An item about the Desmond Theatre appeared in the November 26, 1921, issue of The American Contractor:
“Theater ("Desmond”; seat. cap. 1,270): $200,000. Military av., nr. Pine St., Port Huron. Archt. Geo. Harvey, 201 Huron st., Port Huron. Assoc. Archt. C. Howard Crane, Elmer Geo. Kiehler & Cyril E. Schley. 400 Huron bldg., Detroit. Owner Port Huron Theater Co., J. W. Fead, pres., Port Huron. Gen. contr. let to Charron & Riddell, Port Huron.“
The notice that the Showplace Cinemas in Martinsville had closed appeared on the theater’s Facebook page as recently as September 16, 2016. A comment on the final post reveals that the last shows were on September 11.
Other comments, as well as the architectural style of the building, indicate that the Showplace was in operation by the mid-1970s. The theater spent its last days as a discount house with a $3.00 admission price for regular movies and $5.00 for 3-D films.
As the last line of the sign on the wall reads “GRAND OPENING JUNE 28” I think we can assume this photo was made in June, 1929. The workman on the ladder appears to be putting letters on the marquee, so this might well depict the afternoon of the opening night.
This very long web page mostly about Steubenville’s Grand Theatre also his this bit of information: “…William J. Curn Sr. brought the first nickelodeons to Steubenville and… owned and operated three – the Rex, the Alvin and the Minerva….” The 1913 Steubenville directory listed the three houses: The Rex at 517 Market St.; the Alvin at 349 Market St; and the Minerva at 110 S. Fourth St.
The Temple Theatre was mentioned in this item from the January 21, 1911, issue of The Nickelodeon:
“Carl Ray, who has purchased the Temple theater in Muskegon from A. J. Gilligham and E. M. Smith, is now in control of all the theaters in that city, including the three moving picture houses.”
There is no Market Street in Muskegon today, which is why Google Maps is defaulting to the town of Whitehall, some distance north. I suspect the street name has been changed, but I don’t recognize anything resembling any of the vintage photos on the photo page among the few, pathetic scraps that remain of downtown Muskegon.
Unfortunately, Google has removed that particular image from its online collection of Life Magazine photos. However, there are photos of the Marquis courtesy of the ever-dependable Bill Counter. Here’s the page for the Marquis at his Los Angeles Movie Palaces web site.
Here is an item about theaters in Jackson, including the Majestic, from the November 24, 1917, issue of Motography:
“Two of the most interesting spots in Jackson, Michigan, are the Majestic and Colonial theaters. These are owned and operated by the Majestic-Colonial Theater Company, Inc., of which W. S. McClaren is manager. The Majestic, advertised as ‘The Theater Beautiful,’ plays Vitagraph, Selznick, Metro, World and K. E. S. E. pictures and the best road attractions. It was formerly a $30,000 legitimate house but it took to pictures at 10, 15 and 25 cents with Mr. McClaren’s management to start the people that way. Mr. McClaren uses a splendid orchestra of ten pieces and an organ at the Majestic and girl ushers, with girls also on the doors. The Colonial, called ‘The Pride of the East Side,’ was the first suburban house of the city, built three years ago. It seats 300 and is doing good business.”
CStefanic: The most recent thing I can find about the project is on the Ritz Theatre page at Bill Counter’s web site. He has a photo of the new signage, which reads “FilmOn.TV Hologram”. They intended to launch in August, but have apparently missed their target.
We have the name Newsreel Theatre listed as an aka for this house, but it was called the News-View (hyphenated just like that) throughout its history as a newsreel house. The name Newsreel Theatre was on the marquee from the day the house opened, but was not the name of the theater, just an indication of the theater’s programming. In fact the ends of the marquee had the plural “Newsreels” rather than the singular “Newsreel” on them.
There is an aka that is missing from out list, though. When the house converted to feature films the “S” was removed from the name on the facade and the letters adjusted to read “New-View” which is what the house was called until it became the Pussycat. The “Tele-News” (the name of the chain) that had been on the marquee was removed, as was the word Newsreel, replaced by New-View. This page at Bruce Torrence’s Hollywood Photos web site shows the New-View as it looked until it was converted into the Pussycat.
Maria Luisa DiChiera’s thesis The Theater Designs of C. Howard Crane has a list of his theater projects, and includes this entry: “#227 Atheneum, Jackson, MI, (remodeling), Majestic Theatre”
The paper lists four other Crane projects at Jackson: #449, the Capitol Theatre; #456, the Rex Theatre; #993, the Capitol Theatre again; and #1085, the Michigan Theatre.
This web page with information about Jackson’s movie theaters says that the Crown Theatre was opened in 1909 or 1910, was owned by C. A. Kuhlman, and was located on Michigan Avenue across the street from Kuhlman’s Rex Theatre, which was at 172-174 W. Michigan. 159 W. Michigan Avenue is probably the correct address for the Crown Theatre, which closed in 1917.
C. A. Kuhlman’s Crown Theatre was mentioned in the May 15, 1912, issue of The Edison Kinetogram, a semi-monthly publication of the Edison Company.
An item in the March 8, 1925, issue of The Film Daily said that ground would be broken April 1 for a new theater and dance hall for George Bushko in Eynon. Although the item gave the seating capacity of the new house as 900, the Dreamland Theatre might have been a scaled-down version of this project. A couple of news items from the 1930s note that George Bushko was the co-owner (with M. E. Comerford) of the Eynon Theatre.
PSTOS provides this web page with a photo of the console of the Kimball organ installed at Salem’s Heilig Theatre in 1925.
Heilig’s lease on the Grand was for only one year, but the lease was Sold to J.C. Guthrie, operator of the Elsinore and Oregon Theatres, even before that year was up, as reported in the June 1, 1926, issue of the Salem Daily Capital Journal. The name Grand Theatre was restored to the house not long after the transfer.
A South Milwaukee walking tour brochure (PDF here) says of the Garden Theatre “…this popular movie house served the community until 1977. Currently Board Game Barristers.”
This weblog post says that the Garden Theatre building was gutted by a fire in 1979, and was then remodeled and annexed to the adjacent South Milwaukee Carpet and Vinyl store. When the carpet store closed in 2014, the space was taken over by Board Game Barrister, a retail chain headed by the son of the carpet store’s owners. The game shop uses the original carpet store as retail space and the former theater as its warehouse and distribution center.
While it’s possible that this house was renamed Rialto Theatre for a time and then changed back to its original name, I’ve been unable to find any references to a Rialto Theatre at South Milwaukee in the trade publications (but I haven’t checked the FDY.) In any case, Lee_Loveall is correct about the house having been called the Garden Theatre during its final decades.
Architect H. A. Raapke is listed in the archives of the Nebraska Board of Examiners for Professional
Engineers and Architects as Henry A. Raapke. I’ve been unable to find any online source other than Cinema Treasures giving his middle name as Arthur. His drawings are signed H.A. Raapke.
In an article about Raapke on page 17 of the May, 2016, issue of Nebraska Libraries (PDF here) author Angela Kroeger notes that she, too, was unable to find any other source giving Arthur as Raapke’s middle name.
A selection of Raapke’s early drawings (1899 to 1907) can be seen in this online exhibit from the archives of the Criss Library at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
The Congress Theatre occupied a building originally erected around 1870 for the Congress Hall Ballroom, an adjunct of the Congress Hall Hotel located across Spring Street. A cast iron bridge connected the two buildings at the second floor. When the hotel was demolished in 1912, the ballroom continued to operate as a dance hall until 1919, when it was converted into the Congress Theatre.
Although equipped for moving pictures, the attraction at the Congress Theatre’s gala opening on August 21, 1919, was the Arthur Hammerstein-produced musical comedy Somebody’s Sweetheart, performed by the original New York cast.
barryinperth: Bill Counter’s Los Angeles Movie Palaces web site has several interior views of the Carthay Circle, including a few shots of the lounge, on this web page. Counter also provides links to additional views at other collections.
I wonder if the Grand Theatre was the same house earlier called the Grand Opera House, which was mentioned in the June 24, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. A Mr. Otey, the operator, had lately had the house remodeled and the floor lowered five feet.
A Grand Theatre at Robinson is listed in the 1908-1909 Cahn guide as a ground floor house with 810 seats. I’ve been unable to find an address for the 1916 and 1908 theaters, so I don’t know if they are the same Grand as the one operating in the 1920s.
The name Lyric Theatre goes back to at least 1916 in Harbor Springs. This item is from the June 24, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Harbor Springs, Mich.—Manager Lehy [sic], of the Lyric theater, has installed a new operating room and has remodeled his lobby and ticket office.”
The Lyric that S. D. Leahy was operating in 1916 was in a different building than the later Lyric, though. The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory gives the location of the earlier Lyric as State and Bay Streets. Leahy was still operating the house at least as late as 1920, when he wrote a number of capsule movie reviews for Exhibitors Herald.
The Hyatt may not be with us much longer. A May 5 article in the San Mateo Daily Journal this year reported that plans are afoot to redevelop the property with an office complex and restaurant. The nearby Burlingame Drive-In site is expected to be redeveloped as well, with an even larger office project.
A widening of Michigan Avenue undertaken in 1938 made it necessary to demolish a considerable portion of the Kramer Theatre building, including a small corner of the auditorium, and the house was closed for the better part of a year. This event accounts for the drastic change in the theater’s architectural style, from Renaissance Revival to Streamline Modern. The rebuilt house reopened on February 11, 1939.
An item about the Desmond Theatre appeared in the November 26, 1921, issue of The American Contractor:
The notice that the Showplace Cinemas in Martinsville had closed appeared on the theater’s Facebook page as recently as September 16, 2016. A comment on the final post reveals that the last shows were on September 11.
Other comments, as well as the architectural style of the building, indicate that the Showplace was in operation by the mid-1970s. The theater spent its last days as a discount house with a $3.00 admission price for regular movies and $5.00 for 3-D films.
As the last line of the sign on the wall reads “GRAND OPENING JUNE 28” I think we can assume this photo was made in June, 1929. The workman on the ladder appears to be putting letters on the marquee, so this might well depict the afternoon of the opening night.
This very long web page mostly about Steubenville’s Grand Theatre also his this bit of information: “…William J. Curn Sr. brought the first nickelodeons to Steubenville and… owned and operated three – the Rex, the Alvin and the Minerva….” The 1913 Steubenville directory listed the three houses: The Rex at 517 Market St.; the Alvin at 349 Market St; and the Minerva at 110 S. Fourth St.
1750 is also the address displayed on the building itself in Google street view.
The Temple Theatre was mentioned in this item from the January 21, 1911, issue of The Nickelodeon:
There is no Market Street in Muskegon today, which is why Google Maps is defaulting to the town of Whitehall, some distance north. I suspect the street name has been changed, but I don’t recognize anything resembling any of the vintage photos on the photo page among the few, pathetic scraps that remain of downtown Muskegon.The Pompano Theatre was located on NE First Street at the corner of Fourth Avenue.
A Kimball theater organ, blower serial number C608, was installed in the Olympic Theatre in Monessen in December, 1914.
Unfortunately, Google has removed that particular image from its online collection of Life Magazine photos. However, there are photos of the Marquis courtesy of the ever-dependable Bill Counter. Here’s the page for the Marquis at his Los Angeles Movie Palaces web site.
The stretch of Main Street on which this theater was located was renamed Michigan Avenue long ago.
Here is an item about theaters in Jackson, including the Majestic, from the November 24, 1917, issue of Motography:
CStefanic: The most recent thing I can find about the project is on the Ritz Theatre page at Bill Counter’s web site. He has a photo of the new signage, which reads “FilmOn.TV Hologram”. They intended to launch in August, but have apparently missed their target.
We have the name Newsreel Theatre listed as an aka for this house, but it was called the News-View (hyphenated just like that) throughout its history as a newsreel house. The name Newsreel Theatre was on the marquee from the day the house opened, but was not the name of the theater, just an indication of the theater’s programming. In fact the ends of the marquee had the plural “Newsreels” rather than the singular “Newsreel” on them.
There is an aka that is missing from out list, though. When the house converted to feature films the “S” was removed from the name on the facade and the letters adjusted to read “New-View” which is what the house was called until it became the Pussycat. The “Tele-News” (the name of the chain) that had been on the marquee was removed, as was the word Newsreel, replaced by New-View. This page at Bruce Torrence’s Hollywood Photos web site shows the New-View as it looked until it was converted into the Pussycat.
Maria Luisa DiChiera’s thesis The Theater Designs of C. Howard Crane has a list of his theater projects, and includes this entry: “#227 Atheneum, Jackson, MI, (remodeling), Majestic Theatre”
The paper lists four other Crane projects at Jackson: #449, the Capitol Theatre; #456, the Rex Theatre; #993, the Capitol Theatre again; and #1085, the Michigan Theatre.
This web page with information about Jackson’s movie theaters says that the Crown Theatre was opened in 1909 or 1910, was owned by C. A. Kuhlman, and was located on Michigan Avenue across the street from Kuhlman’s Rex Theatre, which was at 172-174 W. Michigan. 159 W. Michigan Avenue is probably the correct address for the Crown Theatre, which closed in 1917.
C. A. Kuhlman’s Crown Theatre was mentioned in the May 15, 1912, issue of The Edison Kinetogram, a semi-monthly publication of the Edison Company.
An item in the March 8, 1925, issue of The Film Daily said that ground would be broken April 1 for a new theater and dance hall for George Bushko in Eynon. Although the item gave the seating capacity of the new house as 900, the Dreamland Theatre might have been a scaled-down version of this project. A couple of news items from the 1930s note that George Bushko was the co-owner (with M. E. Comerford) of the Eynon Theatre.
PSTOS provides this web page with a photo of the console of the Kimball organ installed at Salem’s Heilig Theatre in 1925.
Heilig’s lease on the Grand was for only one year, but the lease was Sold to J.C. Guthrie, operator of the Elsinore and Oregon Theatres, even before that year was up, as reported in the June 1, 1926, issue of the Salem Daily Capital Journal. The name Grand Theatre was restored to the house not long after the transfer.
A South Milwaukee walking tour brochure (PDF here) says of the Garden Theatre “…this popular movie house served the community until 1977. Currently Board Game Barristers.”
This weblog post says that the Garden Theatre building was gutted by a fire in 1979, and was then remodeled and annexed to the adjacent South Milwaukee Carpet and Vinyl store. When the carpet store closed in 2014, the space was taken over by Board Game Barrister, a retail chain headed by the son of the carpet store’s owners. The game shop uses the original carpet store as retail space and the former theater as its warehouse and distribution center.
While it’s possible that this house was renamed Rialto Theatre for a time and then changed back to its original name, I’ve been unable to find any references to a Rialto Theatre at South Milwaukee in the trade publications (but I haven’t checked the FDY.) In any case, Lee_Loveall is correct about the house having been called the Garden Theatre during its final decades.
Architect H. A. Raapke is listed in the archives of the Nebraska Board of Examiners for Professional Engineers and Architects as Henry A. Raapke. I’ve been unable to find any online source other than Cinema Treasures giving his middle name as Arthur. His drawings are signed H.A. Raapke.
In an article about Raapke on page 17 of the May, 2016, issue of Nebraska Libraries (PDF here) author Angela Kroeger notes that she, too, was unable to find any other source giving Arthur as Raapke’s middle name.
A selection of Raapke’s early drawings (1899 to 1907) can be seen in this online exhibit from the archives of the Criss Library at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
The Congress Theatre occupied a building originally erected around 1870 for the Congress Hall Ballroom, an adjunct of the Congress Hall Hotel located across Spring Street. A cast iron bridge connected the two buildings at the second floor. When the hotel was demolished in 1912, the ballroom continued to operate as a dance hall until 1919, when it was converted into the Congress Theatre.
Although equipped for moving pictures, the attraction at the Congress Theatre’s gala opening on August 21, 1919, was the Arthur Hammerstein-produced musical comedy Somebody’s Sweetheart, performed by the original New York cast.
barryinperth: Bill Counter’s Los Angeles Movie Palaces web site has several interior views of the Carthay Circle, including a few shots of the lounge, on this web page. Counter also provides links to additional views at other collections.
I wonder if the Grand Theatre was the same house earlier called the Grand Opera House, which was mentioned in the June 24, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. A Mr. Otey, the operator, had lately had the house remodeled and the floor lowered five feet.
A Grand Theatre at Robinson is listed in the 1908-1909 Cahn guide as a ground floor house with 810 seats. I’ve been unable to find an address for the 1916 and 1908 theaters, so I don’t know if they are the same Grand as the one operating in the 1920s.
The name Lyric Theatre goes back to at least 1916 in Harbor Springs. This item is from the June 24, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The Lyric that S. D. Leahy was operating in 1916 was in a different building than the later Lyric, though. The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory gives the location of the earlier Lyric as State and Bay Streets. Leahy was still operating the house at least as late as 1920, when he wrote a number of capsule movie reviews for Exhibitors Herald.Typos were not unusual in the trade journals of that period, though in this case it is rather disappointing that Hippie wasn’t the real name.
The Hyatt may not be with us much longer. A May 5 article in the San Mateo Daily Journal this year reported that plans are afoot to redevelop the property with an office complex and restaurant. The nearby Burlingame Drive-In site is expected to be redeveloped as well, with an even larger office project.
A widening of Michigan Avenue undertaken in 1938 made it necessary to demolish a considerable portion of the Kramer Theatre building, including a small corner of the auditorium, and the house was closed for the better part of a year. This event accounts for the drastic change in the theater’s architectural style, from Renaissance Revival to Streamline Modern. The rebuilt house reopened on February 11, 1939.