The late-1920s remodeling of the Grand Opera House in Oshkosh into the Granada Theatre was designed by the Milwaukee architectural firm of Dick & Bauer. It was listed among their works in an ad the firm published in the December 24, 1929, issue of the Appleton Post-Crescent.
Jim Rankin’s introduction to the Colonial Theatre says that the rebuilding of 1926 was the work of the architectural firm of Dick & Bauer. They should be added to the Architects and Firms field.
This house opened on May 26, 1917, as the New Dreamland Theatre. Within a few months it was being advertised as the White Way Theatre, which was later changed to Whiteway Theatre. An item about the opening appeared in the May 31 issue of the Neosho Daily Democrat:
“NEW THEATRE OPENED.
“The New Dreamland Theatre on Wood street was opened Saturday afternoon by Manager G. D. Hall and the first picture presented there was ‘Miss George Washington,’ by Marguerite Clark. The new picture-show was not quite finished as there were many little things to be done but it was far enough along to present the pictures. The house was filled in the afternoon and at night two shows with full houses were given. The new theatre is the largest and best that Neosho ever had. It is on the ground floor and practically fire proof. The stage is large enough for large dramatic companies and it is built in modern style.”
Pointing out that the house was on the ground floor suggests that the old Opera House/Dreamland was probably an upstairs theater.
The Booth Theatre was opened by Glen Dickinson Enterprises on February 4, 1927. The February 7 edition of the Neosho Daily Democrat, Neosho, Missouri, reported that Hugh Gardner, operator of Neosho’s Orpheum Theatre, had been among the people attending the opening.
In 1944, the Bandbox Theatre was advertising for cashiers and an “…elderly man for door work….” in the September 17 and 18 issues of the Neosho Daily Democrat, so the theater was probably preparing to open soon.
In 1920, the Neosho Daily Democrat frequently mentioned a movie house called the Fotosho Theatre. The February 7, 1921, issue of the paper said that Hugh Gardner was converting a store building into a movie theater and the name Fotosho would be moved to that house, while the present Fotosho, which had previously called the Whiteway Theatre, would get a new name.
The March 4, 1921, issue of the Democrat said that the new name chosen for the old Fotosho was Orpheum Theatre, and that the new Fotosho would begin operation that evening. A full-page ad for the Orpheum and Fotosho Theatres in the October 17, 1925, issue of the paper said that the Fotosho was on the south side of the courthouse square.
So Hugh Gardner opened this house, the second Fotosho Theatre, on March 4, 1921. I haven’t been able to discover when the spelling was changed to Photosho.
It turns out that the Orpheum Theatre was not the old Opera House renamed. The June 30, 1920, issue of the Neosho Daily Democrat had an article about the purchase of the Whiteway Theatre by Hugh Gardner. The Whiteway had been built by G. D. Hall in 1917, after his Dreamland Theatre, located in the old Opera House on the north side of the square, had been destroyed by a fire on December 1, 1916.
The 1920 article said that Gardner intended to rename the Whiteway the Photosho Theatre, but later issues of the paper spelled the name as Fotosho. The February 7, 1921, issue of the Democrat said that Gardner was converting a nearby store building into a movie theater and would move the name Fotosho to the new house. The March 4 issue of the paper said that the former Whiteway/Fotosho Theatre would reopen that night as the Orpheum Theatre, presenting moving pictures and vaudeville.
Given the size of the building, and its Victorian style, I wonder if the Bourbon Theatre wasn’t the Grand Opera House, built around 1890, and later operated as the Grand or Paris Grand Theatre?
Paris also had a movie house opened in 1910 as the Comet Theatre. Later there was a Columbia Theatre, operating around 1913 to 1917, and later still an Alamo Theatre,open at least as late as 1922. These three might all have been the same house.
I’ve also found references to a Marigold Theatre, possibly built around 1920. Information about the theaters in Paris is extremely sparse on the Internet.
This photo of White Castle Restaurant #8 shows the Evanston Theatre next door as it appeared in the 1940s (Blue Skies was released in 1946.) The theater front looks to have been remodeled in a Streamline Modern style in the late 1930s or early 1940s.
Architect Joseph G. Steinkamp and his younger brother Bernard F. Steinkamp were the sons of the German-born Cincinnati architect John (Johann) Bernhard Steinkamp. The brothers were active from around 1900 to around 1948.
Max: That photo was actually uploaded by John Rice. His most recent comment at CinemaTreasures is on this page, so that’s where you’d probably be most likely to catch him (I don’t think CT sends notifications of comments made on photo pages.)
