Here is an item from the March 5, 1921, issue of The American Contractor:
“Stores (4) & Theatre (1,200 seat.): $150,000. 90x135. N. E. Mack & Beniteau av. Archt. Bldg. Service Bureau, 1336 Brush st. Owner Harmony Theatre Corp., F. DeVos, 11221 Mack av. Carp, to Thulin & Frahn, 1336 Brush st.”
The lead architect of the Building Service Bureau was Ernest C. Thulin.
Here is an item about the Artcraft Theatre from the March 5, 1921, issue of The American Contractor:
“Contract is Awarded. Franklin, Ind.—Theatre (M. P.) & Office Bldg.: $75,000. 2 sty. 25x30. Archt. Roy C. Bryant. Owner The Artcraft Theatre Corp., D. O. Newlin. secy. Gen. contr. let to Roy C. Bryant. Excav.”
Architect/builder Roy C. Bryant also designed the Masonic Lodge in Franklin, now the Johnson County Museum of History, which is listed on the NRHP.
The building at the northeast corner of Jefferson and Newport that we have taken to be the theater was not the theater. The Lakewood Theatre was at the northwest corner of Jefferson and Lakewood, on a lot now occupied by a small vacant building that once housed a tire store. The final report of Detroit’s Historic Designation Advisory Board for the proposed Jefferson-Chalmers Historic Business District (PDF here) says that the Lakewood Theatre was demolished in 1958.
The report also says that the Gothic-Art Deco building at Jefferson and Newport was the Vanity Ballroom, built in 1929 and designed by theater architect Charles N. Agree, which accounts for its theatrical look. The ballroom entrance must have been at the north end of the building on Newport Street, where the bare frame of a small marquee can still be seen.
I’ve also been able to discover who was the most likely architect of the Lakewood Theatre, though the name was so garbled in the magazine item I cited in my first comment. It must have been Ernest C. Thulin, who designed quite a few buildings in this neighborhood during that period. He designed at least two other movie theaters as well; the Harmony in Detroit and the Grosse Pointe Park in the suburb of that name. Thulin was the lead architect for a firm called the Building Service Bureau.
The last photo in this weblog post depicts the entrance of the Lincoln Theatre around 1950. The Lincoln Theatre in Schenectady is mentioned in the March 18, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. It was then operated by John D. Walker and F. Y. Bergmaier. Larry Hart’s “Tales of Old Dorp” column in the October 11, 1999, issue of the Schenectady Daily Gazette said that the Lincoln Theatre had opened around September, 1914.
This web page about F. F. Proctor says that he opened the very first Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady in April, 1912. This article from the September 18, 1994, issue of The Sunday Gazette gives the exact opening date as April 8.
The article describes the Proctor as having originally had its entrance on the towpath of the Erie Canal, which was soon to be filled in and rebuilt as Erie Boulevard. The theater entrance was later moved into the arcade that opened from the corner of Erie Boulevard and State Street. Originally called Proctor’s Arcade, it was renamed the State Arcade when the second Proctor’s Arcade was built, which was three years after the State Theatre joined the original Proctor’s in the original arcade. To the right of the article here’s a photo of the arcade entrance with the name Proctor’s Theatre on its marquee.
The section of This web page headed “The Grog Shop At The Crossroads of History” has a couple of photos from around 1950 that show what must have been the old entrance to Proctor’s Theatre, but with a marquee for the Erie, which means the original entrance on Erie Boulevard must have been reopened at some point, though the Gazette article doesn’t mention that. The Erie marquee can be seen just past the Wedgewood Building, which is still standing and in which the Grog Shop is located.
The July 28, 1932, issue of The Film Daily had this news about the Erie Theatre:
“William M. Shirley, president and
general manager of the Farrash Theaters Corp., of Schenectady, yesterday, said that the Erie, in Schenectady, destroyed by fire May 19, will be rebuilt and re-opened Oct. 1. The house will seat 1,300 and have RCA sound. Guy A. Graves will manage the theater. The State, another Farrash house, closed since July 4, will re-open Labor Day.”
Later that year, the Farrash Theatre Company entered a deal with the RKO circuit in which RKO would take over management of the four Farrash houses in Schenectady; The State, the Strand, the Erie, and the Van Curler. RKO already operated the Plaza Theatre and Proctor’s Theatre. I haven’t discovered how long RKO remained in control of the four Farrash houses.
Mark D. Kalischer, architect for an extensive remodeling of the Harper Theatre in the 1930s, wrote an article about the house for the January 7, 1939, issue of Boxoffice, which has three photos of the Harper in its Streamline Modern configuration:
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.”
Here is an item from the March 5, 1921, issue of The American Contractor:
The lead architect of the Building Service Bureau was Ernest C. Thulin.Here is an item about the Artcraft Theatre from the March 5, 1921, issue of The American Contractor:
Architect/builder Roy C. Bryant also designed the Masonic Lodge in Franklin, now the Johnson County Museum of History, which is listed on the NRHP.The building at the northeast corner of Jefferson and Newport that we have taken to be the theater was not the theater. The Lakewood Theatre was at the northwest corner of Jefferson and Lakewood, on a lot now occupied by a small vacant building that once housed a tire store. The final report of Detroit’s Historic Designation Advisory Board for the proposed Jefferson-Chalmers Historic Business District (PDF here) says that the Lakewood Theatre was demolished in 1958.
The report also says that the Gothic-Art Deco building at Jefferson and Newport was the Vanity Ballroom, built in 1929 and designed by theater architect Charles N. Agree, which accounts for its theatrical look. The ballroom entrance must have been at the north end of the building on Newport Street, where the bare frame of a small marquee can still be seen.
I’ve also been able to discover who was the most likely architect of the Lakewood Theatre, though the name was so garbled in the magazine item I cited in my first comment. It must have been Ernest C. Thulin, who designed quite a few buildings in this neighborhood during that period. He designed at least two other movie theaters as well; the Harmony in Detroit and the Grosse Pointe Park in the suburb of that name. Thulin was the lead architect for a firm called the Building Service Bureau.
This item is from the October 19, 1932, issue of The Film Daily:
The October 13, 1932, issue of The Film Daily noted that the Lakeside Theatre in Duluth, a new house, had opened in September.
The last photo in this weblog post depicts the entrance of the Lincoln Theatre around 1950. The Lincoln Theatre in Schenectady is mentioned in the March 18, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. It was then operated by John D. Walker and F. Y. Bergmaier. Larry Hart’s “Tales of Old Dorp” column in the October 11, 1999, issue of the Schenectady Daily Gazette said that the Lincoln Theatre had opened around September, 1914.
Here is a photo of the Colony’s entrance building after it was damaged by the fire that led to its demolition.
This web page about F. F. Proctor says that he opened the very first Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady in April, 1912. This article from the September 18, 1994, issue of The Sunday Gazette gives the exact opening date as April 8.
The article describes the Proctor as having originally had its entrance on the towpath of the Erie Canal, which was soon to be filled in and rebuilt as Erie Boulevard. The theater entrance was later moved into the arcade that opened from the corner of Erie Boulevard and State Street. Originally called Proctor’s Arcade, it was renamed the State Arcade when the second Proctor’s Arcade was built, which was three years after the State Theatre joined the original Proctor’s in the original arcade. To the right of the article here’s a photo of the arcade entrance with the name Proctor’s Theatre on its marquee.
The section of This web page headed “The Grog Shop At The Crossroads of History” has a couple of photos from around 1950 that show what must have been the old entrance to Proctor’s Theatre, but with a marquee for the Erie, which means the original entrance on Erie Boulevard must have been reopened at some point, though the Gazette article doesn’t mention that. The Erie marquee can be seen just past the Wedgewood Building, which is still standing and in which the Grog Shop is located.
The July 28, 1932, issue of The Film Daily had this news about the Erie Theatre:
Later that year, the Farrash Theatre Company entered a deal with the RKO circuit in which RKO would take over management of the four Farrash houses in Schenectady; The State, the Strand, the Erie, and the Van Curler. RKO already operated the Plaza Theatre and Proctor’s Theatre. I haven’t discovered how long RKO remained in control of the four Farrash houses.Mark D. Kalischer, architect for an extensive remodeling of the Harper Theatre in the 1930s, wrote an article about the house for the January 7, 1939, issue of Boxoffice, which has three photos of the Harper in its Streamline Modern configuration:
First page
Second page
In addition, another article in the same issue features a couple of small photos of the Harper’s remodeled rest rooms:
First page
Second page (no photos, but additional text for those who only get the magazine for the articles.)
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: