About three months after opening the Fairfax Theatre, Oscar Oldknow sold a half interest in the house to Universal, according to an item in the January 7, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News. Oldknow was a Vice President of Universal at this time. Oscar’s father, William Oldknow, had been an executive of the Universal Film Corporation in 1915, and Oscar’s son, William Oldknow II, later moved to Los Angeles and in 1949 married Constantina Skouras, niece of Fox West Coast Theatres head Charles Skouras. Oscar Oldknow himself had become associated with Fox Theatres by 1930, probably through the Fox-affiliated Lucas & Jenkins circuit which had taken over the Fairfax by that time.
The 1927 MPN item had a bit more information about Universal’s Atlanta area expansion plans:
“Universal’s Southern Theatres
“Dan Michalove Issues Statement Concerning Company’s Holdings and plans of National Theatre Supply Company. Mr. Oldknow launched and built the Fairfax Theatre in East Point some months ago and recently sold a fifty per cent interest in that house to Universal.
“Construction of a moving picture theatre in East Atlanta is in line with Universal’s plan to acquire and develop a chain of suburban houses in Atlanta. One of the company’s most recent acquisitions was a fifty per cent interest in the community theatre just being completed on Ponce de Leon Avenue near Boulevard, one of the city’s most flourishing centers. Work on the new theatre for East Atlanta will start as soon as plans now being drawn are completed.
“FOLLOWING the initial announcement issued by Dan Michalove two weeks ago, of Universal’s plan to build several community theatres in Atlanta’s most thriving suburban centers, comes a detailed statement from Mr. Michalove concerning his company’s theatre acquisition program in East Atlanta.
“According to Mr. Michalove, Universal has acquired an admirable site at 482 Flat Shoals Avenue in East Atlanta, and plans are now being drawn by Daniell and Beautell, architects, for an 800-seat house that will be built along the latest approved lines.
“Universal will erect the house in conjunction with Oscar S. Oldknow, vice-president in charge of the Southern Division.”
The house on Flat Shoals Avenue must have been the Madison Theatre. The house under construction on Ponce de Leon Avenue was most likely the DeKalb Theatre in Decatur, which opened on August 8, 1927.
The December 13, 1977 issue of the St. Petersburg Independent had an article about the reopening of the Sunshine Mall Theatre, which was to take place the following night (scan at Google News.) The article says that the architects for the twinning were Brookbank, Murphy & Shields, but they were most likely acting as supervising architects, as the Eberson Archives list Drew Eberson as architect for the remodeling as well as the original Trans-Lux Sunshine Theatre of 1968.
Linkrot repair: The July 27, 1964, Boxoffice article wit the aerial rendering is now at this link.
The J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater Plans lists the Georgia Theatre as a 1964-65 project designed by the architectural firm of Brookbank & Murphy, in collaboration with the Cinerama Company. The architectural firm later became Brookbank, Murphy & Shields.
The Rome News-Tribune of July 31, 1963, reported that the Village Three Theatres had set its opening date as August 12 (scan at Google News.) The expansion had been accomplished by converting an existing building, formerly an A&P market, into two new auditoriums, each seating 252. The project had been designed by the Columbus, Georgia, firm of Brookbank, Murphy & Shields.
The J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater Plans lists the Martin Cinerama Theatre in St. Louis as having been designed by the architectural firm of Finch, Alexander, Barnes, Rothschild, & Paschal.
The J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater Plans lists the remodeling of the Tower Theatre for Martin Cinerama as a 1962 project. Plans were by the Atlanta architectural firm of Finch, Alexander, Barnes, Rothschild, & Paschal.
The J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater Plans lists six Martin Cinerama houses, including the one in Seattle, as having been designed by the architectural firm of Finch, Alexander, Barnes, Rothschild, & Paschal. It’s likely that Raymond H.Pack was only the local supervising architect for the project, FABRAP being located in Atlanta.
The “New Corporations” column of The National Corporation Reporter for May 13, 1915, listed: “Milliken Theater Company, Youngstown; $5,000; T. R. Milliken, J. J. Hardgrove. F. R. Eistler.” The “R” for Milliken’s middle initial was probably a mistake. A more reliable source has an “E” instead.
A death notice from October 4, 1930, appears on this page at Vindy.com, and says: “Thomas E. ‘Ed’ Milliken, 71, former sheriff of Mahoning County, dies at the home of J.J. Hardgrove, 46 Ellenwood Ave., where he had made his home for many years.”
The Oliver Theatre, operated by Henry Klinger, was the subject of an article in the December 4, 1912, issue of Tonawanda’s local paper, The Evening News Klinger had received a rebate on the taxes for the theater after claiming that the assessment for the year 1911 had been erroneous.
Klinger operated the house until at lest 1915, when he became the first person to exhibit movies on Sunday in North Tonawanda, according to an item in the August 21 issue of The Moving Picture World. He later sold the house to Snyder and Zimmerman of Buffalo, but repurchased it from them in July, 1921, when the July 21 issue of The New York Clipper reported that he planned to remodel the theater and increase its seating capacity.
In January, 1922, The American Organist reported that the Avondale Theatre in North Tonawanda had anew Wurlitzer organ. No details about the instrument were given.
robboehm: There were actually two movie houses called the Elite in San Francisco around 1916. The one that isn’t listed here was on Market Street opposite Seventh Street. The other was the house in Presidio Heights that is now called the Vogue. Our page for the Vogue is currently missing the aka.
The history page of the Vogue’s web site says that the house opened in 1910 as the Elite Theatre and was known as the Rex Theatre before becoming the Vogue in 1939.
San Francisco Theaters, Cinemas, Dancehalls, after 1906 lists 3290 Sacramento Street as the home of the Elite Theatre from 1912-1919, the Rex Theatre from 1919-1927, the Plaza Theatre from 1927-1939, the United Artists Vogue From 1939 to an unlisted date, and simply the Vogue Theater in 1982.
Around 1916 there was an Elite Theatre on Market Street opposite 7th in downtown San Francisco, so the two Elites must have overlapped for some time. The post-1906 web page doesn’t list the Market Street Elite Theatre.
Construction was about to begin on the Mozart Theatre when the Elmira Star-Gazette published an article about the project in its issue of April 8, 1908, which can be read in this PDF of the paper’s second page. The architect of the Mozart Theatre was Albert E. Westover (though the article mistakenly gives him the middle initial C instead of E.)
The December 19, 1908, issue of The Billboard noted that the Mozart Theatre in Elmira had opened on November 23.
When Shea’s Theatre was extensively rebuilt in 1927, the architect for the project was Victor A. Rigaumont. This PDF of a page from the November 1 issue of the Jamestown Evening Journal has an illustration of the auditorium and a few paragraphs about Rigaumont.
The Strand suffered a major fire in 1942. This PDF of a page from the February 14, 1942, issue of The Times Record of Troy, New York, has a photo. The theater’s marquee fell off.
Rogersville, by Randy Ball and Rodney Ferrell (Google Books preview), has a photo of the Roxy on page 22, the caption of which says the house was built in 1946 and demolished in 1988.
The April 17, 1947, issue of the Rogersville Review had this item saying that the new Roxy would open the next week:
“Thursday, April 24, is the day set for formal opening of Rogersville’s
new theater, ‘The Roxy.’ Opening show will be ‘Three Little Girls In Blue,’ a not too old musical in technicolor.
“The building, one of the finest of its size in this section, which has been under construction for more than 8 months, was built to replace the Rogersville Theatre, a comparatively new structure, which was destroyed by fire on April 14, of last year. It is of modern design and will seat 1000 people.
“W. P. Miller, the manager, has been in show business for more than 24 years. He says the new Roxy is dedicated to service and pleasure.”
This paragraph is from an article about Cincinnati’s movie theaters that appeared in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“There was another Gayety in Cincinnati a few years back, this being the name first borne by the Star, on Fountain Square, referred to above as standing on the site of the former Loew arcade. The original Gayety was opened seven years ago, a year after the Bijou, its nearest competitor, by Ed. Hart & Co., the name being changed to the Star when the burlesque house was opened under the same name. Like its neighbor, the Bijou, it has always done a big business at its five-cent admission charge.”
That would indicate that this house operated as the Gayety from 1909 (the year after the Bijou opened) until 1913 (the year the Gayety Burlesque opened) and then became the Star.
The renovation of Sundance Cinemas Seattle was completed over a year and a half ago, the house premiering its new look on July 19, 2015. The official web site provides this page of photos. A nice collection of black and white photos can be found in this post at Curbed Seattle.
The Regent Theatre at Harrisburg was in operation by 1915, and was taken over by Loew’s in 1925. The May 9, 1925, issue of Harrisburg daily, The Evening News, featured several items about the theater, and a full page ad by the Regent’s former operator, Peter Magaro, which said that Marcus Loew would begin operating the house on May 11. The ad also mentioned that Magaro had been in the theater business at Harrisburg for twenty years.
Another article in the paper says that the Regent was on the site of a “store show” Magaro had run in his early days in Harrisburg. He later bought the property and had the Regent built on it, but the article doesn’t say what year the house was erected. Magaro and the Regent were mentioned in the September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World. A 1916 MPW item gave the address of the Regent as 410 Market Street, so it was definitely the same location.
Items in various construction journals in 1917 indicate that Magaro was intending rebuild the Regent at that time. Plans, by Hoffman & Co., had been approved in April and bids were to be taken in September, but the next mention of the rebuilding I’ve found is from 1921, when the November issue of the construction journal Stone ran this item:
“The new Regent moving picture theatre, being built by Peter Magaro on Market Street, Harrisburg, Pa., will have a stairway of Pavonazzo marble, while the walls and wainscoting will be of gray Napoleon marble. The work is being done by Alexander Pelli & Co., of New York”
I’ve been unable to discover the reason for the delay of four years. An April 8, 1925 Harrisburg Telegraph article about the projected sale of the Regent to Loew’s said only that Magaro had rebuilt the theater “…several years ago….” Loew’s was offering $275,000 for the house, but Magaro had not yet accepted. Perhaps he got even more.
Linkrot repair: The before and after photos in Boxoffice of the Congress Theatre, remodeled in 1937, can now be seen at this link.
Linkrot repair: The January 8, 1938, Boxoffice article about the Times Theatre can now be seen at these links:
Page One
Page Two
The April 30 article is now at these links:
Page One
Page Two
Page Three
A photo of the lobby of the Major Theatre appears on this page of Boxoffice Magazine, January 8, 1938.
An article about wall and floor coverings in the January 8, 1938, issue of Boxoffice featured a photo of the foyer of the Jewel Theatre.
Linkrot repair: The 1938 ad with a photo of the Scituate Theatre’s lobby is now here.
Sidney S. Daniell (1889-1956) and Russell L. Beutell (1891-1943) were the principals of the firm of Daniell & Beutell.
About three months after opening the Fairfax Theatre, Oscar Oldknow sold a half interest in the house to Universal, according to an item in the January 7, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News. Oldknow was a Vice President of Universal at this time. Oscar’s father, William Oldknow, had been an executive of the Universal Film Corporation in 1915, and Oscar’s son, William Oldknow II, later moved to Los Angeles and in 1949 married Constantina Skouras, niece of Fox West Coast Theatres head Charles Skouras. Oscar Oldknow himself had become associated with Fox Theatres by 1930, probably through the Fox-affiliated Lucas & Jenkins circuit which had taken over the Fairfax by that time.
The 1927 MPN item had a bit more information about Universal’s Atlanta area expansion plans:
The house on Flat Shoals Avenue must have been the Madison Theatre. The house under construction on Ponce de Leon Avenue was most likely the DeKalb Theatre in Decatur, which opened on August 8, 1927.The December 13, 1977 issue of the St. Petersburg Independent had an article about the reopening of the Sunshine Mall Theatre, which was to take place the following night (scan at Google News.) The article says that the architects for the twinning were Brookbank, Murphy & Shields, but they were most likely acting as supervising architects, as the Eberson Archives list Drew Eberson as architect for the remodeling as well as the original Trans-Lux Sunshine Theatre of 1968.
Linkrot repair: The July 27, 1964, Boxoffice article wit the aerial rendering is now at this link.
The J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater Plans lists the Georgia Theatre as a 1964-65 project designed by the architectural firm of Brookbank & Murphy, in collaboration with the Cinerama Company. The architectural firm later became Brookbank, Murphy & Shields.
The Rome News-Tribune of July 31, 1963, reported that the Village Three Theatres had set its opening date as August 12 (scan at Google News.) The expansion had been accomplished by converting an existing building, formerly an A&P market, into two new auditoriums, each seating 252. The project had been designed by the Columbus, Georgia, firm of Brookbank, Murphy & Shields.
The J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater Plans lists the Martin Cinerama Theatre in St. Louis as having been designed by the architectural firm of Finch, Alexander, Barnes, Rothschild, & Paschal.
The J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater Plans lists the remodeling of the Tower Theatre for Martin Cinerama as a 1962 project. Plans were by the Atlanta architectural firm of Finch, Alexander, Barnes, Rothschild, & Paschal.
The J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater Plans lists six Martin Cinerama houses, including the one in Seattle, as having been designed by the architectural firm of Finch, Alexander, Barnes, Rothschild, & Paschal. It’s likely that Raymond H.Pack was only the local supervising architect for the project, FABRAP being located in Atlanta.
The “New Corporations” column of The National Corporation Reporter for May 13, 1915, listed: “Milliken Theater Company, Youngstown; $5,000; T. R. Milliken, J. J. Hardgrove. F. R. Eistler.” The “R” for Milliken’s middle initial was probably a mistake. A more reliable source has an “E” instead.
A death notice from October 4, 1930, appears on this page at Vindy.com, and says: “Thomas E. ‘Ed’ Milliken, 71, former sheriff of Mahoning County, dies at the home of J.J. Hardgrove, 46 Ellenwood Ave., where he had made his home for many years.”
It has been done.
The Oliver Theatre, operated by Henry Klinger, was the subject of an article in the December 4, 1912, issue of Tonawanda’s local paper, The Evening News Klinger had received a rebate on the taxes for the theater after claiming that the assessment for the year 1911 had been erroneous.
Klinger operated the house until at lest 1915, when he became the first person to exhibit movies on Sunday in North Tonawanda, according to an item in the August 21 issue of The Moving Picture World. He later sold the house to Snyder and Zimmerman of Buffalo, but repurchased it from them in July, 1921, when the July 21 issue of The New York Clipper reported that he planned to remodel the theater and increase its seating capacity.
In January, 1922, The American Organist reported that the Avondale Theatre in North Tonawanda had anew Wurlitzer organ. No details about the instrument were given.
robboehm: There were actually two movie houses called the Elite in San Francisco around 1916. The one that isn’t listed here was on Market Street opposite Seventh Street. The other was the house in Presidio Heights that is now called the Vogue. Our page for the Vogue is currently missing the aka.
The history page of the Vogue’s web site says that the house opened in 1910 as the Elite Theatre and was known as the Rex Theatre before becoming the Vogue in 1939.
San Francisco Theaters, Cinemas, Dancehalls, after 1906 lists 3290 Sacramento Street as the home of the Elite Theatre from 1912-1919, the Rex Theatre from 1919-1927, the Plaza Theatre from 1927-1939, the United Artists Vogue From 1939 to an unlisted date, and simply the Vogue Theater in 1982.
Around 1916 there was an Elite Theatre on Market Street opposite 7th in downtown San Francisco, so the two Elites must have overlapped for some time. The post-1906 web page doesn’t list the Market Street Elite Theatre.
Construction was about to begin on the Mozart Theatre when the Elmira Star-Gazette published an article about the project in its issue of April 8, 1908, which can be read in this PDF of the paper’s second page. The architect of the Mozart Theatre was Albert E. Westover (though the article mistakenly gives him the middle initial C instead of E.)
The December 19, 1908, issue of The Billboard noted that the Mozart Theatre in Elmira had opened on November 23.
When Shea’s Theatre was extensively rebuilt in 1927, the architect for the project was Victor A. Rigaumont. This PDF of a page from the November 1 issue of the Jamestown Evening Journal has an illustration of the auditorium and a few paragraphs about Rigaumont.
The Strand suffered a major fire in 1942. This PDF of a page from the February 14, 1942, issue of The Times Record of Troy, New York, has a photo. The theater’s marquee fell off.
Rogersville, by Randy Ball and Rodney Ferrell (Google Books preview), has a photo of the Roxy on page 22, the caption of which says the house was built in 1946 and demolished in 1988.
The April 17, 1947, issue of the Rogersville Review had this item saying that the new Roxy would open the next week:
This paragraph is from an article about Cincinnati’s movie theaters that appeared in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
That would indicate that this house operated as the Gayety from 1909 (the year after the Bijou opened) until 1913 (the year the Gayety Burlesque opened) and then became the Star.The renovation of Sundance Cinemas Seattle was completed over a year and a half ago, the house premiering its new look on July 19, 2015. The official web site provides this page of photos. A nice collection of black and white photos can be found in this post at Curbed Seattle.
The Regent Theatre at Harrisburg was in operation by 1915, and was taken over by Loew’s in 1925. The May 9, 1925, issue of Harrisburg daily, The Evening News, featured several items about the theater, and a full page ad by the Regent’s former operator, Peter Magaro, which said that Marcus Loew would begin operating the house on May 11. The ad also mentioned that Magaro had been in the theater business at Harrisburg for twenty years.
Another article in the paper says that the Regent was on the site of a “store show” Magaro had run in his early days in Harrisburg. He later bought the property and had the Regent built on it, but the article doesn’t say what year the house was erected. Magaro and the Regent were mentioned in the September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World. A 1916 MPW item gave the address of the Regent as 410 Market Street, so it was definitely the same location.
Items in various construction journals in 1917 indicate that Magaro was intending rebuild the Regent at that time. Plans, by Hoffman & Co., had been approved in April and bids were to be taken in September, but the next mention of the rebuilding I’ve found is from 1921, when the November issue of the construction journal Stone ran this item:
I’ve been unable to discover the reason for the delay of four years. An April 8, 1925 Harrisburg Telegraph article about the projected sale of the Regent to Loew’s said only that Magaro had rebuilt the theater “…several years ago….” Loew’s was offering $275,000 for the house, but Magaro had not yet accepted. Perhaps he got even more.