An advertisement for the Cozy Theatre in the May 10, 1918, issue of The Snyder Signal announced that the house would open that day with the five-reel feature The Avenging Trail, featuring Harold Lockwood.
However, issues of the paper from 1917 mention a house called the Cosy Theatre. I don’t know if it was the same house, reopened with a new spelling for the name in 1918 or not. In 1916, there were ads for a house called the Reel Theatre. I don’t find it mentioned later than 1916.
The Cozy was equipped to present stage productions as well as movies. The December 17, 1920, issue of the Signal said that the Hurton Players had been presenting “…some high class shows….” all week, and would be moving on to Colorado following their final performance at the Cozy on Saturday night.
The December 16, 1921, issue of the Signal noted that T. L. Lollar had purchased the Cozy that week and had moved his family to Snyder. The sale was also noted in the January 6, 1922, issue of The Film Daily. Lollar went on to operate several other theaters in Snyder. The web site of The Ritz Community Theater also notes that Lollar bought the Ritz “…around 1921 when it was known as the Cozy Theater.”
The Burley Theatre was probably opened before the end of 1945, or in early 1946 at the latest. This one-line item from the October 13, 1945, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review is probably about the Burley: “Phil Chakeres, Springfield, Ohio, has started work on his new theatre at Shelbyville, Ky.” Chakeres' other house in Shelbyville, the Shelby Theatre, had recently completed a $5,000 remodeling, according to the October 5 issue of The Film Daily.
I’ve found references to the Shelby Theatre from 1937, so the name change definitely predated 1945. The photos of the Shelby’s facade look like late-deco, early-streamlined style, so the 1934 name change claimed by Nancy Hill, cited in my earlier comment, seems a likely time for that facade to have been built. It would have been decidedly old fashioned by 1947, when Boxoffice said the house had opened following a fire in 1945.
I’ve been unable to find the Boxoffice item about the rebuilding that was cited by kencmcintyre in the first comment on this house, but a January 12, 1946, item in Showmen’s Trade Review mentions the fire:
“Word comes from Shelbyville, Ky., that the damage caused to the Shelby Theatre and adjoining buildings in the recent fire there, will
aggregate $75,000. The theatre was just a year
old.”
The claim of the house being a year old was surely an error, considering an item from the October 5 issue of The Film Daily, which said: “The Chakeres circuit has just completed remodeling of the Shelby Theater, Shelbyville, Ky., at a cost of 5,000….” The remodeling, along with the fact that Chakeres actually did have a new theater under construction in Shalbyville in the fall of 1945, probably contributed to the magazine’s confusion. The new Chakeres house was the Burley, a few doors up the block from the Shelby.
It would be interesting to know if this house was still in operation in 1916, when the September 16 issue of The Moving Picture World published this item about the likely fate of Shelbyville’s upper-floor theaters:
“May Close Second Story Theaters.
“Shelbyville, Ky.—From present indications it looks very much as though Brown’s theater, formerly operated by the late R. M. Brown, will shortly be closed. Following the recent death of Mr. Brown the executors, who had announced that the theater would be sold at public auction, leased the theater to Ivory Ethington for one year, with the privilege of seven additional years. At a meeting of the city council a few nights later a committee composed of City Attorney Barrickman and Councilmen B. A. Logan and W. A. McGrath, was appointed to prepare an ordinance which shall prevent the establishment or operation of moving picture theaters excepting on the first floor. The Brown theater is on the second floor and may have to take up quarters elsewhere.”
The same issue of the magazine mentioned a house at Shelbyville called the Music Hall, but with no details. The opera house might have been one or the other of those theaters.
Ivory Ethington, mentioned in the article, later operated the Bon Ton Theatre, later renamed the Shelby Theatre.
The August 21, 1915, issue of MPW also mentioned Brown’s Theatre, along with a new Shelbyville house called the Green Dragon Theatre. Shelbyville also once had houses called the Majestic Theatre and the Strand Theatre.
The correct address of the Shelby Theatre was 610 Main Street, according to an article in the July 10, 2013, issue of the Sentinel-News (page 13 of this PDF.) The article quotes local historian Nancy Hill:
“‘That’s when I started to realize that I’d lived here all my life and I suddenly wanted to know more about all the places I’d grown up with,’ she said. ‘Like the old Smith-McKinney drug store, where my family shopped and got our medicine, and like this building here,’ she said, pointing to a photo of an old building of 610 Main St. she had pulled out of her collection. ‘The original structure was the old public stable, it was built in 1903, and then in 1920 it was the BonTon Theater and in 1934, it was changed to the Shelby Theater,’ she said. ‘When I was growing up, that’s where I used to go to the movies.’”
