The October 27, 1917 issue of the Wichita Beacon reported that “[t]he old Empress Theater, on South Topeka, now called the New Liberty Theater, will be
reopened Saturday, November 3. The entire interior is being rebuilt.”
The December 8, 1917, issue of The Music Trade Review reported on the New Liberty Theatre, saying that it was on the corner of Topeka and Williams Street. Our Street View should be moved to the south end of the block, about where Google Maps' estimated address is 178 S. Topeka.
The latest mention I’ve found of the Liberty Theatre in the Wichita Daily Eagle is from October 5, 1919. It gives no indication that the theater was to be closed at that time, but as it is not mentioned in 1910 the house was most likely dismantled in late 1919.
This house had been renamed the Regent Theatre by 1919, when the November 2 issue of the Wichita Eagle reported that “[t]he Regent theater building, 117 North Market street, was badly damaged by fire yesterday.”
The Regent had only reopened on September 1, 1919, after an extensive remodeling and redecorating job which had kept the house closed for the entire month of August.
118 Main Street (or Main Avenue, as some listings call it) is now the address of a restaurant called The Sandbar. The building looks pretty old and has a small marquee on it, so I’m pretty sure it is the theater.
Pollock is another place where Google Maps is a mess. The map on our page puts the pin icon on a totally different Main Avenue located in North Dakota, several miles northwest of Pollock. An actual Google map of Pollock doesn’t give Main Street a name, but only the highway number 10, but using highway 10 in a Google Maps search doesn’t get you near the town, let alone theater. (/rant)
Anyway, here is a correct street view of the theater building. It’s on the north side of Highway 10 just east of B Avenue. I suspect that the theater occupied no more than half of the building, as the whole thing, which in satellite view looks to be about 50x120, could have accommodated way more than 200 seats.
The August 28, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the new Dream Theatre in Viborg, South Dakota, would open about September 1. The Glud Theatre was mentioned in the October 6, 1928, issue of Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World.
The July 19, 2007, issue of The New Era has an article about the Lund Theatre, published shortly after it became the first building in Viborg to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places (here is the last page of the article as Google News will not make a link to the front page. Put 1 in the “Page” box just above the article to see the first page.) The article says that the house was renamed the Lund Theatre in 1928.
The Lund Theatre web site has a small photo captioned “Dream/Glud Theatre shortly after construction in 1915” but above the marquee is a poster for All Quiet on the Western Front, which was released in 1930, so the photo is considerably later than they think. In 1930 the building had probably changed little since 1915, though. The modern front dates from the 1950s, according to the official web site and the New Era article.
A 1919 photo of the New Astor Theatre from the archives of the American Terra Cotta Company can be seen on this web page. The text identifies Buechner & Orth as the architects.
Dave Kenney’s Twin Cities Picture Show gives three additional aka’s for the Riviera Theatre (from 1911 to 1916 it was listed the Gaiety Theatre; in 1916 and 1917 it was the Cort Theatre; in 1918 and 1919 it was the OK Theatre. The Gaiety was open in 1910, though, and might have opened in late 1909.)
While there was a theater at this address for a decade before the Astor opened, I don’t know if any of the original building was incorporated into the Astor. Records from a 1913 court case reveal that the Gaiety Theatre had 700 seats, so it was only half the size of the Astor.
The contract for remodeling the store building at 447-9 Wabasha Street for the Gaiety Theatre Co. had recently been awarded to Fred Stanley, according to the November 20, 1909, issue of Construction and Contract News. The project involved complete interior remodeling and a new front with a marquee, at a cost of $4,009 and with a target date of December 6 for completion. Plans for the conversion had been drawn by architect A. C. Pear.
The Dohany Opera House became the Strand Theatre in 1916, as noted in the November 4 issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Council Bluffs. Ia. — The Strand theater, which is the name of the remodeled Dohany opera house, opened with ‘The Common Law.’”
Dohany’s Opera House was built in 1883 to replace an earlier house of the same name that had opened on the second floor of a livery stable in 1868. The new Dohany’s original seating capacity was 1,400, which probably included a gallery.
In 1927 the Strand was completely remodeled inside and out, the original Victorian Italianate front being replaced by the eclectic, polychrome terra cotta, Gothic-Moorish-Art Deco fantasy that remained for the rest of the theater’s history. The interior was redone in a more restrained Classical style.
Three photos of the Strand’s surprisingly elegant auditorium can be seen starting on page 52 of Council Bluffs: Broadway, by Richard Warner and Ryan Roenfeld (Google Books preview.) There are photos of the original 1883 exterior on page 28. Photos of the Strand’s front before and after the fire of December 11, 1974, are on page 54.
Warner and Roenfeld attribute the design of the 1927 remodeling to Council Bluffs architect Henry J. Schneider.
Harris-Warren Theatre was originally the Warren Opera House. The Cleveland Architects Database of the Cleveland City Planning Commission says that the Warren Opera House was designed in 1886 by Oscar Cobb, with the Cleveland firm of Coburn & Barnum acting as supervising architects.
The January 1, 1916, issue of Motography has an item about this theater:
“The new White Way theater in Mansfield was opened by Manager Roberts. The decorations are white and green and are tastily carried out in all the furnishings. Feature films will be shown.”
The Palace Theatre dates back to at least as early as 1921. It was on a list of public buildings for which license fees had been collected by the state during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921.
Chris, you might find the list useful as you’ve been adding theaters in South Dakota. It starts here and continues through page 246 of the Google Books scan. About half the list appears to be theaters. Unfortunately, the list isn’t alphabetical either by theater name or by place, so you have to use the Google Books' search box in the left frame of the page to quickly find if a particular theater was licensed in 1921.
The Legion post building has a plaque with the year 1915 above the entrance, so the building is quite old. It looks as though it might have been built as a lodge hall, though if built in 1915 it wouldn’t have been for the American Legion, which wasn’t founded until 1919. I don’t know how long Hartford’s Legion post has been in this building, but if it was there in 1948 then the State Theatre might have another aka. An item in the October 16, 1948, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review says that “[t]he Legion, Hartford, S. D., is closed for remodeling.”
This is from the August 1, 1941, issue of The Film Daily:
“Floyd Opens Sebring House
“Sebring, Fla. — Floyd Theaters has opened their new $25,000 theater, the Florida. Gene Stone is manager of the 609-seat house. Interior is finished in white-brown Celotex and cypress in natural tones with a two-tone light green trim. Foyer is finished in natural wood, with a bright red carpet. Exterior is concrete with strips of bright orange carra glass.”
I suspect that “carra glass” was meant to read “Carrara Glass,” a competitor of the better-known Vitrolite brand of pigmented glass tiles.
There is a photo of the auditorium of the Kiva Theatre on this page of the April 29, 1939, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review The caption says that the recent renovation of the house was designed by the Kiva’s owner, Frank Maloff, but I believe the correct spelling of his name was Maloof.
Boxoffice is behaving badly again and Tinseltoes' link is not working (whether temporarily or permanently I don’t know.) Fortunately, the remodeling of the Colony Theatre was the subject of an article in the April 29, 1939, issue of Showmen’s Trade Journal, as well, and here is a scan of it at the ever-reliable Internet Archive. The 1939 remodeling was designed by John Eberson.
Have we got the addresses of the State and Hartford Theatres reversed, or is it the names and histories? Internet says that the Hartford American Legion post is at 120 N. Main Avenue. Google Street View shows the address 119 next to the door of the Senior Citizens Center across the street.
The June 13, 1930, issue of The Film Daily said in an item datelined Fort Dodge that “Bruno Pierce is managing the new Iowa here, recently opened by the Rivola Co.”
Indeed, This is Cinerama had been running at the Broadway Theatre in New York for seven months, since September 30, 1952, and at the Music Hall in Detroit for more than a month, beginning March 23, 1953, before it opened at the Warner Hollywood on April 29, 1953. The fourth Cinerama installation was at the Warner Theatre in New York, to which the movie moved after playing 36 weeks at the Broadway. Chicago’s Palace Theatre got the fifth installation, and the movie opened there some three months after its Hollywood opening. Cinerama was rolled out very slowly. By the end of 1953, there had been only ten installations.
The Capitol Theatre opened on January 12, 1927, according to the theater’s history on this web page. The listing in the Buechner & Orth papers was for the year of design and construction, not the year of opening. Henry Orth was probably lead architect on the project, as Charles Buechner died in 1924.
Unless something happened to the original building, or the name was moved to a different house, the Strand Theatre dates to 1916. Here is an item from the July 16 issue of The Moving Picture World
“THE STRAND THEATER, FORT DODGE.
“A. F. Powers, of the Decorators Supply Company, has closed a contract for the ornamental plaster decorations and lighting fixtures for the Strand theater now being erected at Fort Dodge, Iowa, by Messrs. Julius & Awe.
“The decorations of the Strand will be carried out according to the designs furnished by the proprietors. The theater will seat about 700, and will be of strictly fire-proof construction. The auditorium will be ventilated with a modern air washing apparatus. The interior of the auditorium will be carried out to represent an Italian garden effect, with semi-direct electric bowls suspended from arches between the wall pilasters. The wall pilasters and proscenium arch will be of caenstone.
“The foyer and lobby will be of ornamental plaster marble and mosaic floor. The prevailing color of the auditorium will be French gray and ivory, with electric fixtures in ivory and antique gold. The entire front of the building will be covered with an artistic electric sign and display lights.”
The Strand Theatre changed hands in 1917, as reported in the September 1 issue of MPW:
“Fort Dodge, Ia. — D. B. Lederman, manager of the Des Moines Laemmle Film service, has purchased the Strand theater in Fort Dodge from Messrs. Julius & Awe.”
The Rialto Theatre changed hands in 1925, according to the November 7 issue of Motion Picture News:
“The Rialto theatre at Fort Dodge, formerly owned by William Johnson has been added to the string of A. H. Blank. It has not yet been anounced [sic] who will manage the theatre for Mr. Blank.”
Unless the Orient Theatre operated in more than one location, it existed before the 1920s. This item is from the January 29, 1916, issue of The American Contractor:
“Jersey City, N. J.—Moving Picture Theater: $22,000. 1 sty. Archt. C. H. Ziegler, 75 Montgomery st. Owner Orient Theater Corp.. Wm. A. Higgins, pres., 27 Monticello av. Fdn. started. Gen. contr. let to the Jersey City Constr. Co., 75 Montgomery st.”
The style of the brickwork on the facade of this theater was popular in the 1910s, so I’m inclined to think that Our Lady of Sorrows Church is the movie house built by the Orient Theatre Corp. in 1916. $22,000 would have been adequate for construction of a theater of this size before construction costs rose following the U.S. entry into WWI in 1917.
The October 21, 1916, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror said that the Orient Theatre in Jersey City had opened on October 7. The new moving picture house was being managed by John E. Moody.
The October 27, 1917 issue of the Wichita Beacon reported that “[t]he old Empress Theater, on South Topeka, now called the New Liberty Theater, will be reopened Saturday, November 3. The entire interior is being rebuilt.”
The December 8, 1917, issue of The Music Trade Review reported on the New Liberty Theatre, saying that it was on the corner of Topeka and Williams Street. Our Street View should be moved to the south end of the block, about where Google Maps' estimated address is 178 S. Topeka.
The latest mention I’ve found of the Liberty Theatre in the Wichita Daily Eagle is from October 5, 1919. It gives no indication that the theater was to be closed at that time, but as it is not mentioned in 1910 the house was most likely dismantled in late 1919.
This house had been renamed the Regent Theatre by 1919, when the November 2 issue of the Wichita Eagle reported that “[t]he Regent theater building, 117 North Market street, was badly damaged by fire yesterday.”
The Regent had only reopened on September 1, 1919, after an extensive remodeling and redecorating job which had kept the house closed for the entire month of August.
118 Main Street (or Main Avenue, as some listings call it) is now the address of a restaurant called The Sandbar. The building looks pretty old and has a small marquee on it, so I’m pretty sure it is the theater.
Pollock is another place where Google Maps is a mess. The map on our page puts the pin icon on a totally different Main Avenue located in North Dakota, several miles northwest of Pollock. An actual Google map of Pollock doesn’t give Main Street a name, but only the highway number 10, but using highway 10 in a Google Maps search doesn’t get you near the town, let alone theater. (/rant)
Anyway, here is a correct street view of the theater building. It’s on the north side of Highway 10 just east of B Avenue. I suspect that the theater occupied no more than half of the building, as the whole thing, which in satellite view looks to be about 50x120, could have accommodated way more than 200 seats.
The August 28, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the new Dream Theatre in Viborg, South Dakota, would open about September 1. The Glud Theatre was mentioned in the October 6, 1928, issue of Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World.
The July 19, 2007, issue of The New Era has an article about the Lund Theatre, published shortly after it became the first building in Viborg to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places (here is the last page of the article as Google News will not make a link to the front page. Put 1 in the “Page” box just above the article to see the first page.) The article says that the house was renamed the Lund Theatre in 1928.
The Lund Theatre web site has a small photo captioned “Dream/Glud Theatre shortly after construction in 1915” but above the marquee is a poster for All Quiet on the Western Front, which was released in 1930, so the photo is considerably later than they think. In 1930 the building had probably changed little since 1915, though. The modern front dates from the 1950s, according to the official web site and the New Era article.
A 1919 photo of the New Astor Theatre from the archives of the American Terra Cotta Company can be seen on this web page. The text identifies Buechner & Orth as the architects.
Dave Kenney’s Twin Cities Picture Show gives three additional aka’s for the Riviera Theatre (from 1911 to 1916 it was listed the Gaiety Theatre; in 1916 and 1917 it was the Cort Theatre; in 1918 and 1919 it was the OK Theatre. The Gaiety was open in 1910, though, and might have opened in late 1909.)
While there was a theater at this address for a decade before the Astor opened, I don’t know if any of the original building was incorporated into the Astor. Records from a 1913 court case reveal that the Gaiety Theatre had 700 seats, so it was only half the size of the Astor.
The contract for remodeling the store building at 447-9 Wabasha Street for the Gaiety Theatre Co. had recently been awarded to Fred Stanley, according to the November 20, 1909, issue of Construction and Contract News. The project involved complete interior remodeling and a new front with a marquee, at a cost of $4,009 and with a target date of December 6 for completion. Plans for the conversion had been drawn by architect A. C. Pear.
The Dohany Opera House became the Strand Theatre in 1916, as noted in the November 4 issue of The Moving Picture World:
Dohany’s Opera House was built in 1883 to replace an earlier house of the same name that had opened on the second floor of a livery stable in 1868. The new Dohany’s original seating capacity was 1,400, which probably included a gallery.In 1927 the Strand was completely remodeled inside and out, the original Victorian Italianate front being replaced by the eclectic, polychrome terra cotta, Gothic-Moorish-Art Deco fantasy that remained for the rest of the theater’s history. The interior was redone in a more restrained Classical style.
Three photos of the Strand’s surprisingly elegant auditorium can be seen starting on page 52 of Council Bluffs: Broadway, by Richard Warner and Ryan Roenfeld (Google Books preview.) There are photos of the original 1883 exterior on page 28. Photos of the Strand’s front before and after the fire of December 11, 1974, are on page 54.
Warner and Roenfeld attribute the design of the 1927 remodeling to Council Bluffs architect Henry J. Schneider.
I believe Chris is right. The building next door to the theater in both photos has a distinctive Romanesque triple arch on the upper floor.
Harris-Warren Theatre was originally the Warren Opera House. The Cleveland Architects Database of the Cleveland City Planning Commission says that the Warren Opera House was designed in 1886 by Oscar Cobb, with the Cleveland firm of Coburn & Barnum acting as supervising architects.
The January 1, 1916, issue of Motography has an item about this theater:
The Palace Theatre dates back to at least as early as 1921. It was on a list of public buildings for which license fees had been collected by the state during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921.
Chris, you might find the list useful as you’ve been adding theaters in South Dakota. It starts here and continues through page 246 of the Google Books scan. About half the list appears to be theaters. Unfortunately, the list isn’t alphabetical either by theater name or by place, so you have to use the Google Books' search box in the left frame of the page to quickly find if a particular theater was licensed in 1921.
The Legion post building has a plaque with the year 1915 above the entrance, so the building is quite old. It looks as though it might have been built as a lodge hall, though if built in 1915 it wouldn’t have been for the American Legion, which wasn’t founded until 1919. I don’t know how long Hartford’s Legion post has been in this building, but if it was there in 1948 then the State Theatre might have another aka. An item in the October 16, 1948, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review says that “[t]he Legion, Hartford, S. D., is closed for remodeling.”
This is from the August 1, 1941, issue of The Film Daily:
I suspect that “carra glass” was meant to read “Carrara Glass,” a competitor of the better-known Vitrolite brand of pigmented glass tiles.There is a photo of the auditorium of the Kiva Theatre on this page of the April 29, 1939, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review The caption says that the recent renovation of the house was designed by the Kiva’s owner, Frank Maloff, but I believe the correct spelling of his name was Maloof.
Boxoffice is behaving badly again and Tinseltoes' link is not working (whether temporarily or permanently I don’t know.) Fortunately, the remodeling of the Colony Theatre was the subject of an article in the April 29, 1939, issue of Showmen’s Trade Journal, as well, and here is a scan of it at the ever-reliable Internet Archive. The 1939 remodeling was designed by John Eberson.
There was a State Theatre in operation in Hartford by 1945. This item appeared in the January 2, 1946, issue of Film Daily:
Have we got the addresses of the State and Hartford Theatres reversed, or is it the names and histories? Internet says that the Hartford American Legion post is at 120 N. Main Avenue. Google Street View shows the address 119 next to the door of the Senior Citizens Center across the street.
The December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the New Alta Theatre in Pendleton, Oregon, had opened on September 6 that year.
The June 13, 1930, issue of The Film Daily said in an item datelined Fort Dodge that “Bruno Pierce is managing the new Iowa here, recently opened by the Rivola Co.”
Indeed, This is Cinerama had been running at the Broadway Theatre in New York for seven months, since September 30, 1952, and at the Music Hall in Detroit for more than a month, beginning March 23, 1953, before it opened at the Warner Hollywood on April 29, 1953. The fourth Cinerama installation was at the Warner Theatre in New York, to which the movie moved after playing 36 weeks at the Broadway. Chicago’s Palace Theatre got the fifth installation, and the movie opened there some three months after its Hollywood opening. Cinerama was rolled out very slowly. By the end of 1953, there had been only ten installations.
The Capitol Theatre opened on January 12, 1927, according to the theater’s history on this web page. The listing in the Buechner & Orth papers was for the year of design and construction, not the year of opening. Henry Orth was probably lead architect on the project, as Charles Buechner died in 1924.
Unless something happened to the original building, or the name was moved to a different house, the Strand Theatre dates to 1916. Here is an item from the July 16 issue of The Moving Picture World
The Strand Theatre changed hands in 1917, as reported in the September 1 issue of MPW:The Rialto Theatre changed hands in 1925, according to the November 7 issue of Motion Picture News:
The “Theaters in Construction” column of the February 3, 1926, issue of Variety had this item:
C. H. Ziegler was also the architect of the Orient Theatre in Jersey City.Unless the Orient Theatre operated in more than one location, it existed before the 1920s. This item is from the January 29, 1916, issue of The American Contractor:
The style of the brickwork on the facade of this theater was popular in the 1910s, so I’m inclined to think that Our Lady of Sorrows Church is the movie house built by the Orient Theatre Corp. in 1916. $22,000 would have been adequate for construction of a theater of this size before construction costs rose following the U.S. entry into WWI in 1917.The October 21, 1916, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror said that the Orient Theatre in Jersey City had opened on October 7. The new moving picture house was being managed by John E. Moody.