The May 4, 1985, issue of the Lewiston Journal ran a vintage photo of the Lewiston Theatre which can be seen at Google News.
A brief item about the Union Square Theatre appeared in the September 23, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Lewiston’s Union Square Reopens.
“LEWISTON, ME.—The Union Square theater, Lewiston, reopened Thursday, August 31, under the management of Dennault Bros., of Providence, R. L, who run theaters throughout New England. The bills are given over to photoplays and vaudeville, with musical comedy once a month. An eight-reel play, ‘God’s Country and Women,’ was shown the opening night. E. C. Dennualt is the new local manager. With wide experience and a genial personality, he is sure to be a popular Lewiston theatrical manager.”
Writer Doug Taylor’s web site Historic Toronto has a page for La Plaza Theatre with many period and modern photos of the house. Taylor says that plans for La Plaza were submitted to the city in February, 1915.
La Plaza Theatre is listed in the 1917 edition of The Toronto Annual as a moving picture and vaudeville house with 885 seats, with the proprietor being a Mr. Welsman (this might have been either Charles, Clarence, or William Welsman, all of whom are mentioned as early Toronto theater operators in various sources.)
Though it might have begun as a movie and vaudeville house, in 1919 and 1920 La Plaza is mentioned in The Billboard as presenting shows with long runs. The issue of July 5, 1919, says that the Luther, Kelly & Gates' Music Comedy Revue was soon to close a six-month run at La Plaza. The January 10, 1920, issue says that Parker’s Musical Comedy Revue was in the 19th week of its third season at La Plaza, which suggests that the company had been appearing at the house annually since 1918.
Although I can’t find any period documentation for the claim, the Wikipedia article on architect Kirk Hyslop (b. 1889) says that he worked on La Plaza, but it isn’t known if he was the original architect or merely designed alterations that were made in 1932.
Doug Taylor has a web page for the International Cinema with two historic photos. The Oriole Theatre was originally designed by architect Kirk Hyslop in 1933. It was remodeled in 1941 with plans by Kaplan & Sprachman. One of the photos dates from 1945 when the house was called the Cinema, which name probably dates from the 1941 remodeling. It had become the International Cinema by 1947.
The Vaughn Theatre was built for B&F Theatres in 1947, and was designed by architects Kaplan & Sprachman, according to This online article by Toronto writer Doug Taylor. The article has several photos, including a couple of shots of the auditorium. It says that the building was demolished in the 1980s.
AMC’s web site bills this multiplex as the AMC Elmwood Palace 20, and lists it as being in Harahan, Louisiana, even though it is not within the corporate limits of that city but in Elmwood, an unincorporated, census-designated place adjacent to Harahan, with which it shares a zip code.
This web page has the obituary of T. G. Solomon of Gulf States Theatres, original owners of the Palace 20.
I believe this is the same theater listed at Cinema Treasures as the Elmwood Cinema 4 in Harahan, Louisiana. This page is earlier than the other. The theater was not actually within the corporate limits of Harahan, but neither is it within the corporate limits of New Orleans. Instead, it is in Elmwood, an unincorporated, census-designated place adjacent to Harahan, with which it shares a zip code.
The Walton Theatre had opened on August 10, according to the November 14, 1910, issue of The Moving Picture World. The original seating capacity was 500, 122 of them being in the balcony, and the rows were thirty-six inches apart, which was very generous spacing for a theater of that period.
Not surprisingly, Rochester’s own Leon H. Lempert, Jr. designed Gordon’s Photoplay Theatre. Here is an item from the June 26, 1912, issue of The American Architect:
“ROCHESTER—Gordon Brothers are planning to go ahead immediately with the construction of the new theatre in Clinton Ave. North, just north of the Masonic Temple. The theatre is to cost about $90,000 and is to be for vaudeville and moving pictures. Leon Lempert, 31 Pearl St., is the architect.”
The March 26, 1913, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror ran this description of Gordon’s Photoplay:
“The Gordon photoplay house of Rochester. N. Y.,… is a fair example of the magnificent structures being erected in the larger cities throughout the country for the display of motion pictures. It was built by the Gordon Brothers Amusement Co., of which N. H. Gordon, of Boston, is managing director. The total cost of construction and equipment totalled $250,000. The house seats 1,827 people, 911 on the main floor and 916 in the balcony.
“A novel feature of the theater is a moving stairway used to convey patrons to the balcony floor. It is eighty-nine feet long, being eleven feet longer than any other of its kind used in a theater. With twentyseven five-foot exits opening directly out of doors, fifteen on the ground floor and twelve in the balcony, it is estimated that the entire audience can leave the building in a trifle more than three minutes.
“The screen, concave in shape and measuring nineteen feet five inches by fourteen feet five inches, is said to be the only one of its kind in use in New York State. Even from the most remote seats the pictures are clearly in view. On either side of the screen are stages set with columns, draperies, ferns, etc., and adjoining these are two art panels, one representing mirth and the other music.
“The organ installed was built by M. P. Moller. and is called a four manuel or console organ. It is the largest instrument of its type now in use. Richard Henry Warner, late of the Church of the Ascension, New York, is the organist. Other music is supplied by an orchestra of eleven pieces, under the direction of T. Quiry, of the Boston Conservatory of Music.”
There was a Coliseum Theatre operating in Juneau at least as early as 1917, when it was mentioned in the September issue of the official organ of the Washington State Music Teachers' Association, Music and Musicians. It is the theater depicted in the 1918 photo kencmcintyre linked to.
On December 7, 1922, a local newspaper reported the W. D. Gross had bought property next to the Alaskan Hotel and planned to build a 1,000-seat theater on the site, after which the old Coliseum would be converted into a dance hall. I don’t know if this project was carried out or not, but if it was then the theater that got the Kimball organ in 1928 might have been the second Coliseum Theatre.
The web page kencmcintyre linked to is gone, but PSTOS has this page about the Palace, with a couple of exterior photos, though both were taken from oblique angles.
A brief biography of John Spickett, original operator of the Palace, says that he was a former theatrical performer, producer and manager who settled in Juneau in 1898, and entered the movie business after his term as the local postmaster ended in 1912. His first venture was called the Orpheum, and after it closed he operated the Palace and another house called the Dream. The Dream closed in the late 1920s, and about the same time he sold the Palace to Lawrence Kubley, operator of theaters at Ketchikan.
It was Kubley who renamed the house the Capitol. He remodeled the theater and reopened it under the new name in January, 1931.
Spickett’s biography is one of many that were published by a fraternal organization called Pioneers of Alaska, the collection being available online in this PDF.
I’ve noticed that (at least in the PDFs I have) in some of the editions from the 1950s the FDY’s drop the complete lists of movie theaters they had previously included and provide only lists of theaters operated by chains, which leaves out a lot of independent houses. I hadn’t noticed that they dropped an entire (future) state from the listings.
The December 14, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World had an article about Alaska’s movie theaters. It said that L. H. Kubley, who had recently sold his Dream Theatre in Ketchikan, was planning to build a new house in that town. The original Dream Theatre was renamed the Liberty by its new owner, Jack Barbour.
Kubley’s new house was apparently the one that became the Revilla, so the house could have opened in 1919. The name change to Revilla was made in the late 1920s, according to this article about the Kubley family.
The June 21, 1952, issue of Boxoffice had a brief item saying that B. F. Shearer and his associate Lawrence Kubley were taking bids for the construction of a new, 700-seat theater on the site of the Revilla Theatre in Ketchikan. I don’t know if this project was carried out or not. If it was then later editions of the FDY should (but might not) list the house with an increased seating capacity.
The December 14, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World had an article about Alaska’s movie theaters. It said that Ketchikan then had two theaters: the 225-seat Grand, operated by A. D. Bosworth, and, about one block away, the 330-seat Liberty, operated by Jack Barbour.
The Liberty had recently been renamed, having been the called Dream Theatre by its previous owner, L. H. Kubley, who had operated it for about five years. The Dream had been Ketchikan’s first movie house. Barbour had remodeled the Dream inside and out, and had expanded the house from its former 280 seats.
Kubley planned to open a new theater in Ketchikan, but the article gave no details about that project. This article about the Kubley family says that, in the late 1920s, Lawrence Kubley held a contest to rename his Dream Theatre and the winning name was Revilla. That Dream Theatre must have been the new house that the article said Kubley was intending to build.
