GrandWorks Foundation has brought the name Gloria Theatre back to this house. A renovation project is ongoing. The venue is to be operated as a “…multi-purpose entertainment, business and community center….” Here is their web site.
The December 23, 1968, issue of Boxoffice has a brief notice about the two-screen Urbana Cinema, slated to be opened by Chakeres Theatres on Christmas Day. The opening would also mark the 27th anniversary of the opening of the house as the Gloria Theatre, on Christmas Day 1941.
An earlier Boxoffice item, from July 11, 1966, said that Chakeres Theatres had bought the Gloria, which the chain had operated under a lease for the previous twenty-five years, from Warren Grimes.
The Improvement Bulletin of September 12, 1903, said that T. R. North was having plans prepared for an opera house at Adel, Iowa, by the Des Moines architectural firm of Liebbe, Nourse & Rasmussen.
The Time Theatre is also listed in the 1956 FDY. It apparently opened around 1946. The house was to be remodeled and CinemaScope equipment installed, according to an item in the June 18, 1955, issue of Boxoffice.
127 N.Main Street is undoubtedly the correct address for the Ritz Theatre. The modern Eagles lodge building, which chippy1960 said (on January 9, 2012) was next door is at 129 N. Main. The quoins above the ground floor cornice of the old Eagles building, on the other side of the theater, which can be seen in the vintage photo, are still visible in the current Google Street View.
Thanks for the tip about the fire, kevinfglover. I found a report about a fire at the New Weed Theatre the August 25, 1932, edition of the Medford Mail Tribune of Medford, Oregon. The item said that the house, which had been in operation only nine months, had been destroyed by a fire following an explosion early the previous morning. Walter B. Leverette, of the Cordilleran Theatre Circuit, owners of the house, said that the theater would be rebuilt with concrete construction. The burned house had been in a wood framed building.
This was probably operated by Robert Lippert later, before being taken over by the Naify family. In 1947, Lippert bought the Leverette Interstate Theatres, a nine-house chain. I don’t know for certain if the New Weed was still under Leverette’s control at that time, but it most likely was, as it had been part of his chain at least as late as March, 1945.
The news that the New Weed had been in operation nine months when destroyed by the 1932 fire means that it might not have been the original Weed Theatre that had operated in the 1920s. While it’s possible that the original house had merely been closed for a time and then renovated and reopened by Leverette in late 1931, but it could also have been in a different building. Either way, the original Weed Theatre was not in this building, newly constructed in (probably) 1932 or 1933 after the fire.
Ralph Sedgwick Silsbee established his practice in Elyria in 1904. Alfred Smith became a partner in the 1920s. The firm continued until Silsbee’s retirement in 1951. Silsbee was the son of Joseph Lyman Silsbee, a noted Chicago architect, who is now usually remembered as Frank Lloyd Wright’s first employer.
The September 17, 1892, issue of The New York Clipper had an announcement saying that the Odeon Theatre in Marshalltown, Iowa, had been leased for a term of years by its manager, Archie Cox. I haven’t yet been able to discover how long the house had been in operation at that time. The 1899-1900 Cahn guide lists the Odeon Theatre in Marshalltown as a ground floor house with 1,200 seats.
The Odeon is mentioned frequently in theatrical trade papers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Marshalltown appears to have been a good theater town, hosting any number of road shows and concerts, with the Odeon the principal venue for them. This continued for decades, even after the house had turned to movies as its primary fare. It was one of the stops on the Denishawn Dance Company’s 1922-23 tour.
The Odeon was hosting live shows at least into the 1930s, and starting in 1932, the Odeon hosted plays by a newly established local company of actors, the Marshalltown Community Theatre.
On a comprehensive list of movie theaters in the United States that was published in the December 19, 1908, issue of The Billboard, the Little Grand Theatre in Madison, Indiana, was listed at 107 E. Main Street. At 105 E.Main Street (now the address of the Little Grand’s successor theater, the Ohio) was a house called the Nickeltra Theatre.
The August 17, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[t]he Little Grand, Madison, Ind., has the white brick front about completed.” I suspect that it was either with this 1915 remodeling, or earlier, the Little Grand and Nickeltra Theatres were thrown together into one house called the Little Grand. The businesses adjacent to the Ohio in Google Street View are Harriette’s Knit Knook, at 103 Main, and Blue Wolf Vape, at 109 Main, so the footprint of the Ohio Theatre probably covers both of the theaters that were in operation in 1908.
I had notes for the sixth (and final) Music Box Theatre in Portland and intended to submit it ages ago, but must have overlooked it. Now the notes have gone missing. What I can gather quickly is that it was built into an existing building, its formal opening was on January 20, 1960, with 628 seats (later reduced to 611, probably to fulfill ADA requirements,) it was equipped with DP70 projectors, it closed before 1991, and was demolished in 1997, along with the rest of the block, for the Fox Tower project.
Linkrot repair: The article about the four-screen annex to the Americana in the April 20, 1970, issue of Boxoffice can now be found at this link.
Robert Lippert opened the original, single-screen Americana on September 18, 1964. It was the annex which opened in 1970. The ad in the photo section is from that event.
An advertisement for Nashville’s new Theatre Vendome, then under construction, appeared in a December, 1886, issue of The New York Mirror and listed the architects as J. D. McElfatrick & Sons.
This project noted in the November, 1908, issue of The Clay Worker was probably the Princess, despite the location being given as Fifth Street and Central Avenue:
“The Samuel H. Chute Company has let the contract to F. G. McMillan for the erection at Fifth street and Central avenue of a brick and tile theater building, the foundation for which is to be completed this fall. Harry G. Carter is the architect. Cost, $50,000.”
Harry G. Carter died in 1910, and his obituary noted that the Princess Theatre had been his most recent project. Records of City Council meetings in August, 1908, indicate that the S.H. Chute Co. was building a theater at 10-12-14 Forth Street NE.
A report prepared for the Minnesota Historical Society says that the theater at 20 N. Washington Avenue opened as the People’s Theater on October 31, 1887. It was renamed the Bijou in 1890, but was destroyed by fire in December of that year. The Bijou was rebuilt, now a bit larger, with plans by the original architect, Harry G. Carter. The building was razed in 1960 (note Louis Rugani’s earlier comment that the house was still operating in August, 1959.)
An article about the Valentine Theatre was published in the September 18, 2003, issue of The Toledo Blade. It said that the theater opened in 1892 as the Citizen’s Opera House. Other sources indicate that it was called the Defiance Opera House for a while before becoming the Valentine Theatre. The article said that much of the theater’s interior is still in its original state.
The Citizen’s Opera House Co. had accepted plans for the project prepared by St.Paul theater architect Harry G. Carter, according to an item in the August 2, 1890, issue of The New York Clipper. The plans called for a ground floor theater with 378 seats in the parquet, 278 in the balcony, 318 in the gallery, and six boxes, each accommodating six patrons.
The Blade article says that the building originally had a ballroom on the second floor, but this was removed when hotel was added to the front of the building. At some point the roof of the auditorium was lowered and the gallery removed. Seating was ultimately reduced to 546.
The Defiance Public Library provides this postcard from the 1910s showing the original appearance of the theater building.
In 2003, the church which had occupied the theater for several years was moving out, and a local citizens group had hopes that the city would buy the house and it would be restored to theatrical use, but the project obviously came to nothing as the Valentine is now occupied by a different church group.
A description of the Bellevue Theatre and a 1916 photo of the entrance appear in this post from The PhillyHistory Blog. A sign above the entrance boasts of the Bellevue’s “Wonderful Echo Organ.”
Here is a bit of information about the Crystal Theatre from Movie Debut: Films in the Twin Cities 1894-1909 by Lucile M. Kane and John A. Dougherty:
“…the Crystal (Minneapolis) was outstanding. A plan rendered by Harry G. Carter, a
veteran theater architect, called for the conversion of a two-story brick-veneer structure into theater with a seating capacity of 575 at a cost of $20,000. According to the Minneapolis Journal, the theater, which opened on August 28, 1909, measured 115 by 44 feet and was 29 feet high without a gallery or balcony. The interior colors were red, green, and gold. The ornate façade facing on Hennepin Avenue was decorated in white and gold.”