The June 24, 1916, issue of The American Contractor said that work had begun on the rebuilding of the Avenue Theatre in McKeesport for the new lessee, H. A. Victor. The architect for the project was H. J. Lehman of McKeesport.
This theater was built for Samuel H. Thal, according to an item about it in the January 31, 1914, issue of The Construction Record, which said that architect Gustave Niehaus [sic] was preparing the plans.
The same column listed another theatre project by Niehus (again with his name misspelled as Niehaus,) saying that he was ready to take bids on a one-story brick picture theater to be built at at Fifth and Ringgold Streets for James Montgomery and Earl R. Lines. We don’t have a theater listed at that location, and I haven’t been able to track down a name for it.
The January 31, 1914, issue of The Construction Record had this item that must have been about the Evanston Theatre:
“Cincinnati, O — Architects J. G. Steinkamp & Brother, 414 Walnut street, have plans in progress for a one-story brick nickelodeon, to be erected on Montgomery road and Dana avenue, for Andrew Niedenthal, Montgomery road. Cost, $15,000.”
There was a theater called the Majestic in Ellwood City at least as early as 1910, when the house appeared several times in lists of current vaudeville engagements published in various issues of Variety.
The June 26, 1914, issue of the New Castle News said that many improvements were being made to the Majestic Theatre in Ellwood City.
The Majestic Theatre was destroyed by a fire on January 11, 1984. The last movie shown was Return of the Jedi. There is a photo of the fire on this page of the Ellwood City Ledger web site.
The December 21, 1941, issue of the Las Cruces Sun-News mentioned Guy Frazer as the architect of the new State Theatre, which was scheduled to open Christmas Day. This must have been Guy L. Frazer of the El Paso, Texas, firm Frazer & Benner.
The January 1, 1940, issue of the Clovis News-Journal said that the formal opening of the new State Theatre would take place at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, January 3.
The 1924 ad must have been for the reopening of the Schenley as a movie house under new management. An item in the June 28, 1958, issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said that the theater “…was acquired in 1924 by the forerunners of the present Stanley-Warner Corporation.”
The historical sketch of Pittsburgh’s first Nixon Theatre on this web page gives the address as 417-425 Sixth Avenue, and says that it was designed by Chicago architect Benjamin H. Marshall.
Carl: As far as I’ve been able to discover, there were only two big theaters with stages operating in Sedalia in the 1920s. If your wife’s grandmother was a professional dancer, she probably would have appeared at either the Lona/Liberty Theatre, or at the Sedalia Theatre, an older house opened in 1905 (not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.)
On the other hand, if she was an amateur performer she might have appeared at one of the small movie houses in town, of which there were several, most of them operating for no more than a few years, some for only a few months. Some of them are sure to have had had small stages, and all had at least a piano for music, and would have hosted such events as local talent shows, and probably presented local singers on a fairly regular basis. Live music was a big part of the shows at movie theaters before talking pictures came along.
The two big houses undoubtedly presented some local talent as well, but probably not on a regular basis. One example of the use of local talent (dancers, as it happens) is noted in an item from trade publication The Reel Journal of January 30, 1926. It was about the publicity campaign for the MGM production The Merry Widow, which was being handled by a Mr. Bishop. In Sedalia, he came up with a clever stunt:
“Bishop arranged a contest with the Sedalia Republican, the feature of which was to find out why blonde widows re-marry quicker than brunettes, and saw to it that when the picture came there would be a prologue presentation for it, given gratis by two professional dancing teachers, who were well repaid for their work by the advertising they received.”
This major movie (a “blockbuster” of its day) would undoubtedly have appeared at either the Sedalia or the Liberty. A prologue was usually a good-sized production, requiring several dancers, and the two dancing teachers putting it on might have had their better students performing in it. If it went over well, the same arrangement might have been made with theater operators for similar presentations to accompany other movies.
David and Noelle Soren’s list of known Boller theatres includes an unnamed drive-in at Sedalia designed in 1948. Unless two drive-ins in Sedalia began construction that year it must have been this one that was designed by Boller Brothers.
The 1960s aluminum false front has been peeled off of the Fox Theatre and replaced with a retro-style front that might more closely resemble the original Streamlined style of the building. The building has been converted into the Fox Theater Event Center, though the photo gallery at their web site shows that the historic interior of the building has been entirely lost. It’s pretty much just the shell of the theater, and a marquee with the name Fox on it.
