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.
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.
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.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.