So far I’ve found that, along with the Antique, the Wonderland and Lyric were still in operation in 1916, and that all three were then owned by the Papayanakos brothers, who went on to long careers as exhibitors in the upstate region.
The Temple Theatre was advertised in the Cortland Standard at least as early as 1912. It was one of two theaters in Cortland, the other being the Cortland Theatre, which was most likely the former Cortland Opera House, which was in operation by 1900.
In 1919, the Temple was operated by D. S. Burnham who, according to the July 12 issue of The Billboard, had just taken over the Cortland Theatre from the Dillon Brothers.
The Temple was being advertised in the local newspaper as Schine’s Temple Theatre by April, 1933, but the Schine name had not yet appeared in the ads for the house in March, 1932.
Can you tell me if I was correct in my guess that the Berwan Theatre was on the triangle between Euclid, Maple, and Clark Streets? Or better still, do you know the theater’s exact address?
The Little Theatre was older than we thought, and might have operated under yet another name prior to being the Europa. All I’ve found is this line from the April, 1912, issue of Motography: “Plans have been prepared by A. L. Forrest, architect, for a new theater to be erected at 523 Howard street, Baltimore.”
The August 21, 1909, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror said that there were five movie houses at Watertown, all doing well. They were the Antique, the Bijou, the Lyric, the Star, and the Wonderland.
The Neff Opera House was built in 1880, construction beginning on April 28, according to an article in the March 23, 1944, issue of the Amsterdam Evening Recorder. The theater suffered a major fire in 1896, which the May 22 issue of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported had done $30,000 of damage, with $5,000 dollars damage to the adjacent Warner Hotel.
Leon H. Lempert was designing theater auditoriums as early as 1880, though he billed himself as a scenic artist rather than an architect, but he didn’t establish his architectural firm until 1885, so I don’t know if he designed the Neff Opera House of 1880, its replacement of 1896, or both. He must have designed the rebuilding at least, or it wouldn’t have been on his 1906 list.
The Opera House was closed in 1925 and converted into space for M. Lurie’s Department Store. It had last been operated by the Keith circuit, and was apparently last called the Amsterdam Theatre. An article about the project appeared in the May 1, 1925, issue of the Amsterdam Evening Recorder:
“REMODELING OF OLD OPERA HOUSE
“Lurie Company Begin Reconstruction of Building of Which It Has Long Lease.
“Contractor McGibbon today began tearing out the interior of the Amsterdam theatre, the old opera house on East Main street which will be remodeled into a department store for M. Lurie & Co. The Keith interests, lessees for several years, this morning turned over their lease to the Luries, who about a year ago secured a lease from the McClumpha estate for 50 years. This lease includes the entire building, Warner hotel, theatre and stores, the occupants of which have since been the tenants of the Luries, now located on the corner of East Main and Railroad streets in the Corey building, over the ownership of which there has been much litigation between Edward C. Klapp and Mrs. Catherine Dealy.
“The last decision of the courts in this matter declared that lease issued to the Luries by Mrs. Dealy to be void. At the time that they leased the McClumpha building it was stated that eventually they would remodel it for a store on a larger scale than their present building, and it is this work that is now in progress.”Vintage photos of the Warner Hotel and Opera House Block show a four story building in the Second Empire style, with the fourth floor under a mansard. The Opera House abutted the hotel, which was on the corner of Hamilton Street, but the modern building on the Opera House site does not (the hotel building has lost its fourth floor but is still there.) The modern building is not deep enough to have housed the theater, so the auditorium at least, and probably the entrance building as well, has been demolished.
Here is an item from the February 27, 1915, issue of The American Contractor:
“Elmira, N. Y.—Theater: Archt. Harry S. Bair, Vandergrift bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner Strand Theater, Elmira. Plans in progress.”
An issue of Variety later that year said that ground had been broken for the Strand Theatre at Elmira on March 15, and that the house was expected to open by September 1.
A solicitation of bids for construction of the Corning Opera House was published in the March 26, 1891, issue of the Corning Journal. In an article about Rose Coghlan in the December 5, 1918, issue of the Corning Evening Leader the actress reminisced about her first appearance on the stage of the Opera House on October 8, 1891, saying that the theater was “very new” at the time. The theater must have opened in the fall of 1891.
A book published in 1902 describes the Town Hall and Opera House in Lowville, built in 1899 and designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son:
“THE NEW TOWN HALL.
“This building was built at the expense of the town by virtue of a special act of the legislature, and a large majority vote of the electors of the town, in 1899, at a cost of about $25,000. By virtue of said act of the legislature the management was vested in the town board, consisting of Ira Sharp, supervisor, W. H. Egleton, Jay C. Bardo, L. B. Searls and Frank E. Groodell, justices of the peace, and a committee consisting of George Sherwood, Charles S. Mereness, E. S. K. Merrell, Eugene Arthur and Julian H. Wood.
“The building is constructed so as to be used for
town hall and opera house purposes. It is said to be one of the best opera houses in this section of the country. It has a seating capacity of about 1,000. It is built of brick of various colors. The scenery and stage are fine, and has grand electric illumination. It is in the interior one of the most beautifully finished buildings in Northern New York, and furnishes a place for fun, entertainment, pleasure and instruction.”
The facade of the building above the first floor appears to still be pretty much as Lempert designed it, but the interior was completely remodeled by Michael DeAngelis in 1949, along with the ground floor exterior. Here is a fresh link to the December 3, 1949, Boxoffice article about the remodeling, to replace the dead link in one of my earlier comments.
The Amsterdam Opera House is on a list of theaters designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 Cahn guide. I haven’t been able to establish a time line for it, but the theater was in operation by 1892 and the building had been converted into a department store by the late 1930s.
There are some photos of the Sampson Theatre on this web page, along with a speculative computer rendering of what the interior might have looked like (no period photos or drawings of the interior are known to survive.) The Sampson Theatre opened on October 12, 1910, and was designed by its owner, Dr. Frank Sampson, with local architect Frank Harrison serving as consultant. The original seating capacity was over 900.
The page has links to three news items, two from 1910 and one from 1984, and to a “Photo tour” section which has photos from 2007, when some rehabilitation work was going on. There is also a rough floor plan showing the original seating configuration.
The Sampson Theatre was the successor to the Sheppard Opera House, aka Yates Lyceum, located nearby, which opened in 1890 and was destroyed by a fire in 1907.
This PDF file has scans of what appear to be photocopies of drawings, plans, and photos of, and text about, the City Opera House, taken from various period sources.
Information about the house in the file includes the fact that it opened on January 4, 1886; that the architect of the building was John W. Griffin, of Watertown; and that the auditorium and stage sets were designed by Leon H. Lempert, who is credited as a “Scenic Designer.” In 1884, Lempert had received a patent on a design for auditorium floors that greatly improved sight lines over previous designs, which is illustrated in the file.
This web page, which is where I found the PDF, has extensive information about early theaters in Buffalo, along with a section about Leon H. Lempert & Son. There are links to quite a few other PDFs which I haven’t examined yet.
Although Lempert had designed several auditoriums prior to 1885, it wasn’t until that year that he founded his own architectural firm. Lempert, Jr. joined the firm in 1891. Lempert, Sr. semi-retired in 1906, and died in 1909. The Avon should be attributed to Leon H. Lempert, Sr.
Levine is a fairly common surname, so there were probably other stores called Levine’s around the country that were unrelated to the Texas chain. A store called Levine’s located next door to a theater operated by Levine Theatrical Enterprises might even have been a coincidence.
“The Grand, Johnstown, N. Y., is to be remodeled into a modern theatre, with the seating capacity increased 400, while all new dressing rooms will be built.”
I suspect that the house was renamed the New Grand following this 1916 remodeling. The addition of “New” to a theater’s name was fairly common after a major remodeling.
The Grand Opera House in Johnstown is on a list of theaters designed by the Rochester firm Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 edition of the Cahn guide. A History of Fulton County published in 1892 also attributes the design to Leon H. Lempert.
The theater already advertised itself as the Grand Opera House in the July 28, 1890, issue of The Daily Republican, the year after it opened. It’s likely that it was never called the Johnstown Opera House. This is the text of an advertisement that appeared in multiple issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror in the summer of 1889:
“JOHNSTOWN, N Y. NEW GRAND OPERA HOUSE.
“TO THE PROFESSION.
“The new and elegant ground-floor Opera House now being
built at Johnstown, N. Y., will be one of the handsomest and most complete theatres in the State, will be ready for business about Oct. 10th, and will play first class attractions only. Johnstown now numbers about 10,000 inhabitants and is certainly one of the best show towns in the State, situated 40 miles west of Albany and Troy. The designing and building of our new house has been placed in the hands of Leon N. Lempert, of Rochester, N. Y., which is sufficient guarantee of its being first-class in every respect. The house will be furnished with all modern improvements. Electric Lighting, Gas, Electric Spark, Electric Call Bells, Speaking Tubes, 12 Large Dressing Rooms, 17 sets of Scenery, large number of Set Pieces; Stage 41 by 64 feet, full set of traps; 41 feet from Stage to Fly Gallery; 42 feet between Fly Galleries; 4 elegant Boxes, Orchestra Circle, Dress Circle, Balcony and Gallery, elegant Opera Chairs. Seating capacity 1,200. Ventilation good. Heated by steam. We can play any attraction on the road to first-class business. No passes to stockholders or city officers. Wanted—A Good Attraction for the opening for two or three nights on a certainty. Address C. H. BALL, Secy.”
This is the report from the January 7, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News on the destruction by fire of Smalley’s Theatre in Johnstown, New York:
“Fire Destroys Smalley’s Johnstown House
“Smalley’s theatre in Johnstown, N. Y., operated by William Smalley, of Cooperstown, owner of a chain of a dozen or more motion picture theatres, in New York state, was burned to the ground on the afternoon of January 1, with the resultant loss of over $200,000. The fire was one of the most spectacular in many months in the Mohawk Valley. Firemen from both Johnstown and Gloversville fought the blaze for three hours or more with zero temperature prevailing. The blaze is thought to have originated from a defective pipe in the boiler room. It was discovered about one-half hour before the matinee. The fire was then working its way through the floor and the crackling was noticed by the janitor and the house electrician, the only two persons who were in the theatre at the time.
“The theatre was built in 1889 and was being operated by Mr. Smalley under a twenty-year lease. There was over 11,000 feet of film stored in the booth and this added impetus to the flames as they swept upward and through the building. Adjoining structures were also damaged.”
Although the report says that the house was burned to the ground, the front section of the building must have survived. The building now at this address is in the Queen Anne style, popular in the 1870s and 1880s. This web page has a photo of Smalley’s that must have dated from before the fire, as it shows the building with four bay windows across the front instead of the three it now has. The site of the demolished bay, which was occupied by the theater’s entrance, is now occupied by an alley.
It’s likely that the original auditorium of the theater was completely destroyed by the fire, but the facade in the vintage photo is clearly the same one that is still partly intact. However, Google’s satellite view shows that a parking lot has replaced the theater’s auditorium. The awkward placement of the four bays seen in the vintage photo suggests that the original theater was built behind an existing structure, and the fourth bay was added to accommodate the theater entrance at that time. The new auditorium must have occupied the same spot, but it too has now been demolished.
I think that the Smalley’s Theatre destroyed in 1928 was the former Johnstown Opera House/Grand Opera House, just as the page with the vintage photo says it was. The MPN article says that Smalley’s had been built in 1889, which is the right time for it to have been the Opera house. The original Opera House was designed by Leon H. Lempert, but I haven’t been able to discover who designed Smalley’s New Johnstown Theatre which replaced it.
The City Opera House at Watertown is on a list of theaters designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 edition of the Cahn guide.
This web page has an early postcard of the City Opera House, a three-story brick building with a fourth floor mansard in the style popular when it was built around 1885.
The Darling Theatre in Gloversville was on a list of theaters designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 edition of the Cahn guide.
There is a photo of the Darling Theatre on page 103 of Gloversville, by Lewis G. Decker (Google Books preview.) The text says the Darling was located on Elm Street opposite Middle Street.
The Darling Theatre was showing movies at least as early as April, 1913, when this item appeared in The Moving Picture World:
“Several Massachusetts exhibitors are leaving that territory, to try their fortune in New York State. W. 0. Youngsou, formerly manager of the Bijou Theater, North Adams, Mass., has formed a partnership with Lewis J. Cody, and William C. O'Brien who sometime ago was in charge of the Bijou. The Darling Theater of Gloversville. N. Y.. has been leased by the new concern. Mr. O'Brien has lately been in charge of the Emily Theater, of Gloversville, but has now resigned in order to guide the Darling Theater.”
Mary Lou Widmer’s New Orleans in the Thirties says that the Carrollton Theatre opened in 1936, replacing an earlier house of the same name that had burned in 1935. The original Carrollton was in operation by 1916, when it was mentioned in the February 26 issue of The Moving Picture World.
The Capitol was demolished in 1928 and replaced by the Pekin Theatre. Despite their different addresses, the Capitol’s lot became part of the larger Pekin Theatre’s site.
A souvenir booklet called The Pekin Centenary published in 1949 says that the Capitol Theatre was originally the Turner Opera House, and was later renamed the Standard Theatre before becoming the Capitol, operated by a Mrs. Anna Fluegel. The booklet also reveals the fate of the Capitol:
“In 1928, Mrs. Fluegel caused the Capitol theater (the old opera house building) to be razed and she erected the present $250,000 Pekin theater building, constructed in the Chinese motif.”
The Standard itself had been rebuilt in 1913, as noted in this item from the October 18 issue of The Moving Picture World:
“O. W. Frederick, whom I saw at the Illinois convention in Peoria, is building a new theater in Pekin, Ill., which he expects will be finished in time for Thanksgiving opening. This theater, the old Standard of Pekin, will be all new except the walls when completed. It will seat 600 people and the cost of remodeling and re-equipment, etc., will be $24,000. O. W. Frederick is one of the members of the grievance committee formed at the Peoria convention.”
The Turner Opera House was built in 1890. It had been renamed the Standard Theatre by 1908, when the Cahn guide listed it as a ground-floor house with 736 seats.
The Patio’s web site says the house is closed this Monday, but it has show times listed for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. No reason is given for the Monday closing.
high_performance_76 is correct about the 1932 reopening of the Alden Theatre as a movie house. An item in the “Satety Harbor” column of the April 20, 1932, issue of the St.Petersburg Evening Independent says that the Alden Theatre was to reopen on May 2. The house had not shown movies for two years. An April 1 item in the same paper indicated that the house had never been equipped for sound.
The theater had not been entirely dark for the entire two years though. It hosted at least a few live events. The March 19 St. Petersburg Times said that a “good crowd” had attended a performance of the Chick Dramatic Company at the Alden Theatre the previous Tuesday. The December 23 issue of the Evening Independent reported a benefit at the Alden featuring a “…Biblical topic…illustrated by slides….” followed by musical selections and specialties by local talent. A play put on by the local chapter of the Eastern Star drew a full house at the Alden, according to the March 2, 1931, Evening Independent. A number of other such events were reported by the newspapers during this period.
So far I’ve found that, along with the Antique, the Wonderland and Lyric were still in operation in 1916, and that all three were then owned by the Papayanakos brothers, who went on to long careers as exhibitors in the upstate region.
The Temple Theatre was advertised in the Cortland Standard at least as early as 1912. It was one of two theaters in Cortland, the other being the Cortland Theatre, which was most likely the former Cortland Opera House, which was in operation by 1900.
In 1919, the Temple was operated by D. S. Burnham who, according to the July 12 issue of The Billboard, had just taken over the Cortland Theatre from the Dillon Brothers.
The Temple was being advertised in the local newspaper as Schine’s Temple Theatre by April, 1933, but the Schine name had not yet appeared in the ads for the house in March, 1932.
The December 1, 1930, issue of the Cortland Standard had an ad saying that the grand opening of Schine’s State Theatre would take place on December 4.
Hello, Ferretman.
Can you tell me if I was correct in my guess that the Berwan Theatre was on the triangle between Euclid, Maple, and Clark Streets? Or better still, do you know the theater’s exact address?
The Little Theatre was older than we thought, and might have operated under yet another name prior to being the Europa. All I’ve found is this line from the April, 1912, issue of Motography: “Plans have been prepared by A. L. Forrest, architect, for a new theater to be erected at 523 Howard street, Baltimore.”
The August 21, 1909, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror said that there were five movie houses at Watertown, all doing well. They were the Antique, the Bijou, the Lyric, the Star, and the Wonderland.
The Neff Opera House was built in 1880, construction beginning on April 28, according to an article in the March 23, 1944, issue of the Amsterdam Evening Recorder. The theater suffered a major fire in 1896, which the May 22 issue of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported had done $30,000 of damage, with $5,000 dollars damage to the adjacent Warner Hotel.
Leon H. Lempert was designing theater auditoriums as early as 1880, though he billed himself as a scenic artist rather than an architect, but he didn’t establish his architectural firm until 1885, so I don’t know if he designed the Neff Opera House of 1880, its replacement of 1896, or both. He must have designed the rebuilding at least, or it wouldn’t have been on his 1906 list.
The Opera House was closed in 1925 and converted into space for M. Lurie’s Department Store. It had last been operated by the Keith circuit, and was apparently last called the Amsterdam Theatre. An article about the project appeared in the May 1, 1925, issue of theAmsterdam Evening Recorder:
“Lurie Company Begin Reconstruction of Building of Which It Has Long Lease.
“Contractor McGibbon today began tearing out the interior of the Amsterdam theatre, the old opera house on East Main street which will be remodeled into a department store for M. Lurie & Co. The Keith interests, lessees for several years, this morning turned over their lease to the Luries, who about a year ago secured a lease from the McClumpha estate for 50 years. This lease includes the entire building, Warner hotel, theatre and stores, the occupants of which have since been the tenants of the Luries, now located on the corner of East Main and Railroad streets in the Corey building, over the ownership of which there has been much litigation between Edward C. Klapp and Mrs. Catherine Dealy.
“The last decision of the courts in this matter declared that lease issued to the Luries by Mrs. Dealy to be void. At the time that they leased the McClumpha building it was stated that eventually they would remodel it for a store on a larger scale than their present building, and it is this work that is now in progress.”Vintage photos of the Warner Hotel and Opera House Block show a four story building in the Second Empire style, with the fourth floor under a mansard. The Opera House abutted the hotel, which was on the corner of Hamilton Street, but the modern building on the Opera House site does not (the hotel building has lost its fourth floor but is still there.) The modern building is not deep enough to have housed the theater, so the auditorium at least, and probably the entrance building as well, has been demolished.
Here is an item from the February 27, 1915, issue of The American Contractor:
An issue of Variety later that year said that ground had been broken for the Strand Theatre at Elmira on March 15, and that the house was expected to open by September 1.The Van Curler Opera House is on a list of theaters designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 Cahn guide.
A solicitation of bids for construction of the Corning Opera House was published in the March 26, 1891, issue of the Corning Journal. In an article about Rose Coghlan in the December 5, 1918, issue of the Corning Evening Leader the actress reminisced about her first appearance on the stage of the Opera House on October 8, 1891, saying that the theater was “very new” at the time. The theater must have opened in the fall of 1891.
A book published in 1902 describes the Town Hall and Opera House in Lowville, built in 1899 and designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son:
The facade of the building above the first floor appears to still be pretty much as Lempert designed it, but the interior was completely remodeled by Michael DeAngelis in 1949, along with the ground floor exterior. Here is a fresh link to the December 3, 1949, Boxoffice article about the remodeling, to replace the dead link in one of my earlier comments.The Amsterdam Opera House is on a list of theaters designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 Cahn guide. I haven’t been able to establish a time line for it, but the theater was in operation by 1892 and the building had been converted into a department store by the late 1930s.
There are some photos of the Sampson Theatre on this web page, along with a speculative computer rendering of what the interior might have looked like (no period photos or drawings of the interior are known to survive.) The Sampson Theatre opened on October 12, 1910, and was designed by its owner, Dr. Frank Sampson, with local architect Frank Harrison serving as consultant. The original seating capacity was over 900.
The page has links to three news items, two from 1910 and one from 1984, and to a “Photo tour” section which has photos from 2007, when some rehabilitation work was going on. There is also a rough floor plan showing the original seating configuration.
The Sampson Theatre was the successor to the Sheppard Opera House, aka Yates Lyceum, located nearby, which opened in 1890 and was destroyed by a fire in 1907.
Items in various issues of The American Contractor in late 1913 reveal that the Strand Theatre was designed by Leon H. Lempert, Jr.
This PDF file has scans of what appear to be photocopies of drawings, plans, and photos of, and text about, the City Opera House, taken from various period sources.
Information about the house in the file includes the fact that it opened on January 4, 1886; that the architect of the building was John W. Griffin, of Watertown; and that the auditorium and stage sets were designed by Leon H. Lempert, who is credited as a “Scenic Designer.” In 1884, Lempert had received a patent on a design for auditorium floors that greatly improved sight lines over previous designs, which is illustrated in the file.
This web page, which is where I found the PDF, has extensive information about early theaters in Buffalo, along with a section about Leon H. Lempert & Son. There are links to quite a few other PDFs which I haven’t examined yet.
Although Lempert had designed several auditoriums prior to 1885, it wasn’t until that year that he founded his own architectural firm. Lempert, Jr. joined the firm in 1891. Lempert, Sr. semi-retired in 1906, and died in 1909. The Avon should be attributed to Leon H. Lempert, Sr.
Levine is a fairly common surname, so there were probably other stores called Levine’s around the country that were unrelated to the Texas chain. A store called Levine’s located next door to a theater operated by Levine Theatrical Enterprises might even have been a coincidence.
Variety of June 2, 1916, had this item:
I suspect that the house was renamed the New Grand following this 1916 remodeling. The addition of “New” to a theater’s name was fairly common after a major remodeling.The Grand Opera House in Johnstown is on a list of theaters designed by the Rochester firm Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 edition of the Cahn guide. A History of Fulton County published in 1892 also attributes the design to Leon H. Lempert.
The theater already advertised itself as the Grand Opera House in the July 28, 1890, issue of The Daily Republican, the year after it opened. It’s likely that it was never called the Johnstown Opera House. This is the text of an advertisement that appeared in multiple issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror in the summer of 1889:
This is the report from the January 7, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News on the destruction by fire of Smalley’s Theatre in Johnstown, New York:
Although the report says that the house was burned to the ground, the front section of the building must have survived. The building now at this address is in the Queen Anne style, popular in the 1870s and 1880s. This web page has a photo of Smalley’s that must have dated from before the fire, as it shows the building with four bay windows across the front instead of the three it now has. The site of the demolished bay, which was occupied by the theater’s entrance, is now occupied by an alley.It’s likely that the original auditorium of the theater was completely destroyed by the fire, but the facade in the vintage photo is clearly the same one that is still partly intact. However, Google’s satellite view shows that a parking lot has replaced the theater’s auditorium. The awkward placement of the four bays seen in the vintage photo suggests that the original theater was built behind an existing structure, and the fourth bay was added to accommodate the theater entrance at that time. The new auditorium must have occupied the same spot, but it too has now been demolished.
I think that the Smalley’s Theatre destroyed in 1928 was the former Johnstown Opera House/Grand Opera House, just as the page with the vintage photo says it was. The MPN article says that Smalley’s had been built in 1889, which is the right time for it to have been the Opera house. The original Opera House was designed by Leon H. Lempert, but I haven’t been able to discover who designed Smalley’s New Johnstown Theatre which replaced it.
The City Opera House at Watertown is on a list of theaters designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 edition of the Cahn guide.
This web page has an early postcard of the City Opera House, a three-story brick building with a fourth floor mansard in the style popular when it was built around 1885.
The Darling Theatre in Gloversville was on a list of theaters designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son that was published in the 1906-1907 edition of the Cahn guide.
There is a photo of the Darling Theatre on page 103 of Gloversville, by Lewis G. Decker (Google Books preview.) The text says the Darling was located on Elm Street opposite Middle Street.
The Darling Theatre was showing movies at least as early as April, 1913, when this item appeared in The Moving Picture World:
Mary Lou Widmer’s New Orleans in the Thirties says that the Carrollton Theatre opened in 1936, replacing an earlier house of the same name that had burned in 1935. The original Carrollton was in operation by 1916, when it was mentioned in the February 26 issue of The Moving Picture World.
The Capitol was demolished in 1928 and replaced by the Pekin Theatre. Despite their different addresses, the Capitol’s lot became part of the larger Pekin Theatre’s site.
A souvenir booklet called The Pekin Centenary published in 1949 says that the Capitol Theatre was originally the Turner Opera House, and was later renamed the Standard Theatre before becoming the Capitol, operated by a Mrs. Anna Fluegel. The booklet also reveals the fate of the Capitol:
The Standard itself had been rebuilt in 1913, as noted in this item from the October 18 issue of The Moving Picture World:The Turner Opera House was built in 1890. It had been renamed the Standard Theatre by 1908, when the Cahn guide listed it as a ground-floor house with 736 seats.The Patio’s web site says the house is closed this Monday, but it has show times listed for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. No reason is given for the Monday closing.
high_performance_76 is correct about the 1932 reopening of the Alden Theatre as a movie house. An item in the “Satety Harbor” column of the April 20, 1932, issue of the St.Petersburg Evening Independent says that the Alden Theatre was to reopen on May 2. The house had not shown movies for two years. An April 1 item in the same paper indicated that the house had never been equipped for sound.
The theater had not been entirely dark for the entire two years though. It hosted at least a few live events. The March 19 St. Petersburg Times said that a “good crowd” had attended a performance of the Chick Dramatic Company at the Alden Theatre the previous Tuesday. The December 23 issue of the Evening Independent reported a benefit at the Alden featuring a “…Biblical topic…illustrated by slides….” followed by musical selections and specialties by local talent. A play put on by the local chapter of the Eastern Star drew a full house at the Alden, according to the March 2, 1931, Evening Independent. A number of other such events were reported by the newspapers during this period.