The Empire Theatre was in operation prior to 1939, when a photo of its auditorium served as one of the illustrations to an article about parabolic reverse slope theater auditoriums in the January 7 issue of Boxoffice. The article doesn’t specifically say so, but I believe the architect of the Empire was the author of the article, Henry E. Greenspoon, partner in the Montreal firm of Eliasoph & Greenspoon.
The theater would have been designed in association with Benjamin Schlanger, developer of the parabolic reverse slope auditorium concept. Another of the article’s illustrations is a photo of the 1936 Jewel Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, one of Schlanger’s designs.
I don’t believe this link has been published in any earlier comment. Boxoffice of January 7, 1939, had an article about architect Benjamin Schlanger’s innovative design for reverse-slope auditoriums. The second page of the article has a photo of the Jewell Theatre.
I don’t see a link in any of the earlier comments to the January 7, 1939, Boxoffice article by Helen Kent about Rockefeller Centers then-new Newsreel Theatre.
Page one has photos of the exterior and the auditorium.
Though architect Fred Stritzel might have been required by the developer to give the Mariemont Theatre a Tudor facade, the interior appears to have been done in the Streamline Modern style characteristic of F & Y Building Services designs during the late 1930s. An article about theater seating in Boxoffice of January 7, 1939, includes a photo at the top of this page showing enough of the theater’s walls and stage to detect its modernity. The original capacity of the Mariemont was 725 seats, according to the caption.
The Broadway was a Fox Midwest house in 1938, when it was (at least partly) reseated. A photo, which doesn’t show much more than some seats and the aisle carpet (top of this page) was published in >Boxoffice of January 7, 1939. As the caption says there were 875 new American Bodiform chairs, if the capacity we have listed is correct then only the main floor must have been reseated at that time.
According to a list in Our Movie Houses: A History of Film & Cinematic Innovation in Central New York, by Norman O. Keim, the Schine circuit operated the Rialto Theatre in Glens Falls from 1931 to 1966. The Rialto was mentioned in Variety on February 18, 1921, which said that the house was playing Keith vaudeville while the rival Empire Theatre was playing Shubert vaudeville.
The Empire appears to have won this particular battle of the vaudeville war, as by July 2 the Empire was still offering five acts of Shubert vaudeville along with a feature film, while the Rialto was showing only movies, according to their ads in that day’s edition of the Glens Falls Post-Star.
The Rialto was reseated in 1938. The middle photo on this page of the January 7, 1939, issue of Boxoffice shows a section of the new Heywood-Wakefield chairs on the orchestra floor.
The Amsterdam Evening Recorder of April 19, 1917, said that Edward Klapp’s new Rialto Theatre had opened that afternoon. A capacity crowd enjoyed five acts of vaudeville and a feature picture starring Mary Pickford. The formal opening was to take place at seven o'clock that evening, following a half hour concert by Minch’s Military Band in front of the theater. Stephen Bush, editor of The Moving Picture World would then make a short speech before the evening performance began. Presumably Mary Pickford was engaged elsewhere.
The bottom photo on this page of Boxoffice for January 7, 1939, has a photo of the Road Theatre auditorium, in which 608 new seats from the Ideal Seating Company had recently been installed.
The Belvedere Theatre had a Robert Morton organ installed in 1922, which was replaced by a Wurlitzer in 1927. Specifications for the Wurlitzer are on this web page.
The 1939 photo linked by tkpepper on November 19, 2008 is now at this link. It shows only a sliver of the theater, but ROOSEV can be seen on the marquee. I’m still looking for a photo that would show the house with its earlier aka of Triangle Theatre.
Mary Mallory has used to recent controversy over the movie The Interview as an occasion to recall the hounding of the 1921 German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from the screens of Los Angeles. Her tale of near-riot at Miller’s Theatre, and of the American movie industry’s fear of competition from German films, can be read on this page at Larry Harnisch’s web site, The Daily Mirror.
The Avenue Theatre was certainly still there when Google’s camera car last passed by. The marquee remains over the former theater entrance, and you can see the back wall of the auditorium with its two emergency exit doors on the south side of Third Street.
This item appeared in the April 5, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“South River, N. J — Bids have been received for a one-story moving picture theater designed by Alexander Merchant, 363 George Street, New Brunswick, N. J., for George Allgair, South River. The building will measure 45 x 120 and cost $8,000.”
The Star Theatre in the vintage photo above has “Allgair Building” on its parapet. Despite the “one-story” in the item, and the two-story building in the photo, I suspect that this project was the Star Theatre. The theater itself was probably without a balcony.
The September 26, 1913, issue of the New Brunswick Daily Home News mentioned the New Star Theatre on Ferry Street. Issues of the paper from 1912 had mentioned the Star Theatre being on Main Street, so this house replaced an earlier theater of the same name.
The February 6, 1915, issue of the South Amboy Citizen featured an announcement that the New Empire Theatre would open to the public on Monday, February 8. The theater was not yet finished, but the remaining work was not expected to interfere with the shows. A March 16, 2002 item in the paper said that the Empire Theatre’s grand opening had been held on March 25, 1915, and that the theater had burned in April, 1950.
The earliest mention I’ve found of plans for the Stocking Avenue Theatre are this item from The Moving Picture World of September 4, 1915:
“E. M. Brown, of Grand Rapids, Mich., will at once commence the erection of a new theater on Stocking avenue. It will be 40 by 90 feet, one story high, of brick- construction, seating 500. The architect is Pierre Lindhout.”
An October 9 item in the same journal said that Brown had received a permit for construction of the house.
This web page has a brief biography of architect Pierre Lindhout. It says that there were once eleven theaters of his design in Grand Rapids and claims that the Wealthy Theatre “…is the sole surviving example of this work.” As the Stocking Avenue Theatre’s building is still standing, the authors of the page must mean that the Wealthy is the only theater of Lindhout’s design that is fully intact and still in operation.
This web page has brief biography of architect Pierre Lindhout (the correct spelling.) It says that here were once eleven theaters of Lindhout’s design in Grand Rapids, but claims that the Wealthy is the “…sole surviving example of this work.” However, I found the still-standing Stocking Avenue Theatre attributed to Lindhout in the September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World, so they must mean that the Wealthy is the only theater of Lindhout’s design that is still in operation.
The October 9, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture Worldpublished this description of the recently opened Strand Theatre:
“STRAND, AT FLINT, MICHIGAN, A PRETTY HOUSE.
“Special to Moving Picture World from Midwest News Service.
“THE Strand Photoplay Corporation has opened the new Strand theater, at Flint, seating 540. The plans were made from the ideas of Lester E. Matt, secretary-treasurer of the company, who with Mrs. Delia Matt, vice-president, controls four-fifths of the stock. It is of fireproof material. The entrance is in mahoganized birch and the walls and facade are of stucco. The auditorium is in cream and white. The semi-indirect lighting system is used. A three-piece orchestra will furnish music. Lester E. Matt will be manager, A. J. Abbenante, musical director; Albert Brogan, operator; B. M. Berts, assistant operator, and Miss Stella Johnson, cashier.”
The Family Theatre was opened in 1907 in a building remodeled from a Presbyterian church. The architects for the project were the local firm of J. F. Alexander & Son. This web page has pictures of dozens of the firm’s works, including one of the Family Theatre. They also drew the plans for the remodeling the old Grand Opera House (later the Dryfus Theatre) in 1901.
Shortly after the opening of the Majestic, trade publication The Billboard ran this item headed “Another Theater” which mentions other houses operated by Caille & Guthard as well as four other theaters then operating or soon to be operating in Wyandotte:
“Wyandotte. Mich., Jan. 28.—With the opening of the new Majestic Theater here this city of 12,000 people is fast becoming one of the greatest theatrical towns of its size in the country. The new Majestic, owned by the same firm controlling the Majestic, Fine Arts, Knickerbocker, Norwood, Grand River and other Detroit theaters, is a fine one. The new house is beautifully decorated and cost, completed, about $50,000. The house seats 1,300 people, and will play high-class moving pictures at 10, 15, 25 and 35 cents. The same firm controls the Marx Theater, offering motion pictures and vaudeville. In addition to the Majestic and Marx theaters Wyandotte boasts of three other theaters. These are the new Temple, recently completed at a cost of $20,000; the new Lincoln, a $15,000 house, now under construction, and the Wyandotte Theater, a small house.”
The small Wyandotte Theatre on the list is not the house of that name listed at Cinema Treasures, which originally had 1,200 seats and opened in 1938.
There is a possibility that the Temple Theatre on the list was in the Odd Fellows Temple, built in 1911 and later converted into a Masonic Temple before finally being converted to a performing arts space now called the James R. DeSana Center for Arts and Culture. However, the DeSana’s web site doesn’t say anything about the building having been a movie theater at any time, nor have I found any other sources indicating that it was, so that’s only speculative.
I’ve found no other mentions of the Lincoln Theatre. There is of course always the possibility that either the Lincoln or the Temple was an earlier name of the house that was in operation by 1928 as the Rialto Theatre. Local newspaper archives might have some clues, if someone has access to them.
Here is something I originally posted on the Ritz Theatre page, but as that page has to be about the second Ritz and the article is about the destruction by fire of the first Ritz it belongs on this page. The article was from Boxoffice, probably December, 1938, but I failed to note the issue date:
“$50,000 Loss to Ritz at Waxahachie After Fire
“DALLAS— Robb and Rowley’s comparatively new Ritz Theatre in Waxahachie is a mass of total ruin after a fire thought to have originated in the balcony. The house had just recently been remodeled. Nothing was saved and the loss is around $50,000.
“Additional loss was a new and late model sound equipment stored in the Ritz building, which equipment was about to be installed in the Empire, ‘B’ house. ‘A’ bookings will be shown in the Empire temporarily, it was said.
“R&R officials have been extremely busy discussing plans for a new theatre, details of which were not made known at this time.”
This web page has a detailed history of the Texas Theatre, including all of its previous names. Here is the gist of it, with the important dates and name changes:
A movie house called the Theatorium first opened in part of the building on February 15, 1907. In 1908-1909, it was expanded, and reopened on January 18, 1909, as the Majestic Theatre. In 1912 it was renovated and reopened on July 31 as the Dixie Theatre. By the mid-1920s the house had been expanded again, this time upward to add a balcony. Operation of the theater was taken over by Robb & Rowley in September, 1927.
The Dixie Theatre closed in September, 1934, and the interior of the building was gutted and completely rebuilt. The house was reopened as the Ritz Theatre on November 23, 1934. This was the first time since construction of the building in 1887 that the facade was also completely remodeled. Four years later the Ritz Theatre was destroyed by a fire on December 3, 1938.
At the time of the fire the conversion of a building at the southwest corner of Franklin and College Streets into a theater was already underway, and when that project was completed it was opened as the Ritz. When the rebuilding of the first Ritz was completed it was reopened as the Texas Theatre on March 31, 1939.
The Texas suffered another significant fire on February 15, 1942, and was rebuilt again, reopening on May 1. Both the 1939 and 1942 rebuilding projects were designed by the Dallas architectural firm of Houston & Smith.
Since May, 2009, the Texas Theatre has been owned by the City of Waxahachie.
The Ritz in the photo currently displayed above is the first Ritz- the former Dixie Theatre that later became the Texas Theatre. The photo should probably be moved to the Texas Theatre’s photo page.
This web page has a very detailed history of the theater on the north side of the square. It says that that house was called the Ritz from November 23, 1934, until it was destroyed by a fire on December 3, 1938. It was then rebuilt and reopened as the Texas Theatre.
In the meantime, another theater that was actually under construction on the south side of the square (a conversion of an existing building) at the time of the fire was opened as the Ritz. The second Ritz was on Franklin Street at the southwest corner of College Street, and must have opened in early 1939.
