If the State Theatre was in the middle building in the photo above, then its address was either 215 or 217 N. State Street. The State, part of the Frisina Amusement Company chain, was listed with 450 seats in FDYs from 1940 to 1948, but in every edition I’ve checked it was listed as closed. I haven’t found any mentions of the State in trade journals, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter. CinemaTour lists it, without an address and, oddly, lists a Royal Theatre (with the aka Millers Theater) at 215 No. State. I haven’t found the names Royal or Millers in connection with Litchfield anywhere else.
A 1910 Sanborn map shows “Moving Pictures” in the building at 211 N. State, but by 1925, the date of the next Sanborn available online, the only theater shown is the Gem/Capitol. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists only a house called the Grand at Litchfield, which might have been the theater at 211 State. CinemaTour doesn’t list the Grand, but does list a house (without an address) called the Lyric operating from 1911 to 1919. The Lyric at least is mentioned in the July 10, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World.
A centennial history of Litchfield published in 1953 has this paragraph: “In 1938 the Frisina Amusement Company built the Ritz Theatre, a 400 seat house on State Street. It has been the policy of the Ritz Theatre to run only the finest in motion pictures, each picture playing a week’s engagement.”
The history has very little about Litchfield’s movie houses, mentioning only the Capitol, the Ritz, the Sky View Drive-In, and a Nickelodeon theater that once operated at the corner of Ryder and Madison. That intersection also hosted Snell’s Opera House, a large venue that burned in 1924.
This might have been the same house that was operating as the Wonderland Theater when it was mentioned in the March 25, 1911 issue of The Nickelodeon: “The Wonderland Theater of Cottonwood Falls, formerly operated by P. H. Tallman, has been purchased by Harry Grogan, who will conduct an up-to-date house and make every effort to please his patrons.”
A photographer name Patricia DuBose Duncan made this photo at some point (perhaps 1998) when the wooden panel covering the original front of the theater in the KHRI photo was taken down. The photo is titled as Lyric Opera House, but I’ve found no evidence that the theater was ever actually called that or served that function. The columns and steps seen in Duncan’s photo are identical to those on the building in the KHRI photo, so I’m sure it’s the same place.
This Facebook post has a couple of photos of the original Marion City Auditorium. The caption notes that the building was destroyed by a fire in 1918.
A November 13, 1915 Moving Picture World item noted that H. K. Rogers, then operating the Auditorium Theatre, was also the proprietor of the Garden Theatre.
The Auditorium was still in operation at least as a late as 1916, when the July 8 Motion Picture News ran this item: “Another instance of the power of the serial, ‘Peg o’ the Ring,‘ is the case of
the Auditorium theatre, Marion, Kansas, owned by Harry K. Rogers. The Kansas rivers have flooded the town four times in the last two weeks. This worked destruction to Mr. Rogers’ patronage, but when the day for the serial came around the house was crowded. The people came through water to see the picture.”
The September 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon reported that LeRoy Tudor, operator of the Star Theatre in Marion, had bought the Princess Theatre on West Fourth Street and would operate both houses after renaming the Princess the Starette. Mr. Tudor did not retain ownership of the theaters long, and that year the November 1 issue of the same journal said that he had sold his Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Lyric Amusement Company of South Bend.
The house remained the Starette at least into 1912, when the March 15 issue of the Goshen Democrat reported that Lerner and Walters of South Bend had sold their Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Mecca Amusement Company.
The Mecca Theatre in Marion was mentioned in the December 17, 1915 issue of the Gas City Journal. It was in an ad for a tailor named John Ford, who had his shop next door.
The Clinton Community Historical Society says that the Gem Theatre was opened around 1920 by Floyd Barrus and Walter Bassett. The Gem Theater at Clinton, managed by Barrus & Bassett, is listed in the 1921 Cahn-Hill theatrical guide. Barrus became the sole owner at some point. The theater was never converted for sound.
The August 26, 1916 issue of Motion Picture News published this announcement about the new Lyric Theatre in Marion: “The Lyric theatre, Marion’s new $45,000 photoplay and vaudeville theatre, will open Labor Day. The theatre is being built by the Washington Theatre Company, and will be managed by Ora O. Parks, formerly connected with the Indiana and Royal Grand theatres at Marion and the Genette theatre at Richmond. The house will seat 700 comfortably all seats being located on the main floor. The theatre is being built with plenty of room between the rows for the comfort of patrons.”
The Rath Theatre became the Cozy Theater in 1921, as noted in the September 10 issue of Moving Picture World that year: “W. H. Harpole, who recently purchased the Rath Theatre, Dodge City, Kas., from the Souder Brothers, has changed its name to the Cozy Theatre.”
A graph-style timeline of businesses that have occupied quarters in the Star Block at the bottom of this web page shows the Cozy Theater operating into what appears to be 1922.
Here is a slightly belated announcement from the September 10, 1921 Moving Picture World: “Construction on the new theatre that the Strand Amusement Company is building at Osage City, Kas., is rapidly nearing completing and will be ready to open about September 1.”
An ad for the American Seating Company in the August 20, 1927 issue of Movie Age listed a “Horton, Horton, Kansas” among a few dozen theaters that had installed the company’s seats, but I think this might have been the Liberty. A blurb praising the movie “Passion Play” from “Liberty, Horton, Kas.” was published in the November 12 issue of the same journal that year. As the Colonial is not listed in the 1927 FDY, the year the Liberty first appears, it is likely that the former was closed and the latter opened before the 1927 edition was compiled, so a late 1926 opening for the Liberty is possible.
A 300-seat Maxton Theatre is listed in the 1926 FDY, but this was probably at a different location. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists two houses at Maxton: the Theato, no location given, and the Gem, located on Main Street, which was the former name of today’s McKaskill Avenue. Only one theater appears on the 1919 Sanborn map of Maxton, on Main Street at what would be approximately the modern address 250 McKaskill Avenue. This was more likely the Gem, and probably became the first Maxton Theatre. The building, which had offices and a lodge hall on the upper floor, has been demolished.
I don’t know why Apple maps can’t find this address, but Google does, and provides this street view from April, 2023. The front of the building was still standing at that time, but it didn’t look like it would be around much longer.
The Donaldson Guide listed the old opera house by that name, and at least one 1908 issue of The Billboard used that name for the new opera house, but the new one was already listed in the 1908 Cahn guide as the Herron Theatre.
Addresses in Lakeland have been changed since 1913. The modern address for the Auditorium Theatre would be about 107 S. Massachusetts. This site is now a small park jutting into Mirror Lake at the east end of Main Street. The Auditorium once closed the view east on Main Street.
Although it had been open only intermittently for some time, the Auditorium was active at least as late as 1926, when the August 26 issue of The Billboard said that vaudeville and roadshows would be presented at the house while a new theater was under construction elsewhere in town. The Auditorium was also available for conventions and for entertainments given by local organizations, according to the Lakeland Amusement Company.
Lakeland had at least two opera houses in its history. The older one appears on the 1903 Sanborn map, upstairs in a commercial building on Tennessee Street at the northwest corner of Main Street, probably about 104 Tennessee. A 350-seat Lakeland Opera House was listed in the 1894 Donaldson Guide. It apparently never made the Cahn guide. By 1908 this had been replaced by a new upstairs house, at 121 Main Street.
The only theater listed at Lakeland in the 1912-1913 Cahn guide is the Herron Theatre, which it describes as a 700-seat upstairs house. It appears on the 1908 and 1913 Sanborn maps of Lakeland. As the opera house was the only upstairs theater on Main Street, it had to have been the Herron, which a 1921 Lakeland Evening Telegram article confirmed was on Main Street. The article was about a fire that had recently ravaged the building, including the theater which at that time had been closed for several months. I have left a comment on the Herron page with the few details I’ve been able to ferret out so far.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide and an article in the January 24, 1921 Lakeland Evening Telegram reveal that the Herron Theatre could only have been an aka for the old Lakeland Opera House at 121 Main Street. The Cahn guide lists the Herron as a 700-seat upstairs house. The 1921 newspaper article reported that the Herron building on Main Street had suffered some $15,000 damage in a fire. The upstairs theater itself had been closed for several months and was in process of being dismantled. The Herron is mentioned in the newspaper only infrequently after 1912, most often in the context of a special event of some sort, but it did manage to survive on such skimpy fare until 1920.
