The November 5, 1945, issue of The Kingsport News said that fire had destroyed the Garden Theatre, which was located on Gate City Highway about two miles north of Kingsport. I believe the area has since been annexed to Kingsport, and Gate City Highway is now called Lynn Garden Drive.
The only mentions of the Queen Theatre I’ve been able to find in old publications are from 1917. This line from the May 31, 1917, issue of The Kingsport Times is interesting: “Kingsport has three up-to-date theatres, the Strand, the Queen and the Cherokee. All offer attractive pictures nightly.”
The name Gaiety Theatre shows up in the Times from 1919 to 1924. A July 1, 1925, item mentions someone’s intention to reopen the Gaiety, but there are no later instances of its name in the paper so the project probably failed.
The only instances of Broadway Theatre I’ve found in the Times are generic uses pertaining to New York City’s theater district. If this house was ever known as the Broadway Theatre it must have been but briefly.
As near as I can discover, this house last operated as the Gaiety Theatre, and was closed by 1925.
The Rialto was in operation by 1921, when a candy store called the Palace of Sweets advertised in the July 11 issue of The Kingsport Times that it was located on Cherokee Street opposite the Rialto Theatre.
An article in the August 22, 1937, issue of The Kingsport Times said that the Rialto had just been purchased by the Nu-Strand Theatre company, who had been operating the house under a lease for ten years. The new owners planned to expand and remodel the theater.
The Hilan Theatre was scheduled to open on Friday, April 17, according to the April 15, 1936, issue of The Kingsport Times. Kingsport’s first neighborhood theater was in a remodeled commercial building in the Highland Park district.
The paper gave the location of the theater as “Bristol Highway, next to Highland Garden.” Bristol Highway was the former name of was what is now E. Center Street. There’s no Highland Garden today, but maybe it was what is now Highland Indian Park, which would put the Hilan very near the later Fox Theatre, but I haven’t been able to confirm this. The Hilan Theatre might not have lasted very long, as nobody seems to remember it.
The Hilan was owned by the Taylor Brothers, as was the Fox, which opened in 1940. There’s some possibility that they were the same theater, but even if they weren’t it’s possible that the Taylors shut the Hilan down when the Fox opened. I haven’t found the Hilan mentioned in the newspaper later than 1939.
The Center Theatre had a brief life. It would open on Monday, January 26, 1948, according to the article in the previous day’s edition of The Kingsport Times.
The newspaper also ran a brief article about the theater’s architect, Erle G. Stillwell, and his firm, Six Associates. Stillwell, though a master of the streamlined style of the day, revealed to the reporter that he much preferred to design theaters in the atmospheric style, which had by 1948 fallen out of fashion, and that he had a special affection for the Spanish and Mediterranean styles.
The article also gave the names of the other five of the Six Associates at that time: engineer Samuel Clinton Minnich, Jr., architects Henry Irving Gaines and W. Stewart Rogers, plus William Waldo Dodge, Jr. and Anthony Lord, each of whom was both an architect and an engineer.
The April 10, 1947, issue of The Raleigh Register (published in Beckley, Raleigh County, West Virgina) contained many advertisements congratulating the new Mount Hope Theatre. One of the ads was placed by the architect of the theater, Alex B. Mahood of Bluefield, West Virginia.
The April 5, 1935, issue of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph had an item about the reopening of this house under its new name:
“NEW THEATER TO OPEN
“The ‘Robert E. Lee’ theater, (formerly the Capitol) will open today with many improvements in the interior and projection and sound equipment. The theater is now under the personal direction of T. A. Von Court and Hallie Gilbert, two of the best known theater men in this section, and who also operate the Granada and Rialto theaters in Bluefield and the Royal in Princeton. The first picture to be shown is Shirley Temple in ‘Bright Byes.’ There will be a free matinee for all children under 10 years old on Saturday afternoon.”
I’ve been unable to find any mention of the Capitol Theatre dating from earlier than 1933.
The November 26, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that Bluefield architect Alex B. Mahood was drawing plans for a two-story moving picture theater and apartments to be built at Bramwell, West Virginia.
This web page has a brief news item from 2012 saying that the Bramwell Theatre was to be restored. Funds had been acquired, and it was hoped that the project would be completed the next year, but I think they missed their target. I can’t find any events scheduled for the venue, but a new roof was put on the building in 2013.
The page does say that the Bramwell dates to the silent era, and as I’ve found no evidence that the town ever had any other theaters, it seems very likely that the Bramwell Theatre is the project that Alex Mahood was designing in 1921.
This web page has the transcript of an article about the Pocahontas Theatre from the December 22, 1928, issue of the Welch Daily News.
The Pocahontas Theatre was directly across the street from the Temple Theatre, which was in the Odd Fellows Temple building, built in 1929. The Temple Theatre’s space is occupied by a restaurant called Raymond’s, which the Internet says is at 24 McDowell Street. The address of the Pocahontas must have been about 23-25 McDowell Street.
The August 4, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World published an example of the Colonial Theatre’s monthly postcard calendar. Scan at Internet Archive.
There was a movie house in Novinger at least as early as 1920. The September 4 issue of Exhibitors Herald gave the name of its operator, E. Trunnell, but didn’t name the theater. The July 16, 1921, issue of the same journal mentioned Trunnell again, but this time said that his theater was the Baxter. Odds are it was the Baxter in 1920, too.
In 1925 and 1926, J. H.Kelso of the Baxter Theatre, Novinger, sent capsule movie reviews to various issues of The Reel Journal.
Comparing the vintage photos that have been uploaded and the current Google street view it’s clear that most, if not all, the buildings on the Royal Theatre’s block are still standing, and most are recognizable. The Royal appears to have been in the building at 418 E. Douglas Street, currently occupied by a sporting goods shop.
The collection of architectural drawings at the Yakima Valley Museum includes a drawing of a new front for the Yakima Theatre by architect John W. Maloney, dated March 16, 1938.
Crescent City and Del Norte County, by The Del Norte County Historical Society, has two photos of the Mecca Theatre (Google Books preview– scroll down one page for an interior photo.) The Mecca opened in July, 1928, and was located at 265 H Street. It suffered a fire on September 15, 1963, but the coup de grâce was delivered on March 28, 1964, when Crescent City was swept by a series of tsunamis generated by the massive earthquake which had struck Alaska the previous day. Many of the city’s downtown buildings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair, and the Mecca Theatre was among those lost.
Here is an undated photo of the Crooksville Opera House. This photo shows a view of West Main Street with the Opera House on the right. I haven’t been able to puzzle out from the photos exactly where on Main Street the theater was located, but I don’t see anything resembling it in Google street view, so I suspect that it has been demolished.
Various 1913 issues of an actor’s trade union journal called The Player list theaters that booked vaudeville acts independently, and the Crooksville Opera House was on those lists. It’s likely that the Opera House, like most small town halls of its kind, booked a wide variety of entertainment, including vaudeville, movies, traveling repertory companies, concerts, lectures, perhaps prize fights, and maybe even an opera or two. There would undoubtedly have been purely local events as well, such as amateur theatricals and musicales, community meetings, and maybe school graduation ceremonies.
I haven’t found the Opera House mentioned in any of the movie theater industry trade journals, but by 1928 Crooksville had a movie house called the Majestic Theatre, which had a Reproduco organ installed that year. As I’ve found the Opera House mentioned in Zanesville newspaper items as late as 1932, I don’t think they were the same theater. The Opera House might have abandoned movies after the Majestic opened.
The Main Street Theatre must have been destroyed by fire twice if signsell is correct. The June 6, 1941, issue of The Film Daily said that architect Michael J. DeAngelis was preparing plans for rebuilding the Main Street Theatre in Galeton, which had recently destroyed by a fire. The house was definitely rebuilt, as the Main Street was mentioned in the July 9, 1945, issue of the Daily, when the theater was taken over by Lewis Hauser from J. A. Nordquist.
The 1941 remodeling of the Franklin Theatre might have been more a rebuilding. The April 25, 1941, issue of The Film Daily has this item:
“PNT Awards Contracts For Evansville Theater
“Evansville, Ind. — The Premier Naborhood [sic] Theaters, Jesse Fine, president, has awarded contracts for the construction of the new $50,000 Franklin Theater to be erected at 2113 West Franklin Ave.
“General contract went to the Pioneer Construction Co. at $38,485; electric wiring to Evansville Electric Service Co. at $6,265; heating and plumbing to H. A. Grant Plumbing Co. at $3,945; air conditioning to Evansville Electric Service Co. at $8,785, and the marquee and sign to Swanson & Nunn at $3,725.
“Fowler & Logaman, [sic] 11 Northwest Fifth St., Evansville, are the architects, and Rapp & Rapp, 230 North Michigan Blvd., Chicago, the consulting architects.
“Construction will get under way at once.”
The correct name of the architectural firm was Fowler & Legeman. Frank E. Fowler and Ralph E. Legeman were among Evansvilles leading Midcentury architects.
This article from the Toledo Blade of July 6, 1981, tells of the closing of the Colony Theatre. The June 27, 1985, Blade article about its demolition can be found here.
The April 25, 1941, issue of The Film Daily said that Detroit architect Ted Rogvoy was working on a remodeling project for Wiseter & Westman’s Calvin Theatre in Dearborn.
The April 25, 1941, issue of The Film Daily said that the Mel Theatre was being designed by the Detroit firm of Rogvoy & Wright. Ted Rogvoy and Frank H. Wright had dissolved their partnership but would complete this project the firm already had underway.
The May 27, 1948, issue of The Film Daily said that Butterfield’s new Michigan Theatre in Traverse City would open the following day. The June 6 issue of the same journal had this brief item: “Detroit — Butterfield Circuit has opened its newest house, the Michigan at Traverse City, a 1,200-seater. Elmer Keeler of C. Howard Crane Associates is the architect.”
The November 5, 1945, issue of The Kingsport News said that fire had destroyed the Garden Theatre, which was located on Gate City Highway about two miles north of Kingsport. I believe the area has since been annexed to Kingsport, and Gate City Highway is now called Lynn Garden Drive.
The only mentions of the Queen Theatre I’ve been able to find in old publications are from 1917. This line from the May 31, 1917, issue of The Kingsport Times is interesting: “Kingsport has three up-to-date theatres, the Strand, the Queen and the Cherokee. All offer attractive pictures nightly.”
The name Gaiety Theatre shows up in the Times from 1919 to 1924. A July 1, 1925, item mentions someone’s intention to reopen the Gaiety, but there are no later instances of its name in the paper so the project probably failed.
The only instances of Broadway Theatre I’ve found in the Times are generic uses pertaining to New York City’s theater district. If this house was ever known as the Broadway Theatre it must have been but briefly.
As near as I can discover, this house last operated as the Gaiety Theatre, and was closed by 1925.
The Rialto was in operation by 1921, when a candy store called the Palace of Sweets advertised in the July 11 issue of The Kingsport Times that it was located on Cherokee Street opposite the Rialto Theatre.
An article in the August 22, 1937, issue of The Kingsport Times said that the Rialto had just been purchased by the Nu-Strand Theatre company, who had been operating the house under a lease for ten years. The new owners planned to expand and remodel the theater.
The Nu-Strand Theatre of 1925 was designed by New York architect C. K. Howell, according to the March 29 issue of The Kingsport Times.
The Hilan Theatre was scheduled to open on Friday, April 17, according to the April 15, 1936, issue of The Kingsport Times. Kingsport’s first neighborhood theater was in a remodeled commercial building in the Highland Park district.
The paper gave the location of the theater as “Bristol Highway, next to Highland Garden.” Bristol Highway was the former name of was what is now E. Center Street. There’s no Highland Garden today, but maybe it was what is now Highland Indian Park, which would put the Hilan very near the later Fox Theatre, but I haven’t been able to confirm this. The Hilan Theatre might not have lasted very long, as nobody seems to remember it.
The Hilan was owned by the Taylor Brothers, as was the Fox, which opened in 1940. There’s some possibility that they were the same theater, but even if they weren’t it’s possible that the Taylors shut the Hilan down when the Fox opened. I haven’t found the Hilan mentioned in the newspaper later than 1939.
The Center Theatre had a brief life. It would open on Monday, January 26, 1948, according to the article in the previous day’s edition of The Kingsport Times.
The newspaper also ran a brief article about the theater’s architect, Erle G. Stillwell, and his firm, Six Associates. Stillwell, though a master of the streamlined style of the day, revealed to the reporter that he much preferred to design theaters in the atmospheric style, which had by 1948 fallen out of fashion, and that he had a special affection for the Spanish and Mediterranean styles.
The article also gave the names of the other five of the Six Associates at that time: engineer Samuel Clinton Minnich, Jr., architects Henry Irving Gaines and W. Stewart Rogers, plus William Waldo Dodge, Jr. and Anthony Lord, each of whom was both an architect and an engineer.
The August 21, 1940, issue of The Kingsport Times said that the new Fox Theatre would open the following night.
The April 10, 1947, issue of The Raleigh Register (published in Beckley, Raleigh County, West Virgina) contained many advertisements congratulating the new Mount Hope Theatre. One of the ads was placed by the architect of the theater, Alex B. Mahood of Bluefield, West Virginia.
The April 5, 1935, issue of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph had an item about the reopening of this house under its new name:
I’ve been unable to find any mention of the Capitol Theatre dating from earlier than 1933.The November 26, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that Bluefield architect Alex B. Mahood was drawing plans for a two-story moving picture theater and apartments to be built at Bramwell, West Virginia.
This web page has a brief news item from 2012 saying that the Bramwell Theatre was to be restored. Funds had been acquired, and it was hoped that the project would be completed the next year, but I think they missed their target. I can’t find any events scheduled for the venue, but a new roof was put on the building in 2013.
The page does say that the Bramwell dates to the silent era, and as I’ve found no evidence that the town ever had any other theaters, it seems very likely that the Bramwell Theatre is the project that Alex Mahood was designing in 1921.
This web page has the transcript of an article about the Pocahontas Theatre from the December 22, 1928, issue of the Welch Daily News.
The Pocahontas Theatre was directly across the street from the Temple Theatre, which was in the Odd Fellows Temple building, built in 1929. The Temple Theatre’s space is occupied by a restaurant called Raymond’s, which the Internet says is at 24 McDowell Street. The address of the Pocahontas must have been about 23-25 McDowell Street.
The August 4, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World published an example of the Colonial Theatre’s monthly postcard calendar. Scan at Internet Archive.
This house must have been the successor to the New Glarus Theatre, which was in operation at least as early as 1921.
There was a movie house in Novinger at least as early as 1920. The September 4 issue of Exhibitors Herald gave the name of its operator, E. Trunnell, but didn’t name the theater. The July 16, 1921, issue of the same journal mentioned Trunnell again, but this time said that his theater was the Baxter. Odds are it was the Baxter in 1920, too.
In 1925 and 1926, J. H.Kelso of the Baxter Theatre, Novinger, sent capsule movie reviews to various issues of The Reel Journal.
Comparing the vintage photos that have been uploaded and the current Google street view it’s clear that most, if not all, the buildings on the Royal Theatre’s block are still standing, and most are recognizable. The Royal appears to have been in the building at 418 E. Douglas Street, currently occupied by a sporting goods shop.
The collection of architectural drawings at the Yakima Valley Museum includes a drawing of a new front for the Yakima Theatre by architect John W. Maloney, dated March 16, 1938.
Crescent City and Del Norte County, by The Del Norte County Historical Society, has two photos of the Mecca Theatre (Google Books preview– scroll down one page for an interior photo.) The Mecca opened in July, 1928, and was located at 265 H Street. It suffered a fire on September 15, 1963, but the coup de grâce was delivered on March 28, 1964, when Crescent City was swept by a series of tsunamis generated by the massive earthquake which had struck Alaska the previous day. Many of the city’s downtown buildings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair, and the Mecca Theatre was among those lost.
The October 8, 1937, issue of The Film Daily had an item saying: “Toppenish, Wash. — Waldo Ives is taking over the new Wigwam Theater.”
Here is an undated photo of the Crooksville Opera House. This photo shows a view of West Main Street with the Opera House on the right. I haven’t been able to puzzle out from the photos exactly where on Main Street the theater was located, but I don’t see anything resembling it in Google street view, so I suspect that it has been demolished.
Various 1913 issues of an actor’s trade union journal called The Player list theaters that booked vaudeville acts independently, and the Crooksville Opera House was on those lists. It’s likely that the Opera House, like most small town halls of its kind, booked a wide variety of entertainment, including vaudeville, movies, traveling repertory companies, concerts, lectures, perhaps prize fights, and maybe even an opera or two. There would undoubtedly have been purely local events as well, such as amateur theatricals and musicales, community meetings, and maybe school graduation ceremonies.
I haven’t found the Opera House mentioned in any of the movie theater industry trade journals, but by 1928 Crooksville had a movie house called the Majestic Theatre, which had a Reproduco organ installed that year. As I’ve found the Opera House mentioned in Zanesville newspaper items as late as 1932, I don’t think they were the same theater. The Opera House might have abandoned movies after the Majestic opened.
The Main Street Theatre must have been destroyed by fire twice if signsell is correct. The June 6, 1941, issue of The Film Daily said that architect Michael J. DeAngelis was preparing plans for rebuilding the Main Street Theatre in Galeton, which had recently destroyed by a fire. The house was definitely rebuilt, as the Main Street was mentioned in the July 9, 1945, issue of the Daily, when the theater was taken over by Lewis Hauser from J. A. Nordquist.
The 1941 remodeling of the Franklin Theatre might have been more a rebuilding. The April 25, 1941, issue of The Film Daily has this item:
The correct name of the architectural firm was Fowler & Legeman. Frank E. Fowler and Ralph E. Legeman were among Evansvilles leading Midcentury architects.This article from the Toledo Blade of July 6, 1981, tells of the closing of the Colony Theatre. The June 27, 1985, Blade article about its demolition can be found here.
The April 25, 1941, issue of The Film Daily said that Detroit architect Ted Rogvoy was working on a remodeling project for Wiseter & Westman’s Calvin Theatre in Dearborn.
The April 25, 1941, issue of The Film Daily said that the Mel Theatre was being designed by the Detroit firm of Rogvoy & Wright. Ted Rogvoy and Frank H. Wright had dissolved their partnership but would complete this project the firm already had underway.
The May 27, 1948, issue of The Film Daily said that Butterfield’s new Michigan Theatre in Traverse City would open the following day. The June 6 issue of the same journal had this brief item: “Detroit — Butterfield Circuit has opened its newest house, the Michigan at Traverse City, a 1,200-seater. Elmer Keeler of C. Howard Crane Associates is the architect.”