This page at the British Columbia Movie Theatres web site says that in December, 1929, the Liberty Theatre in Ketchikan was the first house in Alasaka to be wired for Photophone sound pictures. It had been beaten to the punch as Ketchikan’s first theater with sound by the rival Coliseum Theatre, which had been equipped for Vitaphone and Movietone pictures in June, 1929.
A March, 2014, article about the Mode Theatre can be found on this page of the web site of The Republic, the local newspaper. No photos, unfortunately, but the story says that the Mode Theatre opened on December 3, 1937.
The Knights of Pythias Building, also known as Castle Hall, was built in 1905-1906. The project included an amusement hall on the ground floor at the rear of the three-story structure. This hall had a level floor and portable seats, and was intended to accommodate a variety of events including dances.
The building was dedicated in January, 1906, and on September 3 that year the amusement hall began operating as the Orpheum Theatre, the first vaudeville house in Columbus. Sometime after 1909, a new owner changed the name of the house to the Crystal Theatre. In 1915 the theater was rebuilt with a proper sloped floor, and a balcony was added. In the later 1910s the house was renamed again, becoming the American Theatre. It had been renamed the Rio Theatre by 1939, probably at the same time it was remodeled in a Streamline Modern style.
The original architect of the Knights of Pythias Building was Elmer E. Dunlap, but I’ve been unable to discover who designed the Crystal Theatre rebuilding of 1915 or the 1930s remodeling as the Rio.
Most of this information comes from various posts on the Historic Columbus Indiana Message Board, but the information is scattered over several pages, so I won’t link to all of them. Near the bottom of this page is a postcard showing the Knights of Pythias Building as it originally looked, and some patron reminiscences of the Rio Theatre can be found on this page.
David: The article you linked to is about the theaters in Sandusky, so the Star theater it mentions is the one in the lakefront city. Upper Sandusky is an entirely different town some fifty miles inland from the lake. The only thing they have in common is that they are both located along (and named for) the Sandusky River. I don’t think there is a Market Street in Upper Sandusky. The Star Theatre in Sandusky is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures. Also, the photo currently displayed above depicts that theater, not the Star in Upper Sandusky.
Here is a photo of the Star in Upper Sandusky. The caption says that Roscoe Cuneo opened the Star in the 1930s, though the 1913 book I cited in my previous comment says it opened in 1910. As the theater in the photo is quite old fashioned the house it shows was undoubtedly the same one operating in the 1910s, and the caption is mistaken about the opening period. The sign advertising an admission price of five cents is evidence that the photo is much earlier than the 1930s.
The plans for the renovation of the Rock Theatre were prepared by the firm of Myers Anderson Architects, with offices in Pocatello, Idaho, and Evanston, Wyoming.
Several photos and three renderings of the Wilson Theatre project can be found in this 2009 album on the Facebook site of Myers Anderson Architects, the firm that handled the renovations.
A few photos of the reopened Strand Theatre can be found on its Facebook page. I don’t know what the interior was like at the time of the 2007 fire, but the designers of the rebuilding, Myers Anderson Architects, have gone with a classic Streamline Modern look. Myers Anderson have designed two other theater renovation projects: the Rock Theatre in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and the Wilson Theatre in Rupert, Idaho.
The Nashville Bijou was originally built for Jake Wells' Richmond, Virginia, chain the Bijou Theatre Company. Beginning in the mid-1910s, Wells gradually retrenched to his Virginia holdings, selling off houses throughout the south to other firms. The Nashville Bijou was one of several theaters that were picked up by the Starr Family’s Bijou Amusement Company.
The September 15, 1904, issue of the Richmond Times Dispatch ran this item about the opening of the Nashville house the previous night:
“ANOTHER WELLS SUCCESS
“Opening of the Nashville Bijou Theatre Last Night.
