The July 24, 1956, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press had an article about Manistique’s theaters, and is says that the Oak Theatre was located on Maple Street. The Cedar Theatre, somewhat more reasonably, was located on Cedar Street. I don’t have an address, but I suspect that the Oak Theatre was located at or very near the corner of Oak Street, which is the only way the name would make sense.
The article also says that, until 1942, when it was bought by Mr. and Mrs. J. L. LeDuc, who had bought the Cedar Theatre in 1937, the Oak Theatre had been called the Gero Theatre.
The November 1, 1934, issue of the same paper said that Benjamin Gero had bought the Manistique Opera House in 1908, and had converted it into a full-time movie house in 1916, renaming it the Gero Theatre that year.
This page has a photo of the auditorium of the opera house and a photo of the exterior after it became the Gero Theatre.
An article in the February 22, 1972, issue of the Daily Press said that the town had been without an indoor theater since the Oak had closed in November, 1970. I haven’t been able to discover what became of the Oak Theatre’s building, but I suspect that it has been demolished. There’s nothing resembling it on Maple Street in Google street view.
The building has been remodeled again, now with a bland front, and it houses an animal hospital and a State Farm insurance agency. I would expect that the floor has been leveled, so there probably won’t be a theater here again. At least that appalling diagonal wood front from the 1970s is gone.
Among dozens of vintage photos on this web page are two shots of the Midcentury Modern Capri Theatre front of 1960, which the diagonal wood covered up later. I like Midcentury design, and the Capri was nicely done, but my personal preference would have been to see the original 1935 Streamline Modern facade preserved and restored. Hardly anybody valued Streamline Modern in 1960, though.
The five theaters listed at Green Bay in the 1939 Film Daily Yearbook included a 700-seat Grand Theatre. In 1940, the Grand vanishes and the 700-seat Packer appears. I suspect a name change.
The August 28, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that August 10 had been set as the tentative opening date of the New Grand Theatre in Green Bay. The “New Theaters” column of the September 25, 1915, issue of The Billboard says: “The Grand Theater, Green Bay, Wis., a new $75,000 moving picture house, has been opened.”
I haven’t been able to find any specific source saying that the Grand Theatre became the Packer, but neither have I found anything saying that a new theater was built in Green Bay in 1939 or 1940. A renovation and name change seems the most likely event.
The picturesque, cottage-like front the Majestic Theatre has in the old photo has been removed from the building, but I believe that part of the theater is still standing. It now has the address 121 over the door of the totally modernized front, but there is a setback above the entrance, beyond which you can see what was probably the end wall of the auditorium.
In the vintage photo, the end wall, which then had a checkerboard pattern, was taller than it is in modern street view. This makes me suspect that the change in seating capacity from 300 in the late 1920s to 450 by the mid-1930s might have been accomplished by extending the auditorium upward and installing a balcony. The upper part of the auditorium must have been removed, along with the picturesque front, when the building was converted to retail use.
This page at Facebook has four photos, including one showing the theater building when it still housed a livery stable.
Here is the exact text of the March 5, 1938, item from Motion Picture Herald I cited in my earlier comment:
“W. R. Vincent opened his new 499-seat De Pere theatre at De Pere, Wis., constructed in a building formerly a storage garage. Geniesse and Connell, Green Bay, Wis., were the architects. The new theatre gives Mr. Vincent six houses in Wisconsin. Incidentally, there are six theatres in De Pere, a town of 5,000, while Green Bay, just adjoining and a city of 28,000, also has six theatres.”
I now suspect that the item was mistaken. The 1938 Film Daily Yearbook lists six theaters at Green Bay, but only the 450-seat Majestic and the 370-seat Pearl at De Pere. The FDY, not always too accurate itself, didn’t get around to listing the De Pere Theatre until 1941, but the Pearl and Majestic were still both listed then, too, so De Pere had three theaters during that period (if the FDY is to be believed.) Green Bay dropped to five in 1939.
