Boxoffice of January 26, 1952, reported that the former Majestic Theatre at Fairbury, which had been closed for some time, had been renovated and reopened in late 1951 as the Woods Theatre. Seating had been reduced to 468. The item noted that the house was across from something called Pla-Mor, but failed to say what Pla-Mor was. It turns out that Pla-Mor is a bowling alley and cafe, still in operation, having now outlasted the theater by about six decades.
I haven’t been able to determine the closing date of the Woods Theatre, but it was in operation at least as late as February, 1955, when it was showing Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I’ve found a reference to a two-week revival meeting being held at the Woods in 1958, so it had possibly closed by then, but had not yet been dismantled. By June, 1959, the theater had been converted to offices for the Jefferson County Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation committee, the formal opening taking place that month.
The March 22, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item about the operators of the Majestic:
“Bartlett & Son Are Progressive.
“C. W. Bartlett & Son, proprietors of the Majestic Theatre, seating 700, and another smaller house in Fairbury, Neb., keep a high average of regular business by sending out specially prepared house organs to a mailing list of 1,500 people living in Fairbury, in the surrounding country and in nearby towns. The Bartlett paper is run on the style of the city newspaper moving picture sections, with reviews of the coming pictures and some interesting material about stars known to the Bartlett patrons. The papers are sent out regularly, and are eagerly looked for. They were used to send out coupons addressed to the state senator and representative from that district protesting against the censorship bill proposed in Nebraska.”
It has little information about the theater itself, but this article from Boxoffice of November 17, 1951, focused on the Roxy’s manager, Wilton Gross, is an interesting look into the small town theater business of the period.
This article from June, 2011, gives the address of the Roxy Theatre as 120 N. Market Street. It had just been bought by the local Chamber of Commerce after having been owned by Berean Bible Church since 1985. The article also notes that the house had for a time been called the Mohawk Theatre, though it has now returned to the name Roxy.
“The longtime fixture has taken on many reincarnations through the years. From its heyday as the Roxy Theater, where crowds of people lined up along the sidewalk under its marquee, to being renamed the Mohawk Theater in the 1960s, to becoming a church in the ’80s. In 2011, the Minerva Area Chamber of Commerce acquired the building and has refurbished its roughly 180-seat theater as well as restored the Roxy name to the marquee, which now boasts an electronic display that advertises community activities. Now used for music performances, theater groups and other community and business events, it also is rented for private functions.”
Because some people claim to have seen a Sasquatch in the area, Minerva hosts a “Monster Day” event which is depicted in this weblog post. It includes a few photos of Market Street in which the Roxy can be seen, and one photo of the theater’s interior. There is a screen in the auditorium, but it looks portable, and when movies are shown they are probably from DVDs. As the church that occupied the building for over a quarter of a century did considerable remodeling it’s likely that the original movie equipment was removed long ago, and modern digital equipment is probably beyond the budget of a small house that is used mostly for live events.
Trade journals from the 1920s mention a movie house in Minerva called the Dreamland Theatre. I haven’t been able to determine if this was an earlier name for the Roxy, but the Roxy’s building looks old enough to have been in use then.
The Manos Theatre opened on April 1, 1953, according to this item from Motion Picture Daily of that date:
“Manos House to Open
“Columbiana. O., March 31. — George Manos' new 800-seat Manos Theatre here is set for opening tomorrow. This, the circuit’s 15th theatre, has been more than two years in building.”
The opening of the Washington Theatre was mentioned in the May 3, 1924, issue of Moving Picture World:
“The Washington Theatre, Toronto, Ohio, was formally opened during April. It is said to be one of the most complete small houses in Eastern Ohio, costing $75,000.”
This item from the November 22, 1924, issue of Moving Picture World reveals that there was an house in Washington called the State Theatre nearly a decade before 1933:
“Arthur Gottesman, who purchased the old Capitol at Washington, reopened the house on November 10 and has renamed it the State. This house also has been considerably improved and is one of the finest picture palaces in the local territory.”
An advertisement for Washington’s two newspapers, the morning Observer and the evening reporter ran in the January 28, 1922, issue of Editor & Publisher, and included a paragraph boasting of new construction projects then underway in Washington, including “…the Capitol Theatre, one of the largest in western Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh, costing a quarter of a million dollars….” So the Capitol must have been a large house, and not really so old when Gottesman took over in 1924.
I’m not sure what to make of this information. Was this the same State Theatre, or a different one. If different, did it later operate under a different name? If the same, why did it have to be rebuilt in 1933? Was there a fire or other disaster, or was it just extensively remodeled?
This is complicated by a comment on this page by aprivee on November 20, 2008, which includes the line “[t]here seem to be two different theaters built by Eberson at different times under the name State Theater in Washington, PA.” Did Eberson design the Capitol, or perhaps merely design the remodeling of the Capitol into the State for Arthur Gottesman in 1924? There is clearly a gap in our knowledge of Washington’s theater history.
The building that became the Capitol Theatre was built in 1867, opening in the fall of that year. The ground floor housed a public market, and upstairs was a public space called Shenango Hall. In 1898 the building was sold to Jacob F. Genkinger, who remodeled it into a ground floor theater called the Opera House. It was listed in the Cahn guides with 1,300 seats and a stage 34x62 feet.
In 1924 the Opera House was remodeled, and the November 22 issue of Moving Picture World reported that the Capitol Theatre had been one of six new movie houses to open in western Pennsylvania on November 10:
“Ben Burke opened the old Opera House at New Castle and rechristened it the Capitol. The house has also been extensively remodeled, and $20,000 was spent in building the lobby alone.”
This web page has an early photo of the Opera House, probably from around 1900, and scans of advertisements for the theater over a span of about two decades.
The only photo of the Earle Theatre I’ve been able to find on the Internet is one taken during its demolition in 1983. It was published in the “Images of America” series book New Castle Revisited, by Michael Connolly (Google Books preview.)
The January 17, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item about the Park Theatre:
“The new Park Theater, at 4189 Hamilton avenue, Cincinnati, O., was opened recently by John J. Vogelpole, [sic] who is president of the company which built the house. Over 100 members of the Master Plumbers' Association, of which Mr. Vogelpole is a member, attended the opening performance. After the show the guests enjoyed a spread tendered by the plumber-exhibitor.”
The opening of the Park Theatre took place on November 25, 1913, and was noted in the following day’s edition of The Cincinnati Enquirer. Both MPW and The Enquirer misspelled Mr. Vogelpohl’s surname.
The Manos Theatre building has not been demolished. After the theater was dismantled the building was converted to retail use, housing a hardware store for a while and then a nightclub. It is currently the home of a Mexican restaurant and lounge. The marquee has been removed and the front of the building completely remodeled.
The “Remebering Newton Falls” Facebook page features a number of photos of the Manos Theatre, including this pair, one of the front and one showing the auditorium.
The caption of another photo says it depicts the Manos on its opening day, but unfortunately no movie is advertised on the marquee so we can’t tell what year that was. As The Film Daily of April 25, 1941, said that th Manos circuit intended to build the Newton Falls project, if there was no delay it was probably opened before the end of 1941, but I haven’t found any published confirmation.
The July 10, 1958, issue of Motion Picture Daily mentions the Liberty Theatre, which had just been closed by its long time owners, the Vogel Brothers:
“Vogel Bros. Move Quarters to Salem
“Special to THE DAILY
“WELLSVILLE, O., July 8.-Vogel Brothers have permanently closed the Liberty, the only local theatre, which was built in 1922 by their late father, Clarence Vogel. They plan to dispose of the property and move to Salem as operational headquarters for their Bengies Drive-in, Baltimore, Md.; Midway Drive-In, Ravenna, O.; Salem Drive-In, Salem, and other Salem interests including a drive-in restaurant and a miniature golf course.
“Jack Vogel, an architectural engineer, has designed many drive-ins including one in Lima, Peru. Paul Vogel, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, returns periodically to active duty as instructor at the Army Command and General Staff Officers' School, Ft. Meade, Md.”
As far as I know I’m not related to the Wellsville Vogels. But there are a couple of odd items about this theater from The Moving Picture World in 1923. The first is from the March 10 issue:
“The Literary [sic] Theatre, a new picture house recently opened at Wellsville, Ohio, is the first theatre to be opened in the Wellsville district since the closing of the old Cooper Opera House, which several years ago was famous throughout the Ohio Valley as one of the first burlesque houses in existence within the State.”
The second, from the March 17 issue, is almost identical:
“The Literary Theatre at Wellsville, Ohio, is among the newest picture houses to open in that vicinity. This is the first theatre project in the Wellsville district since the old Valley Theatre was closed several years ago. the Valley being prominent in its time as one of the earliest burlesque houses.”
Why the typesetter for the magazine would think that the house was called the Literary Theatre is anybody’s guess, but most likely the information was conveyed to the magazine in a handwritten letter from the theater’s owner, Clarence Vogel, and Mr. Vogel might have had terrible handwriting. (Hey, maybe we are related, after all.)
The photo Khnemu uploaded has convinced me that the Carol Theatre, originally the Park Theatre, was indeed on Canal Street. The position of the water tower (surely still in the same location) in relation to the original theater shows that it couldn’t have been anywhere else but on the west side of Canal north of Broad Street, and probably just north of where there is now a McDonald’s (judging from the angle of view of the water tower.) Everything on the block in the photo has been wiped out.
I’ve also found that the Park had earlier been called the Strand. The January 30, 1933, issue of The Film Daily had this brief item: “Newton Falls — Park
(Strand), sold to H. M. Rader.” The Strand was also mentioned in the August 5, 1922, issue of Moving Picture World, which said in its “Changes in Management” column that the house had “…opened under management of N. A. Rubenson.”
The Carol Theatre was to be enlarged to accommodate an additional 200 seats, according to an item in the July 18, 1941, issue of The Film Daily.
The house at 11 W. Broad Street was the Manos Theatre. According to one comment on the “Remembering Newton Falls” Facebook page, the Manos closed around 1964 and the Carol in the early 1940s. However, the Glenn Ford movie Framed, on the Carol’s marquee in the vintage photo, was released in 1947, so I don’t know how reliable the other claim is. I’ve dug up a bit more about the Manos, but I’ll wait until it gets its own page to post it.
The “Images of America” series book McKees Rocks and Stowe Township, by Bernadette Sulzer Agreen, McKees Rocks Historical Society, says that the town’s Orpheum Theatre opened in October, 1923 (Google Books preview.)
Are we sure the Carol Theatre was on Canal Street? An ebay seller currently has a postcard with an aerial view of Broad Street in Newton Falls (link that probably won’t last long) and it looks like there is a theater on the north side of that street just west of Center Street. Even enlarged the scan isn’t clear enough to show the theater name on the marquee, but it does appear to be five letters.
The building is still standing, though with an extensively remodeled front, and houses a Mexican restaurant and lounge called Mi Amigo, which opened in 2014. The address is 11 W. Broad Street. It looks like a theater building in Google’s satellite view, too. I know that CinemaTour lists Canal Street as the location of the house, but they’ve been wrong before, and if I were making a bet my money would be on 11 W. Broad Street as the location of the Carol Theatre.
The name of the neighborhood and its theater originates from a Mi'kmaq word, according to this web page. It doesn’t seem much odder than a lot of other names of Native American origin, though as far as I know it has not yet inspired any limericks, as Nantucket did.
This web page has a closeup of the Gaiety’s entrance, undated, as well as photos of the Gem and Capitol Theatres, two houses that sequentially occupied a site at the corner of King and Carleton Streets.
This web page has an old photo of the Gem Theatre, as well as its successor, the Capitol Theatre, and the Gaiety Theatre on Queen Street.
I’ve set street view to the northeast corner of the intersection, as that was the most likely location for the Gem and the Capitol. There is a slight chance they were located on the southeast corner, but that would have put their entrances on Carleton Street, which is less likely than that they would have been on King Street.
This web page has vintage photos of the Capitol Theatre and of its predecessor, the Gem, as well as the Gaiety Theatre on Queen Street.
It isn’t possible to tell with absolute certainty from the old photo which corner of the intersection the Capitol was on, but given the slight but noticeable slope of the foundation, it was most likely the northeast corner. From that location the vertical sign would have been visible from the main part of the business district, as well, so that’s where I have set the street view.
This web page with many nostalgic recollections of the Plaza Cinemas (among other things) says that the expansion to four screens was part of extensive renovations that were undertaken in 1982-83. The building has been converted to retail space.
They appear to have had live events, all local in nature, a couple of times a year in recent years, some being pictured on their Facebook page, but the page has no listing of upcoming events. I would imagine the Masons hold their non-public meetings in the building, too, so it’s in use but not very usefully to anybody else.
A couple of photos on the Facebook page show the theater’s proscenium, another has part of the auditorium side wall in the background, and a third shows a bit of the back wall. It’s nice looking if fairly plain interior, and looks to be in good condition.
Rather bizarrely, their Facebook page has a link to a web site for a different Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood, New Jersey.
The Atlantic was operating as a Chinese language movie house at least as late as 1983, when this photo was taken. It was pretty shabby by then. I’ve never seen a photo from the period when it was a regular movie house, or from the 1970s when it was running porn movies.
A Dreamland Theatre at Morgan City is mentioned in the January 15, 1910, issue of Moving Picture World. However, this was either a mistake made by the magazine, or the name was subsequently changed, as the July 2 issue carried a brief item dateline Morgan City saying “Dreamworld, a picture house, is being remodeled.”
Boxoffice of January 26, 1952, reported that the former Majestic Theatre at Fairbury, which had been closed for some time, had been renovated and reopened in late 1951 as the Woods Theatre. Seating had been reduced to 468. The item noted that the house was across from something called Pla-Mor, but failed to say what Pla-Mor was. It turns out that Pla-Mor is a bowling alley and cafe, still in operation, having now outlasted the theater by about six decades.
I haven’t been able to determine the closing date of the Woods Theatre, but it was in operation at least as late as February, 1955, when it was showing Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I’ve found a reference to a two-week revival meeting being held at the Woods in 1958, so it had possibly closed by then, but had not yet been dismantled. By June, 1959, the theater had been converted to offices for the Jefferson County Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation committee, the formal opening taking place that month.
The March 22, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item about the operators of the Majestic:
It has little information about the theater itself, but this article from Boxoffice of November 17, 1951, focused on the Roxy’s manager, Wilton Gross, is an interesting look into the small town theater business of the period.
This article from June, 2011, gives the address of the Roxy Theatre as 120 N. Market Street. It had just been bought by the local Chamber of Commerce after having been owned by Berean Bible Church since 1985. The article also notes that the house had for a time been called the Mohawk Theatre, though it has now returned to the name Roxy.
This web page has a paragraph about the Roxy:
Because some people claim to have seen a Sasquatch in the area, Minerva hosts a “Monster Day” event which is depicted in this weblog post. It includes a few photos of Market Street in which the Roxy can be seen, and one photo of the theater’s interior. There is a screen in the auditorium, but it looks portable, and when movies are shown they are probably from DVDs. As the church that occupied the building for over a quarter of a century did considerable remodeling it’s likely that the original movie equipment was removed long ago, and modern digital equipment is probably beyond the budget of a small house that is used mostly for live events.Trade journals from the 1920s mention a movie house in Minerva called the Dreamland Theatre. I haven’t been able to determine if this was an earlier name for the Roxy, but the Roxy’s building looks old enough to have been in use then.
The Manos Theatre opened on April 1, 1953, according to this item from Motion Picture Daily of that date:
The opening of the Washington Theatre was mentioned in the May 3, 1924, issue of Moving Picture World:
This item from the November 22, 1924, issue of Moving Picture World reveals that there was an house in Washington called the State Theatre nearly a decade before 1933:
An advertisement for Washington’s two newspapers, the morning Observer and the evening reporter ran in the January 28, 1922, issue of Editor & Publisher, and included a paragraph boasting of new construction projects then underway in Washington, including “…the Capitol Theatre, one of the largest in western Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh, costing a quarter of a million dollars….” So the Capitol must have been a large house, and not really so old when Gottesman took over in 1924.I’m not sure what to make of this information. Was this the same State Theatre, or a different one. If different, did it later operate under a different name? If the same, why did it have to be rebuilt in 1933? Was there a fire or other disaster, or was it just extensively remodeled?
This is complicated by a comment on this page by aprivee on November 20, 2008, which includes the line “[t]here seem to be two different theaters built by Eberson at different times under the name State Theater in Washington, PA.” Did Eberson design the Capitol, or perhaps merely design the remodeling of the Capitol into the State for Arthur Gottesman in 1924? There is clearly a gap in our knowledge of Washington’s theater history.
The building that became the Capitol Theatre was built in 1867, opening in the fall of that year. The ground floor housed a public market, and upstairs was a public space called Shenango Hall. In 1898 the building was sold to Jacob F. Genkinger, who remodeled it into a ground floor theater called the Opera House. It was listed in the Cahn guides with 1,300 seats and a stage 34x62 feet.
In 1924 the Opera House was remodeled, and the November 22 issue of Moving Picture World reported that the Capitol Theatre had been one of six new movie houses to open in western Pennsylvania on November 10:
This web page has an early photo of the Opera House, probably from around 1900, and scans of advertisements for the theater over a span of about two decades.The only photo of the Earle Theatre I’ve been able to find on the Internet is one taken during its demolition in 1983. It was published in the “Images of America” series book New Castle Revisited, by Michael Connolly (Google Books preview.)
Page needs to be updated with aka Strand Theatre, per previous comment by dallasmovietheaters.
The January 17, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item about the Park Theatre:
The opening of the Park Theatre took place on November 25, 1913, and was noted in the following day’s edition of The Cincinnati Enquirer. Both MPW and The Enquirer misspelled Mr. Vogelpohl’s surname.The Manos Theatre building has not been demolished. After the theater was dismantled the building was converted to retail use, housing a hardware store for a while and then a nightclub. It is currently the home of a Mexican restaurant and lounge. The marquee has been removed and the front of the building completely remodeled.
The “Remebering Newton Falls” Facebook page features a number of photos of the Manos Theatre, including this pair, one of the front and one showing the auditorium.
The caption of another photo says it depicts the Manos on its opening day, but unfortunately no movie is advertised on the marquee so we can’t tell what year that was. As The Film Daily of April 25, 1941, said that th Manos circuit intended to build the Newton Falls project, if there was no delay it was probably opened before the end of 1941, but I haven’t found any published confirmation.
The July 10, 1958, issue of Motion Picture Daily mentions the Liberty Theatre, which had just been closed by its long time owners, the Vogel Brothers:
As far as I know I’m not related to the Wellsville Vogels. But there are a couple of odd items about this theater from The Moving Picture World in 1923. The first is from the March 10 issue:The second, from the March 17 issue, is almost identical:Why the typesetter for the magazine would think that the house was called the Literary Theatre is anybody’s guess, but most likely the information was conveyed to the magazine in a handwritten letter from the theater’s owner, Clarence Vogel, and Mr. Vogel might have had terrible handwriting. (Hey, maybe we are related, after all.)The photo Khnemu uploaded has convinced me that the Carol Theatre, originally the Park Theatre, was indeed on Canal Street. The position of the water tower (surely still in the same location) in relation to the original theater shows that it couldn’t have been anywhere else but on the west side of Canal north of Broad Street, and probably just north of where there is now a McDonald’s (judging from the angle of view of the water tower.) Everything on the block in the photo has been wiped out.
I’ve also found that the Park had earlier been called the Strand. The January 30, 1933, issue of The Film Daily had this brief item: “Newton Falls — Park (Strand), sold to H. M. Rader.” The Strand was also mentioned in the August 5, 1922, issue of Moving Picture World, which said in its “Changes in Management” column that the house had “…opened under management of N. A. Rubenson.”
The Carol Theatre was to be enlarged to accommodate an additional 200 seats, according to an item in the July 18, 1941, issue of The Film Daily.
The house at 11 W. Broad Street was the Manos Theatre. According to one comment on the “Remembering Newton Falls” Facebook page, the Manos closed around 1964 and the Carol in the early 1940s. However, the Glenn Ford movie Framed, on the Carol’s marquee in the vintage photo, was released in 1947, so I don’t know how reliable the other claim is. I’ve dug up a bit more about the Manos, but I’ll wait until it gets its own page to post it.
The “Images of America” series book McKees Rocks and Stowe Township, by Bernadette Sulzer Agreen, McKees Rocks Historical Society, says that the town’s Orpheum Theatre opened in October, 1923 (Google Books preview.)
Are we sure the Carol Theatre was on Canal Street? An ebay seller currently has a postcard with an aerial view of Broad Street in Newton Falls (link that probably won’t last long) and it looks like there is a theater on the north side of that street just west of Center Street. Even enlarged the scan isn’t clear enough to show the theater name on the marquee, but it does appear to be five letters.
The building is still standing, though with an extensively remodeled front, and houses a Mexican restaurant and lounge called Mi Amigo, which opened in 2014. The address is 11 W. Broad Street. It looks like a theater building in Google’s satellite view, too. I know that CinemaTour lists Canal Street as the location of the house, but they’ve been wrong before, and if I were making a bet my money would be on 11 W. Broad Street as the location of the Carol Theatre.
The name of the neighborhood and its theater originates from a Mi'kmaq word, according to this web page. It doesn’t seem much odder than a lot of other names of Native American origin, though as far as I know it has not yet inspired any limericks, as Nantucket did.
This photo of Queen Street dated 1962 shows the entrance of the Gaiety at left.
This web page has a closeup of the Gaiety’s entrance, undated, as well as photos of the Gem and Capitol Theatres, two houses that sequentially occupied a site at the corner of King and Carleton Streets.
This web page has an old photo of the Gem Theatre, as well as its successor, the Capitol Theatre, and the Gaiety Theatre on Queen Street.
I’ve set street view to the northeast corner of the intersection, as that was the most likely location for the Gem and the Capitol. There is a slight chance they were located on the southeast corner, but that would have put their entrances on Carleton Street, which is less likely than that they would have been on King Street.
This web page has vintage photos of the Capitol Theatre and of its predecessor, the Gem, as well as the Gaiety Theatre on Queen Street.
It isn’t possible to tell with absolute certainty from the old photo which corner of the intersection the Capitol was on, but given the slight but noticeable slope of the foundation, it was most likely the northeast corner. From that location the vertical sign would have been visible from the main part of the business district, as well, so that’s where I have set the street view.
This web page with many nostalgic recollections of the Plaza Cinemas (among other things) says that the expansion to four screens was part of extensive renovations that were undertaken in 1982-83. The building has been converted to retail space.
They appear to have had live events, all local in nature, a couple of times a year in recent years, some being pictured on their Facebook page, but the page has no listing of upcoming events. I would imagine the Masons hold their non-public meetings in the building, too, so it’s in use but not very usefully to anybody else.
A couple of photos on the Facebook page show the theater’s proscenium, another has part of the auditorium side wall in the background, and a third shows a bit of the back wall. It’s nice looking if fairly plain interior, and looks to be in good condition.
Rather bizarrely, their Facebook page has a link to a web site for a different Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood, New Jersey.
The Atlantic was operating as a Chinese language movie house at least as late as 1983, when this photo was taken. It was pretty shabby by then. I’ve never seen a photo from the period when it was a regular movie house, or from the 1970s when it was running porn movies.
A Dreamland Theatre at Morgan City is mentioned in the January 15, 1910, issue of Moving Picture World. However, this was either a mistake made by the magazine, or the name was subsequently changed, as the July 2 issue carried a brief item dateline Morgan City saying “Dreamworld, a picture house, is being remodeled.”
The Shastona Theatre is now occupied by the local Elk’s lodge.