More accurate information can hardly be considered bad news for this web site. However, it might be bad news for the Berkeley Historical Plaque Project, which names Cornelius as the architect. Plaques, unlike words on a web page, are costly to replace. Unfortunately, the BHPP page doesn’t give a source for its claim.
I’m not familiar with the form of Berkeley’s building permits from this period, so I do have a couple of questions. A number of east bay buildings are attributed to Dufour as architect, but he was also a builder. Was his company listed on this theater project’s permit as builder? Is the permit the actual form filled out by the person applying for it, or is it an abstract prepared by a clerk in the city office?
Linkrot repair: The photo of the Ras Tanura Theatre in Boxoffice of February 4, 1950, can currently be seen at this link (I hope.)
Edit: Well, it doesn’t, and I can’t figure out how to make a direct link to the page at the user-hostile web site Yumpu. Click on the search icon (magnifying glass) below the magazine page scan and put the name ras tanura in the search box, and clicking on the results from that search should take you to the page with the photo on it.
The Ridgemont was never called the Bathhouse Playhouse. The Bathhouse Theatre group was founded in 1970, and the company’s performances took place in the former bathhouse in Green Lake Park.
After the Ridgemont closed, it was leased for a while in the late 1990s by the Bathhouse group, but only for use as a rehearsal space and as a workshop for building sets. When the Bathhouse group folded in 1999, the Ridgemont Theatre became vacant again and remained so until it was demolished in 2001. The Bathhouse in Green Lake Park was taken over by Seattle Public Theatre in 2000, and continues to operate as a playhouse.
This web page from PSTOS has quite a bit of information about the Ridgemont, as well as a few photos, and notes its use in the late 1990s for rehearsals and scenery construction by the Bathhouse Theatre company.
The Ridgemont Theatre opened in either late 1920 or early 1921, as noted in this item from the January 8, 1921, issue of The Film Daily:
“New Seattle House (Special to WID’S DAILY) Seattle— ‘The Ridgemount,’ H. W. Bruen’s new residential district theater at 78th St. and Greenwood, was opened recently. This house is equipped with loges and the best in furniture, music and projection equipment.”
The supermarket that replaced the Venetian Theatre has itself been replaced by a six-story condominium building with retail space on the ground floor. Street view should be set to the southwest corner of the intersection.
According to the February 2, 1918, issue of The Dramatic Mirror the Victoria Theatre at Dayton had been destroyed by a fire on January 15. Other sources give the date of the event as January 16.
The December 15, 1917, issue of Motography reported that “The Auditorium theater at Dayton was destroyed by fire with a loss of $300,000.” The figure was a bit exaggerated. The next year’s report from the Dayton City Commission said that “The biggest fire during the year was at the Auditorium Theatre on East Fourth Street, with a loss of $70,348.00.”
The report in Motography was probably a bit late as well. The December 6, 1917 issue of Engineering News-Record had this item in its notices of proposed buildings that was probably about the Auditorium:
“Dayton—theater—G. Burrows and Associates plan to rebuild theater recently destroyed by fire. About $250,000. Pretzinger & Musselman, 1155 Reibold St., archts.”
American Classic Images has this May, 1984 photo of the Venice Theatre. It does look like there could be a bit of smoke damage to the facade, and there might be a boarded up section on the pizza parlor next door, but otherwise the building looks sound enough.
flatford: Its been a long time since I posted that now-dead link, but I pretty much always tested my links and then fixed them if they didn’t work, so that probably is the right date. Boxoffice published several different regional editions and a national edition of each issue, though, and it’s possible that the copy they had on issue.com in 2010 was different from the one they now have on yumpu.com. I find yumpu impossible to search either internally or from outside, so I haven’t seen the copy that is there now.
I’m also fed up with Boxoffice, as it has broken its links three times since it first put its archive online. I should probably just delete all my comments with broken links to that magazine in them, but I’ve never gotten around to it.
