The K of P Theatre opened on March 25, 1908, according to Indiana Memory. The site has a couple of interior photos, here and here. The house was designed by noted theater architect James M. Wood.
dredmon: The photo was taken from the stage end of the building, so the stone building in the background was not behind the theater but across the street from it. The stone building, First Federal Savings Bank of Frankfort, is still standing at the northeast corner of West Main and Lewis Streets.
A few photos of the Snodgrass Theatre building, along with some information about its history and scans of a couple of ads, appear on this web page.
Although the second floor windows of the building were squared off through most of its history, the most recent photo of it shows that they have now been capped by faux arches in a Victorian style. The ground floor looks to have been converted for use as an office of some sort.
The Snodgrass Theatre was built by E.C. Snodgrass, and replaced an earlier and smaller house called the White City Theatre which he had operated at a different location in Scottsboro.
Since our photo is upside down, here is a whole page of photos of the Irvington Theatre, from the excellent Maryland movie theater web site, Kilduff’s. Unfortunately, all are from the time after the house was converted into a church. I’ve been unable to find any photos from the period when it was still a theater.
Trade journals from as early as 1923 note A. H. Abrams as owner of the Mozart Theatre. The November 11, 1921, issue of Variety filed this item:
“A. H. Abrams, well-known Canton,
Ohio, theatre owner, announces erection of his new motion picture theatre in Tuscarawas street E will be started soon after the first of the year. This house will offer motion pictures exclusively and will be modern in every respect.
“Abrams also announces that he expects to get his new legitimate theatre under way sometime during 1922. This house when completed will play Shubert vaudeville, the franchise already having been secured, according to Abrams.”
I’ve found nothing to confirm that Abrams built his legitimate (or vaudeville) theater, so the Mozart must have been the film house scheduled for construction on Tuscarawas Street.
Norm: When a theater has had multiple names, the old names, when known, are listed in the “Previous Names” field on the right hand side of the page, and should come up in a search for any previous name.
Re-reading the item, it seems likely that the Daily Press was only reporting on the award the operators had received from the County’s Economic Development Commission, and the reopening had indeed taken place some months earlier.
Schoolcraft County’s first drive-in formally opened on June 9, 1953, according to the following day’s report in The Escanaba Daily Press. Owner J. L. LeDuc also operated the Cedar and Oak Theatres in Manistique. His intention was to leave the Cedar Theatre closed during the summer months while the US-2 Drive-In was in operation. The new drive-in could accommodate 350 cars.
The house must have closed again after its 2015 reopening, and was then reopened again in April of this year. Here is a brief item about the reopening from the Daily Press web site, dated April 16, 2016.
After examining Google street view I believe Seth is correct about the location of the Cedar Theatre. The building’s current occupant, Community Home Medical, Inc., a medical supply retailer, appears to have thrown the theater building together with an adjacent storefront, and uses the latter’s address, which is 215 S. Cedar. The theater’s front, at 213 S. Cedar, has been closed up and used only for display windows.
This item from the Cheboygan Democrat of November 21, 1903, pertains to the closure of the Star Opera House and the intention of the Hancock brothers to replace it with a new theater:
“Manistique’s ‘opera house’ has been sold to the Booth Packing Co., for a fish warehouse, and the place is without a public hall for theatrical entertainments. However, the manager of the old place will have a new opera house ready for Jan. 1, if the people will help him by buying tickets for a grand opening at that time.”
In an article by W. S. Crowe in the June 6, 1951, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press, Crowe says that he and John Hancock built the Manistique Opera House in 1903, so perhaps they did manage to meet their goal of opening the new theater on January 1, 1904. The rather austere facade in the vintage photos suggests that the building was designed by its builder rather than by a professional architect, and it was probably built quickly and at minimal expense, and likely had a fairly plain, utilitarian interior.
Exterior and interior photos of this house can be seen on page 119 of the book Manistique, by M. Vonciel LeDuc (Google Books preview.) The caption says that Benjamin Gero bought the theater in 1904 (apparently incorrect) and changed the name from Hancock Brothers Opera House to Manistique Opera House. It also says that the house was located next door to the town’s earlier Star Opera House.
Editions of the Cahn Guide from around 1910 list it by the name New Opera House, say that it was built in 1904, and that was a ground-floor theater with 800 seats. The guides list Hancock Bros. as the managers. The 1904 construction date makes it more likely that the newspaper article I cited in my previous comment was correct, and Gero took over the house and renamed it Manistique Opera House in 1908, rather than 1904. Both the article and the photo caption in the book say that he renamed it the Gero Theatre in 1916, when it was converted to a full-time cinema.
This PDF from the San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society has two photos, one depicting the Teatro Azteca dated 1988, and a much older but undated photo showing the same building when it housed a theater called the Columbus.
As near as I can discover, the Columbus Theatre opened around 1922 or 1923, and originally served an Italian-American community. That population must not have been large enough to support the theater for long, though, as an item in The San Bernardino County Sun of May 15, 1930, about a real estate deal involving the building, referred to the Columbus as a Mexican movie theater.
The Columbus had its entrance in the first bay of the building, at the corner of 7th Street. I’ve been unable to discover when the house was remodeled and the entrance moved to the center bay, or when it was renamed the Azteca.
Theodore C. Kistner, architect of the Bush Theatre, was an 1897 graduate of the School of Architecture of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He practiced in his native state for a number of years before moving to California, where he opened his first office in San Diego.
The various firms in which Kistner was a partner over the next few decades specialized in school buildings. As far as I’ve been able to discover, the National was his only movie theater project, though he must have designed an enormous number of school auditoriums throughout southern California.
The lead architect of the Academy of Music in Kalamazoo was Dankmar Adler, the German-born Chicago architect and engineer who was noted for his knowledge of acoustics. Louis Sullivan was working in Adler’s office as his chief draftsman at the time the Academy was designed and probably had some input into the project, but he did no become a full partner in the firm until 1883.
As Adler & Sullivan, the firm went on to design some 180 projects over the next several years, including Chicago’s Schiller (aka Garrick) Theatre and The Auditorium, one of the most iconic theaters in the United States.
CinemaTour gives the address of the Royal Theatre as 11 Main Street North, and gives it the aka Sherman Theatre. A comparison of the vintage photo of the Royal with the modern Google street view shows the location to be correct. I found the Sherman Theatre at Moose Jaw mentioned in the September 21, 1918, issue of Exhibitors Herald and Motography.
The New Sherman Theatre in Moose Jaw is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide with 1,000 seats and the notation “[t]his theater just building and no details available as we go to press.” The edition also lists the 550-seat City Hall Theatre, managed by W. B. Sherman who is also listed as manager of the new house.
This page of a family history web site says that William Passmore moved to Moose Jaw and opened the Royal Theatre in 1931. He had earlier operated the Globe Theatre in Lafleche, and at one time operated a theater in Esquimalt.
The building that housed the Royal Theatre has been demolished. It’s site is now part of the site of a business sporting the peculiar name “Capone’s Hideaway Motel”.
The Savoy Theatre was operating at least as early as 1912. In that year it fielded a team in the Moose Jaw City League, according to the Baseball Wiki. The Savoy Theatre was mentioned in the April 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World.
This photograph from the Moose Jaw Public Library’s collection is dated to the period 1910-1913, and shows a view looking east from High Street West across Main Street to High Street East. In th e left foreground is an excavation where the Walter Scott Building would rise. The Savoy Theatre can be seen beyond the excavation, on the other side of the alley. The site today is a parking lot with a sign reading “Casino Moose Jaw.”
The Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Building was built in 1894. A vintage photograph of the Baroque Revival style building can be found on page 16 of Honoring the Veterans of Licking County, Ohio:, by Aaron J. and Nathan J. Keims (Google Books preview.) The facade was ravaged by a fire in 1968, but the building was not demolished until 2002, after repeated efforts to have it restored had failed.
The November 15, 1919, issue of Motion Picture News had an item about the Rialto in East Akron:
“H. E. Horwitz, owner of the Olympia theatre, Cleveland, has just closed a deal for the purchase of the new Rialto theatre, which is in the course of construction in East Akron, Ohio, directly opposite the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. The house, which will cost $250,000 when completed, will have all the latest building and projection equipment, with accommodations for 1200 people.”
The most recent news I can find about the Rodgers Theatre is on this page of the Rolling Hills Casino’s web site, and is dated January 11, 2016. The Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians and the Casino Foundation have pledged $100,000 for the theater’s renovation, to be disbursed over three years.
According to this item from the September 4, 1936, issue of The Film Daily, M. G. Lee, operator of the Lee Theatre, was planning a second house for Eufaula. I wonder if it could have been the Rex?
:“Eufaula, Ala. — Plans for a new
theater are announced by M. G. Lee, owner of the present theater here. In addition to the new house Lee will air condition and install new seats in the old house.”
An economic downturn in 1937 made this a bad time for a new theater project, and it might have been delayed as a result.
This house must have become the Martin Theatre in late 1950 or early 1951, per this notice in the January 8 issue of Motion Picture Daily: “Martin Theatres of Columbus, Ga., has just opened their new 1,159-seat theatre in Eufaula, Ala.”
The K of P Theatre opened on March 25, 1908, according to Indiana Memory. The site has a couple of interior photos, here and here. The house was designed by noted theater architect James M. Wood.
dredmon: The photo was taken from the stage end of the building, so the stone building in the background was not behind the theater but across the street from it. The stone building, First Federal Savings Bank of Frankfort, is still standing at the northeast corner of West Main and Lewis Streets.
A few photos of the Snodgrass Theatre building, along with some information about its history and scans of a couple of ads, appear on this web page.
Although the second floor windows of the building were squared off through most of its history, the most recent photo of it shows that they have now been capped by faux arches in a Victorian style. The ground floor looks to have been converted for use as an office of some sort.
The Snodgrass Theatre was built by E.C. Snodgrass, and replaced an earlier and smaller house called the White City Theatre which he had operated at a different location in Scottsboro.
Since our photo is upside down, here is a whole page of photos of the Irvington Theatre, from the excellent Maryland movie theater web site, Kilduff’s. Unfortunately, all are from the time after the house was converted into a church. I’ve been unable to find any photos from the period when it was still a theater.
The recent opening of the Grand Theatre at Lancaster, Kentucky, was noted in the March 7, 1925, issue of The Moving Picture World.
Trade journals from as early as 1923 note A. H. Abrams as owner of the Mozart Theatre. The November 11, 1921, issue of Variety filed this item:
I’ve found nothing to confirm that Abrams built his legitimate (or vaudeville) theater, so the Mozart must have been the film house scheduled for construction on Tuscarawas Street.Jazz Age Chicago’s citywide theater list has the Burton in operation from 1913 to 1916, based on Chicago Tribune theater listings.
Norm: When a theater has had multiple names, the old names, when known, are listed in the “Previous Names” field on the right hand side of the page, and should come up in a search for any previous name.
Re-reading the item, it seems likely that the Daily Press was only reporting on the award the operators had received from the County’s Economic Development Commission, and the reopening had indeed taken place some months earlier.
Schoolcraft County’s first drive-in formally opened on June 9, 1953, according to the following day’s report in The Escanaba Daily Press. Owner J. L. LeDuc also operated the Cedar and Oak Theatres in Manistique. His intention was to leave the Cedar Theatre closed during the summer months while the US-2 Drive-In was in operation. The new drive-in could accommodate 350 cars.
The house must have closed again after its 2015 reopening, and was then reopened again in April of this year. Here is a brief item about the reopening from the Daily Press web site, dated April 16, 2016.
After examining Google street view I believe Seth is correct about the location of the Cedar Theatre. The building’s current occupant, Community Home Medical, Inc., a medical supply retailer, appears to have thrown the theater building together with an adjacent storefront, and uses the latter’s address, which is 215 S. Cedar. The theater’s front, at 213 S. Cedar, has been closed up and used only for display windows.
This item from the Cheboygan Democrat of November 21, 1903, pertains to the closure of the Star Opera House and the intention of the Hancock brothers to replace it with a new theater:
In an article by W. S. Crowe in the June 6, 1951, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press, Crowe says that he and John Hancock built the Manistique Opera House in 1903, so perhaps they did manage to meet their goal of opening the new theater on January 1, 1904. The rather austere facade in the vintage photos suggests that the building was designed by its builder rather than by a professional architect, and it was probably built quickly and at minimal expense, and likely had a fairly plain, utilitarian interior.Exterior and interior photos of this house can be seen on page 119 of the book Manistique, by M. Vonciel LeDuc (Google Books preview.) The caption says that Benjamin Gero bought the theater in 1904 (apparently incorrect) and changed the name from Hancock Brothers Opera House to Manistique Opera House. It also says that the house was located next door to the town’s earlier Star Opera House.
Editions of the Cahn Guide from around 1910 list it by the name New Opera House, say that it was built in 1904, and that was a ground-floor theater with 800 seats. The guides list Hancock Bros. as the managers. The 1904 construction date makes it more likely that the newspaper article I cited in my previous comment was correct, and Gero took over the house and renamed it Manistique Opera House in 1908, rather than 1904. Both the article and the photo caption in the book say that he renamed it the Gero Theatre in 1916, when it was converted to a full-time cinema.
This PDF from the San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society has two photos, one depicting the Teatro Azteca dated 1988, and a much older but undated photo showing the same building when it housed a theater called the Columbus.
As near as I can discover, the Columbus Theatre opened around 1922 or 1923, and originally served an Italian-American community. That population must not have been large enough to support the theater for long, though, as an item in The San Bernardino County Sun of May 15, 1930, about a real estate deal involving the building, referred to the Columbus as a Mexican movie theater.
The Columbus had its entrance in the first bay of the building, at the corner of 7th Street. I’ve been unable to discover when the house was remodeled and the entrance moved to the center bay, or when it was renamed the Azteca.
Theodore C. Kistner, architect of the Bush Theatre, was an 1897 graduate of the School of Architecture of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He practiced in his native state for a number of years before moving to California, where he opened his first office in San Diego.
The various firms in which Kistner was a partner over the next few decades specialized in school buildings. As far as I’ve been able to discover, the National was his only movie theater project, though he must have designed an enormous number of school auditoriums throughout southern California.
The lead architect of the Academy of Music in Kalamazoo was Dankmar Adler, the German-born Chicago architect and engineer who was noted for his knowledge of acoustics. Louis Sullivan was working in Adler’s office as his chief draftsman at the time the Academy was designed and probably had some input into the project, but he did no become a full partner in the firm until 1883.
As Adler & Sullivan, the firm went on to design some 180 projects over the next several years, including Chicago’s Schiller (aka Garrick) Theatre and The Auditorium, one of the most iconic theaters in the United States.
CinemaTour gives the address of the Royal Theatre as 11 Main Street North, and gives it the aka Sherman Theatre. A comparison of the vintage photo of the Royal with the modern Google street view shows the location to be correct. I found the Sherman Theatre at Moose Jaw mentioned in the September 21, 1918, issue of Exhibitors Herald and Motography.
The New Sherman Theatre in Moose Jaw is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide with 1,000 seats and the notation “[t]his theater just building and no details available as we go to press.” The edition also lists the 550-seat City Hall Theatre, managed by W. B. Sherman who is also listed as manager of the new house.
This page of a family history web site says that William Passmore moved to Moose Jaw and opened the Royal Theatre in 1931. He had earlier operated the Globe Theatre in Lafleche, and at one time operated a theater in Esquimalt.
The building that housed the Royal Theatre has been demolished. It’s site is now part of the site of a business sporting the peculiar name “Capone’s Hideaway Motel”.
The Savoy Theatre was operating at least as early as 1912. In that year it fielded a team in the Moose Jaw City League, according to the Baseball Wiki. The Savoy Theatre was mentioned in the April 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World.
This photograph from the Moose Jaw Public Library’s collection is dated to the period 1910-1913, and shows a view looking east from High Street West across Main Street to High Street East. In th e left foreground is an excavation where the Walter Scott Building would rise. The Savoy Theatre can be seen beyond the excavation, on the other side of the alley. The site today is a parking lot with a sign reading “Casino Moose Jaw.”
The Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Building was built in 1894. A vintage photograph of the Baroque Revival style building can be found on page 16 of Honoring the Veterans of Licking County, Ohio:, by Aaron J. and Nathan J. Keims (Google Books preview.) The facade was ravaged by a fire in 1968, but the building was not demolished until 2002, after repeated efforts to have it restored had failed.
The November 15, 1919, issue of Motion Picture News had an item about the Rialto in East Akron:
The most recent news I can find about the Rodgers Theatre is on this page of the Rolling Hills Casino’s web site, and is dated January 11, 2016. The Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians and the Casino Foundation have pledged $100,000 for the theater’s renovation, to be disbursed over three years.
According to this item from the September 4, 1936, issue of The Film Daily, M. G. Lee, operator of the Lee Theatre, was planning a second house for Eufaula. I wonder if it could have been the Rex?
An economic downturn in 1937 made this a bad time for a new theater project, and it might have been delayed as a result.This house must have become the Martin Theatre in late 1950 or early 1951, per this notice in the January 8 issue of Motion Picture Daily: “Martin Theatres of Columbus, Ga., has just opened their new 1,159-seat theatre in Eufaula, Ala.”
The Amusu Theatre at Eufaula, Alabama, was mentioned in the January 14, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World.