The page also says that both the rebuilt Texas Theatre and the second Ritz Theatre were designed by the Dallas architectural firm of Houston & Smith.
To rather belatedly respond to hanksykes question of March 14, 2012, regarding the Century Theatre, I found this item in the November 11, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Exit Cincinnati’s Century Theater.
“Cincinnati, Ohio. — The Century theater at Peebles corner, which has been at various times used with some success as a picture house, with interims of vaudeville, is to be turned into a public market, according to plans which have been perfected by local interests with capital behind them. The Century has been idle for the past two years, in spite of its apparently fine location, right at one of the busiest suburban corners in the city, its proximity to the popular Orpheum being largely responsible for its failure to prove a success. It was built in 1909 for use as a moving-picture house by John J. and Edward Ryan.”
The original Star Theatre was apparently replaced by a new house in 1916. The November 11, issue of The Moving Picture World had this story:
“PADUCAH. Ky. — Joe Desberger, of Desberger Brothers, operators of the New Star theater, is very much pleased with results obtained by the new house in the few weeks that it has been in operation. With a seating capacity of 470. and playing six days a week, the concern is making money, but, unlike conditions in most of the smaller cities in Kentucky, this house is getting fifteen to twenty-five cents for all of its good features, including Pickfords, Clarks, Youngs, Chaplins, Pearsons, Sweets, Baras, etc. No show is for less than ten cents, and by getting higher prices for the better shows the management has created a demand for high class features until to-day people are calling up and asking when a good feature is coming. In fact the higher priced films are the ones which are bringing attendence as well as shekels. While there is no real law against operating theaters in Paducah on Sunday, public sentiment has been so strong against it that the exhibitors have tactfully operated but six days for a year or two.”
The Empire Theatre was in operation prior to 1939, when a photo of its auditorium served as one of the illustrations to an article about parabolic reverse slope theater auditoriums in the January 7 issue of Boxoffice. The article doesn’t specifically say so, but I believe the architect of the Empire was the author of the article, Henry E. Greenspoon, partner in the Montreal firm of Eliasoph & Greenspoon.
The theater would have been designed in association with Benjamin Schlanger, developer of the parabolic reverse slope auditorium concept. Another of the article’s illustrations is a photo of the 1936 Jewel Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, one of Schlanger’s designs.
This is the first page of the article, with the photo of the Empire Theatre at bottom left.
This is the second page of the article, with the photo of the Jewel, and drawings showing how a parabolic reverse slope floor was configured.
I don’t believe this link has been published in any earlier comment. Boxoffice of January 7, 1939, had an article about architect Benjamin Schlanger’s innovative design for reverse-slope auditoriums. The second page of the article has a photo of the Jewell Theatre.
This is the first page of the article.
This is the secondpage of the article with the photo of the Jewell at bottom right.
I don’t see a link in any of the earlier comments to the January 7, 1939, Boxoffice article by Helen Kent about Rockefeller Centers then-new Newsreel Theatre.
Page one has photos of the exterior and the auditorium.
Page twohas photos of the lounge and Lobby.
Though architect Fred Stritzel might have been required by the developer to give the Mariemont Theatre a Tudor facade, the interior appears to have been done in the Streamline Modern style characteristic of F & Y Building Services designs during the late 1930s. An article about theater seating in Boxoffice of January 7, 1939, includes a photo at the top of this page showing enough of the theater’s walls and stage to detect its modernity. The original capacity of the Mariemont was 725 seats, according to the caption.
The Broadway was a Fox Midwest house in 1938, when it was (at least partly) reseated. A photo, which doesn’t show much more than some seats and the aisle carpet (top of this page) was published in >Boxoffice of January 7, 1939. As the caption says there were 875 new American Bodiform chairs, if the capacity we have listed is correct then only the main floor must have been reseated at that time.
