I believe three theaters are conflated in the current description. The theater built in the 1880s must have been the Red Bank Opera House, which opened in 1883 and burned to the ground in 1905. It was located on the south side of Front Street just west of Maple Avenue.
Frick’s Theatre was better known as Frick’s Lyceum, and it opened in September, 1906, in a converted tomato cannery on the waterfront. The site is now part of Marine Park. An article about it appeared in the August 29, 1906, issue of the Red Bank Register (upper left corner of this PDF.) The Lyceum was listed in the 1912 Cahn guide with the notation “This theater is still in existence but has been closed for some time.” It does not appear in the 1913-1914 guide.
The theater at Front Street and Wharf Avenue was, as teecee said, built in 1912. The Red Bank Register of October 23, 1912, had an article about it (top right corner of the first page of this PDF.) Stockholders in the Red Bank Amusement Company were Fred H. VanDorn, Thomas Williams, and John J. Travers. The theater featured a long lobby, 13 feet wide and 71 feet long, which led from Front Street to the theater proper, which backed up to Union Street and was 56x128 feet. The Lyric was erected by local builder George W. Sewing, who also acted as architect.
The article said that the owners hoped to have the house open by Thanksgiving, but they missed the date. The January 22, 1913, issue of the Register said that the installation of the furnishings and equipment of the theater was well underway and the opening was to be on or about February 1.
The Lyric was remodeled in early 1920 and reopened as the Palace Theatre on April 5, according to the April 7 issue of the Register. The Palace was first operated by N. E. McNulty. In September, 1928, the house had another name change, becoming the Hunting Theatre, which was operated by Mr. and Mrs. Tony Hunting. The theater closed in 1930, but reopened later that year under the previous name Palace Theatre. On January 9, 1931, the Palace Theatre was completely destroyed by a fire.
The January 16, 1912, issue of The Troy Times had this item:
“Boyer and Rosenthal, who will shortly open the Majestic Theatre at 103 Third Street—the Shyne property—took out a license to-day. They expect to be ready the latter part of this week or early next week.”
The January 18, 1945, issue of The Times Record said that the Majestic Theatre was to be converted into facilities for the local post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The auditorium floor was to be leveled and a second floor installed in the space to accommodate lounges, a recreation room, rest rooms, and offices. The ground floor would house a meeting hall and kitchen facilities. Although the Majestic closed in the mid-1920s, the rebuilding plans indicate that auditorium was still intact in 1945.
Joe Masher’s description of the State Theatre says that it was designed by the same architect as the American Theatre, and the description of this house says that it was a twin of the State. If that’s so, then the architect of this theater was Abraham K. Mosley, who was noted as the architect of the Rose (State) Theatre in The American Contractor of April 29, 1922.
The Rose/State Theatre was definitely on Fourth Street, not Fourth Avenue. Here is an item about it from the April 29, 1922, issue of The American Contractor:
“TROY, N. Y.
“Theatre (Rose, movie): $30,000. 2 sty. 60x120. 4th St., bet. Ferry & Congress sts. Archt. A. K. Mosely. Franklin sq. Owner J. C. Rosenthal. 20 Locust av. Cone. ext. walls. Gen. contr. let to C. P. Boland. 30 4th st.”
Abraham K. Mosley was a native of England who came to the United States in 1904. He was commissioned to work on the Emma Willard School in 1910 and settled in Troy where he practiced for many years, though he designed buildings as far away as Kansas City, Kansas (St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church on 18th Street.) He died in 1951.
The Louvee Theatre was designed and built by the F & Y Building Service of Columbus, Ohio. It was on a list of eleven of the compnay’s recent projects that was published in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder.
The Avalon Theatre was designed and built by the F & Y Building Service of Columbus, Ohio. It was one of eleven theaters on a list of the company’s projects in an ad that was published in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder.
An ad for the F & Y Building Service in the Boone County Recorder of October 27, 1938, listed the Arlington Theatre as one of five houses in Columbus that the firm had designed and built by that time. The others were the Westmont, the Fifth Avenue, the Cleve, and the Indianola.
An ad for the F & Y Building Service in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder (PDF here) listed the Fifth Avenue Theatre as one of five Columbus houses it had designed.
If this house originally opened in 1920 then the project by F & Y must have been a remodeling or a replacement. I don’t think the company began designing and building theaters until the mid-1930s, though F & Y Construction had been in business since the 1910s.
In the ad uploaded by dbellis54 the text says “Have you seen the New Fifth Ave.? Modern!” which suggests a recent remodeling. The movie advertised, Born to Dance was released in the U.S. on November 27, 1936, according to IMDb, so the ad for this sub-run house probably dates from well into 1937. It’s likely that this was the theater that F & Y worked on in the 1930s.
An ad for the F & Y Building Service in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder (PDF here) said that Erlanger’s new Gayety Theatre was one of eleven movie houses the company had designed and built since December, 1937.
The Miami-Western Theatre opened on September 23, 1938, per a full-page ad for the theater in Miami University’s 1939 yearbook. The Streamline Modern auditorium featured murals depicting student life at Miami University on one side wall and at Western College for Women on the other. The house closed in 1988.
An ad for the F & Y Building Service in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder (PDF here) of Burlington, Kentucky, on the occasion of the opening of the Gayety Theatre in nearby Erlanger, had a list of several theaters designed and built by F & Y since December, 1937, including the Miami-Western.
A brochure for a walking tour of Oxford’s uptown business district (large PDF file) says that the Princess Theatre was built in 1911 and opened as the Oxford Theatre. It became the Talawanda Theatre in 1950, and was enlarged and renamed the Princess in the 1980s.
This January 25, 2015, article in the Journal-News says that plans are afoot to build a new building for the theaters on a lot adjacent to the Princess and incorporate the facade of the existing Arts and Crafts style building as the entrance to the new theaters, but the plans have not yet been approved. I haven’t found any more recent articles about the proposal.
Though it was still standing when the current Google Street View was made, this page says that the building was demolished in April, 2014. Farther down the page it says that the Isis operated until the end of the silent era, and in 1930 was rebuilt as offices by Western Union.
CharmaineZoe provides this vintage photo of the Isis Theatre, probably from around 1926, the year the movie Midnight Sun was released.
The Orpheum opened on April 2, 1908. This item about the event is from the April 4 issue of Variety:
SUN & MURRAY’S NEW VENTURE.
“Zanesville, O., April 2.
“Sun & Murray this week opened the Orpheum with vaudeville. The following made up the first show: Alburtus and Altus, comedy club juggling; Georgia Lewis, monologue and singing; Ann Hamilton, sketch, ‘Beggars’; John H. West, musical Brownie; Four Dancing Harrises, dancing.”
Gus Sun was a former juggler, vaudevillian, and minstrel who entered the theater business in 1904,opening a small vaudeville and picture house in Springfield, Ohio. By 1909 he had a circuit of a dozen theaters and booked dozens of other houses through the booking agency he founded in 1906.
The Strand Theatre that opened in 1929 was actually the second Strand Theatre at this address. The first was a smaller theater that opened on March 12, 1922. Here is a drawing of the first Strand.
24 N. Broad Street was the Paramount’s historic address, but Middletown has renumbered its lots and the Paramount’s site is on what is now South Broad Street. In this aerial photo from 1955, the intersection of Central Avenue and Broad Street is at center bottom, and the Paramount can be seen on the west side of Broad halfway up the block north of Central.
The Paramount is at right in this 1962 photo. The building housing Doan’s Ace Hardware is still standing, but has been stripped of its modern front, revealing what remains of the much older facade beneath.
An item about the renovation of the Majestic Theatre in Freeport appeared in the December 27, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“L. W. Guiteau, manager of the Majestic Theater, Freeport, Ill., has spent a large amount of money upon improvements to his house. The seating capacity has been increased to over 500, a new and bigger screen has been installed; upon which a picture 12 by 16 feet will be projected. A number of other improvements were made including new seats and wiring.”
The December 27, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World described the recently opened Play House this way:
“CAPACITY BUSINESS AT PLAY HOUSE.
“Ever since the Play House, Ridgewood, N. J., opened on November 22, the management has been playing to capacity business. The structure, which is of concrete construction, measures 52 feet by 154 feet, and has 800 seats on the parquet floor and 200 in the balcony. The seats were bought of the Andrews Seating Company, and the stage scenery and curtain were furnished by the Lee Lash Studios. The interior decorative scheme is ivory, gold and brown ornamental plaster. In the operating room there are two Simplex machines and a Hallberg economizer; the projection machines are fitted with Gundlach-Manhattan lenses. The length of the throw is 127 feet. The indirect lighting system is used throughout the house. The ventilation system can supply thirty cubic feet of air per minute. The screen is located at the back of the stage and is framed in black. The admission prices are 10 and 15 cents, except when specials are run when the price is raised to 15 and 20 cents. The General Film Service is used with features from the Famous Players Company. A piano is the only musical instrument in the house. The lobby is of tile and marble. William W. Young is the resident manager. The theater is owned by the Ridgewood Play House Company, of which Walter W. Wilsey is president; Thomas Nicholas, of Nutley, vice-president, and A. N. Van Liew, of Newark, Secretary and treasurer. The board of directors consists of Howard Peck, of South Orange, and Albert W. Fish, Bloomfield.”
The 1927 FDY lists the Rialto Theatre as one of four houses in Cedar Rapids that were operated by Paramount-Publix affiliate A. H. Blank. The others were the Isis, the Palace, and the Strand.
The 1927 FDY lists the Palace Theatre as one of four houses in Cedar Rapids that were operated by Paramount-Publix affiliate A. H. Blank. The others were the Isis, the Rialto, and the Strand.
The Strand was the project that was the subject of this item from the January 9, 1915, issue of Construction News:
“Cedar Rapids, Iowa—2 Stores (Rent) & Theater, O. O., $85,000, 3rd Av. Archt., W. J. Brown, American Trust Bldg., Cedar Rapids, plans in progress. Owner, Mike Ford, Paving Contractor, 208 2nd Av., Cedar Rapids. Brk. & terra cotta, 2 stys. & bas., 60x140. Storage & scenery. Seat. cap., 1,500. Owner will take bids about Jan. 15, 1915.”
The World Theatre was mentioned as one of his works in the obituary of William Jay Brown in the Feb. 5, 1970, edition of The Cedar Rapids Gazette.
The 1927 FDY lists the Strand Theatre as one of four Cedar Rapids houses operated by Paramount-Publix affiliate A. H. Blank. The other three were the Isis, the Rialto, and the Palace.
It has only just occurred to me that the Bill Moore of Fairfax, Oklahoma, who supervised the rebuilding of the Luna Theatre for architect Gates Corgan in 1936 was probably the William J. Moore who became the partner of Corgan’s son Jack in the firm of Corgan & Moore.
The Colonial Theatre was in operation by 1903. Shakespeare on the Stage, a 1915 book by William Winter, cites a May 11, 1903, matinée of a production of The Taming of the Shrew at the house. The 1909-1910 edition of the Cahn guide listed the Colonial as a ground floor house with 1,050 seats. The 1912 guide has Taylor’s Colonial Theatre with 1,078 seats including 440 on the orchestra floor, 238 in the balcony, and 400 in a gallery. The rebuilding in 1924 was probably quite drastic to accommodate the 1,359 seats it had later.
The September 9, 1940, issue of the Peekskill Highland Democrat said that the Colonial Theatre, which had been built “…nearly a half century ago….” was soon to be demolished. The house had been bought from the Singers by Paramount, who also acquired the recently-remodeled Peekskill Theatre. A fire had damaged the Colonial and the seats had been removed from the balcony as a result.
I don’t know if the Colonial was one of those theaters that the FDY continued listing after it was gone or not, but it certainly could have been.
The 1940 article can be found in column four near the bottom of this single-page PDF.
I believe three theaters are conflated in the current description. The theater built in the 1880s must have been the Red Bank Opera House, which opened in 1883 and burned to the ground in 1905. It was located on the south side of Front Street just west of Maple Avenue.
Frick’s Theatre was better known as Frick’s Lyceum, and it opened in September, 1906, in a converted tomato cannery on the waterfront. The site is now part of Marine Park. An article about it appeared in the August 29, 1906, issue of the Red Bank Register (upper left corner of this PDF.) The Lyceum was listed in the 1912 Cahn guide with the notation “This theater is still in existence but has been closed for some time.” It does not appear in the 1913-1914 guide.
The theater at Front Street and Wharf Avenue was, as teecee said, built in 1912. The Red Bank Register of October 23, 1912, had an article about it (top right corner of the first page of this PDF.) Stockholders in the Red Bank Amusement Company were Fred H. VanDorn, Thomas Williams, and John J. Travers. The theater featured a long lobby, 13 feet wide and 71 feet long, which led from Front Street to the theater proper, which backed up to Union Street and was 56x128 feet. The Lyric was erected by local builder George W. Sewing, who also acted as architect.
The article said that the owners hoped to have the house open by Thanksgiving, but they missed the date. The January 22, 1913, issue of the Register said that the installation of the furnishings and equipment of the theater was well underway and the opening was to be on or about February 1.
The Lyric was remodeled in early 1920 and reopened as the Palace Theatre on April 5, according to the April 7 issue of the Register. The Palace was first operated by N. E. McNulty. In September, 1928, the house had another name change, becoming the Hunting Theatre, which was operated by Mr. and Mrs. Tony Hunting. The theater closed in 1930, but reopened later that year under the previous name Palace Theatre. On January 9, 1931, the Palace Theatre was completely destroyed by a fire.
The January 16, 1912, issue of The Troy Times had this item:
The January 18, 1945, issue of The Times Record said that the Majestic Theatre was to be converted into facilities for the local post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The auditorium floor was to be leveled and a second floor installed in the space to accommodate lounges, a recreation room, rest rooms, and offices. The ground floor would house a meeting hall and kitchen facilities. Although the Majestic closed in the mid-1920s, the rebuilding plans indicate that auditorium was still intact in 1945.Joe Masher’s description of the State Theatre says that it was designed by the same architect as the American Theatre, and the description of this house says that it was a twin of the State. If that’s so, then the architect of this theater was Abraham K. Mosley, who was noted as the architect of the Rose (State) Theatre in The American Contractor of April 29, 1922.
The Rose/State Theatre was definitely on Fourth Street, not Fourth Avenue. Here is an item about it from the April 29, 1922, issue of The American Contractor:
Abraham K. Mosley was a native of England who came to the United States in 1904. He was commissioned to work on the Emma Willard School in 1910 and settled in Troy where he practiced for many years, though he designed buildings as far away as Kansas City, Kansas (St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church on 18th Street.) He died in 1951.The Louvee Theatre was designed and built by the F & Y Building Service of Columbus, Ohio. It was on a list of eleven of the compnay’s recent projects that was published in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder.
The Avalon Theatre was designed and built by the F & Y Building Service of Columbus, Ohio. It was one of eleven theaters on a list of the company’s projects in an ad that was published in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder.
An ad for the F & Y Building Service in the Boone County Recorder of October 27, 1938, listed the Arlington Theatre as one of five houses in Columbus that the firm had designed and built by that time. The others were the Westmont, the Fifth Avenue, the Cleve, and the Indianola.
An ad for the F & Y Building Service in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder (PDF here) listed the Fifth Avenue Theatre as one of five Columbus houses it had designed.
If this house originally opened in 1920 then the project by F & Y must have been a remodeling or a replacement. I don’t think the company began designing and building theaters until the mid-1930s, though F & Y Construction had been in business since the 1910s.
In the ad uploaded by dbellis54 the text says “Have you seen the New Fifth Ave.? Modern!” which suggests a recent remodeling. The movie advertised, Born to Dance was released in the U.S. on November 27, 1936, according to IMDb, so the ad for this sub-run house probably dates from well into 1937. It’s likely that this was the theater that F & Y worked on in the 1930s.
An ad for the F & Y Building Service in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder (PDF here) said that Erlanger’s new Gayety Theatre was one of eleven movie houses the company had designed and built since December, 1937.
The Miami-Western Theatre opened on September 23, 1938, per a full-page ad for the theater in Miami University’s 1939 yearbook. The Streamline Modern auditorium featured murals depicting student life at Miami University on one side wall and at Western College for Women on the other. The house closed in 1988.
An ad for the F & Y Building Service in the October 27, 1938, issue of the Boone County Recorder (PDF here) of Burlington, Kentucky, on the occasion of the opening of the Gayety Theatre in nearby Erlanger, had a list of several theaters designed and built by F & Y since December, 1937, including the Miami-Western.
A brochure for a walking tour of Oxford’s uptown business district (large PDF file) says that the Princess Theatre was built in 1911 and opened as the Oxford Theatre. It became the Talawanda Theatre in 1950, and was enlarged and renamed the Princess in the 1980s.
This January 25, 2015, article in the Journal-News says that plans are afoot to build a new building for the theaters on a lot adjacent to the Princess and incorporate the facade of the existing Arts and Crafts style building as the entrance to the new theaters, but the plans have not yet been approved. I haven’t found any more recent articles about the proposal.
