The May 28, 1937, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor said that Ben Aranda would build a new, 750-seat theater for himself at Brawley. The architect for the project was Walter Webber.
I’m not sure whether or not Walter I. Webber had a solo practice at this time. He had earlier been a member of the firm of Webber & Spaulding, architects of the Avalon Theatre and the Casino, in which the theater was located, at Avalon, on Santa Catalina Island. Nobody seems to know when the firm was dissolved.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of August 21, 1936, reported that a 600-seat theater would be built for Principal Theatres on Main Street near 6th in Brawley. The architect for the project was Clifford A. Balch.
bigjoe59: They must be referring to what is now the Cecchi Gori Fine Arts Cinema. It’s in Beverly Hills. I’ve never heard of it having been called the Fox Fine Arts, and we don’t list that as an aka, so that’s why it didn’t turn up in your search.
The big roadshow house on Hollywood Boulevard was the Egyptian, though the Pantages also had its share of hard ticket events. The Warner Hollywood was tied up with Cinerama through that period. I think that Fox West Coast booked more roadshow engagements into the Carthay Circle than any other theater in the region. The Chinese was the circuit’s big first-run house.
One thing I recall about the Chinese is that at one point, I think it must have been during the late 1950s, one of the television stations in Los Angeles had a weekly movie that was hosted by Francis X. Bushman, and it featured a wraparound of Bushman talking about the movie from a seat in the Chinese. At the end of the closing segment he would get up and walk up the aisle of the auditorium. I hadn’t thought about that show in years. I wonder if anyone else remembers it?
This nostalgia piece from the Oakland Press News says that the Huron Theatre burned on Christmas Eve, 1983. There’s a photo of the fire and one of the burned-out building. The article also says that the theater was in Waterford Township (Water Winter Wonderland also lists it in Waterford.)
The article was also blogged, accompanied by a different photo of the theater while it was still in operation. It was showing Around the World in Eighty Days, and there was special lettering on the building itself, not just the marquee, so this might have been the roadshow, which could date the photo to 1957. If not, it’s probably 1958.
The April 2, 1959, issue of Motion Picture Daily reported that W. Kinder, owner of the Star Theatre in Imperial, Nebraska, had affiliated his house with Allied Rocky Mountain Independent Theatres, Inc.. The move must not have helped business enough, as the Star soon closed. But the October 5, 1960, issue of the same journal reported that the theater had been re-opened under new management:
“Merchants Find Theatre Aids Their Businesses
“Special to THE DAILY
“IMPERIAL, Neb., Oct 4. – The importance of a theatre to a small town is illustrated by the re-opening of the Star Theatre here.
“All merchants in the small community experienced a slump in business when the Star shuttered several months ago.
“Merchants organized the Imperial Businessmens Association and raised sufficient funds to reopen the theatre. Newton Lippitt is acting as manager.”
An Imperial Valley directory published in 1914 lists a house called the L & S Theatre at 568 Main Street in El Centro. It might or might not have been in the same building that became the Valley Theatre.
The Valley should be listed on W. Main St., which is the historic center of town. That’s undoubtedly where it was. I have a strong suspicion that it was replaced by the drive-up teller and ATM lot of the Union Bank at 576 W.Main Street. To the east of the driveways is a vacant store, and next to that is a bike shop with the address 560 W. Main. The vacant store might be at 566, but is probably 564. The Valley Theatre has most likely been demolished.
The January 9, 1928, issue of The Film Daily said that S. U. Anderson, the original owner of the Belvedere Theatre in Brawley, had sold it to Principal Theatres. Princiapal had changed the name of the house to Brawley Theatre by 1929.
The Brawley Community Foundation is attempting to restore this theater. The front of the theater has already been restored and relighted, as seen in this news item from The Desert Review of May 17, 2013. The house has been renamed the Brawley Playhouse Theatre.
The theater’s Facebook page has a brief history of the house. It opened on March 22, 1922, as the Belvedere Theatre, with 815 seats. When restored the house is to have up to 428 seats, a stage for theatrical and music productions, an orchestra pit, and movie screen.
Volume 1 of Cezar Del Valle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index gives operating dates of 1908 to 1931 for the Fulton Auditorium, and October 28, 1948 to 1976 for the Banco Theatre. That fits in with the 1935 Certificate of Occupancy for a cabaret and show room on the ground floor, cited in an earlier comment by Ed Solero.
Brownstoner has this page for the building at 1298 Fulton Street, which says that the plans for the 1913 conversion of the theater into a movie house were by architect James Boyle. This project was probably fairly extensive, as the July 6, 1910, issue of The Film Index ran a brief article about the Fulton Auditorium which said that it then had about 300 seats.
The article is worth quoting in full for its depiction of the nascent star system, which had barely begun, as well as its brief description of the Fulton Auditorium itself:
“Popular Vitagraph Player Receives Ovation at Fulton Auditorium
“Filled with photographs and announcements of the ‘Vitagraph Girl’s’ appearance and reception, the lobby of the ‘Fulton Auditorium’ of Brooklyn, presented a very brilliant display. A large automobile stopped in front of the theatre and Miss Florence E. Turner, ‘The Vitagraph Girl’ with the Vitagraph representative alighted from the tonneau and were greeted by Mr. Charles Cranides, the Manager, and a large congregation of spectators who were waiting to get a look at Miss Turner to see if she is as attractive in reality as she is in the pictures. Entering the Auditorium which was already crowded, ‘The Vitagraph Girl’ was introduced to the audience by the representative and received a royal welcome. In response Miss Turner said: ‘I don’t know what to say in addition to my flattering introduction to you. I don’t know that I look all that has been said about me. I am glad to know I am so well thought of and I will do my best to sustain and merit your good opinions and kind appreciation of me. I thank you all and hope I shall meet you often in person as well as in the Vitagraph pictures.’
“This little speech was greeted with applause, three or four attendants came forward and handed Miss Turner several bouquets and baskets of flowers which almost hid her from view.
“Mr. Arthur Ogden in a rich baritone voice sang the popular motion picture ballad ‘The Vitagraph Girl’ illustrated by a series of beautiful colored slides followed by two or three Vitagraph films in which Miss Turner featured. Afterward an informal reception was given to the guest of the evening by the audience who came forward to shake her hand and make her acquaintance. Manager Cranides arranged a very delightful supper for Miss Turner and her friends and did everything possible to make things pleasant for everybody.
“There is a right and a wrong way of doing things. Manager Cranides has the right one. His theatre is run right with all conveniences and comforts. It seats about three hundred; has a pipe organ for special music as well as a piano. The auditorium is large and airy and always filled with an exceptionally refined audience who are always greeted with a welcome smile or a cheerful good evening from Mrs. Cranides who is just as nice as her husband.”
I’ve been unable to discover the name of the original architect, or of whoever planned the alterations that must have been needed when the house was reopened as the Banco Theatre in 1948.
The December 22, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World mentions the Palace:
“HECTOR, MINN. — Dr. Erickson has disposed of the Palace theater to George Holland of Red Lake Falls and A. W. Fisk of Gettysburg”
Something puzzling is that the Internet has a couple of pages about the theater department of the Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart schools presenting school plays at the Palace Theatre, 301 Main Street South, Hector. The Internet also gives that as the address of the Hector City Hall.
Google Maps' street view of the location shows a modern building that looks nothing like a theater. It could be that the City Hall has a multi-purpose room both for council meetings and community events, and they call it the Palace Theatre when it’s used for the school plays. It’s a corner location, and might be on the site of the original Palace Theatre.
A. R. Anderson was the original operator of the third Orpheum Theatre in Twin Falls, and had operated the second Orpheum and the Gem Theatre as well. He was a regular contributor of capsule movie reviews to trade journals Motography and Exhibitors Herald between 1918 and 1922.
The aka Colonial Theatre should be added for this house, per CSWalczak and BillCounter’s information in the previous comments.
This item from the July 23, 1919, issue of Building & Engineering News most likely pertains to the Colonial Theatre:
“MONROVIA, Los Angeles Co., Cal.
Class ‘C’ motion picture theatre, 88x54. Owner — Mrs. Castle. Architect— S. M. Cooper, 802 Story Bldg., Los Angeles.”
The original building being only 88 feet deep would have left plenty of room for the stage house that was added in 1921. Sanson Milligan Cooper appears to have started out as a contractor and gradually eased into architecture in the late teens and early twenties.
A historic resources survey of Santa Paula (enormous PDF here, though there are only a couple of pages about the theater) says that this house was the Electra Theatre in the 1910s. We have the Electra Theatre listed at 118-120 E. Main Street. It’s possible that Santa Paula went through a renumbering at some point, or it is possible that the Electra Had two different locations, but I think the renumbering is much more likely. Modern 118-120 E. Main is well outside the town’s historic business district and is surrounded by mostly modern residential or industrial buildings. In the 1910s it was probably just scattered houses and small orchards, which would have been a very unlikely location for a movie theater.
There was a proposal to build a new theater in Santa Paula in 1919, noted in the June 25 issue of Building & Engineering News, but I haven’t yet discovered if it got built or not. It’s possible that it was a new home for the Electra, and is the building standing today.
As it was open by very early 1920 (mentioned in the January 18 issue of The Los Angeles Times,) the California Theatre might be the project noted in the April 16, 1919, issue of Building & Engineering News:
“Plans Prepared.
“THEATRE, ETC., Cost, $80,000
“SANTA BARBARA. Cal. West Canon Perdido St. Two-story reinforced concrete and brick theatre and store building, 65x150 (excavation started.) Owner — E. A. Johnson. Architect— J. Corbley Pool, 10 Bothin Bldg., Santa Barbara. A large pipe organ will be installed.”
The May 3 edition of The Moving Picture World also mentioned the project, saying that it would be exclusively a picture house, with all seats on one saucer-shaped floor that would feature a tunnel exit (which sounds as though it might have had a stadium-style section.) The pipe organ for the house was budgeted at $30,000.
A biographical sketch of architect J. Corbley Pool published in 1917 said that he was also noted as an acoustical engineer. He served as a consultant in the design many churches and auditoriums across the United States. Perhaps that $30,000 organ had something to do with the choice of Mr. Pool as architect for this theater.
This theater for which the May 21, 1921, issue of Building & Engineering News said plans were being prepared was probably the Maybell Theatre, but it turned out that the original architect didn’t design the house after all:
“BELL, Los Angeles Co., Cal.
“One and two-story brick and terra cotta theatre, store and office bldg. Owner — Dr. T. G. De Vaugh and J. V. De Vaugh. Architect — J. T. Payne. 426 Western Mutual Life Bldg. Los Angeles.”
The item got the names of the clients wrong (it was supposed to be T. G. De Vaughn and J. V. Spaugh) according to the documents generated by a court case that ensued. De Vaughn and Spaugh found that Payne was not a licensed architect, and so they had a Mr. Zeller prepare new plans for their theater and supervise its construction, much to the displeasure of Payne, who subsequently sued.
The upshot is that the Maybell Theatre as built was designed by architect Julian T. Zeller, who a few years later also designed the Alcazar (aka Liberty) Theatre a couple of blocks east.
This item from the May 21, 1921, issue of Building & Engineering News could have been about the house that became the National Theatre:
“Construction To Start Immediately
THEATRE. ETC. Cost. $85,000
“WOODLAND, Yolo Co., Cal. West Main Street. Brick drama and motion picture theatre and store building, 40x160. seating 900 persons. Owner — W. W. Stuart Webster. Architect & Contractor — E. L. Younger Porter Bldg., Woodland, Calif. A Robert Morton organ to cost $15,000 has already been purchased.”
The Majestic Theatre operated from January 1, 1917 to June 4, 1943, with at least one lengthy interregnum during the depression.
The December 24, 1935, edition of The Mansfield News-Journal said that Warner Bros. would reopen the newly redecorated Majestic Theatre on Christmas Day. The house had been closed for more than a year. Warner planned to have daily shows at the Majestic until January 5, after which it would return to a policy of operating on Saturday and Sunday only.
A readers' question-and-answer column in the December 23,, 1966, issue of the News Journal told of the end of the Majestic Theatre:
“The Majestic met its un-majestic end Dec 26, 1944 when the roof collapsed under the weight of tons of snow and ice following a three-week storm. It had not been used as a theater since June 4, 1943. The theater was built in 1915 at a cost of more than $100,000. Nobody was hurt when the roof collapsed.”
This web page reproduces a list of the events of 1917 as published in the December 31 issue of The Mansfield News, and it says that the Majestic Theatre opened on January 1, 1917.
Plans to convert the Normandy Room of the Fairmont Hotel into a theater were afoot as early as 1919, according to an item in the April 16 issue of Building & Engineering News:
“SAN FRANCISCO. Blk Bded by Powell, Mason, California and Sacramento.
“Extensive alterations to Class ‘A’ hotel (build garage, alter tunnel and remodel Normandy Room into elaborate theatre of 400 seats).
“Owner — Hammond Ohlerich.
“Architect — Reid Bros.. 105 Montgomery St., San Francisco.
“NOTE — This work has been contemplated for over two years and it is now expected to go ahead.”
I’m not sure if the Nob Hill Theatre of 1944 was located in the former Normandy Room or not. It seems unlikely that the Fairmont would have been installing a movie theater as early as 1919, so that project might have been for a legitimate house. I don’t know if these plans were carried out or not.
The Rialto was located at 406 Oak Street, and has been demolished. Its site is now a parking lot.
Here is the PSTOS page for the Rialto Theatre in Hood River. The Rialto’s Wurlitzer organ, installed in 1921, was moved to the Egyptian Theatre in Coos Bay in 1956, but it has recently been returned to Hood River where it is installed in The History Museum of Hood River County and undergoing restoration.
The History Museum has two photos on this page. One is a close view of the theater entrance during a renovation sometime around 1930, and the other shows the Wurlitzer organ being played by Vera Kolstad, wife of the theater’s first owner, Arthur Kolstad.
As we know the name of the theater’s owner, it must have been the Rialto that was the subject of an item in the April 9, 1921, issue of Building & Engineering News which said that architect Henderson Ryan was preparing plans for a two-story theater to be built at Hood River, Oregon, for A. S. Kolstad. The Wurlitzer was installed in 1921, so the theater must have been completed and opened before the end of that year.
The Stockton history site maintained by Wright Realtors says that the Roxy Theatre opened as the Lyric Theatre and was later called the National Theatre and the Studio Theatre before finally being renamed the Roxy. There are photos of the building about 1/5 of the way down this web page, though the page mistakenly gives the address as 124-130 Sutter (the site’s Stockton Theatres Over the Years page gives the correct address, but only has one of the photos.)
The Lyric Theatre was in operation by 1915. That year a feature in the July issue of the trade journal The Architect and Engineer of California attributed the design of the Lyric Theatre to the Stockton firm Stone & Wright. Stone & Wright were also the architects of the Lodi Theatre, built in nearby Lodi in 1918.
The Facebook photo page for Zoe Jakes House of Tarot has two recent photos of the auditorium of the Palace Theatre. The are no seats on the main floor, but there are in the balcony. It doesn’t look as thought here’s been any restoration, but the building appears sound and the atmospheric decor is intact, though painted a uniform beige with a bit of dark brown trim.
The history of the Strand/Varnville Theatre on this web page features a photo of the building taken during its post-theatrical period. The roof collapsed in 2000, and the building was subsequently demolished.
This web page has dozens of photos of Johannesburg’s movie theaters, including a late photo (no earlier than 1955) of the Bijou, about ¼ of the way down the page.
Architect Sumner Spaulding’s middle name was Maurice. Walter Webber’s middle initial was I.
The May 28, 1937, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor said that Ben Aranda would build a new, 750-seat theater for himself at Brawley. The architect for the project was Walter Webber.
I’m not sure whether or not Walter I. Webber had a solo practice at this time. He had earlier been a member of the firm of Webber & Spaulding, architects of the Avalon Theatre and the Casino, in which the theater was located, at Avalon, on Santa Catalina Island. Nobody seems to know when the firm was dissolved.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of August 21, 1936, reported that a 600-seat theater would be built for Principal Theatres on Main Street near 6th in Brawley. The architect for the project was Clifford A. Balch.
bigjoe59: They must be referring to what is now the Cecchi Gori Fine Arts Cinema. It’s in Beverly Hills. I’ve never heard of it having been called the Fox Fine Arts, and we don’t list that as an aka, so that’s why it didn’t turn up in your search.
The big roadshow house on Hollywood Boulevard was the Egyptian, though the Pantages also had its share of hard ticket events. The Warner Hollywood was tied up with Cinerama through that period. I think that Fox West Coast booked more roadshow engagements into the Carthay Circle than any other theater in the region. The Chinese was the circuit’s big first-run house.
One thing I recall about the Chinese is that at one point, I think it must have been during the late 1950s, one of the television stations in Los Angeles had a weekly movie that was hosted by Francis X. Bushman, and it featured a wraparound of Bushman talking about the movie from a seat in the Chinese. At the end of the closing segment he would get up and walk up the aisle of the auditorium. I hadn’t thought about that show in years. I wonder if anyone else remembers it?
This nostalgia piece from the Oakland Press News says that the Huron Theatre burned on Christmas Eve, 1983. There’s a photo of the fire and one of the burned-out building. The article also says that the theater was in Waterford Township (Water Winter Wonderland also lists it in Waterford.)
The article was also blogged, accompanied by a different photo of the theater while it was still in operation. It was showing Around the World in Eighty Days, and there was special lettering on the building itself, not just the marquee, so this might have been the roadshow, which could date the photo to 1957. If not, it’s probably 1958.
The April 2, 1959, issue of Motion Picture Daily reported that W. Kinder, owner of the Star Theatre in Imperial, Nebraska, had affiliated his house with Allied Rocky Mountain Independent Theatres, Inc.. The move must not have helped business enough, as the Star soon closed. But the October 5, 1960, issue of the same journal reported that the theater had been re-opened under new management:
An Imperial Valley directory published in 1914 lists a house called the L & S Theatre at 568 Main Street in El Centro. It might or might not have been in the same building that became the Valley Theatre.
The Valley should be listed on W. Main St., which is the historic center of town. That’s undoubtedly where it was. I have a strong suspicion that it was replaced by the drive-up teller and ATM lot of the Union Bank at 576 W.Main Street. To the east of the driveways is a vacant store, and next to that is a bike shop with the address 560 W. Main. The vacant store might be at 566, but is probably 564. The Valley Theatre has most likely been demolished.
The January 9, 1928, issue of The Film Daily said that S. U. Anderson, the original owner of the Belvedere Theatre in Brawley, had sold it to Principal Theatres. Princiapal had changed the name of the house to Brawley Theatre by 1929.
The Brawley Community Foundation is attempting to restore this theater. The front of the theater has already been restored and relighted, as seen in this news item from The Desert Review of May 17, 2013. The house has been renamed the Brawley Playhouse Theatre.
The theater’s Facebook page has a brief history of the house. It opened on March 22, 1922, as the Belvedere Theatre, with 815 seats. When restored the house is to have up to 428 seats, a stage for theatrical and music productions, an orchestra pit, and movie screen.
Volume 1 of Cezar Del Valle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index gives operating dates of 1908 to 1931 for the Fulton Auditorium, and October 28, 1948 to 1976 for the Banco Theatre. That fits in with the 1935 Certificate of Occupancy for a cabaret and show room on the ground floor, cited in an earlier comment by Ed Solero.
Brownstoner has this page for the building at 1298 Fulton Street, which says that the plans for the 1913 conversion of the theater into a movie house were by architect James Boyle. This project was probably fairly extensive, as the July 6, 1910, issue of The Film Index ran a brief article about the Fulton Auditorium which said that it then had about 300 seats.
The article is worth quoting in full for its depiction of the nascent star system, which had barely begun, as well as its brief description of the Fulton Auditorium itself:
I’ve been unable to discover the name of the original architect, or of whoever planned the alterations that must have been needed when the house was reopened as the Banco Theatre in 1948.The December 22, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World mentions the Palace:
Something puzzling is that the Internet has a couple of pages about the theater department of the Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart schools presenting school plays at the Palace Theatre, 301 Main Street South, Hector. The Internet also gives that as the address of the Hector City Hall.Google Maps' street view of the location shows a modern building that looks nothing like a theater. It could be that the City Hall has a multi-purpose room both for council meetings and community events, and they call it the Palace Theatre when it’s used for the school plays. It’s a corner location, and might be on the site of the original Palace Theatre.
A. R. Anderson was the original operator of the third Orpheum Theatre in Twin Falls, and had operated the second Orpheum and the Gem Theatre as well. He was a regular contributor of capsule movie reviews to trade journals Motography and Exhibitors Herald between 1918 and 1922.
The aka Colonial Theatre should be added for this house, per CSWalczak and BillCounter’s information in the previous comments.
This item from the July 23, 1919, issue of Building & Engineering News most likely pertains to the Colonial Theatre:
The original building being only 88 feet deep would have left plenty of room for the stage house that was added in 1921. Sanson Milligan Cooper appears to have started out as a contractor and gradually eased into architecture in the late teens and early twenties.A historic resources survey of Santa Paula (enormous PDF here, though there are only a couple of pages about the theater) says that this house was the Electra Theatre in the 1910s. We have the Electra Theatre listed at 118-120 E. Main Street. It’s possible that Santa Paula went through a renumbering at some point, or it is possible that the Electra Had two different locations, but I think the renumbering is much more likely. Modern 118-120 E. Main is well outside the town’s historic business district and is surrounded by mostly modern residential or industrial buildings. In the 1910s it was probably just scattered houses and small orchards, which would have been a very unlikely location for a movie theater.
There was a proposal to build a new theater in Santa Paula in 1919, noted in the June 25 issue of Building & Engineering News, but I haven’t yet discovered if it got built or not. It’s possible that it was a new home for the Electra, and is the building standing today.
As it was open by very early 1920 (mentioned in the January 18 issue of The Los Angeles Times,) the California Theatre might be the project noted in the April 16, 1919, issue of Building & Engineering News:
The May 3 edition of The Moving Picture World also mentioned the project, saying that it would be exclusively a picture house, with all seats on one saucer-shaped floor that would feature a tunnel exit (which sounds as though it might have had a stadium-style section.) The pipe organ for the house was budgeted at $30,000.A biographical sketch of architect J. Corbley Pool published in 1917 said that he was also noted as an acoustical engineer. He served as a consultant in the design many churches and auditoriums across the United States. Perhaps that $30,000 organ had something to do with the choice of Mr. Pool as architect for this theater.
This theater for which the May 21, 1921, issue of Building & Engineering News said plans were being prepared was probably the Maybell Theatre, but it turned out that the original architect didn’t design the house after all:
The item got the names of the clients wrong (it was supposed to be T. G. De Vaughn and J. V. Spaugh) according to the documents generated by a court case that ensued. De Vaughn and Spaugh found that Payne was not a licensed architect, and so they had a Mr. Zeller prepare new plans for their theater and supervise its construction, much to the displeasure of Payne, who subsequently sued.The upshot is that the Maybell Theatre as built was designed by architect Julian T. Zeller, who a few years later also designed the Alcazar (aka Liberty) Theatre a couple of blocks east.
This item from the May 21, 1921, issue of Building & Engineering News could have been about the house that became the National Theatre:
The Majestic Theatre operated from January 1, 1917 to June 4, 1943, with at least one lengthy interregnum during the depression.
The December 24, 1935, edition of The Mansfield News-Journal said that Warner Bros. would reopen the newly redecorated Majestic Theatre on Christmas Day. The house had been closed for more than a year. Warner planned to have daily shows at the Majestic until January 5, after which it would return to a policy of operating on Saturday and Sunday only.
A readers' question-and-answer column in the December 23,, 1966, issue of the News Journal told of the end of the Majestic Theatre:
This web page reproduces a list of the events of 1917 as published in the December 31 issue of The Mansfield News, and it says that the Majestic Theatre opened on January 1, 1917.Plans to convert the Normandy Room of the Fairmont Hotel into a theater were afoot as early as 1919, according to an item in the April 16 issue of Building & Engineering News:
I’m not sure if the Nob Hill Theatre of 1944 was located in the former Normandy Room or not. It seems unlikely that the Fairmont would have been installing a movie theater as early as 1919, so that project might have been for a legitimate house. I don’t know if these plans were carried out or not.The Rialto was located at 406 Oak Street, and has been demolished. Its site is now a parking lot.
Here is the PSTOS page for the Rialto Theatre in Hood River. The Rialto’s Wurlitzer organ, installed in 1921, was moved to the Egyptian Theatre in Coos Bay in 1956, but it has recently been returned to Hood River where it is installed in The History Museum of Hood River County and undergoing restoration.
The History Museum has two photos on this page. One is a close view of the theater entrance during a renovation sometime around 1930, and the other shows the Wurlitzer organ being played by Vera Kolstad, wife of the theater’s first owner, Arthur Kolstad.
As we know the name of the theater’s owner, it must have been the Rialto that was the subject of an item in the April 9, 1921, issue of Building & Engineering News which said that architect Henderson Ryan was preparing plans for a two-story theater to be built at Hood River, Oregon, for A. S. Kolstad. The Wurlitzer was installed in 1921, so the theater must have been completed and opened before the end of that year.
The Stockton history site maintained by Wright Realtors says that the Roxy Theatre opened as the Lyric Theatre and was later called the National Theatre and the Studio Theatre before finally being renamed the Roxy. There are photos of the building about 1/5 of the way down this web page, though the page mistakenly gives the address as 124-130 Sutter (the site’s Stockton Theatres Over the Years page gives the correct address, but only has one of the photos.)
The Lyric Theatre was in operation by 1915. That year a feature in the July issue of the trade journal The Architect and Engineer of California attributed the design of the Lyric Theatre to the Stockton firm Stone & Wright. Stone & Wright were also the architects of the Lodi Theatre, built in nearby Lodi in 1918.
The Facebook photo page for Zoe Jakes House of Tarot has two recent photos of the auditorium of the Palace Theatre. The are no seats on the main floor, but there are in the balcony. It doesn’t look as thought here’s been any restoration, but the building appears sound and the atmospheric decor is intact, though painted a uniform beige with a bit of dark brown trim.
The history of the Strand/Varnville Theatre on this web page features a photo of the building taken during its post-theatrical period. The roof collapsed in 2000, and the building was subsequently demolished.
This web page has dozens of photos of Johannesburg’s movie theaters, including a late photo (no earlier than 1955) of the Bijou, about ¼ of the way down the page.