An Orpheum Theatre was operating in Cuba as early as 1916, when the May 20 issue of The Moving Picture World ran a brief notice that the house had suffered a small film fire that was extinguished by placing a galvanized box over the projection machine.
A house called the Colonial Theatre was in operation at Fort Wayne prior to 1916, when this notice appeared in the May 20 issue of The Moving Picture World:
“The Colonial Improvements.
“Ft. Wayne, Ind. — The Colonial was closed for two weeks while repairs were being made. Manager H. C. Heisler said that improvements would be made rapidly and that the patrons of the theater would not be kept away long.”
The May 20, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World ran this notice:
“Covington, Ind. — The Lyric, Covington’s newest moving picture theater, is open. The theater played to capacity business the first week, and much favorable comment was aroused because of the beautifully appointed interior of the picture house.”
Theodore Charles was operating a house called the Moon Theatre at Vincennes at least as early as 1916, when it was mentioned in the September 2 issue of Motion Picture News. CinemaTour lists the Moon Theatre at 505 Main Street. The Showplace 3, at the other end of the block, opened as the New Moon Theatre, and was later renamed the Moon Theatre, rather than the other way around.
The book Vincennes, 1930-1960, by Richard Day, Garry Hall, and William Hopper, says that the New Moon Theatre opened on December 14, 1939 (Google Books preview.) The book also indicates that the original Moon Theatre, which opened as a vaudeville house called the Red Mill in 1908, continued to operate as the Moon Theatre at least into 1941.
Numerous articles from local sources in 2015 and 2016 indicate that plans are afoot to renovate the New Moon Theatre building, though probably not for theatrical use. A new roof has stabilized the building, which had suffered water damage, and mold removal has been undertaken.
I’ve found conflicting information about the Princess Theatre.An article in the September 2, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World has this story:
“THE Princess, Troy, Ala., owned by Ramsay and Cranch, and managed by J. G. Cranch, was built in 1914, and soon became the amusement center of its locality. The theatre stands on a plot measuring thirty-two by ninety feet, and is described by the owners as being the ‘best naturally ventilated house in that part of the country,’ where ventilation is a prime consideration during the summer months. An indirect lighting system has been installed in the Princess to shed sufficient glow for finding the seats without interfering with the light on the screen.
“The Princess has a seating capacity of 280. A Power’s 6-A projector is the machine in use, with a Mirroide screen. The length of throw is seventy-five feet. A three piece orchestra and a Berry Wood electric piano furnishes the music for the exclusive showing of features. Usually about five shows, five and ten cents, with a ten cent admission at night, consist of the daily performances.
“The lobby is made to serve as an effective advertising adjunct, with a full display of posters in brass frames. The theatre is located in the business district.”
However, according to the nomination form of the Troy Downtown Historic District to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage, the theater in the Masonic Temple operated under three names: it opened as the Royal Theatre on June 5, 1912, in 1915 it became the Walton Theatre, and at an unknown date it became the Princess Theatre, operating under that name for fourteen years.
This article from the Troy Messenger says that the Masonic Temple was built in 1892, and was designed by architect Enoch Crites.
A final bit of conflicting information about the theater itself is that a list of Wilby-Kincey houses published in the January 5, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald lists the Princess as a 350 seat house.
The July 9, 1921, issue of The Moving Picture World said that Joseph Shverha planned to enlarge and improve his theater at Lewistown:
“LEWISTOWN, PA.— Joseph M. Shverha has plans by John B. Harmon, 48 North Queen
street, Lancaster, for interior alterations and
an addition, 8 by 25 feet, to one-story moving
picture theatre, to cost $25,000.”
The July 9 issue of the same publication noted that Joseph Shverha, or the Rialto Theatre, Lewistown, was among the Pennsylvania exhibitors attending a recent convention in Minneapolis.
An item from the March 4, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World was published rather late, if the item from The Joplin Globe suggesting that the Crane Theatre was already under construction in November, 1921, as cited in my previous comment, was correct:
“CARTHAGE, MO.— W. S. Crane has plans by A. C. Michaelis, 325 Miners Bank Building, Joplin, for four-story brick theatre, 100 by 150 feet, to be erected on East Third street, to cost $50,000.”
The Crane Theatre would have been one of the last projects designed by architect A. C. Michaelis, who was killed during the construction of Joplin Memorial Hall in 1923.
The opening date found by dallasmovietheaters is a strong indication that this brief item from The Moving Picture World of March 4, 1922, is about the Broadway Theatre:
“COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA. — Broadway Building Company has plans by J. C. Jenson, 305 West Broadway, for theater, to cost $130,000. Address R. B. Wallace, secretary.”
“Jenson” is probably misspelled, and the architect of the Broadway was most likely J. Chris Jensen, a Danish-American architect sufficiently well known in Iowa to warrant this Wikipedia page.
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.
An Orpheum Theatre was operating in Cuba as early as 1916, when the May 20 issue of The Moving Picture World ran a brief notice that the house had suffered a small film fire that was extinguished by placing a galvanized box over the projection machine.
A house called the Colonial Theatre was in operation at Fort Wayne prior to 1916, when this notice appeared in the May 20 issue of The Moving Picture World:
The May 20, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World ran this notice:
A line near the end of this Facebook post says: “In 1960 the Strand Theatre on the SE corner of 6th and Main was razed.”
Theodore Charles was operating a house called the Moon Theatre at Vincennes at least as early as 1916, when it was mentioned in the September 2 issue of Motion Picture News. CinemaTour lists the Moon Theatre at 505 Main Street. The Showplace 3, at the other end of the block, opened as the New Moon Theatre, and was later renamed the Moon Theatre, rather than the other way around.
The book Vincennes, 1930-1960, by Richard Day, Garry Hall, and William Hopper, says that the New Moon Theatre opened on December 14, 1939 (Google Books preview.) The book also indicates that the original Moon Theatre, which opened as a vaudeville house called the Red Mill in 1908, continued to operate as the Moon Theatre at least into 1941.
Numerous articles from local sources in 2015 and 2016 indicate that plans are afoot to renovate the New Moon Theatre building, though probably not for theatrical use. A new roof has stabilized the building, which had suffered water damage, and mold removal has been undertaken.
I’ve found conflicting information about the Princess Theatre.An article in the September 2, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World has this story:
However, according to the nomination form of the Troy Downtown Historic District to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage, the theater in the Masonic Temple operated under three names: it opened as the Royal Theatre on June 5, 1912, in 1915 it became the Walton Theatre, and at an unknown date it became the Princess Theatre, operating under that name for fourteen years.This article from the Troy Messenger says that the Masonic Temple was built in 1892, and was designed by architect Enoch Crites.
A final bit of conflicting information about the theater itself is that a list of Wilby-Kincey houses published in the January 5, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald lists the Princess as a 350 seat house.
The July 9, 1921, issue of The Moving Picture World said that Joseph Shverha planned to enlarge and improve his theater at Lewistown:
The July 9 issue of the same publication noted that Joseph Shverha, or the Rialto Theatre, Lewistown, was among the Pennsylvania exhibitors attending a recent convention in Minneapolis.An item from the March 4, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World was published rather late, if the item from The Joplin Globe suggesting that the Crane Theatre was already under construction in November, 1921, as cited in my previous comment, was correct:
The Crane Theatre would have been one of the last projects designed by architect A. C. Michaelis, who was killed during the construction of Joplin Memorial Hall in 1923.The opening date found by dallasmovietheaters is a strong indication that this brief item from The Moving Picture World of March 4, 1922, is about the Broadway Theatre:
“Jenson” is probably misspelled, and the architect of the Broadway was most likely J. Chris Jensen, a Danish-American architect sufficiently well known in Iowa to warrant this Wikipedia page.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.