As the only photo available is dated 1901 and shows the Auditorium Theatre, I’m not positive that the old building was not replaced at some point. The Auditorium looks to have been a frame structure with the entrance on the long side, which faced Lafayette Street. A very awkward configuration. It’s possible that it was rebuilt at some point, but I haven’t found any references to such an event.
I’ve set street view to match as nearly as possible the historic photo, rather than where the Auditorium actually was just down the block. If it was rebuilt, it’s possible that the Robey Theatre didn’t occupy exactly the same footprint. Both the Auditorium and the small City Building next to it have been demolished.
A History of Pleasants County, West Virginia, by Robert L. Pemberton, says that it was in early 1920 that “…the Auditorium was sold by W. C. Dotson to H. H. Robey of Spencer, who made it one of his chain of motion picture theaters.”
Three pages of historic photos of Muscatine theaters, including a 1940 shot of the original Palace, were published in Muscatine Magazine, issue of Winter, 2012.
I can’t find a direct link to the exact page the article starts on. It only opens to the cover of the magazine. Click the arrow to the right of the cover to turn the page three times to reach the theater article. Click on the image of the magazine itself to enlarge it.
Two photos of Schine’s Milford Theatre illustrate this advertisement for Heywood-Wakefield seating in the September 17, 1949, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review.
The Lyric Theatre in Osceola, Iowa, is mentioned in The Moving Picture World of August 24, 1918. If it was in the same building as the theater in the photo above then it must have been remodeled in the 1930s. It’s also possible that the Lyric got a new building in 1934. The September 8 issue of Motion Picture Herald said “JOHN WALLER is erecting a modern picture theatre in Osceola, Iowa. House will open in early fall.”
The theater description needs correction. This house was opened by Ludy Bosten as the Uptown Theatre on November 4, 1931. The January 7, 1971, issue of the Muscatine Journal said that the Uptown would be renamed Bosten Cinema within two weeks, and that the house was to be extensively remodeled. I haven’t found when it was renamed the Riviera, but it was still called the Bosten Cinema at least as late as November, 1977.
An article in the December 14, 2005, issue of The St. Mary’s Oracle mentions in passing “…the old Auditorium Theater (1902), later Robey Theater.”
The fourth photo on this web page shows the Auditorium Theatre behind the tiny City Building on the corner of Lafayette and Second Streets. The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists the Auditorium as a ground floor house with 290 seats on the main floor, 132 in the balcony, 225 in the gallery and 16 in the boxes. Presumably the gallery and boxes were abandoned when it was converted for movies.
The text accompanying the photo says: “The theatre was in use until about 1953 when the Illar family built a new theatre on the other side of the street at the other end of the same block to the right.” The new theater, called the Center, was actually opened by 1949, when it was featured in the the August 20 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review.
According to the town’s web site, its name is styled St. Marys, without an apostrophe.
This web page, which has the date 7/28/04 at the bottom, has three thumbnails of the demolition of the Rand Theatre, but the full-sized pictures don’t open. A comment by Larry Chapman on the page has this information about the theater:
“…the Rand was built for Kibler R. Roberts and J. Henry Davidson and opened its doors on January 22, 1937. These two gentlemen also owned a second Rand Theatre located in Lynchburg. Greenfield’s Rand was remodeled in 1947.”
As can be seen in the second of the photos kencmcintyre linked to, dated 1983, the Rand Theatre was on the west side of Washington Street adjacent to the alley south of Lafayette Street. The theater’s site is now partly occupied by a drive-through portico for the a single-story brick building on the southwest corner of Lafayette.
Google’s camera car didn’t photograph the location of the Lyric Theatre on its way through Greenfield, Ohio, but here is a bird’s-eye view from Bing Maps. There is still a painted sign on the corner of the building reading “Lyric, Always Good.”
The State Theatre was on the west side of Greenfield’s Courthouse Square. As I have no address for it, it might have been in one of the two surviving commercial buildings on the block, or it might have been under the footprint of Greenfield’s modern City Hall or the small parking lot next to it.
A brief history of Greenfield’s theaters can be found on this web page. When the Weil Theatre opened on November 1, 1946, Greenfield had two other theaters in operation: the State, which closed in 1948, and the Riley, which closed in 1953.
Allen and Linda Strahl, now operators of Greenfield’s nine-screen Legacy Cinema, should be credited with donating this theater for public use.
Bartstar: The new front of the Egyptian Theatre was installed in either late 1949 or early 1950. An article about the remodeling appeared in the March 4, 1950, issue of Boxoffice (first page and second page.) You might also be interested in the Egyptian Theatre street view timeline at Historic Hollywood Theatres.
My subscription to comments on this page got canceled when the site was redesigned a few years ago, so this is the first I’ve seen of the comments from JCL and Ian377.
The El Rey was gone by the time I first visited Paradise in the mid-1970s and had been replaced by the Pine Ridge Theatre on Foster Road, which is now a feed and pet supply store. The Drive-In was still there but had been converted into a swap meet (the remains have since been demolished and a health club has been built on the site.)
It was actually a long time before JCL arrived that the part of The Skyway north of the modern Neal Road intersection was part of Neal Road, but that’s how it is named on old maps. The Skyway from Neal Road to Chico wasn’t built until the early 1950s, and that’s when the section of Neal Road above the current intersection was renamed Skyway.
I’m not sure exactly where the old bowling alley on Skyway was. By the time I arrived the only bowling alley in town was on Clark Road north of Wagstaff, and that building is now gone (its roof collapsed after a heavy snowfall in the late 1980s) and the bowling alley has moved to a new building a few miles farther down Clark.
The old center of town runs from a short way south of Pearson Road northward to Elliott Road. I’m not sure if any of the buildings in that area could be the El Rey’s building remodeled beyond recognition or not. The chances that it is still standing are pretty slim, though.
The October 9, 1909, issue of The Film Index had this description of the Yorkville Hippodrome Theatre:
“YORKVILLE HIPPODROME.
“Handsome picture theatre owned by Alfred Weiss, located at 1499 First avenue, New York City. The
Hippodrome was opened in January, 1909, and cos $21,000 to build. The dimensions are 22 feet 6 inches
front, by 102 feet deep, with an ‘L’ in the rear which gives a width of 39 feet. The auditorium includes a balcony which affords ample seating capacity. There is a commodious stage with a 20-foot opening, with all drops and scenery necessary for vaudeville acts. The lobby is 12 feet deep and brilliantly illuminated. Every possible means of fireproofing the Hippodrome was employed in its construction. The ceiling and walls are of steel and cost $1,600. During the exhibition of pictures the auditorium is made comparatively light by the use of green lamps and shades. Uniformed help add to the general attractiveness of the place. The Hippodrome can be numbered among the best of the modern picture houses.”
A history of Winnebago and Hancock Counties published in 1917 has a brief biography of Forest Secor which says he returned to the town of his birth (his father, Eugene Secor, was the first mayor of Forest City when it incorporated in 1878) in 1916 after having conducted a real estate business in Minnesota for some time, and bought the Forest Theatre.
The “Changes Over Iowa” column of The Moving Picture World, November 3, 1917, had this item:
“Forest City, Ia. — Forest Secor has sold the Forest theater in Forest City to J. P. Weist.”
I don’t know if this item from the February 3 issue of the same publication is about a second theater or if Mr. Secor changed the name of the house he bought after returning in 1916: “FOREST CITY, IA. — Park theater is now being conducted by Secor & Hewitt.”
Forest City had an opera house which the February 26, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World reported had recently been destroyed by a fire. The 350-seat Forest City Opera House was on a list of theaters published in the September 5, 1908,issue of The Billboard. The Forest Theatre might have been built to replace the opera house after it burned, though in 1912 the MPW had reported on plans for another theater that might have been the house that became the Forest: “Forest City, Ia. — J. M. Simmons will open a motion picture theater here.”
John H. Phillips, architect of the Bellevue Theatre, also designed the original building of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.
A history of the Acanthus Lodge of Masons has this to say about the building the Gem Theatre occupied:
“…a building was erected at 2706-2708 Beaver Avenue by Dr. L. H. Chamberlain, with Acanthus Lodge assuming a ten year lease on the entire second floor. The plans for this floor were in accordance with the requirements of the lodge. It was not until 1935 that the building was completed and the lodge was able to move. On March 4, 1935, the new hall was opened at 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon for a public reception.”
However, this item appeared in the Iowa “Changes in Ownership” column in the May 27, 1930, issue of The Film Daily: “Des Moines—Gem, sold to L. H. Chamberlain by Roy Jones.”
Chamberlain’s name appears in two items in The Film Daily in 1931, too, both saying that he was planning to build a $50,000 theater in Des Moines. I Haven’t found any later items about that project, so I don’t know if it was carried out. It’s possible that he had to put the project on hold until the economy improved, and that it was this house.
It’s also possible that the history of the Masonic Lodge, which has a 2013 copyright date, was mistaken about the building on Beaver Avenue having been entirely new in 1935, and that it was the Gem Theatre Chamberlain bought in 1930 rebuilt to accommodate the second floor lodge hall. The Acanthus Lodge moved to a new building in 1950, and the details of what happened in 1935 might have gotten muddled.
Three photos of the lobby of the Marcal Theatre can be seen on this page from the USC Digital Archive (click the thumbnails of the two additional photos in the right column of the page.) The photos were taken by the Dick Whittington Studio in 1932.
The 1924 release In Every Woman’s Life is advertised on the marquee of the Red Mill Theatre in this Frank Meline photo from the USC Digital Archive. The name Red Mill does not appear on the marquee or anywhere else on the building that I can see, but there is a big windmill on the roof of the auditorium. The theater was built in 1922, so was fairly new when this photo was taken.
Andrew: I believe the State opened as a two-a-day vaudeville house, and as such would not have needed an organ. Two-a-day houses all had fairly large orchestras. The State was operated by Loew’s for its first two years and was advertised as Loew’s State Theatre.
It’s possible that the Smith organ was installed not in the auditorium but in the lobby, to entertain patrons waiting for the show to begin. More than a few big theaters had lobby organs. The State might have had another organ installed in the auditorium at a later date, after movies became its primary fare.
Linkrot repair: this photo of the Laughlin Theatre is dated ca.1930 by the USC Digital Archive, but the movie advertised under the marquee is The Dangerous Moment, starring Carmel Myers, which was released in 1921. (Yes, this is the same photo we have on the Laughlin’s photo page, but the copy at the Archive can be zoomed really close.)
This postcard shows the Neptune Theatre in the background beyond the Merryland Arcade. It is postmarked July 7, 1913, so the photo was probably taken within two years or less of the theater’s opening.
The 1939 Dick Whittington photo of the Arrow Theatre from the USC Archive I linked to previously has gone missing. Let’s see if this link (which USC calls a reference url) will have some staying power.
As the only photo available is dated 1901 and shows the Auditorium Theatre, I’m not positive that the old building was not replaced at some point. The Auditorium looks to have been a frame structure with the entrance on the long side, which faced Lafayette Street. A very awkward configuration. It’s possible that it was rebuilt at some point, but I haven’t found any references to such an event.
I’ve set street view to match as nearly as possible the historic photo, rather than where the Auditorium actually was just down the block. If it was rebuilt, it’s possible that the Robey Theatre didn’t occupy exactly the same footprint. Both the Auditorium and the small City Building next to it have been demolished.
A History of Pleasants County, West Virginia, by Robert L. Pemberton, says that it was in early 1920 that “…the Auditorium was sold by W. C. Dotson to H. H. Robey of Spencer, who made it one of his chain of motion picture theaters.”
Three pages of historic photos of Muscatine theaters, including a 1940 shot of the original Palace, were published in Muscatine Magazine, issue of Winter, 2012.
I can’t find a direct link to the exact page the article starts on. It only opens to the cover of the magazine. Click the arrow to the right of the cover to turn the page three times to reach the theater article. Click on the image of the magazine itself to enlarge it.
Two photos of Schine’s Milford Theatre illustrate this advertisement for Heywood-Wakefield seating in the September 17, 1949, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review.
The Lyric Theatre in Osceola, Iowa, is mentioned in The Moving Picture World of August 24, 1918. If it was in the same building as the theater in the photo above then it must have been remodeled in the 1930s. It’s also possible that the Lyric got a new building in 1934. The September 8 issue of Motion Picture Herald said “JOHN WALLER is erecting a modern picture theatre in Osceola, Iowa. House will open in early fall.”
The theater description needs correction. This house was opened by Ludy Bosten as the Uptown Theatre on November 4, 1931. The January 7, 1971, issue of the Muscatine Journal said that the Uptown would be renamed Bosten Cinema within two weeks, and that the house was to be extensively remodeled. I haven’t found when it was renamed the Riviera, but it was still called the Bosten Cinema at least as late as November, 1977.
An article in the December 14, 2005, issue of The St. Mary’s Oracle mentions in passing “…the old Auditorium Theater (1902), later Robey Theater.”
The fourth photo on this web page shows the Auditorium Theatre behind the tiny City Building on the corner of Lafayette and Second Streets. The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists the Auditorium as a ground floor house with 290 seats on the main floor, 132 in the balcony, 225 in the gallery and 16 in the boxes. Presumably the gallery and boxes were abandoned when it was converted for movies.
The text accompanying the photo says: “The theatre was in use until about 1953 when the Illar family built a new theatre on the other side of the street at the other end of the same block to the right.” The new theater, called the Center, was actually opened by 1949, when it was featured in the the August 20 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review.
According to the town’s web site, its name is styled St. Marys, without an apostrophe.
This page of Showmen’s Trade Review for August 20, 1949, features six photos of the Miracle Theatre.
This page from Showmen’s Trade Review of August 20, 1949, features five photos of the RKO Orpheum Theatre in Marshalltown.
This web page, which has the date 7/28/04 at the bottom, has three thumbnails of the demolition of the Rand Theatre, but the full-sized pictures don’t open. A comment by Larry Chapman on the page has this information about the theater:
As can be seen in the second of the photos kencmcintyre linked to, dated 1983, the Rand Theatre was on the west side of Washington Street adjacent to the alley south of Lafayette Street. The theater’s site is now partly occupied by a drive-through portico for the a single-story brick building on the southwest corner of Lafayette.Google’s camera car didn’t photograph the location of the Lyric Theatre on its way through Greenfield, Ohio, but here is a bird’s-eye view from Bing Maps. There is still a painted sign on the corner of the building reading “Lyric, Always Good.”
The State Theatre was on the west side of Greenfield’s Courthouse Square. As I have no address for it, it might have been in one of the two surviving commercial buildings on the block, or it might have been under the footprint of Greenfield’s modern City Hall or the small parking lot next to it.
A brief history of Greenfield’s theaters can be found on this web page. When the Weil Theatre opened on November 1, 1946, Greenfield had two other theaters in operation: the State, which closed in 1948, and the Riley, which closed in 1953.
Allen and Linda Strahl, now operators of Greenfield’s nine-screen Legacy Cinema, should be credited with donating this theater for public use.
Bartstar: The new front of the Egyptian Theatre was installed in either late 1949 or early 1950. An article about the remodeling appeared in the March 4, 1950, issue of Boxoffice (first page and second page.) You might also be interested in the Egyptian Theatre street view timeline at Historic Hollywood Theatres.
My subscription to comments on this page got canceled when the site was redesigned a few years ago, so this is the first I’ve seen of the comments from JCL and Ian377.
The El Rey was gone by the time I first visited Paradise in the mid-1970s and had been replaced by the Pine Ridge Theatre on Foster Road, which is now a feed and pet supply store. The Drive-In was still there but had been converted into a swap meet (the remains have since been demolished and a health club has been built on the site.)
It was actually a long time before JCL arrived that the part of The Skyway north of the modern Neal Road intersection was part of Neal Road, but that’s how it is named on old maps. The Skyway from Neal Road to Chico wasn’t built until the early 1950s, and that’s when the section of Neal Road above the current intersection was renamed Skyway.
I’m not sure exactly where the old bowling alley on Skyway was. By the time I arrived the only bowling alley in town was on Clark Road north of Wagstaff, and that building is now gone (its roof collapsed after a heavy snowfall in the late 1980s) and the bowling alley has moved to a new building a few miles farther down Clark.
The old center of town runs from a short way south of Pearson Road northward to Elliott Road. I’m not sure if any of the buildings in that area could be the El Rey’s building remodeled beyond recognition or not. The chances that it is still standing are pretty slim, though.
The October 9, 1909, issue of The Film Index had this description of the Yorkville Hippodrome Theatre:
A history of Winnebago and Hancock Counties published in 1917 has a brief biography of Forest Secor which says he returned to the town of his birth (his father, Eugene Secor, was the first mayor of Forest City when it incorporated in 1878) in 1916 after having conducted a real estate business in Minnesota for some time, and bought the Forest Theatre.
The “Changes Over Iowa” column of The Moving Picture World, November 3, 1917, had this item:
I don’t know if this item from the February 3 issue of the same publication is about a second theater or if Mr. Secor changed the name of the house he bought after returning in 1916: “FOREST CITY, IA. — Park theater is now being conducted by Secor & Hewitt.”Forest City had an opera house which the February 26, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World reported had recently been destroyed by a fire. The 350-seat Forest City Opera House was on a list of theaters published in the September 5, 1908,issue of The Billboard. The Forest Theatre might have been built to replace the opera house after it burned, though in 1912 the MPW had reported on plans for another theater that might have been the house that became the Forest: “Forest City, Ia. — J. M. Simmons will open a motion picture theater here.”
John H. Phillips, architect of the Bellevue Theatre, also designed the original building of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.
A history of the Acanthus Lodge of Masons has this to say about the building the Gem Theatre occupied:
However, this item appeared in the Iowa “Changes in Ownership” column in the May 27, 1930, issue of The Film Daily: “Des Moines—Gem, sold to L. H. Chamberlain by Roy Jones.”Chamberlain’s name appears in two items in The Film Daily in 1931, too, both saying that he was planning to build a $50,000 theater in Des Moines. I Haven’t found any later items about that project, so I don’t know if it was carried out. It’s possible that he had to put the project on hold until the economy improved, and that it was this house.
It’s also possible that the history of the Masonic Lodge, which has a 2013 copyright date, was mistaken about the building on Beaver Avenue having been entirely new in 1935, and that it was the Gem Theatre Chamberlain bought in 1930 rebuilt to accommodate the second floor lodge hall. The Acanthus Lodge moved to a new building in 1950, and the details of what happened in 1935 might have gotten muddled.
Three photos of the lobby of the Marcal Theatre can be seen on this page from the USC Digital Archive (click the thumbnails of the two additional photos in the right column of the page.) The photos were taken by the Dick Whittington Studio in 1932.
The 1924 release In Every Woman’s Life is advertised on the marquee of the Red Mill Theatre in this Frank Meline photo from the USC Digital Archive. The name Red Mill does not appear on the marquee or anywhere else on the building that I can see, but there is a big windmill on the roof of the auditorium. The theater was built in 1922, so was fairly new when this photo was taken.
Andrew: I believe the State opened as a two-a-day vaudeville house, and as such would not have needed an organ. Two-a-day houses all had fairly large orchestras. The State was operated by Loew’s for its first two years and was advertised as Loew’s State Theatre.
It’s possible that the Smith organ was installed not in the auditorium but in the lobby, to entertain patrons waiting for the show to begin. More than a few big theaters had lobby organs. The State might have had another organ installed in the auditorium at a later date, after movies became its primary fare.
Linkrot repair: this photo of the Laughlin Theatre is dated ca.1930 by the USC Digital Archive, but the movie advertised under the marquee is The Dangerous Moment, starring Carmel Myers, which was released in 1921. (Yes, this is the same photo we have on the Laughlin’s photo page, but the copy at the Archive can be zoomed really close.)
This postcard shows the Neptune Theatre in the background beyond the Merryland Arcade. It is postmarked July 7, 1913, so the photo was probably taken within two years or less of the theater’s opening.
The 1939 Dick Whittington photo of the Arrow Theatre from the USC Archive I linked to previously has gone missing. Let’s see if this link (which USC calls a reference url) will have some staying power.
Water Winter Wonderland has a clearer photo of the Crescent Theatre here. The movies on the marquee date from 1928.