This information about the Embassy Theatre is from a PDF published by the Historic American Buildings Survey (link):
“Most of the Main Street theaters were operated by the Panagotacos family. The Panagotacos bought the Presbyterian Church at 416 Main St. In 1912, when the congregation moved to a new building at the corner of Lincoln and Walnut streets. Rather than demolish the church (which had some sentimental value, albeit of a grisly nature, since it had served as a morgue following the 1889 flood), the family built a new facade and marquee over the existing building. The Presbyterian Church thus became the Nemo Theater, This was the longest lived of the Main Street theaters—as the Embassy Theater, it showed movies until summer 1988.”
Judging from the old photo on David’s link, showing Main Street East from Madison, I suspect that the address of the Avalon Theatre was either 205 or 207 W. Main Street. It appears to have been directly across the street from The westernmost storefront in the Hallan Building, which has the address 206 W. Main. The theater’s site is now part of the parking lot for Union Bank.
I believe the old Monroe Theatre is also mentioned in the “Avalon Theatre” framed history on the same page as the photo, but the text is not clear enough to make out any details other than that the manager of the new theater had also managed the old one.
If this house opened in 1929 then it was not the first in town to be called the Monroe Theatre. A Monroe Theater was advertised in the April 8, 1910, issue of the Monroe Monitor-Transcript. The house was also mentioned in the October 14, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World.
fawlsbane: The links to the Oklahoma Historical Society from this site have been broken for ages. Try clicking this link, and on the page you reach (if it works) select the link that says “Archives Catalog” and it will open the search page for the photo collection (and some other stuff.) There are over 1,000 results for a simple search on the word theatre (that spelling) and a smaller collection if you use the spelling theater. You can narrow it down by using the name of a city or of a specific theater instead.
The lot at 316 Broadway is part of the footprint of a modern, block-square building called Seaside Carousel Mall. The mall has been there for over a quarter of a century, so the Strand building was probably demolished sometime before 1990.
PSTOS has a photo of the Strand, where a Robert Morton organ was installed in 1925.
B.J. Callahan’s Strand Theatre was mentioned in the trade journals quite a few times in the late 1910s an early 1920s. In 1915, Callahan was mentioned in a few publications as operator of a house in Seaside called the Critic Theatre. The Critic had been in operation at least as early as 1912, as it was mentioned in Joseph Gaston’s The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811-1912, published that year.
The April 24, 1915, issue of Motography said that B.J. Callahan had begun construction on a new theater at Seaside. The project must have suffered delays, as the announcement of the Strand’s recent opening appeared in the April 12, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World.
An interesting wire service article about Callahan and his theater appeared in the April 7, 1922, issue of the Santa Cruz Evening News from Santa Cruz, California:
“PATRONS SEE MOVIE, THEN PAY WHAT THEY THINK IT IS WORTH (By International News Service)
“SEASIDE, Ore., April 6.
“A motion picture theatre without a box office is more than an innovation here; it is a big success, after a trial of three months. B. J. Callahan, the movie house owner, remodeled his front, tore out the ticket seller’s cage and installed a glass box between the entrance and the exit, so that patrons could drop into it whatever money they thought the picture was worth on their way out.
“Callahan had strong faith in human nature, and his three-month experience proved it was justified and convinced him that if old Diogenes should visit the local movie house he’d walk on down to the ocean beach after the show and heave his lantern into the sea.
“‘My plan has been a success from the very first day,’ said Callahan. ‘I thought the novelty might wear off, but it doesn’t. Why did I start? Because I had a decided slump in business last fall. I was losing money by keeping open after the summer tourist season slowed down. I hated to close for the winter. I liked the people and had confidence in them. They needed entertainment. I was satisfied if I could just break even.
“‘But let me tell the world something. I am making more money than I did with a regular admission charge. The people pay for what they get. When we show a poor picture the receipts fall down. When a good picture is shown the receipts double.”
A 1949 directory lists B. J. Callahan as owner of both the Times Theatre and the Strand Theatre.
Here is an item from the April 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“OWOSSO, MICH. — Eugene Brewer and Dr. G. N. Finch, who leased the Owosso theater, have remodeled the building and renamed it the Strand. The structure is now a modern theater and moving picture house. New upholstered chairs installed; projecting machines; rotary converter; screen; scenery curtain; heating system, etc. The house has seating capacity of 640.”
An item about the project in the February 15 issue of the same publication had said that the Owosso Theatre was to be remodeled as a ground-floor house at a cost of $15,000. Gus Hill’s 1914-1915 theater directory lists the Owosso Theatre as an upstairs house with 781 seats. The 1909-1910 Cahn guide lists the Owosso Theatre with 822 seats. A 1907 state directory lists the Owosso Opera House, no capacity given, and an 1897 directory lists an 800 seat Salisbury Opera House at Owosso. The 1894 Donaldson guide lists the 800 seat Owosso Opera House.
Here is another article about the renovations at the Temple Theatre, this one from 2014.
A timeline with the article notes that the house opened in 1937 as the Temple Theatre, was renamed the Strand sometime in the 1940s, and was closed in the 1950s. The Temple replaced the Capitol Theatre, which had burned, on the same site, but the article does not make clear whether it was entirely new construction or just a rebuild within the surviving walls.
Portland Preservation Foundation bought the house in 2013, and restored the earlier name Temple Theatre. The renovations are still ongoing. The Facebookpage has a few photos, including a couple showing the restored marquee.
The State is currently showing movies on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but nothing is yet announced for September. Five dollar admission, four for children and seniors. They are showing Dunkirk next weekend. Quite a bargain. But so far there is only one showing each night (at 7:30), so don’t be late.
Overture San Diego, the mixed use project slated to replace the California Theatre, has been waiting on official approval of its construction plans to begin demolition. The old office building on the corner of 4th and C, which once held the theater’s entrance, will be incorporated into the new project, but the auditorium is to be demolished and replaced by a new building with shops on the lower floors and several levels of parking both above and below, with the new residential tower rising atop that structure.
To me it seems almost adding insult to injury that the vertical “California” sign is to be duplicated on the old office building, and that the grill concealing the above-ground parking area will be decorated with a mural depicting the theater in its heyday.
You can see the plans for the project here. I’m sure the completed project will be an asset to downtown San Diego, but it’s unfortunate that the historic California Theatre will have been sacrificed to build it.
When the Perry Drive-In opened in the summer of 1971, it was one of about a dozen theaters in the independent circuit operated by John H. “Tommy” Thompson, a long-time Georgia exhibitor. About $125,000 had been expended on the project, exclusive of the land, according to a brief item in the August 9 issue of Boxoffice.
The records of the Grand Forks architectural firm Wells-Denbrook Architects (Theodore B. Wells and Myron Denbrook, Jr.) list a 1938 project at Crosby as the Metro Theatre. I’m not sure if it opened with that name or not. Wells was the lead architect of the project.
The Cactus Drive-In was twinned in 1971, and its late July opening was noted in the August 9 issue of Boxoffice. The drive-in had doubled its car capacity with the expansion, and featured improved amenities such as a new, air conditioned concessions stand. The Cactus was an ABC Interstate Theatres operation.
The August 9, 1971, issue of Boxoffice reported that the Crossroads Cinema I and II in Waterloo had recently been opened by St. Cloud, Minnesota-based chain Cinema Entertainment Corp.. The original house seated 540 in Cinema I and 460 in Cinema II. Cinema Entertainment then operated 14 theaters in Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
The records of the Grand Forks architectural firm Wells-Denbrook Architects (Theodore B. Wells and Myron Denbrook, Jr.) list the Zelda Theatre at Grafton, North Dakota, as a 1945 project. Postwar restrictions on building materials could account for the opening of the house being delayed until 1947. The original owner of the Zelda was named Ted Hoffman.
The May 3, 1976, issue of Boxoffice said that Arlo Henriksen, operator of the Strand Theatre in Grafton, had taken over operation of the rival Zelda Theatre from Marvin Agotness.
The records of the Grand Forks architectural firm Wells-Denbrook Architects (Theodore B. Wells and Myron Denbrook, Jr.) lists as a 1940 project the remodeling of the Grand Theatre at Michigan, North Dakota. As the Legion Theatre opened in 1940, I think it likely that Legion was the new name of the remodeled Grand.
I’ve been unable to find the Grand mentioned in any of the earlier theater trade journals, but Michigan was mentioned in a brief item in The Moving Picture World of June 4, 1914, which said only that “L. Thompson will open a moving picture theater at Michigan, N. D.”
A brief item in Boxoffice of May 19, 1956, said that the darkened theater at Michigan, North Dakota, had reopened.
This web page has some information about the Grand Theatre in Hallock (I don’t believe any of the accompanying photos depict the Grand, though.) The page says that the Grand opened in November, 1920. It doesn’t give the closing year, but does note that the house operated into the CinemaScope era. A drive-in theater, under the same ownership, opened nearby in 1954.
The article also mentions Frederick “Casey” Jones, a local mechanic and radio repair man who, in the late 1920s, built a sound system for the theater when the owner was unable to afford the commercial systems then coming on the market. Jones later went on to work for Minneapolis-based Ultraphone Sound Systems, where he made many improvements in the company’s theater sound systems. Over the next couple of decades he proved to be an imaginative inventor in many fields, and invented, among other things, the first practicable refrigeration system for long haul trucks. There is an interesting short biography of him on this page from the Minnesota Science & Technology Hall of Fame.
marrossini: Dave Kenney’s book Twin Cities Picture Show lists the Randolph Theatre operating from 1937 to 1956 at 1326 Randolph Avenue. I haven’t found any details about it, though.
Mr. V.E. McGee had an addition built at his theater in Amherst in 1914, as noted in the April 25 issue of The American Contractor that year. The 30x36-foot addition was designed by Loraine, Ohio, architect H.O. Wurmser.
Page 8 of this PDF has two early photos of the Empire Theatre, plus a small photo of the house as the Amherst, probably taken around 1954. The false front on the building might have been from Mr. Wurmser’s project of 1914.
The renovated Delft Theatre is now the home of the Delft Bistro, a bar and restaurant. Their web site says they show movies nightly, but doesn’t give any information about format. I suspect they are just running blue ray movies. They have a calendar style schedule on their “Films” page, but it’s blank, so you have to call the restaurant to find out what the feature film is on any given night.
Cezar Del Valle’s site has a closeup of the Varieties first published in the November 16, 1912, issue of The Moving Picture World. The house was featuring Sarah Bernhardt’s prestige film Camille.
According to this article dated April 19, 2000, the Crown Theatre at Aspen Hill Shopping Center was set to close on April 30. Crown Theatres, which had taken over the 30-year lease on the house in 1996, was unable to negotiate terms for a renewal that were satisfactory to both the company and the landlord.
I’m not sure where the theater was located in this complex, but it is gone now. This directory on the Neonopolis web site shows a number of vacant spaces along with an assortment of shops, restaurants, offices, a brew pub, a nightclub, and even a gallery operated by the Las Vegas Art Museum, but no movie theater. The short-lived Krave Massive is long gone.
Okay, I’ve found the connection (I didn’t look long enough before.) This house was indeed opened by Crown Theatres, LLC, based in South Norwalk, Connecticut. Here is their Bloomberg data page.
Crown Cinema Corporation, as I noted in my earlier comment, was a different company, based in Missouri and headed by Richard Durwood. It was absorbed by Dallas-based Hollywood Theaters in 1996.
This information about the Embassy Theatre is from a PDF published by the Historic American Buildings Survey (link):
Judging from the old photo on David’s link, showing Main Street East from Madison, I suspect that the address of the Avalon Theatre was either 205 or 207 W. Main Street. It appears to have been directly across the street from The westernmost storefront in the Hallan Building, which has the address 206 W. Main. The theater’s site is now part of the parking lot for Union Bank.
I believe the old Monroe Theatre is also mentioned in the “Avalon Theatre” framed history on the same page as the photo, but the text is not clear enough to make out any details other than that the manager of the new theater had also managed the old one.
If this house opened in 1929 then it was not the first in town to be called the Monroe Theatre. A Monroe Theater was advertised in the April 8, 1910, issue of the Monroe Monitor-Transcript. The house was also mentioned in the October 14, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World.
fawlsbane: The links to the Oklahoma Historical Society from this site have been broken for ages. Try clicking this link, and on the page you reach (if it works) select the link that says “Archives Catalog” and it will open the search page for the photo collection (and some other stuff.) There are over 1,000 results for a simple search on the word theatre (that spelling) and a smaller collection if you use the spelling theater. You can narrow it down by using the name of a city or of a specific theater instead.
The lot at 316 Broadway is part of the footprint of a modern, block-square building called Seaside Carousel Mall. The mall has been there for over a quarter of a century, so the Strand building was probably demolished sometime before 1990.
PSTOS has a photo of the Strand, where a Robert Morton organ was installed in 1925.
B.J. Callahan’s Strand Theatre was mentioned in the trade journals quite a few times in the late 1910s an early 1920s. In 1915, Callahan was mentioned in a few publications as operator of a house in Seaside called the Critic Theatre. The Critic had been in operation at least as early as 1912, as it was mentioned in Joseph Gaston’s The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811-1912, published that year.
The April 24, 1915, issue of Motography said that B.J. Callahan had begun construction on a new theater at Seaside. The project must have suffered delays, as the announcement of the Strand’s recent opening appeared in the April 12, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World.
An interesting wire service article about Callahan and his theater appeared in the April 7, 1922, issue of the Santa Cruz Evening News from Santa Cruz, California:
A 1949 directory lists B. J. Callahan as owner of both the Times Theatre and the Strand Theatre.Here is an item from the April 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
An item about the project in the February 15 issue of the same publication had said that the Owosso Theatre was to be remodeled as a ground-floor house at a cost of $15,000. Gus Hill’s 1914-1915 theater directory lists the Owosso Theatre as an upstairs house with 781 seats. The 1909-1910 Cahn guide lists the Owosso Theatre with 822 seats. A 1907 state directory lists the Owosso Opera House, no capacity given, and an 1897 directory lists an 800 seat Salisbury Opera House at Owosso. The 1894 Donaldson guide lists the 800 seat Owosso Opera House.Here is another article about the renovations at the Temple Theatre, this one from 2014.
A timeline with the article notes that the house opened in 1937 as the Temple Theatre, was renamed the Strand sometime in the 1940s, and was closed in the 1950s. The Temple replaced the Capitol Theatre, which had burned, on the same site, but the article does not make clear whether it was entirely new construction or just a rebuild within the surviving walls.
Portland Preservation Foundation bought the house in 2013, and restored the earlier name Temple Theatre. The renovations are still ongoing. The Facebookpage has a few photos, including a couple showing the restored marquee.
The State is currently showing movies on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but nothing is yet announced for September. Five dollar admission, four for children and seniors. They are showing Dunkirk next weekend. Quite a bargain. But so far there is only one showing each night (at 7:30), so don’t be late.
Overture San Diego, the mixed use project slated to replace the California Theatre, has been waiting on official approval of its construction plans to begin demolition. The old office building on the corner of 4th and C, which once held the theater’s entrance, will be incorporated into the new project, but the auditorium is to be demolished and replaced by a new building with shops on the lower floors and several levels of parking both above and below, with the new residential tower rising atop that structure.
To me it seems almost adding insult to injury that the vertical “California” sign is to be duplicated on the old office building, and that the grill concealing the above-ground parking area will be decorated with a mural depicting the theater in its heyday.
You can see the plans for the project here. I’m sure the completed project will be an asset to downtown San Diego, but it’s unfortunate that the historic California Theatre will have been sacrificed to build it.
When the Perry Drive-In opened in the summer of 1971, it was one of about a dozen theaters in the independent circuit operated by John H. “Tommy” Thompson, a long-time Georgia exhibitor. About $125,000 had been expended on the project, exclusive of the land, according to a brief item in the August 9 issue of Boxoffice.
The records of the Grand Forks architectural firm Wells-Denbrook Architects (Theodore B. Wells and Myron Denbrook, Jr.) list a 1938 project at Crosby as the Metro Theatre. I’m not sure if it opened with that name or not. Wells was the lead architect of the project.
The Cactus Drive-In was twinned in 1971, and its late July opening was noted in the August 9 issue of Boxoffice. The drive-in had doubled its car capacity with the expansion, and featured improved amenities such as a new, air conditioned concessions stand. The Cactus was an ABC Interstate Theatres operation.
The August 9, 1971, issue of Boxoffice reported that the Crossroads Cinema I and II in Waterloo had recently been opened by St. Cloud, Minnesota-based chain Cinema Entertainment Corp.. The original house seated 540 in Cinema I and 460 in Cinema II. Cinema Entertainment then operated 14 theaters in Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
The records of the Grand Forks architectural firm Wells-Denbrook Architects (Theodore B. Wells and Myron Denbrook, Jr.) list the Zelda Theatre at Grafton, North Dakota, as a 1945 project. Postwar restrictions on building materials could account for the opening of the house being delayed until 1947. The original owner of the Zelda was named Ted Hoffman.
The May 3, 1976, issue of Boxoffice said that Arlo Henriksen, operator of the Strand Theatre in Grafton, had taken over operation of the rival Zelda Theatre from Marvin Agotness.
The records of the Grand Forks architectural firm Wells-Denbrook Architects (Theodore B. Wells and Myron Denbrook, Jr.) lists as a 1940 project the remodeling of the Grand Theatre at Michigan, North Dakota. As the Legion Theatre opened in 1940, I think it likely that Legion was the new name of the remodeled Grand.
I’ve been unable to find the Grand mentioned in any of the earlier theater trade journals, but Michigan was mentioned in a brief item in The Moving Picture World of June 4, 1914, which said only that “L. Thompson will open a moving picture theater at Michigan, N. D.”
A brief item in Boxoffice of May 19, 1956, said that the darkened theater at Michigan, North Dakota, had reopened.
This web page has some information about the Grand Theatre in Hallock (I don’t believe any of the accompanying photos depict the Grand, though.) The page says that the Grand opened in November, 1920. It doesn’t give the closing year, but does note that the house operated into the CinemaScope era. A drive-in theater, under the same ownership, opened nearby in 1954.
The article also mentions Frederick “Casey” Jones, a local mechanic and radio repair man who, in the late 1920s, built a sound system for the theater when the owner was unable to afford the commercial systems then coming on the market. Jones later went on to work for Minneapolis-based Ultraphone Sound Systems, where he made many improvements in the company’s theater sound systems. Over the next couple of decades he proved to be an imaginative inventor in many fields, and invented, among other things, the first practicable refrigeration system for long haul trucks. There is an interesting short biography of him on this page from the Minnesota Science & Technology Hall of Fame.
Dave Kenney’s book (which I’ve found to be quite reliable) says that the Arcade Theatre closed in 1978, not 1969.
marrossini: Dave Kenney’s book Twin Cities Picture Show lists the Randolph Theatre operating from 1937 to 1956 at 1326 Randolph Avenue. I haven’t found any details about it, though.
Mr. V.E. McGee had an addition built at his theater in Amherst in 1914, as noted in the April 25 issue of The American Contractor that year. The 30x36-foot addition was designed by Loraine, Ohio, architect H.O. Wurmser.
Page 8 of this PDF has two early photos of the Empire Theatre, plus a small photo of the house as the Amherst, probably taken around 1954. The false front on the building might have been from Mr. Wurmser’s project of 1914.
The renovated Delft Theatre is now the home of the Delft Bistro, a bar and restaurant. Their web site says they show movies nightly, but doesn’t give any information about format. I suspect they are just running blue ray movies. They have a calendar style schedule on their “Films” page, but it’s blank, so you have to call the restaurant to find out what the feature film is on any given night.
Cezar Del Valle’s site has a closeup of the Varieties first published in the November 16, 1912, issue of The Moving Picture World. The house was featuring Sarah Bernhardt’s prestige film Camille.
According to this article dated April 19, 2000, the Crown Theatre at Aspen Hill Shopping Center was set to close on April 30. Crown Theatres, which had taken over the 30-year lease on the house in 1996, was unable to negotiate terms for a renewal that were satisfactory to both the company and the landlord.
I’m not sure where the theater was located in this complex, but it is gone now. This directory on the Neonopolis web site shows a number of vacant spaces along with an assortment of shops, restaurants, offices, a brew pub, a nightclub, and even a gallery operated by the Las Vegas Art Museum, but no movie theater. The short-lived Krave Massive is long gone.
Okay, I’ve found the connection (I didn’t look long enough before.) This house was indeed opened by Crown Theatres, LLC, based in South Norwalk, Connecticut. Here is their Bloomberg data page.
Crown Cinema Corporation, as I noted in my earlier comment, was a different company, based in Missouri and headed by Richard Durwood. It was absorbed by Dallas-based Hollywood Theaters in 1996.