The opening year we give for this house must be wrong. Not only is there no Casino theatre listed in the 1914-1915 AMPD, but no theater appears at its address on the Sanborn map published in November, 1913, and there is no indication that the buildings that were on the site were being demolished soon, or that any new construction was planned.
The Casino was certainly in operation by late 1916, as it was mentioned in the December 2 issue of the Lakeland Evening Telegram that year, but the claim that it opened in 1913 appears to be a local urban legend. The AMPD might (and often did) fail to list a theater, but the Sanborn map company would have caught hell from some very powerful people in the insurance industry for such a significant omission, so it seems very unlikely they would have left it off of their 1913 map.
An unidentified moving picture theater that might have been the Lyric appears on the 1913 Sanborn map of Lakeland, at 2 S. Kentucky Avenue (southeast corner of Pine Street) and was the only theater on the map that has not yet been identified. That makes it the most likely location of the house that became the Lyric.
This building had housed a hardware and furniture store in 1908, so if this house was the Edisonia then it was not Lakeland’s first movie show. The July, 1908 Sanborn map shows an “Electric Theatre” in a storefront at what would by 1913 be numbered 122 S. Kentucky Avenue. 122 was more likely the location of the town’s first movie house.
None of the names given above for this theater appear in the 1914-1915 AMPD. The only names listed therein are the Auditorium, the Majestic, and the Star. As the first two houses are now accounted for, and the Star we have listed was closed in 1912, I’m wondering if the name Star might have been revived and used at this house for a while?
The Sanborn map of Lakeland published in July, 1908 shows an “Electric Theatre” in a storefront that would by 1913 be numbered 122 S. Kentucky Avenue (it was 427 in 1908.) Even if the Herron didn’t open until October 1, 1908, this might still have been its location, if it had operated earlier under an as-yet unknown name or indeed as the Electric Theatre. There are no other movie houses indicated on the 1908 map, and by 1913 this storefront housed a boot and shoe shop.
A Star Theatre was still listed at Lakeland in the 1914-1915 AMPD, so unless the directory made a mistake, the name Star must have been revived for use at another theater.
If the State Theatre was in the middle building in the photo above, then its address was either 215 or 217 N. State Street. The State, part of the Frisina Amusement Company chain, was listed with 450 seats in FDYs from 1940 to 1948, but in every edition I’ve checked it was listed as closed. I haven’t found any mentions of the State in trade journals, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter. CinemaTour lists it, without an address and, oddly, lists a Royal Theatre (with the aka Millers Theater) at 215 No. State. I haven’t found the names Royal or Millers in connection with Litchfield anywhere else.
A 1910 Sanborn map shows “Moving Pictures” in the building at 211 N. State, but by 1925, the date of the next Sanborn available online, the only theater shown is the Gem/Capitol. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists only a house called the Grand at Litchfield, which might have been the theater at 211 State. CinemaTour doesn’t list the Grand, but does list a house (without an address) called the Lyric operating from 1911 to 1919. The Lyric at least is mentioned in the July 10, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World.
A centennial history of Litchfield published in 1953 has this paragraph: “In 1938 the Frisina Amusement Company built the Ritz Theatre, a 400 seat house on State Street. It has been the policy of the Ritz Theatre to run only the finest in motion pictures, each picture playing a week’s engagement.”
The history has very little about Litchfield’s movie houses, mentioning only the Capitol, the Ritz, the Sky View Drive-In, and a Nickelodeon theater that once operated at the corner of Ryder and Madison. That intersection also hosted Snell’s Opera House, a large venue that burned in 1924.
This might have been the same house that was operating as the Wonderland Theater when it was mentioned in the March 25, 1911 issue of The Nickelodeon: “The Wonderland Theater of Cottonwood Falls, formerly operated by P. H. Tallman, has been purchased by Harry Grogan, who will conduct an up-to-date house and make every effort to please his patrons.”
Clickable link to the KHRI page.
A photographer name Patricia DuBose Duncan made this photo at some point (perhaps 1998) when the wooden panel covering the original front of the theater in the KHRI photo was taken down. The photo is titled as Lyric Opera House, but I’ve found no evidence that the theater was ever actually called that or served that function. The columns and steps seen in Duncan’s photo are identical to those on the building in the KHRI photo, so I’m sure it’s the same place.