CinemaTour has a photo of the renovated front. CinemaTour claims that the Fox was also known as the Sedalia, but the Sedalia Theatre was a different house, at Third and Massachusetts, which opened in 1905 and faded away in the 1930s, and was finally destroyed by a fire in 1977. I’m pretty sure the Fox was always called the Fox, but the Sedalia was called the Fox Sedalia in the early 1930s, around the same time the Liberty was called the Fox Liberty.
Information about the Lona Theatre is a bit sparse on the Internet, but it is clear that this was at least the second house of that name in Sedalia. A nostalgia piece in the January 1, 1942, issue of The Sedalia Democrat says that on December 30, 1917, the Lona Theatre, at 412 S. Ohio Avenue, was showing a William S. Hart movie. I’ve found references to the Lona Theatre in The Moving Picture World as far back as 1914.
An article from the December 18, 2013, Democrat says that the new Lona Theatre was formally opened on August 12, 1920, with 1,500 seats. I’ve been unable to discover what became of the first Lona Theatre when the new house opened. The building at its address has the name “Story’s Central” and the date 1882 on its parapet, so the earlier Lona Theatre was a storefront movie house.
The new Lona Theatre, though suited for vaudeville and legitimate productions, was also equipped for movies from the beginning, and the August 16, 1920, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the house had opened with the feature film One Hour Before Dawn as part of the program.
The house had been renamed Liberty Theatre by no later than January, 1926. Later that year the Liberty and the local Sedalia and Strand Theatres became part of a Kansas City-based chain called American Theatres. In 1928 and 1929, when sound was installed, the house was advertised as the New Liberty Theatre.
At least as early as mid-1930 and as late as July, 1933, the house was being advertised as the Fox Liberty Theatre. Later in the decade it was simply the Liberty again, but apparently it remained a Fox Midwest house until 1940. On September 15, 1940, after the opening of the new Fox Theatre, the New Liberty Theatre advertised that it had returned to local control. By the next year it had reverted to being called simply the Liberty Theatre once again.
A review of local events of 1954 in the January 14, 1955, issue of The Sedalia Democrat notes that the Community Players theater group had moved into the Liberty Theatre in November. I’ve found no evidence that it ever operated as a movie house again.
The Lona Theatre was obviously designed by an architect with classical training, but nobody seems to know who it was. The renovation as a performing arts house in the 1980s was handled by local architect Neal Reyburn.
The Warner Theatre might have operated in two different locations, or it was rebuilt in 1946. The January 10, 1947, issue of The Film Daily ran this item:
“Warner Opens in Salem, Ky.
“Salem, Ky. — The new Warner Theater here, built and owned by L. Conyer, has opened. The new modern streamlined 350-seater cost approximately $25,000.”
The late-1920s remodeling of the Grand Opera House in Oshkosh into the Granada Theatre was designed by the Milwaukee architectural firm of Dick & Bauer. It was listed among their works in an ad the firm published in the December 24, 1929, issue of the Appleton Post-Crescent.
Jim Rankin’s introduction to the Colonial Theatre says that the rebuilding of 1926 was the work of the architectural firm of Dick & Bauer. They should be added to the Architects and Firms field.
This house opened on May 26, 1917, as the New Dreamland Theatre. Within a few months it was being advertised as the White Way Theatre, which was later changed to Whiteway Theatre. An item about the opening appeared in the May 31 issue of the Neosho Daily Democrat:
Pointing out that the house was on the ground floor suggests that the old Opera House/Dreamland was probably an upstairs theater.The Booth Theatre was opened by Glen Dickinson Enterprises on February 4, 1927. The February 7 edition of the Neosho Daily Democrat, Neosho, Missouri, reported that Hugh Gardner, operator of Neosho’s Orpheum Theatre, had been among the people attending the opening.
In 1944, the Bandbox Theatre was advertising for cashiers and an “…elderly man for door work….” in the September 17 and 18 issues of the Neosho Daily Democrat, so the theater was probably preparing to open soon.
In 1920, the Neosho Daily Democrat frequently mentioned a movie house called the Fotosho Theatre. The February 7, 1921, issue of the paper said that Hugh Gardner was converting a store building into a movie theater and the name Fotosho would be moved to that house, while the present Fotosho, which had previously called the Whiteway Theatre, would get a new name.
The March 4, 1921, issue of the Democrat said that the new name chosen for the old Fotosho was Orpheum Theatre, and that the new Fotosho would begin operation that evening. A full-page ad for the Orpheum and Fotosho Theatres in the October 17, 1925, issue of the paper said that the Fotosho was on the south side of the courthouse square.
So Hugh Gardner opened this house, the second Fotosho Theatre, on March 4, 1921. I haven’t been able to discover when the spelling was changed to Photosho.
It turns out that the Orpheum Theatre was not the old Opera House renamed. The June 30, 1920, issue of the Neosho Daily Democrat had an article about the purchase of the Whiteway Theatre by Hugh Gardner. The Whiteway had been built by G. D. Hall in 1917, after his Dreamland Theatre, located in the old Opera House on the north side of the square, had been destroyed by a fire on December 1, 1916.
The 1920 article said that Gardner intended to rename the Whiteway the Photosho Theatre, but later issues of the paper spelled the name as Fotosho. The February 7, 1921, issue of the Democrat said that Gardner was converting a nearby store building into a movie theater and would move the name Fotosho to the new house. The March 4 issue of the paper said that the former Whiteway/Fotosho Theatre would reopen that night as the Orpheum Theatre, presenting moving pictures and vaudeville.
Given the size of the building, and its Victorian style, I wonder if the Bourbon Theatre wasn’t the Grand Opera House, built around 1890, and later operated as the Grand or Paris Grand Theatre?
Paris also had a movie house opened in 1910 as the Comet Theatre. Later there was a Columbia Theatre, operating around 1913 to 1917, and later still an Alamo Theatre,open at least as late as 1922. These three might all have been the same house.
I’ve also found references to a Marigold Theatre, possibly built around 1920. Information about the theaters in Paris is extremely sparse on the Internet.
This photo of White Castle Restaurant #8 shows the Evanston Theatre next door as it appeared in the 1940s (Blue Skies was released in 1946.) The theater front looks to have been remodeled in a Streamline Modern style in the late 1930s or early 1940s.
Architect Joseph G. Steinkamp and his younger brother Bernard F. Steinkamp were the sons of the German-born Cincinnati architect John (Johann) Bernhard Steinkamp. The brothers were active from around 1900 to around 1948.
Max: That photo was actually uploaded by John Rice. His most recent comment at CinemaTreasures is on this page, so that’s where you’d probably be most likely to catch him (I don’t think CT sends notifications of comments made on photo pages.)
Some interesting digital images generated by laser scans of the Grand Theatre can be seen in this PDF.
The June 24, 1916, issue of The American Contractor said that work had begun on the rebuilding of the Avenue Theatre in McKeesport for the new lessee, H. A. Victor. The architect for the project was H. J. Lehman of McKeesport.
This theater was built for Samuel H. Thal, according to an item about it in the January 31, 1914, issue of The Construction Record, which said that architect Gustave Niehaus [sic] was preparing the plans.
The same column listed another theatre project by Niehus (again with his name misspelled as Niehaus,) saying that he was ready to take bids on a one-story brick picture theater to be built at at Fifth and Ringgold Streets for James Montgomery and Earl R. Lines. We don’t have a theater listed at that location, and I haven’t been able to track down a name for it.
The January 31, 1914, issue of The Construction Record had this item that must have been about the Evanston Theatre:
There was a theater called the Majestic in Ellwood City at least as early as 1910, when the house appeared several times in lists of current vaudeville engagements published in various issues of Variety.
The June 26, 1914, issue of the New Castle News said that many improvements were being made to the Majestic Theatre in Ellwood City.
The Majestic Theatre was destroyed by a fire on January 11, 1984. The last movie shown was Return of the Jedi. There is a photo of the fire on this page of the Ellwood City Ledger web site.
The December 21, 1941, issue of the Las Cruces Sun-News mentioned Guy Frazer as the architect of the new State Theatre, which was scheduled to open Christmas Day. This must have been Guy L. Frazer of the El Paso, Texas, firm Frazer & Benner.
The January 1, 1940, issue of the Clovis News-Journal said that the formal opening of the new State Theatre would take place at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, January 3.
The 1924 ad must have been for the reopening of the Schenley as a movie house under new management. An item in the June 28, 1958, issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said that the theater “…was acquired in 1924 by the forerunners of the present Stanley-Warner Corporation.”
The historical sketch of Pittsburgh’s first Nixon Theatre on this web page gives the address as 417-425 Sixth Avenue, and says that it was designed by Chicago architect Benjamin H. Marshall.