“The theater went out in 1968, Hill said, and the last business to occupy the building was Computer Hawks, which moved after the fire where it suffered extensive smoke damage in March, and 612, 616 and 618 Main Street were destroyed.”
The building is currently occupied by a clothing store called The Tipsy Gypsy.
Google Maps shows 4759 Sunnyslope Dr. as a house in a rustic residential neighborhood, so it’s unlikely there’s a theater there. It’s just misinformation on the Internet, again.
Scroll down a bit on this web page to read a brief article about Owingsville’s Majestic Theatre. It was located at the corner of present day South Court Street and Slate Avenue, fronting on Court Street. It opened in 1922 and closed in 1982.
American Classic Images has two photos of the Majestic after it was converted into a furniture store: from 1985 and from 1986. A modern brick building with a gabled roof now sits on the theater’s site.
The Strand Theatre at Uniontown, Alabama, operated by J. N. Fendley, was mentioned in the January 18, 1941, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review. Mr. Fendley is also mentioned in the January 11, 1941, issue of Motion Picture Herald:
“Each day before ‘Boom Town’ started
at the Neely Theatre, in Uniontown, Ala., Manager J. N. Fendley arranged to have four aerial bombs fired in rapid succession to attract. Special wrappers with title imprint were used on cigarette packages purchased two weeks ahead, same stickers being used on parked cars in the vicinity. Box office was lettered for the occasion.”
The April 19, 1935, issue of The Film Daily mentions a Mr. Neely taking over operation of a theater in Uniontown:
“Uniontown, Ala. — Lester Neely,
who operates theaters in Marion, Greensboro and Oneonta, has taken over the house operated by J. W. Nunemacher here.”
Prior to the 1970 census, Uniontown had a population of less than 2,000, and was thus unlikely to have supported two theaters. Possibly the Strand was the same house that MPH called the Neely Theatre, and that it was also the same house Mr. Neely took over in 1935.
This web page about the Front Royal Historic District has this to say about the origin of the Murphy Theatre:
“The most prominent example of historic adaptive reuse is the former Front Royal Methodist Church at 131 East Main Street. Originally constructed as a church in 1879, the building was transformed into Murphy’s Theater in 1908-1909. The original arched, nave windows are still visible on what is now the second story of the brick building.”
An organization called the Murphy’s Theatre Project hopes to raise funds to purchase and renovate the theater. Here is their Facebook page.
The May 7, 1955, issue of Boxoffice reported that Louis Lampros had closed the Colonial Theatre in Farrell, and had taken over booth duties at the Capitol Theatre. His contract with the projectionists' union had expired and he had been unable to negotiate a new deal that would allow him to keep both houses open.
There was a house called the Colonial Theatre in Farrell at least as early as 1916, when it was mentioned in the July 1 issue of The Moving Picture World. Owner-manager J.C. Leslie planned extensive renovations, which would necessitate closing the house for the week of July 26. I’ve been unable to determine if the 1916 Colonial was on the same site as the later Colonial.
Other theaters operating in Farrell in 1916 included the Cymric and the Rex.
The recent opening of the Lane Court Theatre was noted in the December 9, 1916, issue of Motography:
“New Chicago House Opens
“Ascher Brothers' new Lane Court Theater in Chicago was opened to the public on Saturday, November 25, with much pomp and ceremony.
“In point of artistic decoration and novelty in construction there possibly is no other theater in Chicago resembling it.
“The arrangement throughout the house is what is generally conceded to be the most desirable. The interior of the theater is diamond shaped. The screen is placed in one corner of the building and the orchestra pit is sunk out of view, immediately under the screen. The walls are paneled and artistically finished in gold and tinted in delicate hues.
“In the center of the house there is an electrically lighted dome which will deflect a mellow light throughout the entire theater during performances, expelling much of the gloom and eyestrain now a commonly heard-of evil. Probably this will explain why a great many older people refrain from attending picture performances.
“The organ pipes are placed in two opposite corners with a large open compartment in back which will permit the organist to obtain some very beautiful musical effects. A Kimball organ has been installed, and an eight-piece orchestra will be a regular attraction. The ventilation of the theater is accomplished through a series of grates inserted into the walls near the floor.
“There will be a matinée each day, starting at 2:30 o'clock and lasting up to 5:00 o'clock; the evening performances will start at 6:30 o'clock and run until eleven. The admission prices will be: Children, five cents, adults, ten cents, and when special attractions are being shown the price will be raised to fifteen cents.”
I believe the current Google street view we show depicts the interior of the DeKalb County Courthouse, which is across the street from the theater’s site. If we give Google the exact address of the theater, 102 S. Cedar Street, it might reset the street view.
We still wouldn’t get a close view, as Google’s camera car didn’t go down Cedar Street, but we should be able to get a view down the block from Seventh Street of the Commercial Club Building, which once housed the entrance to the theater in its northernmost bay.
After studying the photos in the Roxy history to which deecee linked on February 10, 2011, I’m doubtful that the Imperial/Rainbow was in the Jacobs Building, even though that building now uses the address 307 Wilburn. The caption of the photo from The Tennessean of September 13, 1914, says that there was a movie theater in the new building pictured.
Counting the doors of the storefronts, it’s clear that 307 at that time had to have been in the Roxy’s building, not the Jacobs Building. It would have been the last storefront in the building, past the second decorative pediment. The first storefront, 301, was the drug store. The second, a barber shop, was at 303, and the third, which would have been the grocery store mentioned in the caption, was at 305. Beyond the second pediment was a storefront mostly covered with brick, so that must have been the theater, at 307, with its entrance under the second pediment.
At some point after the Roxy was built, the addresses on the block must have been reconfigured and the Jacobs building given the number 307. This means that the Imperial Theatre of 1914 and the Rainbow Theatre of 1928 must have occupied what later became the screen end of the Roxy’s auditorium. You can see the sealed-up entrance of the original theater about midway down the wall of the Roxy in the photo above, although the pediments were removed when the wall was raised to accommodate the Roxy’s balcony.
I’m not sure what originally occupied the Morris Jacobs Building, but the Roxy history page says that in the 1940s the former drug store space on the corner of Meridian Street became Morris Dry Goods. Maybe it was the same Morris, and he moved his store to the corner for better visibility.
The 1914 photo caption also says that the architect for the building was C.A. Ferguson. It also says that Crescent Amusement bought the building in 1936, and the Roxy was opened before the end of 1937.
DavePrice: A comment on this theater by deecee from August 10, 2009, gives 307 Wilburn as the address of a house called the Rainbow Theatre, listed in 1928. This is the address of the Morris Jacobs building, an historic structure which has recently been restored.
According to the final paragraph of this article, about the failed attempts to save the Von Lee Theatre, virtually nothing remains of the original building but the facade and the entrance. Other sources suggest that parts of three walls of the auditorium might have been saved, but for all practical purposes the three-story office building that now occupies most of the site is entirely new construction. Even the “Von Lee” sign mounted above the entrance canopy is only a replica of the original.
This brief video, made during demolition, shows the extent of the devastation. Though there are many Internet sources that tout the “adaptive reuse” of the theater, so little of it remains that I’d be inclined to mark the Von Lee as demolished. It will certainly never be a movie theater again.
Here’s an historic photograph (a smaller version of which also appears in the article I linked to) showing the narrow entrance. The theater was L shaped, and the top of the auditorium is hidden behind the Victorian house that once stood inside the L. Kerasotes built an addition to the theater on the site of the house in 1976. That, too, is now gone.
I’m not sure why we classify the style of the Von Lee as Art Deco. The entrance with its tile roofs looks as though the architect was making a stab at something Oriental, highly suitable to the noodle house that now occupies the ground floor front. I doubt that the reopening in 1949 (the building served as a grocery store through most of the 1930s and 1940s) led to an Art Deco interior being built. Most likely the re-theaterized interior was in the basic Streamline style of the era.
The Liberty Theatre was at 147 North Diamond Street, near Pitt Street. There was a very narrow entrance, now occupied by a branch of PNC Bank. I can’t tell if it’s the theater’s original building, extensively remodeled, or new construction. The auditorium had to have been behind the adjacent building.
The Liberty was in operation at least as early as 1926, and might have been a project that was noted in the August 21, 1920, issue of The American Contractor, which said that a 650-seat, one-story theater, 59x85 feet, was to be built at Diamond and Pitt Streets for the Alpha Motion Picture Company. The project had been designed by Sharon, PA, architectural firm Taylor & Hanna. The house was to be called “The Pitt”, but I don’t know if it ever actually operated under that name.
After doing a bit more digging, I now suspect that the Acme Theatre at 111 S.W. Center Street was built in 1916, and prior to that the Acme Theatre name was used in at least two other locations. One was in the Messenger Opera House block, from which H.R. Mason moved his operation in September, 1908, according to an item in the September 17 issue of the Goldsboro Daily Argus. A 1908 Sanborn Map shows the ground floor center bay of the Opera block, 152 S.E. Center, occupied by “Moving Pictures”.
The next location of the Acme is just a guess, but a 1913 Sanborn map available from Doc South’s “Going to the Show” site shows two buildings occupied by “Electric Theatres,” one being at 145 S.W. Center and the other at 121-123 W. Walnut Street. No other movie theaters appear on that map. According to the 1917-18 Goldsboro City Directory, 121 W. Walnut was the location of H.R. Mason’s Crystal Theatre, so I would guess that the house at 145 S.W. Center was, prior to 1916, the Acme.
111-113 S.W. Center were occupied by two small storefronts on the 1913 map, 111 being a confectionery and 113 a music store. On the 1918 map both lots are occupied by a much deeper single building housing the Acme (listed on the map only as “Moving Pictures”.)
Various issues of The Music Trade Review from 1916 note a new theater being built at Goldsboro by H.R. Mason, one item specifically calling it the Acme. The project was also noted in the April 15 issue of Motography. An advertisement in the August 17, 1916, issue of the Goldsboro Daily Argus read “The New Acme Opens Tonight 7:30 P.M.”
While the 1928 Goldsboro directory does not list the Acme Theatre, it does list the Mason Theatre, operated by H.W. Mason, at 137 S.W. Center Street. This house, which later became the Paramount Theatre, was most likely Mason’s replacement for the Acme.
In the 1928 Goldsboro city directory, 319 S. James is listed as the location of the Rex Auditorium Theatre, a moving picture house for black patrons, operated by J. K. Darden. This house was apparently the successor to the Rex Theatre on W. Chestnut Street, which was not listed in the 1928 directory.
The latter part of this PDF has an article about the history of Ephrara’s theaters, with information from an interview with Mary Lee, who started the Lee circuit with her husband John in 1936. The article says that the Marjo (they don’t hyphenate it) Theatre opened in 1940.
The Lees' first venture into the business was taking over an older theater called the Kam in 1936. They renamed the house the Capital (this is the spelling used in the article. “Capitol” is used far more frequently for theaters.)
The article is accompanied by a few photos, one of which depicts the Marjo, and two of which are of the Lee Theatre, which John and Mary opened in 1952.
The 1914-15 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory lists a theater at Ephrata called the Kaminski Opera House. I think it might have been the theater that was later called the Kam which the Lees renamed the Capital.
Unfortunately, the history on the Acme’s web site has some inaccuracies, and they are at least partly my fault. If you check the comment I made on this page on November 5, 2010 (the very fist comment on the Acme) you’ll see that the current operators of the Acme copied and pasted parts of their history from that comment. Part of their information probably also came from our original description of the Acme, contributed by Chuck sometime before November 5, 2010.
Our original description said that the Acme was the same theater as the Wayne, but from the later comments by vbridgers and NightHawk1 we were able to determine that the Acme was not the same house as the Wayne. The description has been corrected, and we now know that Wayne Theatre was the original name of the house that later became the Center Theatre and was last known as the Variety Theatre. The Acme was not listed in the 1928 Goldsboro directory, and probably closed around that time, when new, better equipped theaters were being opened.
The opening year is a bit problematic. Historic sources indicate that there was an Acme Theatre operating in Goldsboro at least as early as 1908, but I haven’t been able to determine if it was at 111 S.W. Center Street or somewhere else. In 1916, the house was either moved to a new building at 111 S.W. Center, or the old theater at that location was rebuilt and expanded. I’ve been checking the sources available to me and will post the information as soon as I can find something about it.
My apologies to everyone using the site for my part in perpetuating the earlier misinformation posted on this page. Cinema Treasures strives to provide accurate information, but when much of the information is crowdsourced, and is pieced together from diverse, often fragmented sources on the Internet, some errors are likely to creep in.
The “Motion Picture Supplement” of the 1921 Cahn guide lists the Acme Theatre, Goldsboro, as a 500-seat house showing “R.&P” (Road shows and Pictures.) The stage was 55 feet wide and 26 feet deep, with a height of 35 feet, which was on the small side for a road show house, but Goldsboro only had a population of 11,296, so it couldn’t be expected to have supported a larger theater, or a full time stage house.
There are multiple mentions of the Acme in moving picture trade journals of the period, including The Moving Picture World and Motography. For many years it was managed by H.R. Mason, who is mentioned in trade journals at least as early as 1908, as is the Acme itself. In 1918 Mason was also operating the Rex and Crystal Theatres in Goldsboro, as noted in an ad for Triangle Distributing Corporation’s moving picture service in the February 23 issue of Motography.
The March 26, 1912, issue of the Goldsboro Daily Argus ran an item noting that:
“Mr. H. R. Mason president of tho Great Southern Feature Film Company will personally present at the Acme Theatre Wednesday and Thursday this great feature picture that has brought forth undivided praise from the press and the pulpit of all Protestant denominations.”
The highly praised film that Mason presented was called A Victim of the Mormons, and a synopsis in the article reveals that it is about a nice Protestant girl who is sweet-talked by a Mormon preacher into going with him to Utah. Presumably she gets some sister wives out of the deal, but I guess the paper didn’t want to publish any spoilers.
I’ve found two earlier theater names in Keota. One of them might have been an aka for the Rex. A “Twenty Years Ago” feature in Boxoffice of November 20, 1948, says that “O. H. Smith has opened the Community Theatre at Keota. Recently the Rialto there, formerly operated by W. D. Tarkington, has been closed.”
This item from the April 7, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News notes the beginning of what turned out to be Mr. Tarkington’s brief career as an exhibitor in Keota::
“W. D. Tarkington is reported to be taking over the Miller Theatre at Keota, Oklahoma, and the Empress Theatre at McCurtain, Oklahoma, from Lester Miller.”
In the early 1950s the Rex was operated by someone with the surname Johnson, but I’ve been unable to discover their first name.
An advertisement for the Cozy Theatre in the May 10, 1918, issue of The Snyder Signal announced that the house would open that day with the five-reel feature The Avenging Trail, featuring Harold Lockwood.
However, issues of the paper from 1917 mention a house called the Cosy Theatre. I don’t know if it was the same house, reopened with a new spelling for the name in 1918 or not. In 1916, there were ads for a house called the Reel Theatre. I don’t find it mentioned later than 1916.
The Cozy was equipped to present stage productions as well as movies. The December 17, 1920, issue of the Signal said that the Hurton Players had been presenting “…some high class shows….” all week, and would be moving on to Colorado following their final performance at the Cozy on Saturday night.
The December 16, 1921, issue of the Signal noted that T. L. Lollar had purchased the Cozy that week and had moved his family to Snyder. The sale was also noted in the January 6, 1922, issue of The Film Daily. Lollar went on to operate several other theaters in Snyder. The web site of The Ritz Community Theater also notes that Lollar bought the Ritz “…around 1921 when it was known as the Cozy Theater.”
The Burley Theatre was probably opened before the end of 1945, or in early 1946 at the latest. This one-line item from the October 13, 1945, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review is probably about the Burley: “Phil Chakeres, Springfield, Ohio, has started work on his new theatre at Shelbyville, Ky.” Chakeres' other house in Shelbyville, the Shelby Theatre, had recently completed a $5,000 remodeling, according to the October 5 issue of The Film Daily.
I’ve found references to the Shelby Theatre from 1937, so the name change definitely predated 1945. The photos of the Shelby’s facade look like late-deco, early-streamlined style, so the 1934 name change claimed by Nancy Hill, cited in my earlier comment, seems a likely time for that facade to have been built. It would have been decidedly old fashioned by 1947, when Boxoffice said the house had opened following a fire in 1945.
I’ve been unable to find the Boxoffice item about the rebuilding that was cited by kencmcintyre in the first comment on this house, but a January 12, 1946, item in Showmen’s Trade Review mentions the fire:
The claim of the house being a year old was surely an error, considering an item from the October 5 issue of The Film Daily, which said: “The Chakeres circuit has just completed remodeling of the Shelby Theater, Shelbyville, Ky., at a cost of 5,000….” The remodeling, along with the fact that Chakeres actually did have a new theater under construction in Shalbyville in the fall of 1945, probably contributed to the magazine’s confusion. The new Chakeres house was the Burley, a few doors up the block from the Shelby.It would be interesting to know if this house was still in operation in 1916, when the September 16 issue of The Moving Picture World published this item about the likely fate of Shelbyville’s upper-floor theaters:
The same issue of the magazine mentioned a house at Shelbyville called the Music Hall, but with no details. The opera house might have been one or the other of those theaters.Ivory Ethington, mentioned in the article, later operated the Bon Ton Theatre, later renamed the Shelby Theatre.
The August 21, 1915, issue of MPW also mentioned Brown’s Theatre, along with a new Shelbyville house called the Green Dragon Theatre. Shelbyville also once had houses called the Majestic Theatre and the Strand Theatre.
The correct address of the Shelby Theatre was 610 Main Street, according to an article in the July 10, 2013, issue of the Sentinel-News (page 13 of this PDF.) The article quotes local historian Nancy Hill:
The building is currently occupied by a clothing store called The Tipsy Gypsy.Google Maps shows 4759 Sunnyslope Dr. as a house in a rustic residential neighborhood, so it’s unlikely there’s a theater there. It’s just misinformation on the Internet, again.
Scroll down a bit on this web page to read a brief article about Owingsville’s Majestic Theatre. It was located at the corner of present day South Court Street and Slate Avenue, fronting on Court Street. It opened in 1922 and closed in 1982.
American Classic Images has two photos of the Majestic after it was converted into a furniture store: from 1985 and from 1986. A modern brick building with a gabled roof now sits on the theater’s site.
The Strand Theatre at Uniontown, Alabama, operated by J. N. Fendley, was mentioned in the January 18, 1941, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review. Mr. Fendley is also mentioned in the January 11, 1941, issue of Motion Picture Herald:
The April 19, 1935, issue of The Film Daily mentions a Mr. Neely taking over operation of a theater in Uniontown:Prior to the 1970 census, Uniontown had a population of less than 2,000, and was thus unlikely to have supported two theaters. Possibly the Strand was the same house that MPH called the Neely Theatre, and that it was also the same house Mr. Neely took over in 1935.This web page about the Front Royal Historic District has this to say about the origin of the Murphy Theatre:
An organization called the Murphy’s Theatre Project hopes to raise funds to purchase and renovate the theater. Here is their Facebook page.The May 7, 1955, issue of Boxoffice reported that Louis Lampros had closed the Colonial Theatre in Farrell, and had taken over booth duties at the Capitol Theatre. His contract with the projectionists' union had expired and he had been unable to negotiate a new deal that would allow him to keep both houses open.
There was a house called the Colonial Theatre in Farrell at least as early as 1916, when it was mentioned in the July 1 issue of The Moving Picture World. Owner-manager J.C. Leslie planned extensive renovations, which would necessitate closing the house for the week of July 26. I’ve been unable to determine if the 1916 Colonial was on the same site as the later Colonial.
Other theaters operating in Farrell in 1916 included the Cymric and the Rex.
The recent opening of the Lane Court Theatre was noted in the December 9, 1916, issue of Motography:
I believe the current Google street view we show depicts the interior of the DeKalb County Courthouse, which is across the street from the theater’s site. If we give Google the exact address of the theater, 102 S. Cedar Street, it might reset the street view.
We still wouldn’t get a close view, as Google’s camera car didn’t go down Cedar Street, but we should be able to get a view down the block from Seventh Street of the Commercial Club Building, which once housed the entrance to the theater in its northernmost bay.
rivest266: Your second ad, touting the renovations, must have been from 1948, the year You Gotta Stay Happy was released.
After studying the photos in the Roxy history to which deecee linked on February 10, 2011, I’m doubtful that the Imperial/Rainbow was in the Jacobs Building, even though that building now uses the address 307 Wilburn. The caption of the photo from The Tennessean of September 13, 1914, says that there was a movie theater in the new building pictured.
Counting the doors of the storefronts, it’s clear that 307 at that time had to have been in the Roxy’s building, not the Jacobs Building. It would have been the last storefront in the building, past the second decorative pediment. The first storefront, 301, was the drug store. The second, a barber shop, was at 303, and the third, which would have been the grocery store mentioned in the caption, was at 305. Beyond the second pediment was a storefront mostly covered with brick, so that must have been the theater, at 307, with its entrance under the second pediment.
At some point after the Roxy was built, the addresses on the block must have been reconfigured and the Jacobs building given the number 307. This means that the Imperial Theatre of 1914 and the Rainbow Theatre of 1928 must have occupied what later became the screen end of the Roxy’s auditorium. You can see the sealed-up entrance of the original theater about midway down the wall of the Roxy in the photo above, although the pediments were removed when the wall was raised to accommodate the Roxy’s balcony.
I’m not sure what originally occupied the Morris Jacobs Building, but the Roxy history page says that in the 1940s the former drug store space on the corner of Meridian Street became Morris Dry Goods. Maybe it was the same Morris, and he moved his store to the corner for better visibility.
The 1914 photo caption also says that the architect for the building was C.A. Ferguson. It also says that Crescent Amusement bought the building in 1936, and the Roxy was opened before the end of 1937.
DavePrice: A comment on this theater by deecee from August 10, 2009, gives 307 Wilburn as the address of a house called the Rainbow Theatre, listed in 1928. This is the address of the Morris Jacobs building, an historic structure which has recently been restored.
According to the final paragraph of this article, about the failed attempts to save the Von Lee Theatre, virtually nothing remains of the original building but the facade and the entrance. Other sources suggest that parts of three walls of the auditorium might have been saved, but for all practical purposes the three-story office building that now occupies most of the site is entirely new construction. Even the “Von Lee” sign mounted above the entrance canopy is only a replica of the original.
This brief video, made during demolition, shows the extent of the devastation. Though there are many Internet sources that tout the “adaptive reuse” of the theater, so little of it remains that I’d be inclined to mark the Von Lee as demolished. It will certainly never be a movie theater again.
Here’s an historic photograph (a smaller version of which also appears in the article I linked to) showing the narrow entrance. The theater was L shaped, and the top of the auditorium is hidden behind the Victorian house that once stood inside the L. Kerasotes built an addition to the theater on the site of the house in 1976. That, too, is now gone.
I’m not sure why we classify the style of the Von Lee as Art Deco. The entrance with its tile roofs looks as though the architect was making a stab at something Oriental, highly suitable to the noodle house that now occupies the ground floor front. I doubt that the reopening in 1949 (the building served as a grocery store through most of the 1930s and 1940s) led to an Art Deco interior being built. Most likely the re-theaterized interior was in the basic Streamline style of the era.
The Liberty Theatre was at 147 North Diamond Street, near Pitt Street. There was a very narrow entrance, now occupied by a branch of PNC Bank. I can’t tell if it’s the theater’s original building, extensively remodeled, or new construction. The auditorium had to have been behind the adjacent building.
The Liberty was in operation at least as early as 1926, and might have been a project that was noted in the August 21, 1920, issue of The American Contractor, which said that a 650-seat, one-story theater, 59x85 feet, was to be built at Diamond and Pitt Streets for the Alpha Motion Picture Company. The project had been designed by Sharon, PA, architectural firm Taylor & Hanna. The house was to be called “The Pitt”, but I don’t know if it ever actually operated under that name.
Open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. See their Facebook page for movie listings and times.
After doing a bit more digging, I now suspect that the Acme Theatre at 111 S.W. Center Street was built in 1916, and prior to that the Acme Theatre name was used in at least two other locations. One was in the Messenger Opera House block, from which H.R. Mason moved his operation in September, 1908, according to an item in the September 17 issue of the Goldsboro Daily Argus. A 1908 Sanborn Map shows the ground floor center bay of the Opera block, 152 S.E. Center, occupied by “Moving Pictures”.
The next location of the Acme is just a guess, but a 1913 Sanborn map available from Doc South’s “Going to the Show” site shows two buildings occupied by “Electric Theatres,” one being at 145 S.W. Center and the other at 121-123 W. Walnut Street. No other movie theaters appear on that map. According to the 1917-18 Goldsboro City Directory, 121 W. Walnut was the location of H.R. Mason’s Crystal Theatre, so I would guess that the house at 145 S.W. Center was, prior to 1916, the Acme.
111-113 S.W. Center were occupied by two small storefronts on the 1913 map, 111 being a confectionery and 113 a music store. On the 1918 map both lots are occupied by a much deeper single building housing the Acme (listed on the map only as “Moving Pictures”.)
Various issues of The Music Trade Review from 1916 note a new theater being built at Goldsboro by H.R. Mason, one item specifically calling it the Acme. The project was also noted in the April 15 issue of Motography. An advertisement in the August 17, 1916, issue of the Goldsboro Daily Argus read “The New Acme Opens Tonight 7:30 P.M.”
While the 1928 Goldsboro directory does not list the Acme Theatre, it does list the Mason Theatre, operated by H.W. Mason, at 137 S.W. Center Street. This house, which later became the Paramount Theatre, was most likely Mason’s replacement for the Acme.
In the 1928 Goldsboro city directory, 319 S. James is listed as the location of the Rex Auditorium Theatre, a moving picture house for black patrons, operated by J. K. Darden. This house was apparently the successor to the Rex Theatre on W. Chestnut Street, which was not listed in the 1928 directory.
The latter part of this PDF has an article about the history of Ephrara’s theaters, with information from an interview with Mary Lee, who started the Lee circuit with her husband John in 1936. The article says that the Marjo (they don’t hyphenate it) Theatre opened in 1940.
The Lees' first venture into the business was taking over an older theater called the Kam in 1936. They renamed the house the Capital (this is the spelling used in the article. “Capitol” is used far more frequently for theaters.)
The article is accompanied by a few photos, one of which depicts the Marjo, and two of which are of the Lee Theatre, which John and Mary opened in 1952.
The 1914-15 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory lists a theater at Ephrata called the Kaminski Opera House. I think it might have been the theater that was later called the Kam which the Lees renamed the Capital.
Unfortunately, the history on the Acme’s web site has some inaccuracies, and they are at least partly my fault. If you check the comment I made on this page on November 5, 2010 (the very fist comment on the Acme) you’ll see that the current operators of the Acme copied and pasted parts of their history from that comment. Part of their information probably also came from our original description of the Acme, contributed by Chuck sometime before November 5, 2010.
Our original description said that the Acme was the same theater as the Wayne, but from the later comments by vbridgers and NightHawk1 we were able to determine that the Acme was not the same house as the Wayne. The description has been corrected, and we now know that Wayne Theatre was the original name of the house that later became the Center Theatre and was last known as the Variety Theatre. The Acme was not listed in the 1928 Goldsboro directory, and probably closed around that time, when new, better equipped theaters were being opened.
The opening year is a bit problematic. Historic sources indicate that there was an Acme Theatre operating in Goldsboro at least as early as 1908, but I haven’t been able to determine if it was at 111 S.W. Center Street or somewhere else. In 1916, the house was either moved to a new building at 111 S.W. Center, or the old theater at that location was rebuilt and expanded. I’ve been checking the sources available to me and will post the information as soon as I can find something about it.
My apologies to everyone using the site for my part in perpetuating the earlier misinformation posted on this page. Cinema Treasures strives to provide accurate information, but when much of the information is crowdsourced, and is pieced together from diverse, often fragmented sources on the Internet, some errors are likely to creep in.
The “Motion Picture Supplement” of the 1921 Cahn guide lists the Acme Theatre, Goldsboro, as a 500-seat house showing “R.&P” (Road shows and Pictures.) The stage was 55 feet wide and 26 feet deep, with a height of 35 feet, which was on the small side for a road show house, but Goldsboro only had a population of 11,296, so it couldn’t be expected to have supported a larger theater, or a full time stage house.
There are multiple mentions of the Acme in moving picture trade journals of the period, including The Moving Picture World and Motography. For many years it was managed by H.R. Mason, who is mentioned in trade journals at least as early as 1908, as is the Acme itself. In 1918 Mason was also operating the Rex and Crystal Theatres in Goldsboro, as noted in an ad for Triangle Distributing Corporation’s moving picture service in the February 23 issue of Motography.
The March 26, 1912, issue of the Goldsboro Daily Argus ran an item noting that:
The highly praised film that Mason presented was called A Victim of the Mormons, and a synopsis in the article reveals that it is about a nice Protestant girl who is sweet-talked by a Mormon preacher into going with him to Utah. Presumably she gets some sister wives out of the deal, but I guess the paper didn’t want to publish any spoilers.I’ve found two earlier theater names in Keota. One of them might have been an aka for the Rex. A “Twenty Years Ago” feature in Boxoffice of November 20, 1948, says that “O. H. Smith has opened the Community Theatre at Keota. Recently the Rialto there, formerly operated by W. D. Tarkington, has been closed.”
This item from the April 7, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News notes the beginning of what turned out to be Mr. Tarkington’s brief career as an exhibitor in Keota::
In the early 1950s the Rex was operated by someone with the surname Johnson, but I’ve been unable to discover their first name.