This Facebook post has a couple of photos of the original Marion City Auditorium. The caption notes that the building was destroyed by a fire in 1918.
A November 13, 1915 Moving Picture World item noted that H. K. Rogers, then operating the Auditorium Theatre, was also the proprietor of the Garden Theatre.
The Auditorium was still in operation at least as a late as 1916, when the July 8 Motion Picture News ran this item: “Another instance of the power of the serial, ‘Peg o’ the Ring,‘ is the case of the Auditorium theatre, Marion, Kansas, owned by Harry K. Rogers. The Kansas rivers have flooded the town four times in the last two weeks. This worked destruction to Mr. Rogers’ patronage, but when the day for the serial came around the house was crowded. The people came through water to see the picture.”
The September 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon reported that LeRoy Tudor, operator of the Star Theatre in Marion, had bought the Princess Theatre on West Fourth Street and would operate both houses after renaming the Princess the Starette. Mr. Tudor did not retain ownership of the theaters long, and that year the November 1 issue of the same journal said that he had sold his Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Lyric Amusement Company of South Bend.
The house remained the Starette at least into 1912, when the March 15 issue of the Goshen Democrat reported that Lerner and Walters of South Bend had sold their Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Mecca Amusement Company.
The Mecca Theatre in Marion was mentioned in the December 17, 1915 issue of the Gas City Journal. It was in an ad for a tailor named John Ford, who had his shop next door.
The Clinton Community Historical Society says that the Clinton Theatre operated from 1937 to 1959.
The Clinton Community Historical Society says that the Gem Theatre was opened around 1920 by Floyd Barrus and Walter Bassett. The Gem Theater at Clinton, managed by Barrus & Bassett, is listed in the 1921 Cahn-Hill theatrical guide. Barrus became the sole owner at some point. The theater was never converted for sound.
The August 26, 1916 issue of Motion Picture News published this announcement about the new Lyric Theatre in Marion: “The Lyric theatre, Marion’s new $45,000 photoplay and vaudeville theatre, will open Labor Day. The theatre is being built by the Washington Theatre Company, and will be managed by Ora O. Parks, formerly connected with the Indiana and Royal Grand theatres at Marion and the Genette theatre at Richmond. The house will seat 700 comfortably all seats being located on the main floor. The theatre is being built with plenty of room between the rows for the comfort of patrons.”
The Rath Theatre became the Cozy Theater in 1921, as noted in the September 10 issue of Moving Picture World that year: “W. H. Harpole, who recently purchased the Rath Theatre, Dodge City, Kas., from the Souder Brothers, has changed its name to the Cozy Theatre.”
A graph-style timeline of businesses that have occupied quarters in the Star Block at the bottom of this web page shows the Cozy Theater operating into what appears to be 1922.
Here is a slightly belated announcement from the September 10, 1921 Moving Picture World: “Construction on the new theatre that the Strand Amusement Company is building at Osage City, Kas., is rapidly nearing completing and will be ready to open about September 1.”
An ad for the American Seating Company in the August 20, 1927 issue of Movie Age listed a “Horton, Horton, Kansas” among a few dozen theaters that had installed the company’s seats, but I think this might have been the Liberty. A blurb praising the movie “Passion Play” from “Liberty, Horton, Kas.” was published in the November 12 issue of the same journal that year. As the Colonial is not listed in the 1927 FDY, the year the Liberty first appears, it is likely that the former was closed and the latter opened before the 1927 edition was compiled, so a late 1926 opening for the Liberty is possible.
A 300-seat Maxton Theatre is listed in the 1926 FDY, but this was probably at a different location. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists two houses at Maxton: the Theato, no location given, and the Gem, located on Main Street, which was the former name of today’s McKaskill Avenue. Only one theater appears on the 1919 Sanborn map of Maxton, on Main Street at what would be approximately the modern address 250 McKaskill Avenue. This was more likely the Gem, and probably became the first Maxton Theatre. The building, which had offices and a lodge hall on the upper floor, has been demolished.
I don’t know why Apple maps can’t find this address, but Google does, and provides this street view from April, 2023. The front of the building was still standing at that time, but it didn’t look like it would be around much longer.
The Donaldson Guide listed the old opera house by that name, and at least one 1908 issue of The Billboard used that name for the new opera house, but the new one was already listed in the 1908 Cahn guide as the Herron Theatre.
Addresses in Lakeland have been changed since 1913. The modern address for the Auditorium Theatre would be about 107 S. Massachusetts. This site is now a small park jutting into Mirror Lake at the east end of Main Street. The Auditorium once closed the view east on Main Street.
Although it had been open only intermittently for some time, the Auditorium was active at least as late as 1926, when the August 26 issue of The Billboard said that vaudeville and roadshows would be presented at the house while a new theater was under construction elsewhere in town. The Auditorium was also available for conventions and for entertainments given by local organizations, according to the Lakeland Amusement Company.
Lakeland had at least two opera houses in its history. The older one appears on the 1903 Sanborn map, upstairs in a commercial building on Tennessee Street at the northwest corner of Main Street, probably about 104 Tennessee. A 350-seat Lakeland Opera House was listed in the 1894 Donaldson Guide. It apparently never made the Cahn guide. By 1908 this had been replaced by a new upstairs house, at 121 Main Street.
The only theater listed at Lakeland in the 1912-1913 Cahn guide is the Herron Theatre, which it describes as a 700-seat upstairs house. It appears on the 1908 and 1913 Sanborn maps of Lakeland. As the opera house was the only upstairs theater on Main Street, it had to have been the Herron, which a 1921 Lakeland Evening Telegram article confirmed was on Main Street. The article was about a fire that had recently ravaged the building, including the theater which at that time had been closed for several months. I have left a comment on the Herron page with the few details I’ve been able to ferret out so far.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide and an article in the January 24, 1921 Lakeland Evening Telegram reveal that the Herron Theatre could only have been an aka for the old Lakeland Opera House at 121 Main Street. The Cahn guide lists the Herron as a 700-seat upstairs house. The 1921 newspaper article reported that the Herron building on Main Street had suffered some $15,000 damage in a fire. The upstairs theater itself had been closed for several months and was in process of being dismantled. The Herron is mentioned in the newspaper only infrequently after 1912, most often in the context of a special event of some sort, but it did manage to survive on such skimpy fare until 1920.
The opening year we give for this house must be wrong. Not only is there no Casino theatre listed in the 1914-1915 AMPD, but no theater appears at its address on the Sanborn map published in November, 1913, and there is no indication that the buildings that were on the site were being demolished soon, or that any new construction was planned.
The Casino was certainly in operation by late 1916, as it was mentioned in the December 2 issue of the Lakeland Evening Telegram that year, but the claim that it opened in 1913 appears to be a local urban legend. The AMPD might (and often did) fail to list a theater, but the Sanborn map company would have caught hell from some very powerful people in the insurance industry for such a significant omission, so it seems very unlikely they would have left it off of their 1913 map.
An unidentified moving picture theater that might have been the Lyric appears on the 1913 Sanborn map of Lakeland, at 2 S. Kentucky Avenue (southeast corner of Pine Street) and was the only theater on the map that has not yet been identified. That makes it the most likely location of the house that became the Lyric.
This building had housed a hardware and furniture store in 1908, so if this house was the Edisonia then it was not Lakeland’s first movie show. The July, 1908 Sanborn map shows an “Electric Theatre” in a storefront at what would by 1913 be numbered 122 S. Kentucky Avenue. 122 was more likely the location of the town’s first movie house.
None of the names given above for this theater appear in the 1914-1915 AMPD. The only names listed therein are the Auditorium, the Majestic, and the Star. As the first two houses are now accounted for, and the Star we have listed was closed in 1912, I’m wondering if the name Star might have been revived and used at this house for a while?
The Sanborn map of Lakeland published in July, 1908 shows an “Electric Theatre” in a storefront that would by 1913 be numbered 122 S. Kentucky Avenue (it was 427 in 1908.) Even if the Herron didn’t open until October 1, 1908, this might still have been its location, if it had operated earlier under an as-yet unknown name or indeed as the Electric Theatre. There are no other movie houses indicated on the 1908 map, and by 1913 this storefront housed a boot and shoe shop.
A Star Theatre was still listed at Lakeland in the 1914-1915 AMPD, so unless the directory made a mistake, the name Star must have been revived for use at another theater.
The 1913 Sanborn map of Lakeland shows the Auditorium at 311 S. Massachusetts Avenue.