“Manager McKee, of the Bijou Theatre, received a message from Manager Jake Wells, at Nashville, Tenn., last night, in reference to the opening of the new Bijou Theatre at that place. The message stated that the opening was entirely satisfactory, and that the house was crowded with an enthusiastic audience to see Walter Edwards and his fine company in a revised edition of the ‘Sign of the Four.’ Mr. Allan Jenkins, formerly of this city, and well known here as a newspaper and theatrical man, is the local manager of the Nashville house. The new Birmingham theatre, of the Wells circuit, was opened most successfully on Monday night, with the ‘Midnight Marriage Company.’ Mr. Mortie Seamon, of this city, is the local manager of this theatre for Manager Wells. The new theatre here will be ready for the opening Thanksgiving week. The attraction has not yet been settled upon, but Manager McKee said last night that one of the best of attractions would be offered. Manager Wells will be back in Richmond about Saturday.”
During this period when Jake Wells was rapidly expanding his chain, the new theaters being built for the Bijou Theatre Company, including the Nashville Bijou, were designed by architect Fuller Claflin of the New York firm the Amalgamated Theatre Building Association.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch of March 5, 1902, said that Jake Wells had returned from a visit to New York during which he had consulted architect Fuller Claflin and visited some of the city’s newest theaters in preparation for replacing his Richmond Bijou. Claflin’s firm, the Amalgamated Theatre Building Association, subsequently designed several houses for Wells’s Bijou Theatre Company, including the new Bijou in Richmond, the chain’s flagship.
Here is a brief item about the Lyceum from the September 10, 1904, issue of the New York Morning Telegraph:
“Fuller Claflin, architect of the Amalgamated Theatre Building Association of 1440 Broadway, left last night for Elmira to close contracts for the building of the new Lyceum for Col. D. C. Robinson.”
The May 4, 1985, issue of the Lewiston Journal ran a vintage photo of the Lewiston Theatre which can be seen at Google News.
A brief item about the Union Square Theatre appeared in the September 23, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
Writer Doug Taylor’s web site Historic Toronto has a page for La Plaza Theatre with many period and modern photos of the house. Taylor says that plans for La Plaza were submitted to the city in February, 1915.
La Plaza Theatre is listed in the 1917 edition of The Toronto Annual as a moving picture and vaudeville house with 885 seats, with the proprietor being a Mr. Welsman (this might have been either Charles, Clarence, or William Welsman, all of whom are mentioned as early Toronto theater operators in various sources.)
Though it might have begun as a movie and vaudeville house, in 1919 and 1920 La Plaza is mentioned in The Billboard as presenting shows with long runs. The issue of July 5, 1919, says that the Luther, Kelly & Gates' Music Comedy Revue was soon to close a six-month run at La Plaza. The January 10, 1920, issue says that Parker’s Musical Comedy Revue was in the 19th week of its third season at La Plaza, which suggests that the company had been appearing at the house annually since 1918.
Although I can’t find any period documentation for the claim, the Wikipedia article on architect Kirk Hyslop (b. 1889) says that he worked on La Plaza, but it isn’t known if he was the original architect or merely designed alterations that were made in 1932.
Doug Taylor has a web page for the International Cinema with two historic photos. The Oriole Theatre was originally designed by architect Kirk Hyslop in 1933. It was remodeled in 1941 with plans by Kaplan & Sprachman. One of the photos dates from 1945 when the house was called the Cinema, which name probably dates from the 1941 remodeling. It had become the International Cinema by 1947.
The Vaughn Theatre was built for B&F Theatres in 1947, and was designed by architects Kaplan & Sprachman, according to This online article by Toronto writer Doug Taylor. The article has several photos, including a couple of shots of the auditorium. It says that the building was demolished in the 1980s.
AMC’s web site bills this multiplex as the AMC Elmwood Palace 20, and lists it as being in Harahan, Louisiana, even though it is not within the corporate limits of that city but in Elmwood, an unincorporated, census-designated place adjacent to Harahan, with which it shares a zip code.
This web page has the obituary of T. G. Solomon of Gulf States Theatres, original owners of the Palace 20.
I believe this is the same theater listed at Cinema Treasures as the Elmwood Cinema 4 in Harahan, Louisiana. This page is earlier than the other. The theater was not actually within the corporate limits of Harahan, but neither is it within the corporate limits of New Orleans. Instead, it is in Elmwood, an unincorporated, census-designated place adjacent to Harahan, with which it shares a zip code.
This web page has a very early photo of the facade of the Poli Theatre in Scranton as is was originally designed by Albert Westover.
The Walton Theatre had opened on August 10, according to the November 14, 1910, issue of The Moving Picture World. The original seating capacity was 500, 122 of them being in the balcony, and the rows were thirty-six inches apart, which was very generous spacing for a theater of that period.
Not surprisingly, Rochester’s own Leon H. Lempert, Jr. designed Gordon’s Photoplay Theatre. Here is an item from the June 26, 1912, issue of The American Architect:
The March 26, 1913, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror ran this description of Gordon’s Photoplay:There was a Coliseum Theatre operating in Juneau at least as early as 1917, when it was mentioned in the September issue of the official organ of the Washington State Music Teachers' Association, Music and Musicians. It is the theater depicted in the 1918 photo kencmcintyre linked to.
On December 7, 1922, a local newspaper reported the W. D. Gross had bought property next to the Alaskan Hotel and planned to build a 1,000-seat theater on the site, after which the old Coliseum would be converted into a dance hall. I don’t know if this project was carried out or not, but if it was then the theater that got the Kimball organ in 1928 might have been the second Coliseum Theatre.
The web page kencmcintyre linked to is gone, but PSTOS has this page about the Palace, with a couple of exterior photos, though both were taken from oblique angles.
A brief biography of John Spickett, original operator of the Palace, says that he was a former theatrical performer, producer and manager who settled in Juneau in 1898, and entered the movie business after his term as the local postmaster ended in 1912. His first venture was called the Orpheum, and after it closed he operated the Palace and another house called the Dream. The Dream closed in the late 1920s, and about the same time he sold the Palace to Lawrence Kubley, operator of theaters at Ketchikan.
It was Kubley who renamed the house the Capitol. He remodeled the theater and reopened it under the new name in January, 1931.
Spickett’s biography is one of many that were published by a fraternal organization called Pioneers of Alaska, the collection being available online in this PDF.
I’ve found a reference to the Uptown Theatre in Juneau advertising “Family Night” with an admission price of 25 cents in May, 1955.
I’ve noticed that (at least in the PDFs I have) in some of the editions from the 1950s the FDY’s drop the complete lists of movie theaters they had previously included and provide only lists of theaters operated by chains, which leaves out a lot of independent houses. I hadn’t noticed that they dropped an entire (future) state from the listings.
The December 14, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World had an article about Alaska’s movie theaters. It said that L. H. Kubley, who had recently sold his Dream Theatre in Ketchikan, was planning to build a new house in that town. The original Dream Theatre was renamed the Liberty by its new owner, Jack Barbour.
Kubley’s new house was apparently the one that became the Revilla, so the house could have opened in 1919. The name change to Revilla was made in the late 1920s, according to this article about the Kubley family.
The June 21, 1952, issue of Boxoffice had a brief item saying that B. F. Shearer and his associate Lawrence Kubley were taking bids for the construction of a new, 700-seat theater on the site of the Revilla Theatre in Ketchikan. I don’t know if this project was carried out or not. If it was then later editions of the FDY should (but might not) list the house with an increased seating capacity.
The December 14, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World had an article about Alaska’s movie theaters. It said that Ketchikan then had two theaters: the 225-seat Grand, operated by A. D. Bosworth, and, about one block away, the 330-seat Liberty, operated by Jack Barbour.
The Liberty had recently been renamed, having been the called Dream Theatre by its previous owner, L. H. Kubley, who had operated it for about five years. The Dream had been Ketchikan’s first movie house. Barbour had remodeled the Dream inside and out, and had expanded the house from its former 280 seats.
Kubley planned to open a new theater in Ketchikan, but the article gave no details about that project. This article about the Kubley family says that, in the late 1920s, Lawrence Kubley held a contest to rename his Dream Theatre and the winning name was Revilla. That Dream Theatre must have been the new house that the article said Kubley was intending to build.
This page at the British Columbia Movie Theatres web site says that in December, 1929, the Liberty Theatre in Ketchikan was the first house in Alasaka to be wired for Photophone sound pictures. It had been beaten to the punch as Ketchikan’s first theater with sound by the rival Coliseum Theatre, which had been equipped for Vitaphone and Movietone pictures in June, 1929.
A March, 2014, article about the Mode Theatre can be found on this page of the web site of The Republic, the local newspaper. No photos, unfortunately, but the story says that the Mode Theatre opened on December 3, 1937.
The Knights of Pythias Building, also known as Castle Hall, was built in 1905-1906. The project included an amusement hall on the ground floor at the rear of the three-story structure. This hall had a level floor and portable seats, and was intended to accommodate a variety of events including dances.
The building was dedicated in January, 1906, and on September 3 that year the amusement hall began operating as the Orpheum Theatre, the first vaudeville house in Columbus. Sometime after 1909, a new owner changed the name of the house to the Crystal Theatre. In 1915 the theater was rebuilt with a proper sloped floor, and a balcony was added. In the later 1910s the house was renamed again, becoming the American Theatre. It had been renamed the Rio Theatre by 1939, probably at the same time it was remodeled in a Streamline Modern style.
The original architect of the Knights of Pythias Building was Elmer E. Dunlap, but I’ve been unable to discover who designed the Crystal Theatre rebuilding of 1915 or the 1930s remodeling as the Rio.
Most of this information comes from various posts on the Historic Columbus Indiana Message Board, but the information is scattered over several pages, so I won’t link to all of them. Near the bottom of this page is a postcard showing the Knights of Pythias Building as it originally looked, and some patron reminiscences of the Rio Theatre can be found on this page.
It would probably be best to delete them, but save the information for when a Sandusky Star page is added.
David: The article you linked to is about the theaters in Sandusky, so the Star theater it mentions is the one in the lakefront city. Upper Sandusky is an entirely different town some fifty miles inland from the lake. The only thing they have in common is that they are both located along (and named for) the Sandusky River. I don’t think there is a Market Street in Upper Sandusky. The Star Theatre in Sandusky is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures. Also, the photo currently displayed above depicts that theater, not the Star in Upper Sandusky.
Here is a photo of the Star in Upper Sandusky. The caption says that Roscoe Cuneo opened the Star in the 1930s, though the 1913 book I cited in my previous comment says it opened in 1910. As the theater in the photo is quite old fashioned the house it shows was undoubtedly the same one operating in the 1910s, and the caption is mistaken about the opening period. The sign advertising an admission price of five cents is evidence that the photo is much earlier than the 1930s.
The plans for the renovation of the Rock Theatre were prepared by the firm of Myers Anderson Architects, with offices in Pocatello, Idaho, and Evanston, Wyoming.
Several photos and three renderings of the Wilson Theatre project can be found in this 2009 album on the Facebook site of Myers Anderson Architects, the firm that handled the renovations.
The Wilson Theatre is open with live events. Here is the official web site.
A few photos of the reopened Strand Theatre can be found on its Facebook page. I don’t know what the interior was like at the time of the 2007 fire, but the designers of the rebuilding, Myers Anderson Architects, have gone with a classic Streamline Modern look. Myers Anderson have designed two other theater renovation projects: the Rock Theatre in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and the Wilson Theatre in Rupert, Idaho.
The Nashville Bijou was originally built for Jake Wells' Richmond, Virginia, chain the Bijou Theatre Company. Beginning in the mid-1910s, Wells gradually retrenched to his Virginia holdings, selling off houses throughout the south to other firms. The Nashville Bijou was one of several theaters that were picked up by the Starr Family’s Bijou Amusement Company.
The September 15, 1904, issue of the Richmond Times Dispatch ran this item about the opening of the Nashville house the previous night:
During this period when Jake Wells was rapidly expanding his chain, the new theaters being built for the Bijou Theatre Company, including the Nashville Bijou, were designed by architect Fuller Claflin of the New York firm the Amalgamated Theatre Building Association.The Richmond Times-Dispatch of March 5, 1902, said that Jake Wells had returned from a visit to New York during which he had consulted architect Fuller Claflin and visited some of the city’s newest theaters in preparation for replacing his Richmond Bijou. Claflin’s firm, the Amalgamated Theatre Building Association, subsequently designed several houses for Wells’s Bijou Theatre Company, including the new Bijou in Richmond, the chain’s flagship.
Here is a brief item about the Lyceum from the September 10, 1904, issue of the New York Morning Telegraph: