A book called Past and Present of Adams County, published in 1917, says: “The Brach Theater was erected by William Brach and is the first elaborate, exclusive moving picture theater to be erected in Hastings. The house was opened October 8, 1916. Charles A. Beghtol is the proprietor.”
The May 13, 1916, issue of Motography had an item about the proposed theater, though it got the name of the owner wrong:
“The office and theater building being erected in Hastings by William Branch [sic] has been leased by Charles A. Beghtol of Denver. The latter expects to take possession by September 1. The first floor will be used exclusively for a moving picture theater, which, Mr. Beghtol and the designers say, will have no superior in the west. The lobby will be especially elaborate, with tile floor and marble trimmings. The installation of an orchestra organ is contemplated.”
If the Catherine was twinned in 1916, it was probably part of the remodeling and enlargement noted in this item from the April 29, 1916, issue of Motogrpahy, thopugh the item doesn’t mantion anything about a second auditorium being part of the project:
“The Catherine Theater, Detroit, Mich., is being remodeled and enlarged, and will be ready for opening by July 1. The theater, when the new improvements are completed, will have a seating capacity of 800. The theater is owned and operated by the Lincoln Amusement Company.”
Here is the paragraph about the Illinois Theatre from a document about the Joseph W. Royer Arts and Architecture District, an historic neighborhood of Urbana with several surviving buildings designed by Joseph William Royer, architect of the lost theater:
“This four-story brick structure was built by a group of Urbana stockholders on land donated by the Flatiron Building Association. Construction began in early June 1907, and the new theater was formally opened on March 3, 1908. Local and nationally known artists such as Enrico Caruso, Al Jolson, Jenny Lind, and Sarah Bernhardt performed in the theater. From 1923 the building was owned by the Zenith Amusement Company, a Ku Klux Klan organization, which used it primarily for Klan activities. On April 3, 1927, the theater burned down. The walls survived, and the ‘Tuscany’ Apartments were built in the burnt out shell.”
Porter, I wish you success in your restoration project. I haven’t been able to find any early photos of the building, though as Jay English was a fairly well known theater architect it’s possible that some of his plans and papers, and possibly project photos, survive in an archive somewhere, though I haven’t been able to discover if they have. If I come across any information about his papers I’ll post it here.
The two buildings adjacent to the Shapiro Theatre in the photo Granola uploaded on January 29 are still standing, but the theater itself is gone, replaced by a parking lot and drive-up ATM for Clearfield Bank.
Linkrot repair: The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company ad illustrated with a photo of the front of the Harris DuBois Theatre, in Boxoffice of October 15, 1938, can now be found at this link.
While there was an architect named Walter E. Kelley working in the 1920s, he practiced in New York. His Portland contemporary spelled his surname Kelly. Kelly was best known for his residential buildings, but did design the City Hall in Milwaukie, Oregon, built by the Public Works Administration in 1937-1938.
There is a distant glimpse of the Alberta Theatre’s marquee in the photo on this web page. A comment by “Butch” some way down the page says that the theater was this side of the big vertical sign reading “Furniture” which can be seen on the left side of the street (click photo to enlarge.) The theater name in script on the end of the marquee can be made out, though it is partly blocked by a utility pole. A dark vertical sign above it can’t be read, but might also belong to the theater.
The PSTOS page for the Alberta says that a Wurlitzer organ was installed in the Victoria Theatre 1924, and a Wood organ was later installed in the renamed Alberta Theatre.
This web page has an article about Alberta Central, the office-retail project which incorporates the old Alberta Theatre auditorium. There is a photo of the auditorium during reconstruction, after it was gutted but before the sloped floor had been leveled. A second floor housing offices has been inserted into the space.
The smaller building which housed the theater entrance has been demolished and replaced by the two-story building housing a branch of Umpqua Bank. It’s possible that the demolished building was the original Victoria Theatre, reported in 1916 to have 400 seats. The larger auditorium backing up to 18th Street must have been an expansion, possibly dating from 1924 when the Wurlitzer organ was installed.