Well, duh. I forgot that this comment and this comment by CT member Pens on the Wayne Cinema page both say that the State Theatre was on Third Street. It replaced the Trainor Opera House, which was destroyed by fire in 1926, so it probably opened that year or in 1927. The State’s entrance building in the photo at Facebook looks 19th century, and might have been the Opera House entry as well. The Opera House was built by the IOOF in 1873.
I’ve come across two sources that say the State Theatre was on Third Street. This obituary of former manager Stockton Shafer says that it was on West Third, and the caption of this photo at Facebook just says Third Street. A commenter remembers seeing The Shining at the State, so it must have been in operation at least as late as 1975.
The 300-seat Majestic and the 400-seat Pearl were the only theaters listed for De Pere in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. By 1935, the Majestic was being listed with 450 seats.
A two-page article about the 1940 remodeling of the Empire Theatre appears in the April 27 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review. Here is a scan from the Internet Archive. There are photos from before and after the streamlining designed by architect Michael J. DeAngelis.
As much as I like DeAngelis’s work, I must say that in this case I wish he’d left more of the original detail in place. Tabor & Baxter’s design had some very nice features.
The September 7, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that the Schine circuit’s New Strand Theatre at Hudson Falls, New York, had opened over the weekend. It was not clear from the item whether this was an entirely new theater, or if Schine had simply taken over and renovated the older Strand Theatre.
I’ve now found the State Theatre mentioned in the September 14, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald. It was being operated by Chakeres Theatres at that time.
The February 13, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item about the Chalk Beeson Theatre:
“Dodge City, Kans.—Theater: 2 sty. & has. 70x75. $30M. Archt. R. A. Curtis, Reserve Bank bldg., Kansas City, Mo. Owner Merritt Beeson, Dodge City. Plans finished; owner will take bids on sub-contracts.”
Merritt L. Beeson operated this theater himself. On the occasion of his visit to Kansas City in 1916, the September 9 issue of The Moving Picture World called his house “…one of the most beautiful and picturesque moving picture theaters in the West….”
The Crown Theatre in Dodge City is on David & Noelle Soren’s list of known Boller Brothers theater designs as a 1923 project, with the aka Cooper Theatre.
In 1939, the Crown was one of three Dodge City houses (along with the Dodge and the Cozy) that co-hosted the world premier of the Warner Bros. film Dodge City. Star Errol Flynn and numerous other movie stars attended the event.
According to an article in the January 28, 1954, issue of the Hutchinson, Kansas News Herald, Fox Kansas Theatres operated the Crown under a lease from 1935 to 1949, at which time they sub-leased the house to Fox Plains Theatres which in turn sub-leased it to Glenn Cooper. It must have been at that time that it was renamed the Cooper Theatre. The Cooper Theatre was in operation at least as late as 1958.
An item in the July 3, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that the Sutherlin Theatre in Sutherlin, Oregon, had been sold to J, Higginbottom, so the Rand was not the town’s first movie theater. The 1927 Film Daily Yearbook lists a 300-seat Gem Theatre at Sutherlin. As the town was still quite small (1927 FDY lists the population as 515,) it is unlikely to have had two theaters, so the Sutherlin Theatre Mr. Higginbottom bought around the middle of the year was probably the same house as the Gem the FDY listed in January.
Here’s an example from the De Luxe Theatre at Hutchinson, Kansas, of old-school, local movie publicity, or “ballyhoo,” as the industry called it in those days, as reported in the July 24, 1923, issue of The Film Daily:
“Street Cars Boost ‘Souls’
“Hutchinson, Kans — The street car system of Hutchinson, was roped 100 percent, into helping exploit ‘Souls for Sale’ at the De Luxe. Each car on the system carried a four foot banner on the front fender.
“At a cost of $1.75 an hour an old street car was chartered and each side covered with a 24-sheet poster. The car was run through the city between the hours of 11 to 2, and from 5 to 8 the day before the opening and each day of the run.
“Cut-outs from the one-sheet were placed in 10 conspicuous windows; a shadow-box, 25 feet long, with lettering patterned after that on the six-sheet, was placed in front of the theater; a register was placed in the lobby in which girls who wished to receive a letter from Eleanor Boardman wrote their names.”
A Flickr album with eight photos showing the rough condition of the third floor space of the Johnson Hall Theatre can be found at this link. Mike Miclon, head of the Johanson Hall Performing Arts Center, was reported in the local newspaper last May saying that the organization intended to have the third-floor opera hall ready for full time operation within five years.
This articleposted at centralmaine.com on September 14 shows the auditorium set up with temporary seating for the first performance in three decades, a concert held last Saturday.
The November 23, 1994, issue of the Mineral County Independent-News, published at Hawthorne, Nevada, had a column prepared by the Nevada Historical Society which gave a brief biography of a Nevada pioneer named Henry Anderson. It says that “…he built the Wigwam Theatre Block on Second Street in downtown Reno in 1908-09….”
The Wigwam Theatre in Reno is mentioned in the February 13, 1910, issue of The San Francisco Call. At that time it was presenting live performances.
Here is a photo of the Wigwam Theatre which the University of Nevada dates to the period 1930-1948, but I think it’s more likely from 1924, the year the movie the stagecoach parked out front is promoting, The Iron Horse, was released.
The March 8, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had a couple of paragraphs about the T & D circuit’s theater in Reno, which had opened recently. I haven’t yet been able to establish a definite connection between the T&D house and the original Granada, but I suspect that they were the same theater. The T & D was reported to have 1,600 seats, and the original Granada certainly had a large enough footprint to accommodate that many. The only other candidate, the Majestic, was built in 1910.
This weblog post, mostly about the Majestic, says that the Granada opened in 1915 as the Rialto Theatre and was renamed the Granada in 1926. It might have been called the Rialto for a while, but all the first Turner & Dahnken houses in a given city that I’ve come across so far were originally called the T & D Theatre.
Here are the paragraphs about the unnamed T & D house at Reno from the 1916 article:
“The Reno, Nev., house of this concern, representing its first venture outside California, was opened a short time ago and has been doing an exceedingly heavy business ever since. The opening attraction was ‘The Ne'er-o-Well’ and at the opening performances the crowd could not be handled through the main entrance, necessitating the use of the exits. Governor Boyle, Mayor Byington and many men prominent in the political and commercial life of the State were present at the opening and brief speeches were made, the firm of Turner & Dahnken being represented by E. B. Johnson. Later a banquet was tendered by R. L. Fulton, of the Reno Amusement Company to the stockholders of the concern and the honored guests.
“This theater is the finest in the state of Nevada and was designed by architect George A. Ferris. It has a seating capacity of more than 1600, about one-third of the seats being in the balcony. Music is furnished by the magnificent organ which attracted so much attention last year in the Palace of Mines at the Exposition at San Francisco. The new house is under the management of R. G. Hunter, formerly of Vacaville, Calif.”
Architect George A. Ferris established his practice at Reno in 1906, and became one of the region’s leading architects, designing such landmarks as the El Cortez Hotel in Reno and the Governor’s mansion in Carson City, as well as a large number of the public schools in the region.
The article about the proposed T & D Theatre in Oakland that was published in the August 28, 1915, issue of the trade journal Motography is worth quoting in full, as this was one of the earliest of the immense movie palaces that proliferated in the 1910s and 1920s to be built.
“TURNER AND DAHNKEN OF FRISCO BUILDING NEW PICTURE THEATER
“The Turner and Dahnken Circuit of San Francisco has just completed arrangements for the immediate erection of a new theater in Oakland, to take the place of the Oakland Photo-Play, on which the lease will expire at an early date.
“A lease for 15 years has been secured on the property of the James K. Moffitt estate, southwest corner of Eleventh and Franklin streets, the lot being 100 feet on Franklin, and 175 feet on Eleventh street.
“For months, this concern has been negotiating for a site at Fourteenth and Franklin, and the change to the location secured came as a great surprise.
“Plans for a high-class motion picture theater are being prepared in the offices of Cunningham and Politeo, the architects who designed the Imperial and
Alcazar theaters in San Francisco.
“This house will be the largest and most modern on the Pacific Coast, with a seating capacity of 4,000.
“There will be but one balcony and no stairs, the balcony to be reached by inclined planes only. Between the main floor and the balcony a large mezzanine floor is to be arranged with reception rooms for ladies and gentlemen, ladies' dressing room, men’s smoking room and a nursery.
“The theater will be constructed exclusively for moving pictures, the stages and flies being eliminated. An organ that will cost not less than $25,000 will be installed, and the house will be built to accommodate this instrument.
“The operating room will be a model, built on the lower floor, thus giving a straight throw to the screen.
“The interior will be most modern, with special
attention paid to the lighting, heating and ventilating systems. Fresh air will be brought from above, cleansed and warmed and completely changed twelve times an hour.
“The foyers and lobby will be entirely of marble and tile. An innovation here will be checkrooms where hats, coats or bundles may be checked free.
“The auditorium will be wider in the rear than it
is in front, thus affording an unobstructed view of the screen from every seat and facilitating the planning of the aisles. The aisles will be bordered with white tile through which light will shine in sufficient intensity to enable patrons to see their way.
“The exterior is designed in modern art and reflects to a marked degree the influences of the Panama-Pacific Exposition in architecture. The front will be illuminated by indirect lights, producing a soft effect that will enhance the beauty of the designs and colors employed.”
Although as built the T & D Theatre had a seating capacity a bit less than the 4,000 reported in the article, I think the completed house had all the other advanced features originally proposed. The Strand Theatre on Broadway in New York City, opened in 1914, is considered by some theater historians to have been the first true movie palace, but the Strand also had one of the largest stages in New York. There might have been one or two theaters as large and palatial as the Oakland T & D that were built exclusively for movies as early as it was, but if so I don’t know about them.
Counting the number of lots up the block from Don’s Pizza (110 W. Washington) to the Police Department (entrance at 124 W. Washington, but also occupying the adjacent building at 122) I’d surmise that the correct address of the Owen Theatre is 120 W. Washington Street. Maybe Google Maps can find that, because the sure haven’t been able to find the Square.
A two-page article about the Richmond Theatre appeared in the September 7, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News. It featured before and after photos of the front and rear of the auditorium, showing the changes made during the recent renovation of the house. The project was designed by architect Harry A. Brandt.
The Bektash Temple and Capitol Theatre were designed by Manchester architect Chase Roy Witcher. Motion Picture News of February 27, 1925, said that bids would soon be taken for the $250,000 project. Construction proceeded slowly. The Temple was dedicated in October, 1926, and the theater went into operation in early 1927.
The NRHP Registration Form for the Hobart Downtown Historic District says that this house opened around 1930 as the Rialto Theatre. The timing, and the size of the building, suggest that it was this project noted in the April 10, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News:
“Bids were closed August 6 on the construction of a new theatre at Hobart, Okla., for the Griffith Amusement Co. of Oklahoma City. The plans call for a one story, basement, balcony and mezzanine. The building will be 50 by 150 feet. Harold Gimeno of Norman, Okla., is the architect.”
The Esquire building bears a very strong resemblance to the Sooner Theatre in Norman, also designed by Harold Gimeno.
The August 3, 1929, issue of Moving Picture News attributes the design of the State Theatre to the Boston architectural firm Hutchins & French. This weblog post at Cow Hampshire says that Hutchins & French are listed in John Eberson’s records, so there must have been some sort of collaboration. Possibly Hutchins & French acted as supervising architects.
The July 27, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News had this news about the original name of this theater:
“Theatre Named After
U’s ‘Show Boat’
“PHILADELPHIA, PA, July 25.—
Hunt’s ‘Show Boat’ Theatre, Ocean City, N. J., erected by Camp & Co., of Philadelphia, in record time of 64 working days, is probably the first theatre in the country to be named for a picture. While Universal’s talking triumph did not open the new house, it will be an early attraction there. The ‘Show Boat’ is a 2000-seat house designed by Ritter and Shay, Philadelphia architects. It is equipped with De Forest Phonofilm.”
The partnership of architects Verus T. Ritter and Howell L. Shay was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1936. The Show Boat is the only theater I’ve found listed among their projects.
The July 24, 1956, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press had an article about Manistique’s theaters, and is says that the Oak Theatre was located on Maple Street. The Cedar Theatre, somewhat more reasonably, was located on Cedar Street. I don’t have an address, but I suspect that the Oak Theatre was located at or very near the corner of Oak Street, which is the only way the name would make sense.
The article also says that, until 1942, when it was bought by Mr. and Mrs. J. L. LeDuc, who had bought the Cedar Theatre in 1937, the Oak Theatre had been called the Gero Theatre.
The November 1, 1934, issue of the same paper said that Benjamin Gero had bought the Manistique Opera House in 1908, and had converted it into a full-time movie house in 1916, renaming it the Gero Theatre that year.
This page has a photo of the auditorium of the opera house and a photo of the exterior after it became the Gero Theatre.
An article in the February 22, 1972, issue of the Daily Press said that the town had been without an indoor theater since the Oak had closed in November, 1970. I haven’t been able to discover what became of the Oak Theatre’s building, but I suspect that it has been demolished. There’s nothing resembling it on Maple Street in Google street view.
The building has been remodeled again, now with a bland front, and it houses an animal hospital and a State Farm insurance agency. I would expect that the floor has been leveled, so there probably won’t be a theater here again. At least that appalling diagonal wood front from the 1970s is gone.
Among dozens of vintage photos on this web page are two shots of the Midcentury Modern Capri Theatre front of 1960, which the diagonal wood covered up later. I like Midcentury design, and the Capri was nicely done, but my personal preference would have been to see the original 1935 Streamline Modern facade preserved and restored. Hardly anybody valued Streamline Modern in 1960, though.
The five theaters listed at Green Bay in the 1939 Film Daily Yearbook included a 700-seat Grand Theatre. In 1940, the Grand vanishes and the 700-seat Packer appears. I suspect a name change.
The August 28, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that August 10 had been set as the tentative opening date of the New Grand Theatre in Green Bay. The “New Theaters” column of the September 25, 1915, issue of The Billboard says: “The Grand Theater, Green Bay, Wis., a new $75,000 moving picture house, has been opened.”
I haven’t been able to find any specific source saying that the Grand Theatre became the Packer, but neither have I found anything saying that a new theater was built in Green Bay in 1939 or 1940. A renovation and name change seems the most likely event.
The picturesque, cottage-like front the Majestic Theatre has in the old photo has been removed from the building, but I believe that part of the theater is still standing. It now has the address 121 over the door of the totally modernized front, but there is a setback above the entrance, beyond which you can see what was probably the end wall of the auditorium.
In the vintage photo, the end wall, which then had a checkerboard pattern, was taller than it is in modern street view. This makes me suspect that the change in seating capacity from 300 in the late 1920s to 450 by the mid-1930s might have been accomplished by extending the auditorium upward and installing a balcony. The upper part of the auditorium must have been removed, along with the picturesque front, when the building was converted to retail use.
This page at Facebook has four photos, including one showing the theater building when it still housed a livery stable.
Here is the exact text of the March 5, 1938, item from Motion Picture Herald I cited in my earlier comment:
I now suspect that the item was mistaken. The 1938 Film Daily Yearbook lists six theaters at Green Bay, but only the 450-seat Majestic and the 370-seat Pearl at De Pere. The FDY, not always too accurate itself, didn’t get around to listing the De Pere Theatre until 1941, but the Pearl and Majestic were still both listed then, too, so De Pere had three theaters during that period (if the FDY is to be believed.) Green Bay dropped to five in 1939.Well, duh. I forgot that this comment and this comment by CT member Pens on the Wayne Cinema page both say that the State Theatre was on Third Street. It replaced the Trainor Opera House, which was destroyed by fire in 1926, so it probably opened that year or in 1927. The State’s entrance building in the photo at Facebook looks 19th century, and might have been the Opera House entry as well. The Opera House was built by the IOOF in 1873.
I’ve come across two sources that say the State Theatre was on Third Street. This obituary of former manager Stockton Shafer says that it was on West Third, and the caption of this photo at Facebook just says Third Street. A commenter remembers seeing The Shining at the State, so it must have been in operation at least as late as 1975.
The 300-seat Majestic and the 400-seat Pearl were the only theaters listed for De Pere in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. By 1935, the Majestic was being listed with 450 seats.
A two-page article about the 1940 remodeling of the Empire Theatre appears in the April 27 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review. Here is a scan from the Internet Archive. There are photos from before and after the streamlining designed by architect Michael J. DeAngelis.
As much as I like DeAngelis’s work, I must say that in this case I wish he’d left more of the original detail in place. Tabor & Baxter’s design had some very nice features.
The September 7, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that the Schine circuit’s New Strand Theatre at Hudson Falls, New York, had opened over the weekend. It was not clear from the item whether this was an entirely new theater, or if Schine had simply taken over and renovated the older Strand Theatre.
I’ve now found the State Theatre mentioned in the September 14, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald. It was being operated by Chakeres Theatres at that time.
The February 13, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item about the Chalk Beeson Theatre:
Merritt L. Beeson operated this theater himself. On the occasion of his visit to Kansas City in 1916, the September 9 issue of The Moving Picture World called his house “…one of the most beautiful and picturesque moving picture theaters in the West….”The Crown Theatre in Dodge City is on David & Noelle Soren’s list of known Boller Brothers theater designs as a 1923 project, with the aka Cooper Theatre.
In 1939, the Crown was one of three Dodge City houses (along with the Dodge and the Cozy) that co-hosted the world premier of the Warner Bros. film Dodge City. Star Errol Flynn and numerous other movie stars attended the event.
According to an article in the January 28, 1954, issue of the Hutchinson, Kansas News Herald, Fox Kansas Theatres operated the Crown under a lease from 1935 to 1949, at which time they sub-leased the house to Fox Plains Theatres which in turn sub-leased it to Glenn Cooper. It must have been at that time that it was renamed the Cooper Theatre. The Cooper Theatre was in operation at least as late as 1958.
An item in the July 3, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that the Sutherlin Theatre in Sutherlin, Oregon, had been sold to J, Higginbottom, so the Rand was not the town’s first movie theater. The 1927 Film Daily Yearbook lists a 300-seat Gem Theatre at Sutherlin. As the town was still quite small (1927 FDY lists the population as 515,) it is unlikely to have had two theaters, so the Sutherlin Theatre Mr. Higginbottom bought around the middle of the year was probably the same house as the Gem the FDY listed in January.
Here’s an example from the De Luxe Theatre at Hutchinson, Kansas, of old-school, local movie publicity, or “ballyhoo,” as the industry called it in those days, as reported in the July 24, 1923, issue of The Film Daily:
A Flickr album with eight photos showing the rough condition of the third floor space of the Johnson Hall Theatre can be found at this link. Mike Miclon, head of the Johanson Hall Performing Arts Center, was reported in the local newspaper last May saying that the organization intended to have the third-floor opera hall ready for full time operation within five years.
This articleposted at centralmaine.com on September 14 shows the auditorium set up with temporary seating for the first performance in three decades, a concert held last Saturday.
The November 23, 1994, issue of the Mineral County Independent-News, published at Hawthorne, Nevada, had a column prepared by the Nevada Historical Society which gave a brief biography of a Nevada pioneer named Henry Anderson. It says that “…he built the Wigwam Theatre Block on Second Street in downtown Reno in 1908-09….”
The Wigwam Theatre in Reno is mentioned in the February 13, 1910, issue of The San Francisco Call. At that time it was presenting live performances.
Here is a photo of the Wigwam Theatre which the University of Nevada dates to the period 1930-1948, but I think it’s more likely from 1924, the year the movie the stagecoach parked out front is promoting, The Iron Horse, was released.
The March 8, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had a couple of paragraphs about the T & D circuit’s theater in Reno, which had opened recently. I haven’t yet been able to establish a definite connection between the T&D house and the original Granada, but I suspect that they were the same theater. The T & D was reported to have 1,600 seats, and the original Granada certainly had a large enough footprint to accommodate that many. The only other candidate, the Majestic, was built in 1910.
This weblog post, mostly about the Majestic, says that the Granada opened in 1915 as the Rialto Theatre and was renamed the Granada in 1926. It might have been called the Rialto for a while, but all the first Turner & Dahnken houses in a given city that I’ve come across so far were originally called the T & D Theatre.
Here are the paragraphs about the unnamed T & D house at Reno from the 1916 article:
Architect George A. Ferris established his practice at Reno in 1906, and became one of the region’s leading architects, designing such landmarks as the El Cortez Hotel in Reno and the Governor’s mansion in Carson City, as well as a large number of the public schools in the region.The article about the proposed T & D Theatre in Oakland that was published in the August 28, 1915, issue of the trade journal Motography is worth quoting in full, as this was one of the earliest of the immense movie palaces that proliferated in the 1910s and 1920s to be built.
Although as built the T & D Theatre had a seating capacity a bit less than the 4,000 reported in the article, I think the completed house had all the other advanced features originally proposed. The Strand Theatre on Broadway in New York City, opened in 1914, is considered by some theater historians to have been the first true movie palace, but the Strand also had one of the largest stages in New York. There might have been one or two theaters as large and palatial as the Oakland T & D that were built exclusively for movies as early as it was, but if so I don’t know about them.Counting the number of lots up the block from Don’s Pizza (110 W. Washington) to the Police Department (entrance at 124 W. Washington, but also occupying the adjacent building at 122) I’d surmise that the correct address of the Owen Theatre is 120 W. Washington Street. Maybe Google Maps can find that, because the sure haven’t been able to find the Square.
A two-page article about the Richmond Theatre appeared in the September 7, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News. It featured before and after photos of the front and rear of the auditorium, showing the changes made during the recent renovation of the house. The project was designed by architect Harry A. Brandt.
The Bektash Temple and Capitol Theatre were designed by Manchester architect Chase Roy Witcher. Motion Picture News of February 27, 1925, said that bids would soon be taken for the $250,000 project. Construction proceeded slowly. The Temple was dedicated in October, 1926, and the theater went into operation in early 1927.
The NRHP Registration Form for the Hobart Downtown Historic District says that this house opened around 1930 as the Rialto Theatre. The timing, and the size of the building, suggest that it was this project noted in the April 10, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News:
The Esquire building bears a very strong resemblance to the Sooner Theatre in Norman, also designed by Harold Gimeno.The August 3, 1929, issue of Moving Picture News attributes the design of the State Theatre to the Boston architectural firm Hutchins & French. This weblog post at Cow Hampshire says that Hutchins & French are listed in John Eberson’s records, so there must have been some sort of collaboration. Possibly Hutchins & French acted as supervising architects.
The July 27, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News had this news about the original name of this theater:
The partnership of architects Verus T. Ritter and Howell L. Shay was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1936. The Show Boat is the only theater I’ve found listed among their projects.