An article about the new Balboa Theatre in the March 31, 1923 issue of Motion Picture News said that the house had been deigned by Reid Bros., who made it a “…‘rambling’ structure, suggestive of some early California mission….” to fit into its predominantly residential neighborhood. The Balboa was owned by Samuel H. Levin, who operated a number of neighborhood houses in the city, including the Coliseum and the Haight.
The March 24, 1923 issue of Motion Picture Newshad this item about the new Madison Theatre:
“A number of Chicago and Milwaukee exchange men journeyed to Madison, Wisconsin, last Thursday night to attend the opening of Frank Fischer’s new Madison Theatre in that city. They found the theatre fine in architecture and magnificently equipped, and were unanimous in congratulating Manager Fischer on his splendid new cinema palace.”
I’ve found a 1918 Sanborn map of Statesville, and the only theater it shows is the Crescent. 117 Broad street was at that time occupied by a wholesale grocer. The 1911 reference to the Broadway I found (but have now lost track of) must have been to a different Broadway theatre, perhaps some short-lived storefront nickelodeon. The earliest reference to the Broadway I can find now is from the July 2, 1921 issue of Exhibitors Herald, which is one of several capsule movie reviews submitted to the magazine that year by the Broadway’s manager W. D. Van Derbergh. [sic] The description should be altered to say the house was in operation by 1921.
News of the Broadway’s 1923 remodeling appears in the March 10 issue of Motion Picture News, which ran this item:
“Broadway, Statesville, N.C., Being Remodeled
“K. E. Spencer, formerly of Monroe, N. C, has purchased the Broadway, Statesville, N. C, from W. D. Vanderberg. [sic] Mr. Spencer immediately closed the house for extensive alterations. The screen formerly in the front will be put in the rear, and the entire seating plan rearranged to give one hundred more seats.”
I don’t know which spelling of Van Derbergh Mr. Vanderberg (or vice-versa) actually used, but since he probably submitted the capsule reviews to EH in his own hand, and surely could have had any errors he saw in print corrected in later issues, I think Van Derbergh is, though unconventional, more likely correct.
The Organ Historical Society’s Pipe Organ Database says that a 2-manuel instrument made by the Robert-Morton company was installed in the Crescent Theatre at Statesville in 1920. Its fate is unknown.
The current opening line of the description is inaccurate. Construction of the Playhouse began in 1926 and the theater opened on February 19, 1927. Although the opening attraction at the fully-equipped house was a stage play, the theater was also equipped to show movies from the beginning, and was one of the four houses listed at Statesville in the 1928 FDY.
The Texas Theatre first appears in the FDY in 1932, a new rival to the town’s 300-seat Astor Theatre. The May 12, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times said: “The Texas will be the name of a new house in Rusk, Texas, put in by Rau & Hughes in opposition to H. C. Houston operating the Astor. Rusk has between 3,000 and 4,000 population.”
A item in a later issue of the same journal says that J. T. Hughes had ordered “…500 beautiful upholstered chairs” for his new theater at Rusk (not quite the 575 seats the 1932 Year Book claimed the house had.) I haven’t found the opening date, but “J. T. Hughes, of the Texas at Rusk, was a recent visitor to the Dallas market and at the TIMES office” according to the December 22, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times.
I’ve been unable to find any references to the Crescent in theater industry trade journals before 1926, when the March 20 issue of Exhibitor Herald reported that its owner, H. A. Gilliland, was having the house remodeled. However, the hand-lettered caption “Home of Mutual Movies” on the vintage photo of the theater shows that it had to have been operating earlier.
The Mutual studio (1913-1918) was absorbed by a company called Robinson-Cole in 1919, which in turn became Film Booking Offices of America (FBO Pictures) in 1922. R-C did use the Mutual name on some releases after taking over the studio in 1919, but I’ve been unable to discover for how long. Still, the photo must have been made before 1922, and is most likely a few years earlier.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory has four listings for Manchester, but two appear to be duplicates: there is a house called the Idle Theatre and a listing for McCormick & Thorpe Idle Theatre. A third listing is for the Model Theatre, which is accounted for.
The name of the house at the Plaza’s eventual address in 1913 must have been either the Idle, for which no location is given, or the fourth listing in the directory, the Lyric Theatre, which was listed on Franklin Street. Whatever its name was in 1915, it was already being called the Plaza in the 1926 FDY, when it was the only theater listed at Manchester.
According to the NRHP registration form for downtown Elkader’s historic district, Harold and Belma Hall, owners and operators of the Rivola Theatre at 119 N. Main Street since 1927, opened the Elkader Theatre in September, 1941 in a commercial building that had been built in 1901. The Elkader and Rivola both continued to be listed in the FDY for several years, with the Rivola listed as closed, but the Year Book listed both with 250 seats, though the Elkader apparently had 400 from the beginning.
The NRHP form says that the Rivola, opened in 1921, was the first movie theater in Elkader, but they missed something. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two houses in the town: The Crystal, located on Main Street, and the Majestic, no location noted. A history of Clayton County published in 1916 says that John L. Flanagan opened the Majestic in 1910. There is a possibility that the Majestic was an aka for the Elkader Opera House, which opened in 1903 at 207 N. Main Street, but I’ve been unable to confirm this.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two theaters at Guttenberg: the Lyric, at 1st and Herder Street, and the Elite, no address provided. Polk’s 1912 Iowa directory lists only one theater at Guttenberg, that being called the Delight.
In 1926, proprietors of the Princess, Hunstad and Becker, were providing capsule movie reviews for Exhibitors Herald.
The 1960 FDY lists the Princess in Guttenberg as one of the 24 houses operated by the Iowa United Theatres chain.
Internet gives this as the address of a chiropractic clinic (Dr. Scott Scherer, DC). I hoped Bing Maps might have a better street view, as they sometimes do, but they don’t have any at all for this location.
The Cozy is the only theater listed at Dyersville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory and is occasionally mentioned, along with the Plaza Theatre, in early trade journal items from the 1910s and 1920s. The only other theater name I’ve found associated with Dyersville is the Nemo, mentioned in issues of Moving Picture World in November and December, 1916, when it was operated by a Mr. A. E. Bennett.
The April 6, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World mentions “J. E. Lippert, of the Plaza theater, Dyersville….” The name Lippert had appeared in that journal before, in the April 17, 1909 issue, which said “Henry and Anthony Lippert have opened a five and ten-cent theater in the Lippert Building.” I’ve been unable to discover if the house opened in 1909 was in fact the Plaza or a different theater. The only theater listed at Dyersville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was the Cozy, but that publication’s listings were frequently incomplete.
The November 7, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News said that H. Lippert was remodeling the Plaza, and had spent $1,500 on new equipment from Exhibitors Supply Company of Des Moines.
The July 9, 1949 Boxoffice said that Bert Coughlin’s new Fine Arts Theatre at Maynard had opened on June 29 with the ballet picture “The Red Shoes.” The article gave the seating capacity of the original single-screen house as 425.
A 2019 Lodi Newsarticle about the Sunset quotes Lodi Historical Society director Lisa Craig as saying that the house on which the Sunset was modeled, the Ritz Theatre in Hayward, was designed by San Francisco architect Albert H. Larsen. I guess that implies that the Sunset and the nearly identical Tower theatre in Willows were also Larsen designs.
A Bijou Theatre is listed at Mason City in the 1926 FDY, with 400 seats. If it was the same Bijou, it must have taken over the entire ground floor of its building. It is last listed, with no seating capacity given, as a silent house, in the 1932 FDY.
An item datelined Mason City in the March 11, 1911 issue of Moving Picture World said “Mesers. Arthur and Heffner are making arrangements to open a new vaudeville and moving picture theater here. It will be known as the Princess.” The Princess Theatre operating at Mason City in 1908 must have been a different house.
In Polk’s 1912 Iowa business directory, the Princess was the only Mason City theater listed among both the picture houses (along with the Orpheum, Bijou and Star) and among regular theaters (along with the Wilson Theatre and Parker’s Opera House.)
The 1922 Cahn-Leighton guide’s moving picture theaters section lists a house called the Maryland Theatre at 1015 E. 7th Street with the notation “OB”, meaning out of business. However, the same year’s L.A, City Directory lists the Merryland Theatre at the same address. The 1921 directory did list it as the Maryland, as did the 1920 directory. As it was listed as Merryland in the 1915 directory, I don’t know if Maryland was just an intermittent typo or was an actual aka, even if temporary, for this house.
There was a gap between the closing of the Academy and the opening of the Normandie. The 1922 Cahn-Leighton guide lists the Academy at this address with the notation “OB”, meaning out of business. No theaters are listed at this address in city directories later than 1921 until the Normandie appears in 1925.
The America Theatre was not in the building at 167 N. College, now occupied by the comedy club, but in the building immediately south of it, at 153-157 N. College. I also think that the facades of both buildings are misleading, as is often the case in old urban neighborhoods. Buildings can be gutted and entirely new facades put on them without demolishing the basic structure, though in this case I suspect that the building which actually housed the America Theatre has had its roof lowered, which means nothing remains of the theater but the side walls and perhaps the lower part of the back wall. The fly tower is of course gone, along with any other traces of the building’s theatrical history
Here is a major problem with the comedy club building: satellite view shows that it simply isn’t deep enough to have held a theater. About 2/5 of that lot is parking, and was already parking in a 1956 aerial view (the earliest aerial available online.) LoopNet’s page for 167 N. College says it was built/renovated in 1885/1914 and calls it the Briggs Building (though there is another building of that name in Fort Collins, at Oak and Mason street, built in 1951/1952.)
The building to the south of this Briggs Building, at 153-157 N. College, also has a LoopNet page, which calls it the America Building (!), and says it was built/renovated in 1904/2016. This building is definitely deep enough to have housed a theater. It is currently occupied by an assortment of small businesses, some of them arrayed along a passageway cut through the building to the alley in back. Despite LoopNet noting only a 2016 renovation, the conversion of the structure to a commercial arcade was done around 1955, the year noted on plans and drawings of the project prepared by local architect William B. Robb, listed in the finding aid for his collected papers. The closing date of 1953 provided by rivest266 is probably correct, despite the continued listing of the house in the 1956 FDY.
The theater entrance having been in the north bay of the building, as revealed by the vintage photo, the address would have been about 157 N., currently the address of a business called Elite E-Sport. The historic address I’ve seen for the Orpheum Theatre was 163 N, but that number is apparently no longer in use.
While there apparently was an earlier Empress Theatre in Fairbanks, local sources I’ve seen have all been in agreement that this house opened on August 25, 1927, and I’ve found none that give it any name other than Empress. CinemaTour cites a June 15, 1962 item in the Daily News Miner saying that the house had shown its last movie the previous night. It was the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy “Lover Come Back.”
An article about the new Balboa Theatre in the March 31, 1923 issue of Motion Picture News said that the house had been deigned by Reid Bros., who made it a “…‘rambling’ structure, suggestive of some early California mission….” to fit into its predominantly residential neighborhood. The Balboa was owned by Samuel H. Levin, who operated a number of neighborhood houses in the city, including the Coliseum and the Haight.
The March 24, 1923 issue of Motion Picture Newshad this item about the new Madison Theatre:
I’ve found a 1918 Sanborn map of Statesville, and the only theater it shows is the Crescent. 117 Broad street was at that time occupied by a wholesale grocer. The 1911 reference to the Broadway I found (but have now lost track of) must have been to a different Broadway theatre, perhaps some short-lived storefront nickelodeon. The earliest reference to the Broadway I can find now is from the July 2, 1921 issue of Exhibitors Herald, which is one of several capsule movie reviews submitted to the magazine that year by the Broadway’s manager W. D. Van Derbergh. [sic] The description should be altered to say the house was in operation by 1921.
News of the Broadway’s 1923 remodeling appears in the March 10 issue of Motion Picture News, which ran this item:
I don’t know which spelling of Van Derbergh Mr. Vanderberg (or vice-versa) actually used, but since he probably submitted the capsule reviews to EH in his own hand, and surely could have had any errors he saw in print corrected in later issues, I think Van Derbergh is, though unconventional, more likely correct.The Organ Historical Society’s Pipe Organ Database says that a 2-manuel instrument made by the Robert-Morton company was installed in the Crescent Theatre at Statesville in 1920. Its fate is unknown.
The Crescent was the only theater listed at Statesville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The current opening line of the description is inaccurate. Construction of the Playhouse began in 1926 and the theater opened on February 19, 1927. Although the opening attraction at the fully-equipped house was a stage play, the theater was also equipped to show movies from the beginning, and was one of the four houses listed at Statesville in the 1928 FDY.
The Texas Theatre first appears in the FDY in 1932, a new rival to the town’s 300-seat Astor Theatre. The May 12, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times said: “The Texas will be the name of a new house in Rusk, Texas, put in by Rau & Hughes in opposition to H. C. Houston operating the Astor. Rusk has between 3,000 and 4,000 population.”
A item in a later issue of the same journal says that J. T. Hughes had ordered “…500 beautiful upholstered chairs” for his new theater at Rusk (not quite the 575 seats the 1932 Year Book claimed the house had.) I haven’t found the opening date, but “J. T. Hughes, of the Texas at Rusk, was a recent visitor to the Dallas market and at the TIMES office” according to the December 22, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times.
I’ve been unable to find any references to the Crescent in theater industry trade journals before 1926, when the March 20 issue of Exhibitor Herald reported that its owner, H. A. Gilliland, was having the house remodeled. However, the hand-lettered caption “Home of Mutual Movies” on the vintage photo of the theater shows that it had to have been operating earlier.
The Mutual studio (1913-1918) was absorbed by a company called Robinson-Cole in 1919, which in turn became Film Booking Offices of America (FBO Pictures) in 1922. R-C did use the Mutual name on some releases after taking over the studio in 1919, but I’ve been unable to discover for how long. Still, the photo must have been made before 1922, and is most likely a few years earlier.
An item about the demolition of the Granada in Boxoffice of November 9, 1957 gave the theater’s seating capacity as 1,274.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory has four listings for Manchester, but two appear to be duplicates: there is a house called the Idle Theatre and a listing for McCormick & Thorpe Idle Theatre. A third listing is for the Model Theatre, which is accounted for.
The name of the house at the Plaza’s eventual address in 1913 must have been either the Idle, for which no location is given, or the fourth listing in the directory, the Lyric Theatre, which was listed on Franklin Street. Whatever its name was in 1915, it was already being called the Plaza in the 1926 FDY, when it was the only theater listed at Manchester.
The Model Theatre survived long enough to be listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
According to the NRHP registration form for downtown Elkader’s historic district, Harold and Belma Hall, owners and operators of the Rivola Theatre at 119 N. Main Street since 1927, opened the Elkader Theatre in September, 1941 in a commercial building that had been built in 1901. The Elkader and Rivola both continued to be listed in the FDY for several years, with the Rivola listed as closed, but the Year Book listed both with 250 seats, though the Elkader apparently had 400 from the beginning.
The NRHP form says that the Rivola, opened in 1921, was the first movie theater in Elkader, but they missed something. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two houses in the town: The Crystal, located on Main Street, and the Majestic, no location noted. A history of Clayton County published in 1916 says that John L. Flanagan opened the Majestic in 1910. There is a possibility that the Majestic was an aka for the Elkader Opera House, which opened in 1903 at 207 N. Main Street, but I’ve been unable to confirm this.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two theaters at Guttenberg: the Lyric, at 1st and Herder Street, and the Elite, no address provided. Polk’s 1912 Iowa directory lists only one theater at Guttenberg, that being called the Delight.
In 1926, proprietors of the Princess, Hunstad and Becker, were providing capsule movie reviews for Exhibitors Herald.
The 1960 FDY lists the Princess in Guttenberg as one of the 24 houses operated by the Iowa United Theatres chain.
Internet gives this as the address of a chiropractic clinic (Dr. Scott Scherer, DC). I hoped Bing Maps might have a better street view, as they sometimes do, but they don’t have any at all for this location.
The Cozy is the only theater listed at Dyersville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory and is occasionally mentioned, along with the Plaza Theatre, in early trade journal items from the 1910s and 1920s. The only other theater name I’ve found associated with Dyersville is the Nemo, mentioned in issues of Moving Picture World in November and December, 1916, when it was operated by a Mr. A. E. Bennett.
The April 6, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World mentions “J. E. Lippert, of the Plaza theater, Dyersville….” The name Lippert had appeared in that journal before, in the April 17, 1909 issue, which said “Henry and Anthony Lippert have opened a five and ten-cent theater in the Lippert Building.” I’ve been unable to discover if the house opened in 1909 was in fact the Plaza or a different theater. The only theater listed at Dyersville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was the Cozy, but that publication’s listings were frequently incomplete.
The November 7, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News said that H. Lippert was remodeling the Plaza, and had spent $1,500 on new equipment from Exhibitors Supply Company of Des Moines.
The July 9, 1949 Boxoffice said that Bert Coughlin’s new Fine Arts Theatre at Maynard had opened on June 29 with the ballet picture “The Red Shoes.” The article gave the seating capacity of the original single-screen house as 425.
A 2019 Lodi News article about the Sunset quotes Lodi Historical Society director Lisa Craig as saying that the house on which the Sunset was modeled, the Ritz Theatre in Hayward, was designed by San Francisco architect Albert H. Larsen. I guess that implies that the Sunset and the nearly identical Tower theatre in Willows were also Larsen designs.
The State Theatre’s first appearance in the FDY was in 1936, making a 1935 opening very likely, though it was listed with only 300 seats.
A Bijou Theatre is listed at Mason City in the 1926 FDY, with 400 seats. If it was the same Bijou, it must have taken over the entire ground floor of its building. It is last listed, with no seating capacity given, as a silent house, in the 1932 FDY.
An item datelined Mason City in the March 11, 1911 issue of Moving Picture World said “Mesers. Arthur and Heffner are making arrangements to open a new vaudeville and moving picture theater here. It will be known as the Princess.” The Princess Theatre operating at Mason City in 1908 must have been a different house.
In Polk’s 1912 Iowa business directory, the Princess was the only Mason City theater listed among both the picture houses (along with the Orpheum, Bijou and Star) and among regular theaters (along with the Wilson Theatre and Parker’s Opera House.)
The 1922 Cahn-Leighton guide’s moving picture theaters section lists a house called the Maryland Theatre at 1015 E. 7th Street with the notation “OB”, meaning out of business. However, the same year’s L.A, City Directory lists the Merryland Theatre at the same address. The 1921 directory did list it as the Maryland, as did the 1920 directory. As it was listed as Merryland in the 1915 directory, I don’t know if Maryland was just an intermittent typo or was an actual aka, even if temporary, for this house.
There was a gap between the closing of the Academy and the opening of the Normandie. The 1922 Cahn-Leighton guide lists the Academy at this address with the notation “OB”, meaning out of business. No theaters are listed at this address in city directories later than 1921 until the Normandie appears in 1925.
The America Theatre was not in the building at 167 N. College, now occupied by the comedy club, but in the building immediately south of it, at 153-157 N. College. I also think that the facades of both buildings are misleading, as is often the case in old urban neighborhoods. Buildings can be gutted and entirely new facades put on them without demolishing the basic structure, though in this case I suspect that the building which actually housed the America Theatre has had its roof lowered, which means nothing remains of the theater but the side walls and perhaps the lower part of the back wall. The fly tower is of course gone, along with any other traces of the building’s theatrical history
Here is a major problem with the comedy club building: satellite view shows that it simply isn’t deep enough to have held a theater. About 2/5 of that lot is parking, and was already parking in a 1956 aerial view (the earliest aerial available online.) LoopNet’s page for 167 N. College says it was built/renovated in 1885/1914 and calls it the Briggs Building (though there is another building of that name in Fort Collins, at Oak and Mason street, built in 1951/1952.)
The building to the south of this Briggs Building, at 153-157 N. College, also has a LoopNet page, which calls it the America Building (!), and says it was built/renovated in 1904/2016. This building is definitely deep enough to have housed a theater. It is currently occupied by an assortment of small businesses, some of them arrayed along a passageway cut through the building to the alley in back. Despite LoopNet noting only a 2016 renovation, the conversion of the structure to a commercial arcade was done around 1955, the year noted on plans and drawings of the project prepared by local architect William B. Robb, listed in the finding aid for his collected papers. The closing date of 1953 provided by rivest266 is probably correct, despite the continued listing of the house in the 1956 FDY.
The theater entrance having been in the north bay of the building, as revealed by the vintage photo, the address would have been about 157 N., currently the address of a business called Elite E-Sport. The historic address I’ve seen for the Orpheum Theatre was 163 N, but that number is apparently no longer in use.
While there apparently was an earlier Empress Theatre in Fairbanks, local sources I’ve seen have all been in agreement that this house opened on August 25, 1927, and I’ve found none that give it any name other than Empress. CinemaTour cites a June 15, 1962 item in the Daily News Miner saying that the house had shown its last movie the previous night. It was the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy “Lover Come Back.”