And this is interesting too: looking at Google street view of the theater I noticed a hand-made sign reading “David Sukonick Concert Hall.” Sukonick Concert Hall has its own Facebook page, but there haven’t been any posts since February this year, and none earlier than January 11, 2015, and there are only three posts altogether, all of them posted by people appearing at the venue, so whoever actually runs the place obviously hasn’t yet claimed the page. I don’t think we should change the name of the theater’s page based on this scantly information, though.
The only David Sukonick I can find on the Internet is a professional dancer who now designs and builds floors for dance studios through a company called Bolo Productions. Maybe he has something to do with this theater, and maybe he doesn’t. The web site isn’t telling, as far as I can discover.
Also also interesting (to me, at least, though not theater-related) is this interview with David Sukonick at Danse Track, though it might be boring for people who aren’t interested in dance (or construction.)
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this or not (and not that this really matters either), but someone has tagged the Variety Theatre building on Google satellite view with the name Vaud and the Villains, which the Internet tells me is a traveling orchestra and cabaret show (here is their web site.) Aside from the troupe having performed two shows at the Fais Do-Do in 2016, I can’t find any connection between them and the theater. Might they be using it for a rehearsal hall?
Boxoffice of July 6, 1964, ran a two-page spread about the Eric Theatre in Fairless Hills (link which might or might not last, Boxoffice being an unreliable online presence.) The 1,400-seat house featured a 28x60-foot curved screen and a box office located in an enclosed storm lobby.
The project was designed by the King of Prussia-based architectural firm Brugger & Freeman (John T. Brugger, Jr. and David Dean Freeman) who also designed the King Theatre in King of Prussia, opened a few months earlier than the Eric.
Samuel Shapiro had operated both indoor and outdoor theaters in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for some time, but had only recently formed the Sameric Company and was rapidly expanding his operations. The King Theatre was the first in his new chain, and the Fairless Hills house was the first location to have the name Eric Theatre.
lushwoodland: I don’t doubt that the original King Theatre was in a different building than the Queen Four, but the King could not have been a Jerry Lewis Cinema when it first opened. Mike Rivest has uploaded to this theater’s photo page the King Theatre’s grand opening ad from June 26, 1963, and the ad displays the company name, Sameric.
There is also the fact that the entry for King of Prussia architect David Dean Freeman in the 1970 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the King Theatre as one of his projects (it is listed as a 1965 project, so that is either a typo- these are not unknown in books as enormous as the AIA directories- or Freeman merely designed some alterations for the theater two years after it opened.)
Network Cinema Corporation and Jerry Lewis didn’t even form their partnership to create Jerry Lewis Cinemas until 1969. I don’t know when the King of Prussia Jerry Lewis Cinema opened, but I doubt it was any earlier than 1970. Most of the company’s houses were opened in the early 1970s, some of them as single-screens, more of them as twins, and a few as triplexes.
Presumably, it was when the Jerry Lewis operation failed later in the 1970s (the company was gone by the end of the decade) that Sameric took over the King of Prussia location and began operating it, renamed the Queen, as an adjunct to the King Theatre. What happened after that I don’t know. I wasn’t there and I haven’t found any articles about it on the Internet.
But I can guess, based mainly on the theater’s nomenclature (lack of solid information has never stopped me from making guesses, as I’m sure everyone at Cinema Treasures knows.) At some point Sameric took over the Jerry Lewis location and renamed it the Queen (it would not have made sense for them to renamed the Jerry Lewis the King and rename the King the Queen. Moving the signage alone would have been costly, and there was nothing to gain from it.) The King was twinned, either before or after the Jerry Lewis was taken over, and at some point two additional screens were added to the Queen twin, and the entire operation went by the name King and Queen Six until the twinned King was closed, after which the former Jerry Lewis location with its two-screen addition operated as the Queen Four. This is the only explanation that really makes sense to me.
The January 3, 1953, issue of Motion Picture Herald mentions both the Rose Theatre and the Welsh Theatre in this item:
“M. F. Welsh, who recently purchased the
Rose in Franklinton, La., from O. D. Myles, has put up a ‘closed’ sign, which leaves the town with one theatre, the Welsh, which has been operating for many years.”
Mentions of Franklinton are sparse in the trade journals. I found two in Boxoffice, one from December 27, 1952, saying that O. D. Myles had closed the Rose Theatre until further notice, and one in the February 2, 1957, issue mentioning a Hollywood Theatre in Franklinton, operated by an E. P. Dubuisson.
Here is an article about the pending demolition of the Colony Theatre, from The Times-Gazette of May 11, 2016. The building had deteriorated so badly that it was deemed unsalvageable, mostly as result of water damage from the long-unrepaired leaky roof.
The Colony opened in September, 1938. Chakeres Theatres deeded the property to the city in the 1990s, and the city turned it over to a non-profit organization. It was operated as a live performance venue, but with little success. In 2014, by which time deterioration of the structure was already well advanced, ownership reverted to the city.
The Times-Gazette has uploaded this short video to YouTube, showing a minute of the demolition of the theater’s auditorium.
The apparent source for the Grand Theatre’s description says that the house had operated “…for approximately 29 years, nine under Douglas' ownership” at the time of the 1963 fire. Presumably written many years after these events, the article appears to have been mistaken about the length of the theater’s tenure. The Ohio section of the “Theaters Under Construction” column of The Film Daily for April 9, 1938, had this item:
“Dunkirk — Grand, 275 seats, Main St. (4-6-38); Architect: W. Burke; Operator: W. M. Day.”
Being a remodeling job on an existing building, the project probably didn’t take too long and the Grand probably opened well before the end of 1938. A rather blurry photo at the bottom of the page I linked to shows what I think is probably the marquee of the Grand, dripping with icicles in the December air.
I’ve found a single reference to a theater called the Star that operated in Dunkirk earlier. It was listed as a member of the American Motion Picture League in the December 20, 1913, issue of Moving Picture World.
The Key Theatre was one of the houses noted in the “Theaters Under Construction” column of The Film Daily of April 9, 1938:
“Middleboro — Key, 500 seats, 6 S. Main St. (4-17-38); Owners: Pat McGee and Roy Heffner; Builder: C. Brent; Architect: C. Brent; Cost: $21,000; Operator: Middleboro Amusement Co.”
I’ve been unable to find out anything about builder/architect C. Brent. Most likely it was a small, local firm.
The Rialto might have been either a replacement for or a rebuilding of a house called the Star Theatre, the demise of which was noted in the November 7, 1925, issue of Motion Picture News:
“The Star theatre in Mine-
ville, owned and operated by Mrs. Jennie Anderson, was burned to the ground in a fire that started in an ice house in the rear of the theatre, and which destroyed a hotel as well as a private residence.”
This item from the April 9, 1938, issue of The Film Daily “Theatre Openings” column was mistakenly placed under New Jersey (there is no Mineville in New Jersey):
“Mineville— Rialto, 332 seats (3-3-38); Owner: Thomas Scozzafava; House Manager: Allen Sirrine; closed since 4-1-37.”
Street view is currently set a long way from Cineplex St. John- probably more than a quarter mile too far west (maybe I should say about half a kilometer.) As can be seen on the map, the cinema is at the northwest corner of McAllister Drive and Westmorland Road.
It’s hard to tell from the exterior, but I think the entrance is actually about halfway up the Westmorland Road side of the building, where there is a setback. It looks like the ticketing lobby is behind the windows to the left, with four entrance-exit doors facing the parking lot to the north.
This item from the July 3, 1915, issue of The American contractor probably is about the Harvard Theatre:
“Theater: 1 sty. & bas. 72x130. Massachusetts av. Cambridge, Mass. Archt Geo Nelson Jacobs, 6 Beacon st. Boston. Owner Harvard Amusement Co., Max Keezer, treas,. 12 Dover st., Cambridge. Gen. Contr. M. S. Williams, 19 Milk st.”