According to a list in Our Movie Houses: A History of Film & Cinematic Innovation in Central New York, by Norman O. Keim, the Schine circuit operated the Rialto Theatre in Glens Falls from 1931 to 1966. The Rialto was mentioned in Variety on February 18, 1921, which said that the house was playing Keith vaudeville while the rival Empire Theatre was playing Shubert vaudeville.
The Empire appears to have won this particular battle of the vaudeville war, as by July 2 the Empire was still offering five acts of Shubert vaudeville along with a feature film, while the Rialto was showing only movies, according to their ads in that day’s edition of the Glens Falls Post-Star.
The Rialto was reseated in 1938. The middle photo on this page of the January 7, 1939, issue of Boxoffice shows a section of the new Heywood-Wakefield chairs on the orchestra floor.
The Amsterdam Evening Recorder of April 19, 1917, said that Edward Klapp’s new Rialto Theatre had opened that afternoon. A capacity crowd enjoyed five acts of vaudeville and a feature picture starring Mary Pickford. The formal opening was to take place at seven o'clock that evening, following a half hour concert by Minch’s Military Band in front of the theater. Stephen Bush, editor of The Moving Picture World would then make a short speech before the evening performance began. Presumably Mary Pickford was engaged elsewhere.
The bottom photo on this page of Boxoffice for January 7, 1939, has a photo of the Road Theatre auditorium, in which 608 new seats from the Ideal Seating Company had recently been installed.
The Belvedere Theatre had a Robert Morton organ installed in 1922, which was replaced by a Wurlitzer in 1927. Specifications for the Wurlitzer are on this web page.
The 1939 photo linked by tkpepper on November 19, 2008 is now at this link. It shows only a sliver of the theater, but ROOSEV can be seen on the marquee. I’m still looking for a photo that would show the house with its earlier aka of Triangle Theatre.
Mary Mallory has used to recent controversy over the movie The Interview as an occasion to recall the hounding of the 1921 German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from the screens of Los Angeles. Her tale of near-riot at Miller’s Theatre, and of the American movie industry’s fear of competition from German films, can be read on this page at Larry Harnisch’s web site, The Daily Mirror.
The Avenue Theatre was certainly still there when Google’s camera car last passed by. The marquee remains over the former theater entrance, and you can see the back wall of the auditorium with its two emergency exit doors on the south side of Third Street.
This item appeared in the April 5, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The Star Theatre in the vintage photo above has “Allgair Building” on its parapet. Despite the “one-story” in the item, and the two-story building in the photo, I suspect that this project was the Star Theatre. The theater itself was probably without a balcony.The September 26, 1913, issue of the New Brunswick Daily Home News mentioned the New Star Theatre on Ferry Street. Issues of the paper from 1912 had mentioned the Star Theatre being on Main Street, so this house replaced an earlier theater of the same name.
The February 6, 1915, issue of the South Amboy Citizen featured an announcement that the New Empire Theatre would open to the public on Monday, February 8. The theater was not yet finished, but the remaining work was not expected to interfere with the shows. A March 16, 2002 item in the paper said that the Empire Theatre’s grand opening had been held on March 25, 1915, and that the theater had burned in April, 1950.
The earliest mention I’ve found of plans for the Stocking Avenue Theatre are this item from The Moving Picture World of September 4, 1915:
An October 9 item in the same journal said that Brown had received a permit for construction of the house.This web page has a brief biography of architect Pierre Lindhout. It says that there were once eleven theaters of his design in Grand Rapids and claims that the Wealthy Theatre “…is the sole surviving example of this work.” As the Stocking Avenue Theatre’s building is still standing, the authors of the page must mean that the Wealthy is the only theater of Lindhout’s design that is fully intact and still in operation.
This web page has brief biography of architect Pierre Lindhout (the correct spelling.) It says that here were once eleven theaters of Lindhout’s design in Grand Rapids, but claims that the Wealthy is the “…sole surviving example of this work.” However, I found the still-standing Stocking Avenue Theatre attributed to Lindhout in the September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World, so they must mean that the Wealthy is the only theater of Lindhout’s design that is still in operation.
The October 9, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture Worldpublished this description of the recently opened Strand Theatre:
The Family Theatre was opened in 1907 in a building remodeled from a Presbyterian church. The architects for the project were the local firm of J. F. Alexander & Son. This web page has pictures of dozens of the firm’s works, including one of the Family Theatre. They also drew the plans for the remodeling the old Grand Opera House (later the Dryfus Theatre) in 1901.
Shortly after the opening of the Majestic, trade publication The Billboard ran this item headed “Another Theater” which mentions other houses operated by Caille & Guthard as well as four other theaters then operating or soon to be operating in Wyandotte:
The small Wyandotte Theatre on the list is not the house of that name listed at Cinema Treasures, which originally had 1,200 seats and opened in 1938.There is a possibility that the Temple Theatre on the list was in the Odd Fellows Temple, built in 1911 and later converted into a Masonic Temple before finally being converted to a performing arts space now called the James R. DeSana Center for Arts and Culture. However, the DeSana’s web site doesn’t say anything about the building having been a movie theater at any time, nor have I found any other sources indicating that it was, so that’s only speculative.
I’ve found no other mentions of the Lincoln Theatre. There is of course always the possibility that either the Lincoln or the Temple was an earlier name of the house that was in operation by 1928 as the Rialto Theatre. Local newspaper archives might have some clues, if someone has access to them.
Here are fresh links to the March 20, 1967, Boxoffice article about the Glenwood Theatre:
Page one
page two
Here is something I originally posted on the Ritz Theatre page, but as that page has to be about the second Ritz and the article is about the destruction by fire of the first Ritz it belongs on this page. The article was from Boxoffice, probably December, 1938, but I failed to note the issue date:
This web page has a detailed history of the Texas Theatre, including all of its previous names. Here is the gist of it, with the important dates and name changes:
A movie house called the Theatorium first opened in part of the building on February 15, 1907. In 1908-1909, it was expanded, and reopened on January 18, 1909, as the Majestic Theatre. In 1912 it was renovated and reopened on July 31 as the Dixie Theatre. By the mid-1920s the house had been expanded again, this time upward to add a balcony. Operation of the theater was taken over by Robb & Rowley in September, 1927.
The Dixie Theatre closed in September, 1934, and the interior of the building was gutted and completely rebuilt. The house was reopened as the Ritz Theatre on November 23, 1934. This was the first time since construction of the building in 1887 that the facade was also completely remodeled. Four years later the Ritz Theatre was destroyed by a fire on December 3, 1938.
At the time of the fire the conversion of a building at the southwest corner of Franklin and College Streets into a theater was already underway, and when that project was completed it was opened as the Ritz. When the rebuilding of the first Ritz was completed it was reopened as the Texas Theatre on March 31, 1939.
The Texas suffered another significant fire on February 15, 1942, and was rebuilt again, reopening on May 1. Both the 1939 and 1942 rebuilding projects were designed by the Dallas architectural firm of Houston & Smith.
Since May, 2009, the Texas Theatre has been owned by the City of Waxahachie.
The Ritz in the photo currently displayed above is the first Ritz- the former Dixie Theatre that later became the Texas Theatre. The photo should probably be moved to the Texas Theatre’s photo page.
This web page has a very detailed history of the theater on the north side of the square. It says that that house was called the Ritz from November 23, 1934, until it was destroyed by a fire on December 3, 1938. It was then rebuilt and reopened as the Texas Theatre.
In the meantime, another theater that was actually under construction on the south side of the square (a conversion of an existing building) at the time of the fire was opened as the Ritz. The second Ritz was on Franklin Street at the southwest corner of College Street, and must have opened in early 1939.
The page also says that both the rebuilt Texas Theatre and the second Ritz Theatre were designed by the Dallas architectural firm of Houston & Smith.
To rather belatedly respond to hanksykes question of March 14, 2012, regarding the Century Theatre, I found this item in the November 11, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The original Star Theatre was apparently replaced by a new house in 1916. The November 11, issue of The Moving Picture World had this story: