The Banner Theatre originally opened around 1910. In 1934 the house was bought by Abe Gumbiner who had it remodeled in a Streamline Modern style, with plans by architect Mark D. Kalischer. Two pages about the project, with before and after photos, appeared in the May 4, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald.
The Alhambra Theatre had been converted into a fruit store before it was reopened as the Harris Family Theatre in the 1930s. The Alhambra is on the left side of Penn Avenue in this 1928 photo. If the building still exists it must be the one occupied by the Rent-A-Center midway between Centre and Sheridan Avenues.
The May 4, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald featured this full page of before and after photos of the Harris Family Theatre. The Art Deco-style renovation was designed for the Harris Amusement Company by architect Victor A. Rigaumont.
The Alhambra Theatre was in operation by 1915, when it was mentioned in the August 4 issue of The Moving Picture World.
The Buflo Theatre was still in operation at least as late as October 8, 1959, when it was showing Face of a Fugitive starring Fred MacMurray and Dorothy Green.
The October 8, 1940, issue of Motion Picture Daily has an item that must be about the Pix Theatre:
“A new 350-seat house is being built at Buffalo, Mo., by Shields Wilson, operator of the Camden at Camdenton, Mo. Buffalo also has the Nu Buflo, operated by C. C. Rhodes of Warsaw, Mo.”
The 1915 ad linked by kencmcintyre says that the Marlowe Hippodrome Theatre was at 63rd Street and Stewart Avenue. The Hippodrome at 63rd and Ashland (or Marshfield) was a different house. I found a 1915 reference to a business at 1621 63rd in the Hippodrome Building, which would put it pretty close to the corner of Marshfield.
The West Englewood/Ogden must have been the proposed theater in this item from The American Contractor of October 4, 1919:
“ $600,000. Marshfield av., S., 6301-11. Brk. Theater: Owners Ascher Bros., Consumers bldg. Mas. Reidenour & Erickson, 535 E. 47th. Archt. H. L. Newhouse.”
6301-11 Marshfield would be at the southeast corner of Marshfield and 63rd. Items in the same journal later that year indicate that contracts had been let and construction was underway before the end of 1919. An item in the August 28, 1920, issue of the Forest Park Review said that Ascher Bros. new Englewood Theatre at 63rd and Marshfield was expected to open by January 1, so by that time the project would have taken more than a year to complete.
I’m not sure if the old Hippodrome was just extensively rebuilt or was demolished for Ascher Bros. West Englewood Theatre. One possibility would be that Ascher Bros. acquired several lots along Marshfield Avenue behind the Hippodrome and built an entirely new auditorium there, cutting a new lobby through the existing building to 63rd Street.
Ascher Bros. had opened the Columbus Theatre on Ashland just off 63rd in 1915, but it was only half the size of the Ogden. Most likely they found business too brisk for the smaller house and built this theater to replace it. The Columbus was closed in 1926.
In 1927, the West Englewood Theatre was one of three south side houses that Ascher Bros. sold to the National Theatres Corporation, according to an item in the March 1 issue of Suburbanite Economist. The others were the Colony, at 50th and Kedzie, and the Highland, at 70th and Ashland.
A biographical sketch of George J. Schade says that “[a]fter leaving the coal business in 1914, Schade opened and managed the Schade Theater, located on West Market St. in Sandusky.” The house most likely opened before the end of 1915. The July 24, 1915, issue of The American Contractor ran this item:
“Sandusky, O.—Motion Picture Theater & Commercial Bldg.: 2 sty. & bas. 44x188. $30M. Archt. H. C. Hunt, 411 Columbus av. Owner Geo. J. Schade, 922 Tiffin st. Gen. contr. let to Geo. Feick & Co., 420 Decatur st.”
Schade operated the theater until 1930, when it was leased to Warner Bros. The site at 207 W. Market Street is now part of a parking lot.
The San Toy Theatre in Reading had an M.P. Möller theater organ, Opus 3087, installed in late 1920. The January 3, 1921, issue of the Reading Times said that the recently-installed organ was attracting many new patrons to the house. The first organist for the San Toy was Harry Baird. In 1927, the instrument was being played by Mabel Stoudt according to the November 10 issue of the Times.
The May-June 2006 issue of a Reading Area Community College publication, the Front Street Journal, had a feature article about Front Street which said that the San Toy Theatre opened in August, 1914, and closed in 1933. The theater was designed in an Oriental style.
An article in the May 2, 1913, issue of the Reading Times said that Frank Hill had opened the Lyric Theatre at 806-810 Penn Street in 1910.
The June 29, 1914, issue of the paper said that the Moller organ just installed in the Lyric would be dedicated on July 4. It was a three manual instrument with 850 pipes, and had taken four weeks to install. It was the same style of organ that had been installed in the Vitagraph and Strand Theatres in New York City and the Stanley Theatre in Philadelphia.
An item about the Times Theatre in the “Theater Changes” section of the April 9, 1938, issue of The Film Daily says that the house (under construction at the time) was owned by the Crystal Amusement Company. I’ve found references to the company in trade publications of the 1910s and 1920s, too, and there was a Crystal Theatre operating in Braddock at least as early as 1908, when it was frequently mentioned in The Billboard and Variety. At least as early as 1910, the company also operated a movie house called the Family Theatre.
There were quite a few theaters in Braddock in the 1910s and 1920s. I’ve found references to a house called the American, operating at 1616 Braddock Avenue in 1916, a Knickerbocker Theatre operating in 1917, and theaters called the Braddock, the Grand, and the Colonial operating around 1922-1923, along with the Crystal and Family, both still open at that date.
I haven’t been able to discover a definite address for the Crystal Theatre itself, but the company was located at 860 Braddock Avenue according to an item in The American Contractor of June 17, 1922, and the offices might have been the theater building. Aside from the American, which I found mentioned only once, I have no idea where any of the others were. The 1922 Contractor item was about the contract being let for a new theater at 640-646 Braddock Avenue for the Crystal Amusement Company. If that project was completed it might have been the Braddock, Grand, or Colonial.
The April 3, 1920, issue of The American Contractor had this item about alterations being made to the Colonial Theatre:
“Theater (colonial, alt. & ext.): $150.000. 203 Bleeker St., Utica, N. Y. Archt. E. C. Horn & Son, 1476 Broadway, N. Y. C. Owner Wilmer & Vincent Theater Co., Walter W. Vincent, pres., 1415 Broadway, N. Y. C. Archt. will take bids on gen. contr. Finishing plans.”
E. C. Horn & Sons did quite a bit of work for the Wilmer & Vincent circuit during this period.
The April 3, 1920, issue of The American Contractor said that the contract had been let for the Liberty Theatre:
“Theater: 1 sty. & balcony. 60x120. Cor. 5th av. & 8th St., New Kensington, Pa. Archt. Harry S. Bair, Vandergrift bldg., Pittsburgh. Owner Liberty Theater Co., New Kensington. Gen. contr. let to T. C. Danner, New Kensington.”
A document prepared for the nomination of the New Kensington Downtown Historic District to the NRHP says that the Liberty Theatre opened on May 2, 1921.
Architect J. S. McIntyre’s first name was James. If this house didn’t open until September 11, 1922, there must have been some serious delays during construction. The April 3, 1920, issue of The American Contractor said that McIntyre was then taking bids on the Empire Theatre project in New Bedford.
Articles about the opening of Wilmer & Vincent’s new State Theatre appeared in the April 12, 1926, issue of the Harrisburg Telegraph. One of them noted that the new theater had been designed by E. C. Horn & Sons.
This article from the Sidney Herald of June 2, 2009, at the time the Centre Theatre was sold, tells the history of the house and the Suckstorff family’s 77-year involvement in the theater business in Sidney.
An article about the sale of the Centre Theatre that was published in the June 2, 2009, edition of the Sidney Herald says that the Princess Theatre was opened by Carl Brattin in 1915.
I’ve had to reconsider the location of the Roxy. The article I cited says that the Isis was “down the street” from the Princess, and it turns out that the Princess was on N. Central Avenue, not E. Main Street. That means that the Roxy was probably next door to the south end of the bank building, in a building at 108 S. Central that was occupied by a a barber shop and a payday loan company called Cash Montana at the time the current Google street view was made.
A March 18, 2008, Sidney Herald article about centenarian Dorothy Gall, who as a girl had played piano to accompany silent movies at both the Isis and the Princess Theatres, indicates that the Princess was located on N. Central Avenue, not E. Main Street. The article says that the Princess building is now occupied by Mike Bergh’s Tae Kwon Do studio, next door to Gurney Electric. Gurney Electric is listed at 115 N. Central and the Sidney Tendo Tae Kwon Do Studio is listed at 117 N. Central. The building at 117 has had the lower two thirds of the front refaced with brick, but the upper part has a pediment that looks like it could have belonged to a theater.
A June 12, 2012, feature about the news of 1925 in the Sidney Herald indicated that the opening of the Isis Theatre was one of the events that took place that year.
A March 18, 2008, article about centenarian Dorothy Gall, who as a girl had played piano to accompany silent movies at both the Isis and the Princess Theatres, said that the Isis was next door to the First National Bank, which is now occupied by the Cheerio Lounge. Internet gives the lounge the address 101 E. Main St., so the Isis/Roxy must have been at 103 E. Main, now the location of 2 Blondes, a nail salon.
The March 21, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Herald said that plans for the proposed Dixon Theatre in Dixon, Illinois, had been completed by Chicago architectural firm N. S. Spencer & Son.
An article in the December 9, 1966, issue of the Dixon Evening Telegraph says that William J. McAlpine was the contractor who built the courthouse, the old post office, the Dixon National Bank building and the City National Bank building as well as the Dixon Theatre. Almost all the references to McAlpine I’ve found call him a builder or contractor, not an architect. Those that call him an architect all appear to be citing the Dixon Theatre’s web site.
Dixon’s William J. McAlpine is not to be confused with William Jarvis McAlpine, a noted 19th century civil engineer.
An item datelined Missoula in the January 1, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Herald said (somewhat belatedly) that “[t]he new Rialto
theatre will be open for the holiday season.”
The Banner Theatre originally opened around 1910. In 1934 the house was bought by Abe Gumbiner who had it remodeled in a Streamline Modern style, with plans by architect Mark D. Kalischer. Two pages about the project, with before and after photos, appeared in the May 4, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald.
The Alhambra Theatre had been converted into a fruit store before it was reopened as the Harris Family Theatre in the 1930s. The Alhambra is on the left side of Penn Avenue in this 1928 photo. If the building still exists it must be the one occupied by the Rent-A-Center midway between Centre and Sheridan Avenues.
The May 4, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald featured this full page of before and after photos of the Harris Family Theatre. The Art Deco-style renovation was designed for the Harris Amusement Company by architect Victor A. Rigaumont.
The Alhambra Theatre was in operation by 1915, when it was mentioned in the August 4 issue of The Moving Picture World.
The Buflo Theatre was still in operation at least as late as October 8, 1959, when it was showing Face of a Fugitive starring Fred MacMurray and Dorothy Green.
The October 8, 1940, issue of Motion Picture Daily has an item that must be about the Pix Theatre:
Internet says the County Courier News is at 206 W. Main Street.
The 1915 ad linked by kencmcintyre says that the Marlowe Hippodrome Theatre was at 63rd Street and Stewart Avenue. The Hippodrome at 63rd and Ashland (or Marshfield) was a different house. I found a 1915 reference to a business at 1621 63rd in the Hippodrome Building, which would put it pretty close to the corner of Marshfield.
The West Englewood/Ogden must have been the proposed theater in this item from The American Contractor of October 4, 1919:
6301-11 Marshfield would be at the southeast corner of Marshfield and 63rd. Items in the same journal later that year indicate that contracts had been let and construction was underway before the end of 1919. An item in the August 28, 1920, issue of the Forest Park Review said that Ascher Bros. new Englewood Theatre at 63rd and Marshfield was expected to open by January 1, so by that time the project would have taken more than a year to complete.I’m not sure if the old Hippodrome was just extensively rebuilt or was demolished for Ascher Bros. West Englewood Theatre. One possibility would be that Ascher Bros. acquired several lots along Marshfield Avenue behind the Hippodrome and built an entirely new auditorium there, cutting a new lobby through the existing building to 63rd Street.
Ascher Bros. had opened the Columbus Theatre on Ashland just off 63rd in 1915, but it was only half the size of the Ogden. Most likely they found business too brisk for the smaller house and built this theater to replace it. The Columbus was closed in 1926.
In 1927, the West Englewood Theatre was one of three south side houses that Ascher Bros. sold to the National Theatres Corporation, according to an item in the March 1 issue of Suburbanite Economist. The others were the Colony, at 50th and Kedzie, and the Highland, at 70th and Ashland.
Thomas Lamb was the architect of the Youngstown Palace.
A biographical sketch of George J. Schade says that “[a]fter leaving the coal business in 1914, Schade opened and managed the Schade Theater, located on West Market St. in Sandusky.” The house most likely opened before the end of 1915. The July 24, 1915, issue of The American Contractor ran this item:
Schade operated the theater until 1930, when it was leased to Warner Bros. The site at 207 W. Market Street is now part of a parking lot.The 1912 photo currently displayed above probably belongs to this theater.
The San Toy Theatre in Reading had an M.P. Möller theater organ, Opus 3087, installed in late 1920. The January 3, 1921, issue of the Reading Times said that the recently-installed organ was attracting many new patrons to the house. The first organist for the San Toy was Harry Baird. In 1927, the instrument was being played by Mabel Stoudt according to the November 10 issue of the Times.
The May-June 2006 issue of a Reading Area Community College publication, the Front Street Journal, had a feature article about Front Street which said that the San Toy Theatre opened in August, 1914, and closed in 1933. The theater was designed in an Oriental style.
An article in the May 2, 1913, issue of the Reading Times said that Frank Hill had opened the Lyric Theatre at 806-810 Penn Street in 1910.
The June 29, 1914, issue of the paper said that the Moller organ just installed in the Lyric would be dedicated on July 4. It was a three manual instrument with 850 pipes, and had taken four weeks to install. It was the same style of organ that had been installed in the Vitagraph and Strand Theatres in New York City and the Stanley Theatre in Philadelphia.
An item about the Times Theatre in the “Theater Changes” section of the April 9, 1938, issue of The Film Daily says that the house (under construction at the time) was owned by the Crystal Amusement Company. I’ve found references to the company in trade publications of the 1910s and 1920s, too, and there was a Crystal Theatre operating in Braddock at least as early as 1908, when it was frequently mentioned in The Billboard and Variety. At least as early as 1910, the company also operated a movie house called the Family Theatre.
There were quite a few theaters in Braddock in the 1910s and 1920s. I’ve found references to a house called the American, operating at 1616 Braddock Avenue in 1916, a Knickerbocker Theatre operating in 1917, and theaters called the Braddock, the Grand, and the Colonial operating around 1922-1923, along with the Crystal and Family, both still open at that date.
I haven’t been able to discover a definite address for the Crystal Theatre itself, but the company was located at 860 Braddock Avenue according to an item in The American Contractor of June 17, 1922, and the offices might have been the theater building. Aside from the American, which I found mentioned only once, I have no idea where any of the others were. The 1922 Contractor item was about the contract being let for a new theater at 640-646 Braddock Avenue for the Crystal Amusement Company. If that project was completed it might have been the Braddock, Grand, or Colonial.
The 1963 photo of the Belmar Theatre’s marquee can now be seen at this link.
The April 3, 1920, issue of The American Contractor had this item about alterations being made to the Colonial Theatre:
E. C. Horn & Sons did quite a bit of work for the Wilmer & Vincent circuit during this period.The April 3, 1920, issue of The American Contractor said that the contract had been let for the Liberty Theatre:
A document prepared for the nomination of the New Kensington Downtown Historic District to the NRHP says that the Liberty Theatre opened on May 2, 1921.A document prepared for the nomination of the New Kensington Downtown Historic District to the NRHP says that the Ritz Theatre opened in 1922.
Architect J. S. McIntyre’s first name was James. If this house didn’t open until September 11, 1922, there must have been some serious delays during construction. The April 3, 1920, issue of The American Contractor said that McIntyre was then taking bids on the Empire Theatre project in New Bedford.
Articles about the opening of Wilmer & Vincent’s new State Theatre appeared in the April 12, 1926, issue of the Harrisburg Telegraph. One of them noted that the new theater had been designed by E. C. Horn & Sons.
This article from the Sidney Herald of June 2, 2009, at the time the Centre Theatre was sold, tells the history of the house and the Suckstorff family’s 77-year involvement in the theater business in Sidney.
An article about the sale of the Centre Theatre that was published in the June 2, 2009, edition of the Sidney Herald says that the Princess Theatre was opened by Carl Brattin in 1915.
I’ve had to reconsider the location of the Roxy. The article I cited says that the Isis was “down the street” from the Princess, and it turns out that the Princess was on N. Central Avenue, not E. Main Street. That means that the Roxy was probably next door to the south end of the bank building, in a building at 108 S. Central that was occupied by a a barber shop and a payday loan company called Cash Montana at the time the current Google street view was made.
A March 18, 2008, Sidney Herald article about centenarian Dorothy Gall, who as a girl had played piano to accompany silent movies at both the Isis and the Princess Theatres, indicates that the Princess was located on N. Central Avenue, not E. Main Street. The article says that the Princess building is now occupied by Mike Bergh’s Tae Kwon Do studio, next door to Gurney Electric. Gurney Electric is listed at 115 N. Central and the Sidney Tendo Tae Kwon Do Studio is listed at 117 N. Central. The building at 117 has had the lower two thirds of the front refaced with brick, but the upper part has a pediment that looks like it could have belonged to a theater.
A June 12, 2012, feature about the news of 1925 in the Sidney Herald indicated that the opening of the Isis Theatre was one of the events that took place that year.
A March 18, 2008, article about centenarian Dorothy Gall, who as a girl had played piano to accompany silent movies at both the Isis and the Princess Theatres, said that the Isis was next door to the First National Bank, which is now occupied by the Cheerio Lounge. Internet gives the lounge the address 101 E. Main St., so the Isis/Roxy must have been at 103 E. Main, now the location of 2 Blondes, a nail salon.
The March 21, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Herald said that plans for the proposed Dixon Theatre in Dixon, Illinois, had been completed by Chicago architectural firm N. S. Spencer & Son.
An article in the December 9, 1966, issue of the Dixon Evening Telegraph says that William J. McAlpine was the contractor who built the courthouse, the old post office, the Dixon National Bank building and the City National Bank building as well as the Dixon Theatre. Almost all the references to McAlpine I’ve found call him a builder or contractor, not an architect. Those that call him an architect all appear to be citing the Dixon Theatre’s web site.
Dixon’s William J. McAlpine is not to be confused with William Jarvis McAlpine, a noted 19th century civil engineer.
An item datelined Missoula in the January 1, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Herald said (somewhat belatedly) that “[t]he new Rialto theatre will be open for the holiday season.”