The MidPointe Library has a few photos of the Sorg Opera House/Colonial Theatre. Unfortunately, none show the interior.
This photo shows the building around 1950, shortly after it had been remodeled and renamed the Colonial Theatre.
Somewhat clearer is this 1975 photo which shows more of the facade’s Romanesque Revival details.
This photo is from around 1900.
Though it was still standing when the current Google Street View was made, this page says that the building was demolished in April, 2014. Farther down the page it says that the Isis operated until the end of the silent era, and in 1930 was rebuilt as offices by Western Union.
CharmaineZoe provides this vintage photo of the Isis Theatre, probably from around 1926, the year the movie Midnight Sun was released.
The Orpheum opened on April 2, 1908. This item about the event is from the April 4 issue of Variety:
Gus Sun was a former juggler, vaudevillian, and minstrel who entered the theater business in 1904,opening a small vaudeville and picture house in Springfield, Ohio. By 1909 he had a circuit of a dozen theaters and booked dozens of other houses through the booking agency he founded in 1906.The Strand Theatre that opened in 1929 was actually the second Strand Theatre at this address. The first was a smaller theater that opened on March 12, 1922. Here is a drawing of the first Strand.
24 N. Broad Street was the Paramount’s historic address, but Middletown has renumbered its lots and the Paramount’s site is on what is now South Broad Street. In this aerial photo from 1955, the intersection of Central Avenue and Broad Street is at center bottom, and the Paramount can be seen on the west side of Broad halfway up the block north of Central.
The Paramount is at right in this 1962 photo. The building housing Doan’s Ace Hardware is still standing, but has been stripped of its modern front, revealing what remains of the much older facade beneath.
An item about the renovation of the Majestic Theatre in Freeport appeared in the December 27, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The December 27, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World described the recently opened Play House this way:
The 1927 FDY lists the Rialto Theatre as one of four houses in Cedar Rapids that were operated by Paramount-Publix affiliate A. H. Blank. The others were the Isis, the Palace, and the Strand.
The 1927 FDY lists the Palace Theatre as one of four houses in Cedar Rapids that were operated by Paramount-Publix affiliate A. H. Blank. The others were the Isis, the Rialto, and the Strand.
The Strand was the project that was the subject of this item from the January 9, 1915, issue of Construction News:
The World Theatre was mentioned as one of his works in the obituary of William Jay Brown in the Feb. 5, 1970, edition of The Cedar Rapids Gazette.The 1927 FDY lists the Strand Theatre as one of four Cedar Rapids houses operated by Paramount-Publix affiliate A. H. Blank. The other three were the Isis, the Rialto, and the Palace.
They’ll undoubtedly overcharge for the drinks, but if having a drink keeps teenagers from sitting next to me in a theater it might be worth it.
It has only just occurred to me that the Bill Moore of Fairfax, Oklahoma, who supervised the rebuilding of the Luna Theatre for architect Gates Corgan in 1936 was probably the William J. Moore who became the partner of Corgan’s son Jack in the firm of Corgan & Moore.
The Colonial Theatre was in operation by 1903. Shakespeare on the Stage, a 1915 book by William Winter, cites a May 11, 1903, matinée of a production of The Taming of the Shrew at the house. The 1909-1910 edition of the Cahn guide listed the Colonial as a ground floor house with 1,050 seats. The 1912 guide has Taylor’s Colonial Theatre with 1,078 seats including 440 on the orchestra floor, 238 in the balcony, and 400 in a gallery. The rebuilding in 1924 was probably quite drastic to accommodate the 1,359 seats it had later.
The September 9, 1940, issue of the Peekskill Highland Democrat said that the Colonial Theatre, which had been built “…nearly a half century ago….” was soon to be demolished. The house had been bought from the Singers by Paramount, who also acquired the recently-remodeled Peekskill Theatre. A fire had damaged the Colonial and the seats had been removed from the balcony as a result.
I don’t know if the Colonial was one of those theaters that the FDY continued listing after it was gone or not, but it certainly could have been.
The 1940 article can be found in column four near the bottom of this single-page PDF.
spectrumis correct. The photo depicts the Grand Theatre on Fifth Avenue, which we have listed under its later name Warner Theatre.
The November 8, 1947 ad in Boxoffice that I mistakenly dated to 1940 in my earlier comment can be seen at lower right on this page.