This would have been a very early project for architect George Nelson Jacobs, who had been working as a draftsman in the offices of A.L. Darrow and E.B. Stratton as recently as 1913. He went on to become a prominent architect specializing in residential buildings, though with a number of commercial projects to his credit.
CinemaTour gives 146 Madison as the address of the Madison Theatre. I believe it is correct. The Madison’s entrance building is still standing at that address, recognizable, though altered, and occupied by a law firm.
The auditorium, or at least most of it (see satellite view) has been replaced by a parking lot. The building next door to the left in the vintage photo is also still standing, its front barely changed.
A “75 Years Ago” feature in the February 14, 2012, issue of The Oneida Daily Dispatch said that Kallet Theatres was planning to erect a new, $175,000 theater on Main Street, and that the ten-year-old Regent Theatre at 212 Main Street would be leased to a Dexter Robbins, who intended to convert it into a bowling alley.
75 years before 2012 would give an opening year of 1927 for the Regent, and a publication year of 1937 for the original newspaper article cited. The new theater being planned was the Kallet, now Kallet Civic Center, which opened in 1938.
Another “75 Years Ago” published a few weeks earlier on January 10 cited a 1937 article saying that Kallet Theatres planned to either remodel the Madison Theatre, reopen the Regent, or build a new house.
The address 212 Main means the site of the Regent was the parking lot just north of two old brick commercial buildings that survive on the west side of Main Street at the end of the block south of Lenox Avenue (NY 365 A).
The Grand must have been on the south side of Main Street, where the Burger King is now. The Crossroads Professional Building, on the north side of Main, has the address 70-74 Main Street on its doors.
From the April 10, 1939 issue of Motion Picture Daily: “Warners have leased the Steuben and Strand in Hornell, N. Y., and will begin operation of the houses April 15.”
It looks like AMVETS moved into this building in 2001. The October 31 issue of The Preston County Journal said that the organization would hold its first Veterans Day program in its new home on November 11, with a formal dedication of the new facility following.
Clickable link. I think you must be right, Seth. The building definitely looks like a former theater, and fits the description in the 1958 auction ad of a large brick building on a corner lot. AMVETS Mountaineer Post 37 is mentioned in a few articles in The Preston County Journal, but the newspaper’s archive web site isn’t working right now. I’ll try checking it again later to see if any of the articles mention anything about the building.
Something I did not include in the description of the Alpine Theatre is the possibility that it opened in 1916 as the Strand Theatre. The July 22 issue of The Moving Picture World that year had an item saying that the 400-seat Strand had opened at Salem, West Virginia, on July 3, but I’ve been unable to find any documentation indicating that the Strand later became the Salem/Alpine. It’s certainly a possibility that it did, though. G. C. Broadwater was the original owner of the Strand.
Half of the block on which the Alpine was located has recently been demolished and the old buildings replaced by a new chain store and its parking lot. It is possible that the Alpine was located in one of the buildings that is still standing on the other half of the block, but none of them show any indication of having once held a theater.
However, I’ve found a source saying that the Arcadia Publishing Company plans to release a book called Historic Movie Theatres of West Virginia in spring, 2018, and that one of the photos that might be included in it shows “… people standing in hip-deep floodwater under the marquee of Salem’s Alpine Theatre….” so we might find out next year if the building is still standing or among the demolished.
I wonder if the barn-like, utilitarian exterior remodeling can be undone, and the handsome brick front the Bantam sported when it opened in 1927 as the Rivoli restored?
The May 23, 1917, issue of Building & Engineering News had an item about this theater:
“BREMERTON, WASH. Theatre, 2 story and base. reinforced concrete $75,000. Architect Max Umbrecht, Arcade Bldg. Seattle. Owners Osran Amusement Co. Will cover an area of 60 by 105 feet. Plans are being prepared.”
The June 27 issue of the same journal noted that the contract for the project had been let.
Architect Maximilian B. Umbracht practiced in Seattle from 1900-1907 and again from 1912 to 1922, following which he returned to his home town of Syracuse, New York.
The Osran Amusement Company (Oswald and Rance) operated several theaters in Bremerton during this period. It eventually became a subsidiary of Evergreen State Amusement Corporation.
And this is interesting too: looking at Google street view of the theater I noticed a hand-made sign reading “David Sukonick Concert Hall.” Sukonick Concert Hall has its own Facebook page, but there haven’t been any posts since February this year, and none earlier than January 11, 2015, and there are only three posts altogether, all of them posted by people appearing at the venue, so whoever actually runs the place obviously hasn’t yet claimed the page. I don’t think we should change the name of the theater’s page based on this scantly information, though.
The only David Sukonick I can find on the Internet is a professional dancer who now designs and builds floors for dance studios through a company called Bolo Productions. Maybe he has something to do with this theater, and maybe he doesn’t. The web site isn’t telling, as far as I can discover.
Also also interesting (to me, at least, though not theater-related) is this interview with David Sukonick at Danse Track, though it might be boring for people who aren’t interested in dance (or construction.)
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this or not (and not that this really matters either), but someone has tagged the Variety Theatre building on Google satellite view with the name Vaud and the Villains, which the Internet tells me is a traveling orchestra and cabaret show (here is their web site.) Aside from the troupe having performed two shows at the Fais Do-Do in 2016, I can’t find any connection between them and the theater. Might they be using it for a rehearsal hall?
Boxoffice of July 6, 1964, ran a two-page spread about the Eric Theatre in Fairless Hills (link which might or might not last, Boxoffice being an unreliable online presence.) The 1,400-seat house featured a 28x60-foot curved screen and a box office located in an enclosed storm lobby.
The project was designed by the King of Prussia-based architectural firm Brugger & Freeman (John T. Brugger, Jr. and David Dean Freeman) who also designed the King Theatre in King of Prussia, opened a few months earlier than the Eric.
Samuel Shapiro had operated both indoor and outdoor theaters in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for some time, but had only recently formed the Sameric Company and was rapidly expanding his operations. The King Theatre was the first in his new chain, and the Fairless Hills house was the first location to have the name Eric Theatre.
lushwoodland: I don’t doubt that the original King Theatre was in a different building than the Queen Four, but the King could not have been a Jerry Lewis Cinema when it first opened. Mike Rivest has uploaded to this theater’s photo page the King Theatre’s grand opening ad from June 26, 1963, and the ad displays the company name, Sameric.
There is also the fact that the entry for King of Prussia architect David Dean Freeman in the 1970 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the King Theatre as one of his projects (it is listed as a 1965 project, so that is either a typo- these are not unknown in books as enormous as the AIA directories- or Freeman merely designed some alterations for the theater two years after it opened.)
Network Cinema Corporation and Jerry Lewis didn’t even form their partnership to create Jerry Lewis Cinemas until 1969. I don’t know when the King of Prussia Jerry Lewis Cinema opened, but I doubt it was any earlier than 1970. Most of the company’s houses were opened in the early 1970s, some of them as single-screens, more of them as twins, and a few as triplexes.
Presumably, it was when the Jerry Lewis operation failed later in the 1970s (the company was gone by the end of the decade) that Sameric took over the King of Prussia location and began operating it, renamed the Queen, as an adjunct to the King Theatre. What happened after that I don’t know. I wasn’t there and I haven’t found any articles about it on the Internet.
But I can guess, based mainly on the theater’s nomenclature (lack of solid information has never stopped me from making guesses, as I’m sure everyone at Cinema Treasures knows.) At some point Sameric took over the Jerry Lewis location and renamed it the Queen (it would not have made sense for them to renamed the Jerry Lewis the King and rename the King the Queen. Moving the signage alone would have been costly, and there was nothing to gain from it.) The King was twinned, either before or after the Jerry Lewis was taken over, and at some point two additional screens were added to the Queen twin, and the entire operation went by the name King and Queen Six until the twinned King was closed, after which the former Jerry Lewis location with its two-screen addition operated as the Queen Four. This is the only explanation that really makes sense to me.
The January 3, 1953, issue of Motion Picture Herald mentions both the Rose Theatre and the Welsh Theatre in this item:
Mentions of Franklinton are sparse in the trade journals. I found two in Boxoffice, one from December 27, 1952, saying that O. D. Myles had closed the Rose Theatre until further notice, and one in the February 2, 1957, issue mentioning a Hollywood Theatre in Franklinton, operated by an E. P. Dubuisson.Here is an article about the pending demolition of the Colony Theatre, from The Times-Gazette of May 11, 2016. The building had deteriorated so badly that it was deemed unsalvageable, mostly as result of water damage from the long-unrepaired leaky roof.
The Colony opened in September, 1938. Chakeres Theatres deeded the property to the city in the 1990s, and the city turned it over to a non-profit organization. It was operated as a live performance venue, but with little success. In 2014, by which time deterioration of the structure was already well advanced, ownership reverted to the city.
The Times-Gazette has uploaded this short video to YouTube, showing a minute of the demolition of the theater’s auditorium.
The Rialto is being operated as an event space. Here is their web site.
The apparent source for the Grand Theatre’s description says that the house had operated “…for approximately 29 years, nine under Douglas' ownership” at the time of the 1963 fire. Presumably written many years after these events, the article appears to have been mistaken about the length of the theater’s tenure. The Ohio section of the “Theaters Under Construction” column of The Film Daily for April 9, 1938, had this item:
Being a remodeling job on an existing building, the project probably didn’t take too long and the Grand probably opened well before the end of 1938. A rather blurry photo at the bottom of the page I linked to shows what I think is probably the marquee of the Grand, dripping with icicles in the December air.I’ve found a single reference to a theater called the Star that operated in Dunkirk earlier. It was listed as a member of the American Motion Picture League in the December 20, 1913, issue of Moving Picture World.
The Key Theatre was one of the houses noted in the “Theaters Under Construction” column of The Film Daily of April 9, 1938:
I’ve been unable to find out anything about builder/architect C. Brent. Most likely it was a small, local firm.The “Theater Openings” column of The Film Daily for April 9, 1938, noted the opening of the Beacon, February 5:
R. C. Buck, Inc., was a design-build firm. I have no idea why a different builder was involved in this project.The Rialto might have been either a replacement for or a rebuilding of a house called the Star Theatre, the demise of which was noted in the November 7, 1925, issue of Motion Picture News:
This item from the April 9, 1938, issue of The Film Daily “Theatre Openings” column was mistakenly placed under New Jersey (there is no Mineville in New Jersey):Street view is currently set a long way from Cineplex St. John- probably more than a quarter mile too far west (maybe I should say about half a kilometer.) As can be seen on the map, the cinema is at the northwest corner of McAllister Drive and Westmorland Road.
It’s hard to tell from the exterior, but I think the entrance is actually about halfway up the Westmorland Road side of the building, where there is a setback. It looks like the ticketing lobby is behind the windows to the left, with four entrance-exit doors facing the parking lot to the north.
This item from the July 3, 1915, issue of The American contractor probably is about the Harvard Theatre:
This would have been a very early project for architect George Nelson Jacobs, who had been working as a draftsman in the offices of A.L. Darrow and E.B. Stratton as recently as 1913. He went on to become a prominent architect specializing in residential buildings, though with a number of commercial projects to his credit.CinemaTour gives 146 Madison as the address of the Madison Theatre. I believe it is correct. The Madison’s entrance building is still standing at that address, recognizable, though altered, and occupied by a law firm.
The auditorium, or at least most of it (see satellite view) has been replaced by a parking lot. The building next door to the left in the vintage photo is also still standing, its front barely changed.
A “75 Years Ago” feature in the February 14, 2012, issue of The Oneida Daily Dispatch said that Kallet Theatres was planning to erect a new, $175,000 theater on Main Street, and that the ten-year-old Regent Theatre at 212 Main Street would be leased to a Dexter Robbins, who intended to convert it into a bowling alley.
75 years before 2012 would give an opening year of 1927 for the Regent, and a publication year of 1937 for the original newspaper article cited. The new theater being planned was the Kallet, now Kallet Civic Center, which opened in 1938.
Another “75 Years Ago” published a few weeks earlier on January 10 cited a 1937 article saying that Kallet Theatres planned to either remodel the Madison Theatre, reopen the Regent, or build a new house.
The address 212 Main means the site of the Regent was the parking lot just north of two old brick commercial buildings that survive on the west side of Main Street at the end of the block south of Lenox Avenue (NY 365 A).
The Grand must have been on the south side of Main Street, where the Burger King is now. The Crossroads Professional Building, on the north side of Main, has the address 70-74 Main Street on its doors.
From the April 10, 1939 issue of Motion Picture Daily: “Warners have leased the Steuben and Strand in Hornell, N. Y., and will begin operation of the houses April 15.”
It looks like AMVETS moved into this building in 2001. The October 31 issue of The Preston County Journal said that the organization would hold its first Veterans Day program in its new home on November 11, with a formal dedication of the new facility following.
The May 6, 1936, issue of Motion Picture Herald ran a brief item saying “Joe Priego has opened the Alavarado [sic] theatre at Alvarado, Calif.”
Clickable link. I think you must be right, Seth. The building definitely looks like a former theater, and fits the description in the 1958 auction ad of a large brick building on a corner lot. AMVETS Mountaineer Post 37 is mentioned in a few articles in The Preston County Journal, but the newspaper’s archive web site isn’t working right now. I’ll try checking it again later to see if any of the articles mention anything about the building.
Something I did not include in the description of the Alpine Theatre is the possibility that it opened in 1916 as the Strand Theatre. The July 22 issue of The Moving Picture World that year had an item saying that the 400-seat Strand had opened at Salem, West Virginia, on July 3, but I’ve been unable to find any documentation indicating that the Strand later became the Salem/Alpine. It’s certainly a possibility that it did, though. G. C. Broadwater was the original owner of the Strand.
Half of the block on which the Alpine was located has recently been demolished and the old buildings replaced by a new chain store and its parking lot. It is possible that the Alpine was located in one of the buildings that is still standing on the other half of the block, but none of them show any indication of having once held a theater.
However, I’ve found a source saying that the Arcadia Publishing Company plans to release a book called Historic Movie Theatres of West Virginia in spring, 2018, and that one of the photos that might be included in it shows “… people standing in hip-deep floodwater under the marquee of Salem’s Alpine Theatre….” so we might find out next year if the building is still standing or among the demolished.
This house originally opened as the Arcade Theatre on June 12, 1925. It had been renamed the Alpine Theatre by January, 1935.
I wonder if the barn-like, utilitarian exterior remodeling can be undone, and the handsome brick front the Bantam sported when it opened in 1927 as the Rivoli restored?
The May 23, 1917, issue of Building & Engineering News had an item about this theater:
The June 27 issue of the same journal noted that the contract for the project had been let.Architect Maximilian B. Umbracht practiced in Seattle from 1900-1907 and again from 1912 to 1922, following which he returned to his home town of Syracuse, New York.
The Osran Amusement Company (Oswald and Rance) operated several theaters in Bremerton during this period. It eventually became a subsidiary of Evergreen State Amusement Corporation.
I forgot to mention in my previous comment that the newspaper article said that the Alpine Theatre had been demolished in 1981.