The Patio Theatre was originally an airdome, and was in operation by 1926 (a number of modern sources say it opened in 1925.) The advertisement for the house in the April 14 issue of The Tampa Bay Times that year boasted: “PATIO, Central and 19th, Handsomest Open Air Theatre in America”. It’s possible that the 1928 opening that other sources give was its re-opening as an indoor theater.
A document listing historic buildings in St, Petersburg says that the 1924 bank building which was converted into the State Theatre in 1950 was designed by Atlanta architect Neel Reid.
Reid’s fine Beaux Arts facade is still intact, but judging from the two interior shots in this web gallery the original interior is gone. It looks like much of Archie Parish’s streamlined 1950 remodeling probably remains.
I believe the building partly seen beyond the theater in the vintage photo is still standing on the southeast corner of North Main and East Grand Street. The Vita must have been on the lot at the northeast corner, now the site a modern building housing RMS Jewelers, at 508 N. Main Street. The gabled house up the hill on the left side of Main Street in the old photo is still standing, too.
Despite numerous Internet sources saying that the Arcade was built in 1908, the name Arcade Theatre does not appear in the Fort Myers News-Press prior to 1915. The only theater names I’ve found in earlier papers are the Court Theatre, which later became the Omar Theatre and then the Ritz Theatre, and was located in the Patio de Leon, and the Grand Theatre, which was at the southwest corner of First and Jackson, and was destroyed by a fire in February, 1915.
According to this 2016 article in the News-Press, the first Arcade Theatre was under construction at the time the Grand burned. It was part of a project that included a number of shops. In late 1916, Harvie Heitman, the owner of the Arcade, rebuilt and expanded the project, including the theater. That was the house that opened in February, 1917.
This article also covers the history of the Arcade, and includes a couple of smallish photos of the theater’s Bay Street entrance, one from the 1920s and one recent.
The Arcade Theatre was rebuilt again in 1938, just about doubling its size, and formally opened on December 20 that year. According to that day’s issue of the News-Press, the plans for the expansion were by architect Roy Benjamin, who was at that time designing all of E. J. Sparks' new and remodeled theaters.
One of the newspaper articles displayed at the above link says that the architect of the Marlow Theatre was Henderson Ryan. The Marlow was one of several theaters built around this time that featured Ryan’s inclined ramp system for access to the balcony and mezzanine.
The trade journals give contradictory information about the theater in Juneau. The November 15, 1947, issue of Motion Picture Herald ran this brief item saying “Carl Neitzel is planning one in Juneau, Wis., which has no theatre.”
However the December 2, 1950, issue of Boxoffice has a short article about the remodeling of the Juno, which says this: “Mr. and Mrs. Carl Neitzel, owners of the house for ten years, recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.”
I suppose it could be that the Juno was a replacement for an earlier theater in Juneau that the Neitzel’s owned.
Boxoffice pf February 4, 1956, reported that Mrs. Ethel K. Walsh, president of the Scott Amusement Company, had turned over management of the Scott Theatre in Scottsburg and the Austin Theatre in Austin to her daughters and their husbands.
The January 22, 1908, issue of The Junction City Union said that the tinners who had been putting the decorative finishes on the new Aurora Theatre had moved on to Topeka to work on a theater of the same name there.
I’ve seen ads for both the Aurora and the Cozy in the Union as early as May, 1913, (the original Cozy most likely opened on May 10, and was at 625 N. Washington) and continuing into 1917. The Aurora often featured live events during this period, but the Cozy ran movies most of the time, though it too had live theater sometimes.
The town also had an Airdome, operated during the summer months. In 1914 the Airdome was taken over from the Aurora Theatre by the operators of the Cozy, according to the April 9 issue of the Union.
The October 16, 1918, issue of the Union had an article about the rebuilt Cozy Theatre, the opening of which had been delayed by a quarantine, probably imposed due to the Spanish Influenza epidemic. The Aurora had been renamed the Cozy in 1917 (change noted in the August 2 issue of the Union), around the time the new Columbia Theatre was opened.
Junction City had an earlier movie house, the Lyric Theatre, opened in March, 1907, at 603 N. Washington, but it appears to have closed not long after the first Cozy opened.
David and Noelle Soren’s list of know Boller Brothers theaters lists a 1917 project by the Bollers in Junction City, but it is listed as the Columbia Theatre.
The list also includes the Junction Theatre, but that is listed as a later aka for the Uptown Theatre that opened in 1928. It also lists Dickinson as another aka for the Uptown/Junction.
I’ve been unable to find an address for the Columbia Theatre, but the September 1, 1919, Daily Union has an ad for the house which includes a drawing (here, but I don’t have an account with Newspapers.com, so it isn’t enlarged.) Wherever it was, it looks like it was a corner location.
The Unique was mentioned in the October 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“THE Unique theater at Mankato, Minn., has been reopened by the American Amusement Company and will again be operated in conjunction with the Grand theater. Manager Arthur Erickson of the Grand will have charge of both houses. Erickson has opened a show at Madison Lake, showing Sunday and Wednesday nights in the village hall. Percy Wirig is local manager.”
An issue of MPW later that year noted that Erickson had given up management of the Grand and Unique and had leased Mankato’s Pastime Theatre.
The Mankato Commercial College building that burned in 1915 was located in the 100 block of south Front Street, a location that will no longer map, the neighborhood having been altered by an urban renewal project. As near as I can figure the building was under the footprint of what is now the Holiday Inn that fronts on Main Street, or perhaps the footprint of the municipal parking ramp just north of it, or maybe across Front Street at or near the location of what is now the Loose Moose Saloon and Conference Center.
The judo classes given at the Park Theatre are provided by Racine Youth Sports, a nonprofit volunteer organization. Most of their activities are held in Haban Park.
I don’t know the nature of the group’s arrangement with the theater. I’ve been unable to discover if it is still owned by the Westbury Group LLC, the investment bank that bought it in 2004 with the intention of renovating it for use as a performing arts venue. Thirteen years is an awfully long time for a for-profit company to hang on to a property that can’t bringing in much revenue, if any.
At least the fact that RYS is using the building for kids' classes indicates that it is unlikely to fall down from decay. The promised renovation for theatrical use, however, must be at the very least on hold for now, and has perhaps been abandoned.
More accurate information can hardly be considered bad news for this web site. However, it might be bad news for the Berkeley Historical Plaque Project, which names Cornelius as the architect. Plaques, unlike words on a web page, are costly to replace. Unfortunately, the BHPP page doesn’t give a source for its claim.
I’m not familiar with the form of Berkeley’s building permits from this period, so I do have a couple of questions. A number of east bay buildings are attributed to Dufour as architect, but he was also a builder. Was his company listed on this theater project’s permit as builder? Is the permit the actual form filled out by the person applying for it, or is it an abstract prepared by a clerk in the city office?
Linkrot repair: The photo of the Ras Tanura Theatre in Boxoffice of February 4, 1950, can currently be seen at this link (I hope.)
Edit: Well, it doesn’t, and I can’t figure out how to make a direct link to the page at the user-hostile web site Yumpu. Click on the search icon (magnifying glass) below the magazine page scan and put the name ras tanura in the search box, and clicking on the results from that search should take you to the page with the photo on it.
The Ridgemont was never called the Bathhouse Playhouse. The Bathhouse Theatre group was founded in 1970, and the company’s performances took place in the former bathhouse in Green Lake Park.
After the Ridgemont closed, it was leased for a while in the late 1990s by the Bathhouse group, but only for use as a rehearsal space and as a workshop for building sets. When the Bathhouse group folded in 1999, the Ridgemont Theatre became vacant again and remained so until it was demolished in 2001. The Bathhouse in Green Lake Park was taken over by Seattle Public Theatre in 2000, and continues to operate as a playhouse.
This web page from PSTOS has quite a bit of information about the Ridgemont, as well as a few photos, and notes its use in the late 1990s for rehearsals and scenery construction by the Bathhouse Theatre company.
The Ridgemont Theatre opened in either late 1920 or early 1921, as noted in this item from the January 8, 1921, issue of The Film Daily:
The supermarket that replaced the Venetian Theatre has itself been replaced by a six-story condominium building with retail space on the ground floor. Street view should be set to the southwest corner of the intersection.
According to the February 2, 1918, issue of The Dramatic Mirror the Victoria Theatre at Dayton had been destroyed by a fire on January 15. Other sources give the date of the event as January 16.
The December 15, 1917, issue of Motography reported that “The Auditorium theater at Dayton was destroyed by fire with a loss of $300,000.” The figure was a bit exaggerated. The next year’s report from the Dayton City Commission said that “The biggest fire during the year was at the Auditorium Theatre on East Fourth Street, with a loss of $70,348.00.”
The report in Motography was probably a bit late as well. The December 6, 1917 issue of Engineering News-Record had this item in its notices of proposed buildings that was probably about the Auditorium:
American Classic Images has this May, 1984 photo of the Venice Theatre. It does look like there could be a bit of smoke damage to the facade, and there might be a boarded up section on the pizza parlor next door, but otherwise the building looks sound enough.
flatford: Its been a long time since I posted that now-dead link, but I pretty much always tested my links and then fixed them if they didn’t work, so that probably is the right date. Boxoffice published several different regional editions and a national edition of each issue, though, and it’s possible that the copy they had on issue.com in 2010 was different from the one they now have on yumpu.com. I find yumpu impossible to search either internally or from outside, so I haven’t seen the copy that is there now.
I’m also fed up with Boxoffice, as it has broken its links three times since it first put its archive online. I should probably just delete all my comments with broken links to that magazine in them, but I’ve never gotten around to it.
The Patio Theatre was originally an airdome, and was in operation by 1926 (a number of modern sources say it opened in 1925.) The advertisement for the house in the April 14 issue of The Tampa Bay Times that year boasted: “PATIO, Central and 19th, Handsomest Open Air Theatre in America”. It’s possible that the 1928 opening that other sources give was its re-opening as an indoor theater.
A document listing historic buildings in St, Petersburg says that the 1924 bank building which was converted into the State Theatre in 1950 was designed by Atlanta architect Neel Reid.
Reid’s fine Beaux Arts facade is still intact, but judging from the two interior shots in this web gallery the original interior is gone. It looks like much of Archie Parish’s streamlined 1950 remodeling probably remains.
I believe the building partly seen beyond the theater in the vintage photo is still standing on the southeast corner of North Main and East Grand Street. The Vita must have been on the lot at the northeast corner, now the site a modern building housing RMS Jewelers, at 508 N. Main Street. The gabled house up the hill on the left side of Main Street in the old photo is still standing, too.
Liebenberg & Kaplan worked on the State Theatre in 1935.
Link
Despite numerous Internet sources saying that the Arcade was built in 1908, the name Arcade Theatre does not appear in the Fort Myers News-Press prior to 1915. The only theater names I’ve found in earlier papers are the Court Theatre, which later became the Omar Theatre and then the Ritz Theatre, and was located in the Patio de Leon, and the Grand Theatre, which was at the southwest corner of First and Jackson, and was destroyed by a fire in February, 1915.
According to this 2016 article in the News-Press, the first Arcade Theatre was under construction at the time the Grand burned. It was part of a project that included a number of shops. In late 1916, Harvie Heitman, the owner of the Arcade, rebuilt and expanded the project, including the theater. That was the house that opened in February, 1917.
This article also covers the history of the Arcade, and includes a couple of smallish photos of the theater’s Bay Street entrance, one from the 1920s and one recent.
The Arcade Theatre was rebuilt again in 1938, just about doubling its size, and formally opened on December 20 that year. According to that day’s issue of the News-Press, the plans for the expansion were by architect Roy Benjamin, who was at that time designing all of E. J. Sparks' new and remodeled theaters.
Link & Haire, original architects.