Kane and Dougherty’s article, a useful resource, was published in the Winter 1995 issue of the Minnesota Historical Society’s quarterly Minnesota History (PDF here) and includes a photo and a drawing of the Crystal, along with numerous other illustrations of early Twin Cities theaters.
The obituary of architect Harry G. Carter in the March 5, 1910, issue of The Improvement Bulletin listed the Metropolitan Theatre in Minneapolis as one of his works.
According to his obituary in the March 5, 1910, issue of The Improvement Bulletin, the original architect of the Bijou Theatre in Minneapolis was Harry G. Carter.
The Princess Theatre was in operation at least as early as 1908. It was listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide as having 485 seats on the main floor, 180 in the balcony, and a gallery seating 49.
“A. H. Bank” in the theater description should read “A. H. Blank.” Paramount affiliate Blank probably operated the Strand from the time of its opening, and then bought it outright in 1917 as noted in this item from the December 29 issue of Motography that year:
“Ingleduc & Jensen have sold the Strand Theater at Marshalltown to A. H. Blank of Des Moines who will continue to operate it.”
I found a reference to an O. L. Ingleduc who was mayor of Marshalltown in 1910. The vintage photo of Main Street shows that the Strand’s site is now under the footprint of the Great Western Bank building, so the theater has been demolished.
Rochester, Minnesota, by Ted St Mane, says that the Empress Theatre was built in 1914, closed in 1956, and the building was demolished on December 31, 1965. There’s a photo at the bottom of page 105 (Google Books preview.)
The finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers indicates that the firm worked on the Empress three times: in 1931, 1935, and 1951.
The name of the theater is not given in this item from the May 13, 1916, issue of Motography, but the address is that of the Crystal:
“J. Barnet of St. Paul, proprietor of the only all-night moving picture theater in Minneapolis, has been denied a renewal of his license on complaint of the Minneapolis Humane Society that children were allowed in the place after curfew hours. The theater is located at 305 Hennepin avenue.”
The Strand Theatre in Grinnell was originally to have had 600 seats, according to this item from the May 13, 1916, issue of Motography:
“Work has been started on the new motion picture theater on Main street, Grinnell. Mart & Son is the owner and they have had plans drawn for a very modern theater to seat 600. Cost $20,000.”
A 1:27 video tour of the Strand can be seen at YouTube.
GrandWorks Foundation has brought the name Gloria Theatre back to this house. A renovation project is ongoing. The venue is to be operated as a “…multi-purpose entertainment, business and community center….” Here is their web site.
The December 23, 1968, issue of Boxoffice has a brief notice about the two-screen Urbana Cinema, slated to be opened by Chakeres Theatres on Christmas Day. The opening would also mark the 27th anniversary of the opening of the house as the Gloria Theatre, on Christmas Day 1941.
An earlier Boxoffice item, from July 11, 1966, said that Chakeres Theatres had bought the Gloria, which the chain had operated under a lease for the previous twenty-five years, from Warren Grimes.
The Improvement Bulletin of September 12, 1903, said that T. R. North was having plans prepared for an opera house at Adel, Iowa, by the Des Moines architectural firm of Liebbe, Nourse & Rasmussen.
The Time Theatre is also listed in the 1956 FDY. It apparently opened around 1946. The house was to be remodeled and CinemaScope equipment installed, according to an item in the June 18, 1955, issue of Boxoffice.
127 N.Main Street is undoubtedly the correct address for the Ritz Theatre. The modern Eagles lodge building, which chippy1960 said (on January 9, 2012) was next door is at 129 N. Main. The quoins above the ground floor cornice of the old Eagles building, on the other side of the theater, which can be seen in the vintage photo, are still visible in the current Google Street View.
Thanks for the tip about the fire, kevinfglover. I found a report about a fire at the New Weed Theatre the August 25, 1932, edition of the Medford Mail Tribune of Medford, Oregon. The item said that the house, which had been in operation only nine months, had been destroyed by a fire following an explosion early the previous morning. Walter B. Leverette, of the Cordilleran Theatre Circuit, owners of the house, said that the theater would be rebuilt with concrete construction. The burned house had been in a wood framed building.
This was probably operated by Robert Lippert later, before being taken over by the Naify family. In 1947, Lippert bought the Leverette Interstate Theatres, a nine-house chain. I don’t know for certain if the New Weed was still under Leverette’s control at that time, but it most likely was, as it had been part of his chain at least as late as March, 1945.
The news that the New Weed had been in operation nine months when destroyed by the 1932 fire means that it might not have been the original Weed Theatre that had operated in the 1920s. While it’s possible that the original house had merely been closed for a time and then renovated and reopened by Leverette in late 1931, but it could also have been in a different building. Either way, the original Weed Theatre was not in this building, newly constructed in (probably) 1932 or 1933 after the fire.
Ralph Sedgwick Silsbee established his practice in Elyria in 1904. Alfred Smith became a partner in the 1920s. The firm continued until Silsbee’s retirement in 1951. Silsbee was the son of Joseph Lyman Silsbee, a noted Chicago architect, who is now usually remembered as Frank Lloyd Wright’s first employer.
The September 17, 1892, issue of The New York Clipper had an announcement saying that the Odeon Theatre in Marshalltown, Iowa, had been leased for a term of years by its manager, Archie Cox. I haven’t yet been able to discover how long the house had been in operation at that time. The 1899-1900 Cahn guide lists the Odeon Theatre in Marshalltown as a ground floor house with 1,200 seats.
The Odeon is mentioned frequently in theatrical trade papers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Marshalltown appears to have been a good theater town, hosting any number of road shows and concerts, with the Odeon the principal venue for them. This continued for decades, even after the house had turned to movies as its primary fare. It was one of the stops on the Denishawn Dance Company’s 1922-23 tour.
The Odeon was hosting live shows at least into the 1930s, and starting in 1932, the Odeon hosted plays by a newly established local company of actors, the Marshalltown Community Theatre.
On a comprehensive list of movie theaters in the United States that was published in the December 19, 1908, issue of The Billboard, the Little Grand Theatre in Madison, Indiana, was listed at 107 E. Main Street. At 105 E.Main Street (now the address of the Little Grand’s successor theater, the Ohio) was a house called the Nickeltra Theatre.
The August 17, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[t]he Little Grand, Madison, Ind., has the white brick front about completed.” I suspect that it was either with this 1915 remodeling, or earlier, the Little Grand and Nickeltra Theatres were thrown together into one house called the Little Grand. The businesses adjacent to the Ohio in Google Street View are Harriette’s Knit Knook, at 103 Main, and Blue Wolf Vape, at 109 Main, so the footprint of the Ohio Theatre probably covers both of the theaters that were in operation in 1908.
I had notes for the sixth (and final) Music Box Theatre in Portland and intended to submit it ages ago, but must have overlooked it. Now the notes have gone missing. What I can gather quickly is that it was built into an existing building, its formal opening was on January 20, 1960, with 628 seats (later reduced to 611, probably to fulfill ADA requirements,) it was equipped with DP70 projectors, it closed before 1991, and was demolished in 1997, along with the rest of the block, for the Fox Tower project.
Linkrot repair: The article about the four-screen annex to the Americana in the April 20, 1970, issue of Boxoffice can now be found at this link.
Robert Lippert opened the original, single-screen Americana on September 18, 1964. It was the annex which opened in 1970. The ad in the photo section is from that event.
An advertisement for Nashville’s new Theatre Vendome, then under construction, appeared in a December, 1886, issue of The New York Mirror and listed the architects as J. D. McElfatrick & Sons.
This project noted in the November, 1908, issue of The Clay Worker was probably the Princess, despite the location being given as Fifth Street and Central Avenue:
Harry G. Carter died in 1910, and his obituary noted that the Princess Theatre had been his most recent project. Records of City Council meetings in August, 1908, indicate that the S.H. Chute Co. was building a theater at 10-12-14 Forth Street NE.A report prepared for the Minnesota Historical Society says that the theater at 20 N. Washington Avenue opened as the People’s Theater on October 31, 1887. It was renamed the Bijou in 1890, but was destroyed by fire in December of that year. The Bijou was rebuilt, now a bit larger, with plans by the original architect, Harry G. Carter. The building was razed in 1960 (note Louis Rugani’s earlier comment that the house was still operating in August, 1959.)
An article about the Valentine Theatre was published in the September 18, 2003, issue of The Toledo Blade. It said that the theater opened in 1892 as the Citizen’s Opera House. Other sources indicate that it was called the Defiance Opera House for a while before becoming the Valentine Theatre. The article said that much of the theater’s interior is still in its original state.
The Citizen’s Opera House Co. had accepted plans for the project prepared by St.Paul theater architect Harry G. Carter, according to an item in the August 2, 1890, issue of The New York Clipper. The plans called for a ground floor theater with 378 seats in the parquet, 278 in the balcony, 318 in the gallery, and six boxes, each accommodating six patrons.
The Blade article says that the building originally had a ballroom on the second floor, but this was removed when hotel was added to the front of the building. At some point the roof of the auditorium was lowered and the gallery removed. Seating was ultimately reduced to 546.
The Defiance Public Library provides this postcard from the 1910s showing the original appearance of the theater building.
In 2003, the church which had occupied the theater for several years was moving out, and a local citizens group had hopes that the city would buy the house and it would be restored to theatrical use, but the project obviously came to nothing as the Valentine is now occupied by a different church group.
A description of the Bellevue Theatre and a 1916 photo of the entrance appear in this post from The PhillyHistory Blog. A sign above the entrance boasts of the Bellevue’s “Wonderful Echo Organ.”
The 100 block of Chestnut Street has been redeveloped as part of the Downtown Mall shopping center, so the Theatorium has been demolished.
Here is a bit of information about the Crystal Theatre from Movie Debut: Films in the Twin Cities 1894-1909 by Lucile M. Kane and John A. Dougherty:
Kane and Dougherty’s article, a useful resource, was published in the Winter 1995 issue of the Minnesota Historical Society’s quarterly Minnesota History (PDF here) and includes a photo and a drawing of the Crystal, along with numerous other illustrations of early Twin Cities theaters.The obituary of architect Harry G. Carter in the March 5, 1910, issue of The Improvement Bulletin listed the Metropolitan Theatre in Minneapolis as one of his works.
According to his obituary in the March 5, 1910, issue of The Improvement Bulletin, the original architect of the Bijou Theatre in Minneapolis was Harry G. Carter.
The Princess Theatre was in operation at least as early as 1908. It was listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide as having 485 seats on the main floor, 180 in the balcony, and a gallery seating 49.
“A. H. Bank” in the theater description should read “A. H. Blank.” Paramount affiliate Blank probably operated the Strand from the time of its opening, and then bought it outright in 1917 as noted in this item from the December 29 issue of Motography that year:
I found a reference to an O. L. Ingleduc who was mayor of Marshalltown in 1910. The vintage photo of Main Street shows that the Strand’s site is now under the footprint of the Great Western Bank building, so the theater has been demolished.Rochester, Minnesota, by Ted St Mane, says that the Empress Theatre was built in 1914, closed in 1956, and the building was demolished on December 31, 1965. There’s a photo at the bottom of page 105 (Google Books preview.)
The finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers indicates that the firm worked on the Empress three times: in 1931, 1935, and 1951.
The name of the theater is not given in this item from the May 13, 1916, issue of Motography, but the address is that of the Crystal:
Documentation of the Grinell Historic Business District for the NRHP says that the Iowa/Colonial Theatre was at 937 Main Street.
The Strand Theatre in Grinnell was originally to have had 600 seats, according to this item from the May 13, 1916, issue of Motography:
A 1:27 video tour of the Strand can be seen at YouTube.