Carl: As far as I’ve been able to discover, there were only two big theaters with stages operating in Sedalia in the 1920s. If your wife’s grandmother was a professional dancer, she probably would have appeared at either the Lona/Liberty Theatre, or at the Sedalia Theatre, an older house opened in 1905 (not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.)
On the other hand, if she was an amateur performer she might have appeared at one of the small movie houses in town, of which there were several, most of them operating for no more than a few years, some for only a few months. Some of them are sure to have had had small stages, and all had at least a piano for music, and would have hosted such events as local talent shows, and probably presented local singers on a fairly regular basis. Live music was a big part of the shows at movie theaters before talking pictures came along.
The two big houses undoubtedly presented some local talent as well, but probably not on a regular basis. One example of the use of local talent (dancers, as it happens) is noted in an item from trade publication The Reel Journal of January 30, 1926. It was about the publicity campaign for the MGM production The Merry Widow, which was being handled by a Mr. Bishop. In Sedalia, he came up with a clever stunt:
This major movie (a “blockbuster” of its day) would undoubtedly have appeared at either the Sedalia or the Liberty. A prologue was usually a good-sized production, requiring several dancers, and the two dancing teachers putting it on might have had their better students performing in it. If it went over well, the same arrangement might have been made with theater operators for similar presentations to accompany other movies.David and Noelle Soren’s list of known Boller theatres includes an unnamed drive-in at Sedalia designed in 1948. Unless two drive-ins in Sedalia began construction that year it must have been this one that was designed by Boller Brothers.
The 1960s aluminum false front has been peeled off of the Fox Theatre and replaced with a retro-style front that might more closely resemble the original Streamlined style of the building. The building has been converted into the Fox Theater Event Center, though the photo gallery at their web site shows that the historic interior of the building has been entirely lost. It’s pretty much just the shell of the theater, and a marquee with the name Fox on it.
CinemaTour has a photo of the renovated front. CinemaTour claims that the Fox was also known as the Sedalia, but the Sedalia Theatre was a different house, at Third and Massachusetts, which opened in 1905 and faded away in the 1930s, and was finally destroyed by a fire in 1977. I’m pretty sure the Fox was always called the Fox, but the Sedalia was called the Fox Sedalia in the early 1930s, around the same time the Liberty was called the Fox Liberty.
Information about the Lona Theatre is a bit sparse on the Internet, but it is clear that this was at least the second house of that name in Sedalia. A nostalgia piece in the January 1, 1942, issue of The Sedalia Democrat says that on December 30, 1917, the Lona Theatre, at 412 S. Ohio Avenue, was showing a William S. Hart movie. I’ve found references to the Lona Theatre in The Moving Picture World as far back as 1914.
An article from the December 18, 2013, Democrat says that the new Lona Theatre was formally opened on August 12, 1920, with 1,500 seats. I’ve been unable to discover what became of the first Lona Theatre when the new house opened. The building at its address has the name “Story’s Central” and the date 1882 on its parapet, so the earlier Lona Theatre was a storefront movie house.
The new Lona Theatre, though suited for vaudeville and legitimate productions, was also equipped for movies from the beginning, and the August 16, 1920, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the house had opened with the feature film One Hour Before Dawn as part of the program.
The house had been renamed Liberty Theatre by no later than January, 1926. Later that year the Liberty and the local Sedalia and Strand Theatres became part of a Kansas City-based chain called American Theatres. In 1928 and 1929, when sound was installed, the house was advertised as the New Liberty Theatre.
At least as early as mid-1930 and as late as July, 1933, the house was being advertised as the Fox Liberty Theatre. Later in the decade it was simply the Liberty again, but apparently it remained a Fox Midwest house until 1940. On September 15, 1940, after the opening of the new Fox Theatre, the New Liberty Theatre advertised that it had returned to local control. By the next year it had reverted to being called simply the Liberty Theatre once again.
A review of local events of 1954 in the January 14, 1955, issue of The Sedalia Democrat notes that the Community Players theater group had moved into the Liberty Theatre in November. I’ve found no evidence that it ever operated as a movie house again.
The Lona Theatre was obviously designed by an architect with classical training, but nobody seems to know who it was. The renovation as a performing arts house in the 1980s was handled by local architect Neal Reyburn.
The Thursday, September 5, 1940, issue of The Sedalia Democrat said that the new Fox Theatre would open Friday evening at 7:30.
The Warner Theatre might have operated in two different locations, or it was rebuilt in 1946. The January 10, 1947, issue of The Film Daily ran this item: