessories.” His company, which had two factories, also manufactured something called Bowline Screen Frames, which are mentioned now and then in theater industry trade journals of the period.
The newly-opened Ranch Drive-In at Hartselle was listed in the “Construction” column of the November 29, 1952, issue of Boxoffice, which noted that the drive-in’s kiddie playground had been completed, along with a four-room apartment at the base of the screen for the manager.
The November 29, 1952, issue of Boxoffice said that the College Drive-In was under construction at Fort Valley, Georgia, and was expected to open around December 25. The project would accommodate 300 cars, and would have 250 seats for walk-in customers. The owners were Lee Hancock and Greer Grace.
If the rebuilt Roxy expanded onto the site of the adjacent building then the original theater’s sidewall could not have been incorporated in the project, and that makes it unlikely that any of the original back wall was saved either.
This paragraph about the Manhattan Theatre’s owner, William Gane, is from Robert Grau’s book The Business Man in the Amusement World, published in 1910:
“As a manager Mr. Gane began his career at the Manhattan Theatre, since razed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he presented moving pictures. His success there was marked by crowded houses, and when he was forced to vacate he built the present Manhattan Theatre at Broadway and 31st Street.”
According to an index card in this PDF from the Theatre Historical Society, the Theatre Brighton opened in 1873 in a building converted from a saloon. It was later renamed the St. James Theatre. The house was rebuilt in 1883 to plans by John McElfatrick, and opened on December 5 as the Bijou Opera House.
Alterations were made by architect Thomas Lamb in 1908, and additional alterations designed by architect W. G. Masarene in 1910. The building was demolished in 1914, and the card doesn’t mention any alterations by Stuckert & Sloane, so perhaps their 1913 project was for the only other theater on Broadway near 31st Street, Gane’s Manhattan.
According to an index card in this PDF from the Theatre Historical Society, the Imperial Music Hall opened in 1892 (on Monday, October 24, according to the October 26 issue of The New York Sun.) It became Weber & Field’s Music Hall in 1896, Weber & Ziegfeld’s Music Hall in 1905, and simply Weber’s Theatre in 1906. Alterations made in 1908 were by Thomas Lamb, and additional, though minor, alterations made in 1914 were designed by Emery Roth. The theater was demolished in 1917.
According to an index card in this PDF from the Theatre Historical Society (as well as in the AIA Guide to New York City), this long-time movie house (last operated as the Chuan Kung Theatre according to the AIA guide) began in the late 19th century as a three story store building designed by none other than McKim, Mead & White, one of New York’s most famous architectural firms.
The index card says that plans to alter the building to accommodate a movie theater were submitted in July, 1913, (Louis Sheinart, architect) and the Universal Photoplay was in operation by 1914.
The house was altered several times over the years, with its listed seating capacity increasing from 281 in 1925 to 450 in 1931 and 546 in the 1940’s, but the only alteration credited on the card is a marquee installed in 1941 by architect Sol Oberwager. The house was renamed the Music Palace in the early 1970s.
According to an index card in this PDF from the Theatre Historical Society, the building that became the New Atlantic Theatre was in operation as the Atlantic Garden by 1870, and was altered for use as a concert hall in 1883 with plans by architect Julius Kastner.
There was an aborted plan to build a new theater and 8-story office block on the site in 1911. Instead, it was remodeled in 1916 with plans by architect Henry (the card erroneously says Harry) Regelmann (plans for this project were noted in the November 17, 1915, issue of The New York Times.) Operated during its last years by the M&S Bijou circuit, the building was demolished in March, 1929.
This PDF from The Theatre Historical Society contains index cards (possibly from library files, though it doesn’t specify) with information about Manhattan’s theaters. This is the contents of the card for the People’s Theatre on the Bowery:
“199-201 BOWERY e/s n of DELANCEY ST PEOPLE’S THEATRE, Was HOYM’s (1858), then TONY PASTOR’S OPERA HOUSE (1865-75), Became PEOPLE’S Sep 3, 1883, ALTS 692/1883, $12,000, acht Wm Graul, Owner: Henry Miner, Seats: 1454 (PHOTO: Lin Center MWEZ 7229), ALTS 1908, archt: Louis Maurer, ALTS, Sep 1916, $5000 archt: R. Thomas Short Yiddish plays presented 20’s, opera GABEL, Demolished 1945.”
A far more detailed history of the house, with several illustrations, can be found on this web page from Mapping Yiddish New York, though it doesn’t mention the period when the house ran movies (which it must have been doing when it was listed in The Film Daily Yearbook.)
A brief article in the October 1, 1932, issue of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said that plans for the new theater to be built by the Schwartz Amusement Company on Merrick Road in the village of Baldwin were being drawn by architect R. Thomas Short.
The article noted that the theater’s site, which Schwartz had purchased six years earlier, was west of the Baldwin M.E. Church. The church now displays a sign reading First Church Baldwin United Methodist.
The modern address of the theater’s lot, displayed on the front of the Baldwin Office Plaza, is 865 Merrick Road.
This web page from Brownstone Detectives says that the Halsey Theatre was built in 1912. The adjacent Arcadia Dance Hall and Broadway Arena flanking the theater were built around the same time by the same developer. The page notes that the Halsey closed in 1943 and was occupied through the late 1940s by a company that made cardboard leis and party favors. The arena next door was the boxing venue. All three structures were demolished around 1967 to make way for a New York City Housing Authority senior citizens housing project.
The caption of one of the photos in the January, 1913, issue of the trade journal Architecture and Building to which I linked in an earlier comment says that the Halsey Theatre was designed by the architectural firm Harde & Short. However, a biographical sketch of the firm says that the partnership was dissolved in 1909 (confirmed by this article in The New York Times from December 1, 2005), so unless the theater was designed some two to three years before it opened it was more likely one or the other of them who completed the project. I suppose it’s possible that the design was done late in 1909 and construction began in 1911, but I haven’t found the opening date of the theater, nor the exact date on which the partnership of Harde & Short was dissolved.
Herbert Spencer Steinhardt (later shortened to Harde) and Richard Thomas Short are remembered for a number of lavishly decorated apartment buildings completed between 1904 and 1909. Short went on to design a large number of theaters, mostly in Brooklyn, under the professional name R. Thomas Short.
There was a theater operating at Tilden in 1944, though this item from the March 4 issue of Motion Picture Herald doesn’t give its name:
“Sells Nebraska House
“Melvin Krouse has sold his theatre at Tilden, Neb., to M. T. Rethwisch, of Tilden.”
This web page has the obituary of Jean Margaret Rethwisch, M. T.’s wife, which says that the Rethwischs operated the Victory Theatre in Tilden from 1943 to 1962. I don’t know if the Victory was the Tilden rebuilt or a new theater opened after the Tilden burned.
The obituary also says that the Rethwischs were partners with another couple in operating the Tilden Bowl from 1962 until 1984, so it’s possible that the Victory was converted into a bowling alley when the theater business declined. Tilden still has a bowling alley, Bob’s Bowling, at 208 E. 2nd Street (the main commercial streets on the map in Tilden are Center Street, running north and south, and 2nd Street, running east and west, but the City of Tilden calls 2nd Street Main Street.) Bob’s has only four lanes, so is probably in a building about the same width as a 200-seat movie house would occupy.
The Granada Theatre and Allen Gardner were mentioned in the August 11, 1931, issue of Motion Picture Herald, and again in the April 2, 1932, issue of the same journal.
I’ve found more mentions of this house in the trade journals (Moving Picture World July 1, 1916; Motion Picture News April 7, 1917) and in the newspapers (The San Francisco Call October 30, 1912; Paramount Pictures ads in the Mill Valley Record various issues in June, 1916) as the Oakland Photoplay Theatre than as the Oakland Photo Theatre (San Francisco Call July 22, 1913; The Edison Kinetogram September 1, 1912.) The vintage photos do all show both “Photo” and “Play” on the marquee, separated by the name Oakland Theatre. Butt hen it did get listed as the Oakland Photo Theatre in the 1916 Polk guide. It would be helpful if someone could find one of the weekly or monthly programs the house probably issued,or at least a display newspaper ad for it.
An enormous apartment complex has been built on the site of the Aquarius Theatres IV. For the time being Google’s satellite views still show the theater if you zoom in, but they probably won’t last long.
When the original Italian Baroque interior of the Strand was partly torn out and replaced by the more modern look of the Michigan Theatre in 1941, the architects who handled the job were… John and Drew Eberson. The ornate original facade was simplified at the same time.
The Bijou Theatre originally opened at a location on East Ottawa Street in 1905, but moved into its new quarters in the Oakland Building in 1907. The new house was set to open on Monday, April 8, according to an article in the April 6, 1907, issue of The State Republican (scan at Flickr.) The address of the Oakland Building was 125-129 West Michigan Avenue. If the theater entrance was in the center bay its address must have been 127 W. Michigan.
The location of the Bijou was the southeast corner of West Michigan Avenue and South Capitol Avenue. The 1907 newspaper article mentions some of the theater’s emergency exits debouching onto Capitol Avenue. This web page has a postcard showing the Bijou building, and is captioned “South side Michigan Ave., between Capitol and Washington Aves., Lansing, Mich.” The grassy areas in the foreground were on the grounds of the State Capitol Building.
The fire which gutted and partly collapsed the Oakland Building took place in the early morning hours of December 22, 1923. After the ruins were demolished the 300-room Hotel Olds was built on the site. The hotel building, still standing, has been converted to offices for the State of Michigan and is called the George W. Romney Building.
This weblog post from Preservation Austin credits architect Jack Corgan with the design of the Chief Drive-In. There’s a nice black and white photo of the screen tower, featuring a Texas longhorn painted by Dallas muralist H. R. McBride.
A telephone directory listing I found online doesn’t give the Rodeo’s exact address, but lists it on West Main Street. I’ve checked Google’s street views of downtown Hartselle, and though a few of the old buildings are the right size to have accommodated a theater, none have any distinguishing characteristics that could identify it as such.
The Rodeo was most likely somewhere in the three block stretch between Railroad Street and Corsbie Street, now a thriving district of restored buildings, many of them housing antiques dealers.
This notice in the “Openings” column of the November 29, 1952, issue of Boxoffice was mistakenly dateline Parkville, B. C.:
The October 18, 1952, issue of Motion Picture Herald had this news from Louisiana:
The “Construction” column of the November 29, 1952, issue of Boxoffice reported that construction of the Kenmore Drive-In was scheduled to begin on February 1, 1953, with a target date for completion of April 1. There must have been delays, as Drive-Ins.com’s page for the Kenmore says it opened on May 20, 1953, with a double feature of Ma & Pa Kettle At The Fair and Destination Gobi. The theater was demolished in 1985.
Boxoffice of May 5, 1956, reported that a fire had damaged the long-closed Powhattan Theatre in Maplewood on Friday, April 27. This item, like several other sources, gives the address as 3111 Sutton. I suspect that there might have been more than one Powhatan Theatre on this block, the one at 3111 replacing the older one at 3107.
The Strand of 1944 must have been either a rebuild of or replacement for an earlier house of the same name which was in operation by 1932. The Strand’s manager, Adam P. Howell, was quoted in the January 14, 1933, issue of Universal Weekly saying that attendance for the studio’s movie “The Mummy” had broken his house record for 1932.
The Hartselle Enquirer has frequently published a column called “A look back” which often mentions the town’s theaters, but the earliest mentions of the Strand are from 1937, and there are no items about a rebuilding or a new theater in 1944.
In its later years the Strand became the Rodeo Theatre, as noted in this item:
The May 5, 1956, issue of Boxoffice also noted the name change and remodel, saying that the owner, Hubert Mitchell, had adopted a western motif for the Rodeo, which he had also used at his Ranch Drive-In. I’ve found one more mention of the name Strand in the newspaper, incongruously from 1958, but by 1960 the house is called the Rodeo again. The theater was closed by 1967, when a June 28 item said that “[t]he vacant Rodeo Theatre building on Main Street is being offered for lease.”Hubert R. Mitchell bought the Strand in 1955, but had lived in Hartselle for quite some time and was noted in the October 13, 1956, issue of Motion Picture Herald as “…the owner of Hubert Mitchell Industries, one of the largest manufacturers of stage fittings, decorations and props, as well as theatre auditorium drapes, seat cushions and accessories.” His company, which had two factories, also manufactured something called Bowline Screen Frames, which are mentioned now and then in theater industry trade journals of the period.
The newly-opened Ranch Drive-In at Hartselle was listed in the “Construction” column of the November 29, 1952, issue of Boxoffice, which noted that the drive-in’s kiddie playground had been completed, along with a four-room apartment at the base of the screen for the manager.
The November 29, 1952, issue of Boxoffice said that the College Drive-In was under construction at Fort Valley, Georgia, and was expected to open around December 25. The project would accommodate 300 cars, and would have 250 seats for walk-in customers. The owners were Lee Hancock and Greer Grace.
If the rebuilt Roxy expanded onto the site of the adjacent building then the original theater’s sidewall could not have been incorporated in the project, and that makes it unlikely that any of the original back wall was saved either.
This paragraph about the Manhattan Theatre’s owner, William Gane, is from Robert Grau’s book The Business Man in the Amusement World, published in 1910:
According to an index card in this PDF from the Theatre Historical Society, the Theatre Brighton opened in 1873 in a building converted from a saloon. It was later renamed the St. James Theatre. The house was rebuilt in 1883 to plans by John McElfatrick, and opened on December 5 as the Bijou Opera House.
Alterations were made by architect Thomas Lamb in 1908, and additional alterations designed by architect W. G. Masarene in 1910. The building was demolished in 1914, and the card doesn’t mention any alterations by Stuckert & Sloane, so perhaps their 1913 project was for the only other theater on Broadway near 31st Street, Gane’s Manhattan.
According to an index card in this PDF from the Theatre Historical Society, the Imperial Music Hall opened in 1892 (on Monday, October 24, according to the October 26 issue of The New York Sun.) It became Weber & Field’s Music Hall in 1896, Weber & Ziegfeld’s Music Hall in 1905, and simply Weber’s Theatre in 1906. Alterations made in 1908 were by Thomas Lamb, and additional, though minor, alterations made in 1914 were designed by Emery Roth. The theater was demolished in 1917.
According to an index card in this PDF from the Theatre Historical Society (as well as in the AIA Guide to New York City), this long-time movie house (last operated as the Chuan Kung Theatre according to the AIA guide) began in the late 19th century as a three story store building designed by none other than McKim, Mead & White, one of New York’s most famous architectural firms.
The index card says that plans to alter the building to accommodate a movie theater were submitted in July, 1913, (Louis Sheinart, architect) and the Universal Photoplay was in operation by 1914.
The house was altered several times over the years, with its listed seating capacity increasing from 281 in 1925 to 450 in 1931 and 546 in the 1940’s, but the only alteration credited on the card is a marquee installed in 1941 by architect Sol Oberwager. The house was renamed the Music Palace in the early 1970s.
According to an index card in this PDF from the Theatre Historical Society, the building that became the New Atlantic Theatre was in operation as the Atlantic Garden by 1870, and was altered for use as a concert hall in 1883 with plans by architect Julius Kastner.
There was an aborted plan to build a new theater and 8-story office block on the site in 1911. Instead, it was remodeled in 1916 with plans by architect Henry (the card erroneously says Harry) Regelmann (plans for this project were noted in the November 17, 1915, issue of The New York Times.) Operated during its last years by the M&S Bijou circuit, the building was demolished in March, 1929.
This PDF from The Theatre Historical Society contains index cards (possibly from library files, though it doesn’t specify) with information about Manhattan’s theaters. This is the contents of the card for the People’s Theatre on the Bowery:
A far more detailed history of the house, with several illustrations, can be found on this web page from Mapping Yiddish New York, though it doesn’t mention the period when the house ran movies (which it must have been doing when it was listed in The Film Daily Yearbook.)A brief article in the October 1, 1932, issue of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said that plans for the new theater to be built by the Schwartz Amusement Company on Merrick Road in the village of Baldwin were being drawn by architect R. Thomas Short.
The article noted that the theater’s site, which Schwartz had purchased six years earlier, was west of the Baldwin M.E. Church. The church now displays a sign reading First Church Baldwin United Methodist.
The modern address of the theater’s lot, displayed on the front of the Baldwin Office Plaza, is 865 Merrick Road.
This web page from Brownstone Detectives says that the Halsey Theatre was built in 1912. The adjacent Arcadia Dance Hall and Broadway Arena flanking the theater were built around the same time by the same developer. The page notes that the Halsey closed in 1943 and was occupied through the late 1940s by a company that made cardboard leis and party favors. The arena next door was the boxing venue. All three structures were demolished around 1967 to make way for a New York City Housing Authority senior citizens housing project.
The caption of one of the photos in the January, 1913, issue of the trade journal Architecture and Building to which I linked in an earlier comment says that the Halsey Theatre was designed by the architectural firm Harde & Short. However, a biographical sketch of the firm says that the partnership was dissolved in 1909 (confirmed by this article in The New York Times from December 1, 2005), so unless the theater was designed some two to three years before it opened it was more likely one or the other of them who completed the project. I suppose it’s possible that the design was done late in 1909 and construction began in 1911, but I haven’t found the opening date of the theater, nor the exact date on which the partnership of Harde & Short was dissolved.
Herbert Spencer Steinhardt (later shortened to Harde) and Richard Thomas Short are remembered for a number of lavishly decorated apartment buildings completed between 1904 and 1909. Short went on to design a large number of theaters, mostly in Brooklyn, under the professional name R. Thomas Short.
A spectacular photo of the Pioneer Building in flames can be seen on this web page from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
There was a theater operating at Tilden in 1944, though this item from the March 4 issue of Motion Picture Herald doesn’t give its name:
This web page has the obituary of Jean Margaret Rethwisch, M. T.’s wife, which says that the Rethwischs operated the Victory Theatre in Tilden from 1943 to 1962. I don’t know if the Victory was the Tilden rebuilt or a new theater opened after the Tilden burned.The obituary also says that the Rethwischs were partners with another couple in operating the Tilden Bowl from 1962 until 1984, so it’s possible that the Victory was converted into a bowling alley when the theater business declined. Tilden still has a bowling alley, Bob’s Bowling, at 208 E. 2nd Street (the main commercial streets on the map in Tilden are Center Street, running north and south, and 2nd Street, running east and west, but the City of Tilden calls 2nd Street Main Street.) Bob’s has only four lanes, so is probably in a building about the same width as a 200-seat movie house would occupy.
The Granada Theatre and Allen Gardner were mentioned in the August 11, 1931, issue of Motion Picture Herald, and again in the April 2, 1932, issue of the same journal.
I’ve found more mentions of this house in the trade journals (Moving Picture World July 1, 1916; Motion Picture News April 7, 1917) and in the newspapers (The San Francisco Call October 30, 1912; Paramount Pictures ads in the Mill Valley Record various issues in June, 1916) as the Oakland Photoplay Theatre than as the Oakland Photo Theatre (San Francisco Call July 22, 1913; The Edison Kinetogram September 1, 1912.) The vintage photos do all show both “Photo” and “Play” on the marquee, separated by the name Oakland Theatre. Butt hen it did get listed as the Oakland Photo Theatre in the 1916 Polk guide. It would be helpful if someone could find one of the weekly or monthly programs the house probably issued,or at least a display newspaper ad for it.