One of the newspaper articles displayed at the above link says that the architect of the Marlow Theatre was Henderson Ryan. The Marlow was one of several theaters built around this time that featured Ryan’s inclined ramp system for access to the balcony and mezzanine.
Henderson Ryan was the architect of the People’s Theatre. The house featured his patented incline ramps for balcony and mezzanine access.
The trade journals give contradictory information about the theater in Juneau. The November 15, 1947, issue of Motion Picture Herald ran this brief item saying “Carl Neitzel is planning one in Juneau, Wis., which has no theatre.”
However the December 2, 1950, issue of Boxoffice has a short article about the remodeling of the Juno, which says this: “Mr. and Mrs. Carl Neitzel, owners of the house for ten years, recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.”
I suppose it could be that the Juno was a replacement for an earlier theater in Juneau that the Neitzel’s owned.
Boxoffice pf February 4, 1956, reported that Mrs. Ethel K. Walsh, president of the Scott Amusement Company, had turned over management of the Scott Theatre in Scottsburg and the Austin Theatre in Austin to her daughters and their husbands.
The May 13, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World noted that the Scenic Theater Company of Scottsburg, Indiana, had filed articles of incorporation.
The January 22, 1908, issue of The Junction City Union said that the tinners who had been putting the decorative finishes on the new Aurora Theatre had moved on to Topeka to work on a theater of the same name there.
I’ve seen ads for both the Aurora and the Cozy in the Union as early as May, 1913, (the original Cozy most likely opened on May 10, and was at 625 N. Washington) and continuing into 1917. The Aurora often featured live events during this period, but the Cozy ran movies most of the time, though it too had live theater sometimes.
The town also had an Airdome, operated during the summer months. In 1914 the Airdome was taken over from the Aurora Theatre by the operators of the Cozy, according to the April 9 issue of the Union.
The October 16, 1918, issue of the Union had an article about the rebuilt Cozy Theatre, the opening of which had been delayed by a quarantine, probably imposed due to the Spanish Influenza epidemic. The Aurora had been renamed the Cozy in 1917 (change noted in the August 2 issue of the Union), around the time the new Columbia Theatre was opened.
Junction City had an earlier movie house, the Lyric Theatre, opened in March, 1907, at 603 N. Washington, but it appears to have closed not long after the first Cozy opened.
David and Noelle Soren’s list of know Boller Brothers theaters lists a 1917 project by the Bollers in Junction City, but it is listed as the Columbia Theatre.
The list also includes the Junction Theatre, but that is listed as a later aka for the Uptown Theatre that opened in 1928. It also lists Dickinson as another aka for the Uptown/Junction.
I’ve been unable to find an address for the Columbia Theatre, but the September 1, 1919, Daily Union has an ad for the house which includes a drawing (here, but I don’t have an account with Newspapers.com, so it isn’t enlarged.) Wherever it was, it looks like it was a corner location.
The Unique was mentioned in the October 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World:
An issue of MPW later that year noted that Erickson had given up management of the Grand and Unique and had leased Mankato’s Pastime Theatre.The Mankato Commercial College building that burned in 1915 was located in the 100 block of south Front Street, a location that will no longer map, the neighborhood having been altered by an urban renewal project. As near as I can figure the building was under the footprint of what is now the Holiday Inn that fronts on Main Street, or perhaps the footprint of the municipal parking ramp just north of it, or maybe across Front Street at or near the location of what is now the Loose Moose Saloon and Conference Center.
The judo classes given at the Park Theatre are provided by Racine Youth Sports, a nonprofit volunteer organization. Most of their activities are held in Haban Park.
I don’t know the nature of the group’s arrangement with the theater. I’ve been unable to discover if it is still owned by the Westbury Group LLC, the investment bank that bought it in 2004 with the intention of renovating it for use as a performing arts venue. Thirteen years is an awfully long time for a for-profit company to hang on to a property that can’t bringing in much revenue, if any.
At least the fact that RYS is using the building for kids' classes indicates that it is unlikely to fall down from decay. The promised renovation for theatrical use, however, must be at the very least on hold for now, and has perhaps been abandoned.