The Alberta Central article also notes that the Alberta operated as a movie theater until 1965, at which time it was converted into a church. The church remained in the building until perhaps as late as 2007. The conversion to Alberta Center took place in 2009, the year the article was published.
JWenk: The Frolic, built in 1921, was not the old Midland Opera House. The Opera House is one of at least four early Midland theaters that are not currently listed at Cinema Treasures. A line from an extract from a history of Midland originally published in 1950 and found at Rootsweb names the four:
“…the old Star Theater, The Monarch, The Mecca, and the upstairs show in the old Fales building — yes, the famous ‘Midland Opera House’ back of where now stands the Reinhart Building….”
The phrasing of the history is not too clear, but it sounds as though the Fales Building and its upstairs opera house were gone by the time it was written. The Reinhart building itself was destroyed by a fire in 1954. It housed a J.C. Penney store, so it’s possible that the Fales Building was demolished to make way for a parking lot for the adjacent store sometime prior to 1950. I’ve been unable to find an address for either building.
clinkpage: I never attended Cinemaland, so I don’t know the name of the manager you remember, but the theater was owned by the Edwards circuit throughout its history, so the man you remember must have been only the manager.
I have to disagree with Spectrum about the building not having been big enough for a theater, and about the auditorium having been in an annex on the Pearl Street side of the block. For one reason, the buildings along Pearl Street were already gone in a 1995 photo at Historic Aerials. The theater was still in operation s late as 2006. Someone who was inside the Art Theatre in September, 2008, described in this comment by Ron Salters, said that the auditorium was in fairly good condition at that time (the auditorium has apparently since been gutted.) It also says that the theater’s stage was only seven feet deep.
This earlier comment by Ron Salters cites a 1941 MGM report saying that the theater then had 650 seats on the main floor and 536 in the balcony. The footprint of this building is quite ample for a 650 seat main floor and a seven foot deep stage. Keep in mind that this was an upstairs house (probably one of the last in operation in the U.S.) and could use the entire depth of the building, all the way to the street wall, for the theater, with none of its space taken up by those storefronts, which are on the ground floor.
The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists the Wagner Opera House as a ground floor theater with 425 seats on the main floor and 125 seats in the balcony. A 500-seat Wagner Opera Hall was listed in the 1889 Jeffrey’s guide, but I don’t know if it was the same building or not. In 1889, the Wagner had competition from the 800-seat Nellis' Opera Hall.
Oddly, a New Opera House, attached to the Nellis House (presumably a hotel) and the Wagner Opera House both had advertisements in the September 10, 1881, issue of The New York Clipper. The New Opera House advertised itself with 701 seats, while the Wagner advertised itself with 800 seats and as the “[f]inest opera-house and the only one in town….”
A promotion by Gino’s Pizzaria featured cupcakes in the form of popcorn buckets “…baked in honor of the old Strand theater formerly located across the street….” according to an article in the local Courier-Standard-Enterprise of December 19, 2013. Gino’s is at 49 Church Street, but is on the corner of Main Street so I don’t know which of the two streets the theater was across.
An appendix in Our Movie Houses: A History of Film & Cinematic Innovation in Central New York, by Norman O. Keim, lists the Strand at Canajoharie as having been part of the Kallet chain from 1931 to 1955.
staceygreenspan’s memory is confirmed by another CT member. Thehillsarealive’s comment on the Ocean Theatre page recalls the MMC cast members appearing at a Wildwood theater one fall day, and also says that the Hunt circuit always closed all the theaters in Wildwood except those on Atlantic Avenue after the tourist season ended. As the Strand was on Boardwalk and the Shore on Atlantic Avenue, it must have been the Shore where the cast appeared.
The principal architect of Grossman & Proskauer was Adolph Proskauer. Mr. Grossman appears to have been an engineer. A notice that plans by the firm were underway for a building at Lincoln and Giddings, to contain a theater, nine stores, plus offices and flats, appeared in the May 31, 1913, issue of Construction News.
The March 26, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that Chicago architect Paul T. Haagen had prepared plans for a 1,500 seat theater to be built at Benton Harbor for Fitzpatrick & McElroy. It must have been the Liberty, which the February 18, 1922, issue of Exhibitors Trade Review reported had recently been opened by Fitzpatrick-McElroy Company.
An item in the April 16, 1973, issue of Boxoffice said that “[t]he city commission has approved the reopening of the Liberty Theatre by new owners, subject to the completion of inspection and certification by the building inspection department.” I haven’t found any later items about the theater, but it’s possible that it did reopen for a while.
The Plaza 3 was opened by Family Theatres on March 30, 1973, according to the April 16 issue of Boxoffice. The three auditoriums had a total of 1,800 seats. Unlike most multiplexes, the Plaza 3 had separate concession stands and sets of restrooms for each auditorium.
At that time Family Theatres also operated the Bowman Twin, Park Lane, Circle, and Rialto Theatres in Tulsa, along with three drive-ins, plus twin theaters in Oklahoma City and Bartlesville. Mrs. Marjorie Snyder was the president of the company.
I’m not seeing the photo linked by thegreev in an earlier comment (I don’t know if it’s gone or my browser simply isn’t fetching it) so I don’t know if this is the same one, but this 1963 photo shows the entrance and part of the marquee of the Pocahontas Theatre.
I’d say that the exterior, at least, of the City Theatre is Romanesque Revival rather than Beaux-Arts in style. I have no clue as to the interior, but it could well be some variety of Classical design, which was a fairly common choice for the interiors of Romanesque Revival buildings.
A book called The Entrepreneurial Spirit of the Greek Immigrant in Chicago, Illinois, by Alexander Rassogianis, says that the Gregory Brothers theater circuit opened the Parthenon Theatre at Berwyn in 1924. The Gregorys were also in the construction business and built the Parthenon, as well as other houses in their circuit, and houses for other Greek theater operators in the region.
agnesbry: I think the block-shaped ice cream you mentioned must have the same kind that was sold at the concession stand in the neighborhood theater I attended in southern California in the 1950s. It came in a cardboard package about two inches square, and the concession stand attendant would peel off the package and stick the block of ice cream into a regular ice cream cone, with one corner down. You had to be careful with the first few licks or you could dislodge the block of ice cream and it would fall in your lap. I had completely forgotten about that ice cream. Thanks for reminding me of it.
A book called Past and Present of Adams County, published in 1917, says: “The Brach Theater was erected by William Brach and is the first elaborate, exclusive moving picture theater to be erected in Hastings. The house was opened October 8, 1916. Charles A. Beghtol is the proprietor.”
The May 13, 1916, issue of Motography had an item about the proposed theater, though it got the name of the owner wrong:
If the Catherine was twinned in 1916, it was probably part of the remodeling and enlargement noted in this item from the April 29, 1916, issue of Motogrpahy, thopugh the item doesn’t mantion anything about a second auditorium being part of the project:
Here is the paragraph about the Illinois Theatre from a document about the Joseph W. Royer Arts and Architecture District, an historic neighborhood of Urbana with several surviving buildings designed by Joseph William Royer, architect of the lost theater:
Porter, I wish you success in your restoration project. I haven’t been able to find any early photos of the building, though as Jay English was a fairly well known theater architect it’s possible that some of his plans and papers, and possibly project photos, survive in an archive somewhere, though I haven’t been able to discover if they have. If I come across any information about his papers I’ll post it here.
The two buildings adjacent to the Shapiro Theatre in the photo Granola uploaded on January 29 are still standing, but the theater itself is gone, replaced by a parking lot and drive-up ATM for Clearfield Bank.
Linkrot repair: The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company ad illustrated with a photo of the front of the Harris DuBois Theatre, in Boxoffice of October 15, 1938, can now be found at this link.
Linkrot repair: The October 17, 1936, Boxoffice article about the rebuilt Frolic Theatre can now be found at this link.
The photo and lobby floor plan can be found at this link.
While there was an architect named Walter E. Kelley working in the 1920s, he practiced in New York. His Portland contemporary spelled his surname Kelly. Kelly was best known for his residential buildings, but did design the City Hall in Milwaukie, Oregon, built by the Public Works Administration in 1937-1938.
There is a distant glimpse of the Alberta Theatre’s marquee in the photo on this web page. A comment by “Butch” some way down the page says that the theater was this side of the big vertical sign reading “Furniture” which can be seen on the left side of the street (click photo to enlarge.) The theater name in script on the end of the marquee can be made out, though it is partly blocked by a utility pole. A dark vertical sign above it can’t be read, but might also belong to the theater.
The PSTOS page for the Alberta says that a Wurlitzer organ was installed in the Victoria Theatre 1924, and a Wood organ was later installed in the renamed Alberta Theatre.
This web page has an article about Alberta Central, the office-retail project which incorporates the old Alberta Theatre auditorium. There is a photo of the auditorium during reconstruction, after it was gutted but before the sloped floor had been leveled. A second floor housing offices has been inserted into the space.
The smaller building which housed the theater entrance has been demolished and replaced by the two-story building housing a branch of Umpqua Bank. It’s possible that the demolished building was the original Victoria Theatre, reported in 1916 to have 400 seats. The larger auditorium backing up to 18th Street must have been an expansion, possibly dating from 1924 when the Wurlitzer organ was installed.
The Alberta Central article also notes that the Alberta operated as a movie theater until 1965, at which time it was converted into a church. The church remained in the building until perhaps as late as 2007. The conversion to Alberta Center took place in 2009, the year the article was published.
JWenk: The Frolic, built in 1921, was not the old Midland Opera House. The Opera House is one of at least four early Midland theaters that are not currently listed at Cinema Treasures. A line from an extract from a history of Midland originally published in 1950 and found at Rootsweb names the four:
The phrasing of the history is not too clear, but it sounds as though the Fales Building and its upstairs opera house were gone by the time it was written. The Reinhart building itself was destroyed by a fire in 1954. It housed a J.C. Penney store, so it’s possible that the Fales Building was demolished to make way for a parking lot for the adjacent store sometime prior to 1950. I’ve been unable to find an address for either building.clinkpage: I never attended Cinemaland, so I don’t know the name of the manager you remember, but the theater was owned by the Edwards circuit throughout its history, so the man you remember must have been only the manager.
I have to disagree with Spectrum about the building not having been big enough for a theater, and about the auditorium having been in an annex on the Pearl Street side of the block. For one reason, the buildings along Pearl Street were already gone in a 1995 photo at Historic Aerials. The theater was still in operation s late as 2006. Someone who was inside the Art Theatre in September, 2008, described in this comment by Ron Salters, said that the auditorium was in fairly good condition at that time (the auditorium has apparently since been gutted.) It also says that the theater’s stage was only seven feet deep.
This earlier comment by Ron Salters cites a 1941 MGM report saying that the theater then had 650 seats on the main floor and 536 in the balcony. The footprint of this building is quite ample for a 650 seat main floor and a seven foot deep stage. Keep in mind that this was an upstairs house (probably one of the last in operation in the U.S.) and could use the entire depth of the building, all the way to the street wall, for the theater, with none of its space taken up by those storefronts, which are on the ground floor.
The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists the Wagner Opera House as a ground floor theater with 425 seats on the main floor and 125 seats in the balcony. A 500-seat Wagner Opera Hall was listed in the 1889 Jeffrey’s guide, but I don’t know if it was the same building or not. In 1889, the Wagner had competition from the 800-seat Nellis' Opera Hall.
Oddly, a New Opera House, attached to the Nellis House (presumably a hotel) and the Wagner Opera House both had advertisements in the September 10, 1881, issue of The New York Clipper. The New Opera House advertised itself with 701 seats, while the Wagner advertised itself with 800 seats and as the “[f]inest opera-house and the only one in town….”
A promotion by Gino’s Pizzaria featured cupcakes in the form of popcorn buckets “…baked in honor of the old Strand theater formerly located across the street….” according to an article in the local Courier-Standard-Enterprise of December 19, 2013. Gino’s is at 49 Church Street, but is on the corner of Main Street so I don’t know which of the two streets the theater was across.
An appendix in Our Movie Houses: A History of Film & Cinematic Innovation in Central New York, by Norman O. Keim, lists the Strand at Canajoharie as having been part of the Kallet chain from 1931 to 1955.
Linkrot repair: Jack Corgan’s rendering of the proposed Leachman Theatre in the March 29, 1947, issue of Boxoffice can now be seen at this link.
staceygreenspan’s memory is confirmed by another CT member. Thehillsarealive’s comment on the Ocean Theatre page recalls the MMC cast members appearing at a Wildwood theater one fall day, and also says that the Hunt circuit always closed all the theaters in Wildwood except those on Atlantic Avenue after the tourist season ended. As the Strand was on Boardwalk and the Shore on Atlantic Avenue, it must have been the Shore where the cast appeared.
The principal architect of Grossman & Proskauer was Adolph Proskauer. Mr. Grossman appears to have been an engineer. A notice that plans by the firm were underway for a building at Lincoln and Giddings, to contain a theater, nine stores, plus offices and flats, appeared in the May 31, 1913, issue of Construction News.
Architect A. Proskauer’s first name was Adolph, according to an item in the January 7, 1922, issue of The Economist.
The March 26, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that Chicago architect Paul T. Haagen had prepared plans for a 1,500 seat theater to be built at Benton Harbor for Fitzpatrick & McElroy. It must have been the Liberty, which the February 18, 1922, issue of Exhibitors Trade Review reported had recently been opened by Fitzpatrick-McElroy Company.
An item in the April 16, 1973, issue of Boxoffice said that “[t]he city commission has approved the reopening of the Liberty Theatre by new owners, subject to the completion of inspection and certification by the building inspection department.” I haven’t found any later items about the theater, but it’s possible that it did reopen for a while.
The Plaza 3 was opened by Family Theatres on March 30, 1973, according to the April 16 issue of Boxoffice. The three auditoriums had a total of 1,800 seats. Unlike most multiplexes, the Plaza 3 had separate concession stands and sets of restrooms for each auditorium.
At that time Family Theatres also operated the Bowman Twin, Park Lane, Circle, and Rialto Theatres in Tulsa, along with three drive-ins, plus twin theaters in Oklahoma City and Bartlesville. Mrs. Marjorie Snyder was the president of the company.
I’m not seeing the photo linked by thegreev in an earlier comment (I don’t know if it’s gone or my browser simply isn’t fetching it) so I don’t know if this is the same one, but this 1963 photo shows the entrance and part of the marquee of the Pocahontas Theatre.
I’d say that the exterior, at least, of the City Theatre is Romanesque Revival rather than Beaux-Arts in style. I have no clue as to the interior, but it could well be some variety of Classical design, which was a fairly common choice for the interiors of Romanesque Revival buildings.
A book called The Entrepreneurial Spirit of the Greek Immigrant in Chicago, Illinois, by Alexander Rassogianis, says that the Gregory Brothers theater circuit opened the Parthenon Theatre at Berwyn in 1924. The Gregorys were also in the construction business and built the Parthenon, as well as other houses in their circuit, and houses for other Greek theater operators in the region.
agnesbry: I think the block-shaped ice cream you mentioned must have the same kind that was sold at the concession stand in the neighborhood theater I attended in southern California in the 1950s. It came in a cardboard package about two inches square, and the concession stand attendant would peel off the package and stick the block of ice cream into a regular ice cream cone, with one corner down. You had to be careful with the first few licks or you could dislodge the block of ice cream and it would fall in your lap. I had completely forgotten about that ice cream. Thanks for reminding me of it.