The 1985 NHP nomination form for the Delchar Theatre (PDF here) says that the house opened on February 6, 1928. It was built by Charles M. Tolan, and the name was derived from combining his first name with that of his wife, Della. The form says that Tolan had operated theaters in Mayville since 1917, but doesn’t give names or addresses for any of them.
This PDF has a photo of the Delchar Theatre, apparently taken in 1985 for the NRHP nomination.
The NRHP form uses the -re spelling of the T word, but the theater’s official web site uses the -er spelling.
A photo of the original, San Joaquin Street entrance building of the Yosemite Theatre, probably taken in the 1890s, can be found at the very bottom of the Stockton Theatres Over the Years page on Wright Realtors' web site. There is also a photo of the original proscenium arch with its advertising curtain.
Farther up the page (theaters are in alphabetical order) there are photos of the Main Street entrance of the house as the State and as the second Esquire.
Although first listed in directories in 1915, the Columbia Theatre was probably opened before the end of 1914. The Columbia was the house in this item from the May 2, 1914, issue of The American Contractor:
“Picture Theater (seating 1.400), 62x125. $40,000. Genesee nr. Mortimer st. Archt. Martin C. Miller, 1009 Mutual Life bldg. Owner Fred. Ullman, Mutual Life bldg. Archt. ready for bids about May 15th on construction with & without gallery, and with and without stage. Brick, terra cotta, fireproof, comp. roof, struct. & orn. iron.”
This house was probably a replacement for an earlier theater of the same name, as the New York Clipper mentioned a Columbia Theatre in Buffalo operated by Fred Ullman in October, 1912.
This Microsoft Word document has a list of Buffalo’s early nickelodeons. The original Ariel Theatre that the New Ariel replaced was right down the block at 173-175 High Street from 1910 to 1914. It, too, has been demolished.
The New Ariel must have opened in late 1914. The January 2, 1915, issue of Motography had this announcement of the opening:
“The new Ariel motion picture palace on High street, Buffalo, has been opened. The beautiful new structure has a capacity of 700 and is equipped with all the latest appliances. Joseph Welte is manager.”
The Electric Theatre probably opened in December, 1914. This is item from the January 2, 1915, issue of Motography: “The Electric theater at Litchville has been opened to the public.”
A lawsuit was filed against various film distributors and theater chains by Don Harlo, operator of the Harlo Theatre at St. Joseph, Michigan, on February 5, 1953. The record of the suit indicates that Harlo began operating the theater on July 1, 1944. It doesn’t say if the theater was new at that time or was an existing theater that Mr. Harlo took over.
An early comment by James Dumdei on this Facebook post says that the Harlo Theatre was at 107 State Street. This location opens the possibility that the Harlo was a house previously called the Cozy Theatre, which was listed at 105 State Street in a 1940 Benton Harbor-St. Joseph directory.
The site of the Harlo Theatre is now part of the parking lot of a hotel.
I still haven’t found a first name for the Mr. Cooney who was probably the original architect of the Majestic Theatre in 1910, but the September 18, 1920, issue of Motion Picture News has this item about a remodeling of the house:
“Bloomington — The Majestic theatre
closed on June 5th to be entirely remodeled. Mr. A. T. Simmons is the architect, in charge of the improvements. A new ventilating system and new operating booth and equipment are a few of the changes.”
Architect Aaron T. Simmons is best remembered as the probable designer of all 50 houses in the historic Cedar Crest neighborhood of Normal, Illinois, and of 71 Carnegie libraries in 13 states. The remodeling of the Majestic is the only theater project to which I’ve been able to connect him so far.
The original blueprints of the Princess Theatre are in the Arthur L. Pillsbury Collection at the McLean County Museum of History. Pillsbury was on of the leading architects in Bloomington, Illinois, over the three decades prior to his untimely death in an automobile accident in 1925. His involvement in the Princess Theatre project was noted in the April 15, 1916, issue of The American Contractor:
“LeRoy, III.—Moving Picture Theater & Store: 1 sty. & bas. 40x100. Archt. Arthur L. Pillsbury, 708 People’s Bank bldg., Bloomington, 111. Owner Marcus West, LeRoy. Plans In progress.”
The Pillsbury collection inventory list says that Pillsbury designed the theater in LeRoy for Marcus West in 1916, and it is listed as project #900. Pillsbury designed ten projects in LeRoy from 1905 to 1921.
How the building came to be attributed to W. W. Van Atta I don’t know. No architect of that name appears in any of the construction or design journals of the period, and every instance of his name on the Internet is connected with this theater. The Pillsbury collection inventory list gives the names of Pillsbury’s associates and successors, and no Van Atta is among them.
The source of the attribution appears to be the history page of the theater’s web site, but that history provides no original source or documentation for the claim. It does say that the manager of the theater in 1928 was a Harry W. Vanatta, so it sounds as though there could have been some conflation going on somewhere along the line.
In any case, until somebody can come up with sound documentation that a W. W. Van Atta did design this house, the presence of the actual 1916 blueprints in the Arthur L. Pillsbury collection provide a pretty good argument that we should attribute the design of the Princess Theatre to Pillsbury.
The Gore Bros. and Sol Lesser took over the Belvedere and American Theatres in 1920. The acquisitions were announced in the September 20, 1920, issue of Motion Picture News.
The Lyric probably opened in 1910. An ad for Power’s projection equipment in the September 2, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World included this encomium from the Houze Bros.:
“‘We have used the No. 6 machine for over a year and it has given us the best of satisfaction. Our patrons tell us that they have never seen a clearer or more steady picture.’ Pomona, Cal., June 10, 1911. Houze Bros., Lyric Theatre.”
When West Coast Theatres, Inc. was formed through the consolidation of the holdings of Gore Bros., Sol Lesser, and Adolph Ramish, the American and Belvedere Theatres in Pomona were among the thirty theaters that became part of the new circuit. The formation of the corporation was noted in the January 19, 1921, issue of The Film Daily.
A list of movie theaters in the July 28, 1917, issue of The Billboard has only the Constantine Theatre listed for Pawhuska, with Albert Jackson as the manager of the 715-seat house. A list in the February 22, 1919, issue of The Billboard has only the Jackson Theatre in Pawhuska, and gives its seating capacity as 715. Again, Albert Jackson is the manager. I’m wondering if the identical seating capacities were a coincidence, or if the magazine conflated one theater with another one year, or if the names of theaters in Pawhuska did actually get shifted about during this period.
I’m sorry if the comment comes across as hostile. The tone might be a bit curt, but it’s just a plain statement of the information I’ve come across, with no hostility intended (not even toward whoever it was at the State Historical Society who misidentified the 1913 photo of Masonic Hall. It was an understandable mistake, given the sign attached to the building.)
Mr. Constantine went bankrupt in 1926, and his theater changed hands. This item is from the September 11, 1926, issue of Motion Picture News:
“Albert Jackson, one of the pioneer theatre men in Oklahoma, who sold his theatre in Pawhuska, ‘The Jackson,’ to A. B. Momand early in the year, has again entered the theatre business in Pawhuska, temporarily at least. Jackson was recently appointed receiver of the Constantine Theatre by the Bankruptcy Court, with the understanding that if the theatre becomes solvent, it will again revert to Mr. Constantine.”
The September 25 issue of the same journal had a follow-up item:
“F. B. Pickrel and his associates
who own the Majestic, Murray and Mission theatres at Ponca City, have just purchased the Constantine Theatre at Pawhuska, from the bankruptcy court. This sale releases Albert Jackson, who was appointed receiver by the court a few weeks ago. Pickrel will have charge of the Constantine Theatre in addition to the three Ponca City ones.”
The October 7, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News refers to Fred Pickrel’s “Hi-he-kat” Theatre in Pawhuska. Pickrel probably renamed the house the Kihekah not long after buying it. Motion Picture News had ongoing difficulty with the theater’s new name. As late as April 20, 1929, they called it the “Ki-he-kak” Theatre.
This house was called the Jackson theater for many years before being remodeled and renamed the State in 1928. Here is an item about the reopening from the July 21, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News:
“The Jackson Theatre at Pawhuska, Oklahoma, which has been closed for several weeks undergoing extensive repairs, re-opened last Monday night, under the new name of The State Theatre with Fred Cosman as Manager. This theatre is owned by the Pawhuska Theatre Company, Inc., A. B. Momand, Secretary-Treasurer, and is one of a number of theatres controlled and operated by Mr. Momand.”
Albert Jackson had sold the Jackson Theatre to A. B. Momand and his partners in 1926. Albert Jackson of Pawhuska is listed in the November 8, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World as one of the movie exhibitors who had attended a recent convention in Oklahoma City. Given that the fire insurance map cited in an earlier comment by Lauren Durbin showed that there was a theater at the State’s location at least as early as 1912, it seems pretty likely that it was this house that Albert Jackson was operating in 1913.
The house probably goes back even farther. The December 24, 1910, issue of The Moving Picture World has an ad for movies of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and it says that the Oklahoma and Kansas rights to the films had been sold to Albert Jackson, Jackson Theatre, Pawhuska.
Will, the theater in which Mr. Pickrell (or Pickrel, as Motion Picture News spelled it) installed the organ in 1926 was probably the Constantine. See my comment of today on that page for more details.
The NRHP registration form for the Metropolitan Opera House in Grand Forks says this:
“The architectural classification of the Metropolitan Opera House is late Victorian in the Richardsonian
Romanesque style. Warren B. Dunnell from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was the architect who designed the
Metropolitan Opera House. It is believed to be the only theater Mr. Dunnell designed.”
My photo link shows the 1909 Grand Opera House that became the Grand Theatre. Neither Wineman’s Opera House nor the Grand Opera House was located in the Masonic Hall. The Historical Society has mistakenly identified the building as the Grand Opera House because of the sign jutting from the corner of the building, but the sign merely advertises the Grand Opera House and its basement roller rink, which was probably down the block. Note that the original typed caption on the photo itself identifies the building only as Masonic Hall, not as the Grand Opera House.
I do now see one mistake in my previous comment. The Grand Opera House was on Fifth Street, not Fifth Avenue, and I believe I have identified its exact location. Part of the front wall with its base, face brick faux quoins, and a short length of stringcourse, is still standing, and can be seen in this Google Street View. The Opera House was on the south side of Fifth Street about midway between Third and Fourth Avenues.
An October 28, 1909, item in the Turtle Mountain Star said that the Devils Lake Opera House was scheduled to open on December 16. When the building was demolished in 1971, the main chandelier from the auditorium was salvaged and has since been installed in a building at Lake Region State College.
It turns out that there were two theaters called the Opera House in Devils Lake, and the one that became the Grand Theatre was this one, which was located on Fifth Avenue and built in 1909. It was demolished in 1971. The 1913-1914 Cahn Guide lists the Grand Opera House as a ground-floor theater with 625 seats in the orchestra, 335 in the balcony, and 90 in the boxes and loge. A history of Devils Lake prepared for the national Bicentennial in 1976 (9.9mb pdf here) says this:
“…the Grand Opera House holds sentimental memories among Devils Lake citizens comparable to those of New Yorkers for the Metropolitan. Its gala opening night, December 16, 1909, featured a New York stage show, ‘Honeymoon Trail’, with a cast of 60 players, which was followed by a grand ball attended by about 200 couples.”
The theater featured a ballroom in its basement, which was later used as a roller skating rink. The history also notes the eventual fate of the Grand Theatre:
“Plagued by financial problems during the depression years, the theatre closed, and the building was sold on September 19, 1946, to the American Legion Post for use as their club house. The last legal transaction was on March 11, 1971, when the building was sold to the Devils Lake parking authority, and the building was wrecked for parking facilities.”
I’ve been unable to discover the exact address of the Grand Theatre, but it was on Fifth Avenue within a block of Fourth Street.
The earlier opera house was originally called Wineman’s Opera House, and was a second-floor theater with but 500 seats. The building, but not the theater, was expanded in 1916, going from the original two-story structure at the corner of Fourth Street and Fourth Avenue to the longer three-story building that survives today as the Opera House Apartments. I’ve found no evidence that Wineman’s Opera House was ever used as a movie theater.
This article at Dakotafire says that the Krieger Theatre has closed permanently. The operators were unable to afford the conversion to digital projection.
The February, 1912, issue of Motography said: “The opera house at Devils Lake has changed hands and
will now be conducted as a motion picture and vaudeville house.”
An ad for Carl Boller & Bro. Architects, in the January 16, 1916 issue of The Wichita Daily Eagle boasted that the firm designed not only the new Palace Theatre but the Crawford and Princess Theatres as well.
Carl Boller & Bro., Architects, ran an ad in the January 16, 1916 issue of The Wichita Daily Eagle saying that the firm had designed the Princess and Crawford Theatres as well as the new Palace Theatre, which was opening the following day.
Thanks, Chris. It was a temporary name change, then, as the house had returned to its original name by the time the 1921 city directory was published.
The September 13, 1913, issue of The Topeka Daily Capital noted the opening of the Princess Theatre at this address:
“The Princess theater reopened, at the new location, 834 North Kansas avenue, yesterday evening. A special four reel program was given, with additional music. There was a capacity attendance at each performance.”
I haven’t yet discovered the address of the Princess Theatre mentioned in the 1912 newspaper item, but it must have been the same neighborhood as the item specified that it was in North Topeka..
The 1985 NHP nomination form for the Delchar Theatre (PDF here) says that the house opened on February 6, 1928. It was built by Charles M. Tolan, and the name was derived from combining his first name with that of his wife, Della. The form says that Tolan had operated theaters in Mayville since 1917, but doesn’t give names or addresses for any of them.
This PDF has a photo of the Delchar Theatre, apparently taken in 1985 for the NRHP nomination.
The NRHP form uses the -re spelling of the T word, but the theater’s official web site uses the -er spelling.
A photo of the original, San Joaquin Street entrance building of the Yosemite Theatre, probably taken in the 1890s, can be found at the very bottom of the Stockton Theatres Over the Years page on Wright Realtors' web site. There is also a photo of the original proscenium arch with its advertising curtain.
Farther up the page (theaters are in alphabetical order) there are photos of the Main Street entrance of the house as the State and as the second Esquire.
Although first listed in directories in 1915, the Columbia Theatre was probably opened before the end of 1914. The Columbia was the house in this item from the May 2, 1914, issue of The American Contractor:
This house was probably a replacement for an earlier theater of the same name, as the New York Clipper mentioned a Columbia Theatre in Buffalo operated by Fred Ullman in October, 1912.This Microsoft Word document has a list of Buffalo’s early nickelodeons. The original Ariel Theatre that the New Ariel replaced was right down the block at 173-175 High Street from 1910 to 1914. It, too, has been demolished.
The New Ariel must have opened in late 1914. The January 2, 1915, issue of Motography had this announcement of the opening:
The Electric Theatre probably opened in December, 1914. This is item from the January 2, 1915, issue of Motography: “The Electric theater at Litchville has been opened to the public.”
A lawsuit was filed against various film distributors and theater chains by Don Harlo, operator of the Harlo Theatre at St. Joseph, Michigan, on February 5, 1953. The record of the suit indicates that Harlo began operating the theater on July 1, 1944. It doesn’t say if the theater was new at that time or was an existing theater that Mr. Harlo took over.
An early comment by James Dumdei on this Facebook post says that the Harlo Theatre was at 107 State Street. This location opens the possibility that the Harlo was a house previously called the Cozy Theatre, which was listed at 105 State Street in a 1940 Benton Harbor-St. Joseph directory.
The site of the Harlo Theatre is now part of the parking lot of a hotel.
I still haven’t found a first name for the Mr. Cooney who was probably the original architect of the Majestic Theatre in 1910, but the September 18, 1920, issue of Motion Picture News has this item about a remodeling of the house:
Architect Aaron T. Simmons is best remembered as the probable designer of all 50 houses in the historic Cedar Crest neighborhood of Normal, Illinois, and of 71 Carnegie libraries in 13 states. The remodeling of the Majestic is the only theater project to which I’ve been able to connect him so far.The original blueprints of the Princess Theatre are in the Arthur L. Pillsbury Collection at the McLean County Museum of History. Pillsbury was on of the leading architects in Bloomington, Illinois, over the three decades prior to his untimely death in an automobile accident in 1925. His involvement in the Princess Theatre project was noted in the April 15, 1916, issue of The American Contractor:
The Pillsbury collection inventory list says that Pillsbury designed the theater in LeRoy for Marcus West in 1916, and it is listed as project #900. Pillsbury designed ten projects in LeRoy from 1905 to 1921.How the building came to be attributed to W. W. Van Atta I don’t know. No architect of that name appears in any of the construction or design journals of the period, and every instance of his name on the Internet is connected with this theater. The Pillsbury collection inventory list gives the names of Pillsbury’s associates and successors, and no Van Atta is among them.
The source of the attribution appears to be the history page of the theater’s web site, but that history provides no original source or documentation for the claim. It does say that the manager of the theater in 1928 was a Harry W. Vanatta, so it sounds as though there could have been some conflation going on somewhere along the line.
In any case, until somebody can come up with sound documentation that a W. W. Van Atta did design this house, the presence of the actual 1916 blueprints in the Arthur L. Pillsbury collection provide a pretty good argument that we should attribute the design of the Princess Theatre to Pillsbury.
The Gore Bros. and Sol Lesser took over the Belvedere and American Theatres in 1920. The acquisitions were announced in the September 20, 1920, issue of Motion Picture News.
This item comes from the September 18, 1920, issue of Motion Picture News:
The Lyric probably opened in 1910. An ad for Power’s projection equipment in the September 2, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World included this encomium from the Houze Bros.:
When West Coast Theatres, Inc. was formed through the consolidation of the holdings of Gore Bros., Sol Lesser, and Adolph Ramish, the American and Belvedere Theatres in Pomona were among the thirty theaters that became part of the new circuit. The formation of the corporation was noted in the January 19, 1921, issue of The Film Daily.
A list of movie theaters in the July 28, 1917, issue of The Billboard has only the Constantine Theatre listed for Pawhuska, with Albert Jackson as the manager of the 715-seat house. A list in the February 22, 1919, issue of The Billboard has only the Jackson Theatre in Pawhuska, and gives its seating capacity as 715. Again, Albert Jackson is the manager. I’m wondering if the identical seating capacities were a coincidence, or if the magazine conflated one theater with another one year, or if the names of theaters in Pawhuska did actually get shifted about during this period.
I’m sorry if the comment comes across as hostile. The tone might be a bit curt, but it’s just a plain statement of the information I’ve come across, with no hostility intended (not even toward whoever it was at the State Historical Society who misidentified the 1913 photo of Masonic Hall. It was an understandable mistake, given the sign attached to the building.)
Mr. Constantine went bankrupt in 1926, and his theater changed hands. This item is from the September 11, 1926, issue of Motion Picture News:
The September 25 issue of the same journal had a follow-up item:The October 7, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News refers to Fred Pickrel’s “Hi-he-kat” Theatre in Pawhuska. Pickrel probably renamed the house the Kihekah not long after buying it. Motion Picture News had ongoing difficulty with the theater’s new name. As late as April 20, 1929, they called it the “Ki-he-kak” Theatre.This house was called the Jackson theater for many years before being remodeled and renamed the State in 1928. Here is an item about the reopening from the July 21, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News:
Albert Jackson had sold the Jackson Theatre to A. B. Momand and his partners in 1926. Albert Jackson of Pawhuska is listed in the November 8, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World as one of the movie exhibitors who had attended a recent convention in Oklahoma City. Given that the fire insurance map cited in an earlier comment by Lauren Durbin showed that there was a theater at the State’s location at least as early as 1912, it seems pretty likely that it was this house that Albert Jackson was operating in 1913.The house probably goes back even farther. The December 24, 1910, issue of The Moving Picture World has an ad for movies of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and it says that the Oklahoma and Kansas rights to the films had been sold to Albert Jackson, Jackson Theatre, Pawhuska.
Will, the theater in which Mr. Pickrell (or Pickrel, as Motion Picture News spelled it) installed the organ in 1926 was probably the Constantine. See my comment of today on that page for more details.
The NRHP registration form for the Metropolitan Opera House in Grand Forks says this:
My photo link shows the 1909 Grand Opera House that became the Grand Theatre. Neither Wineman’s Opera House nor the Grand Opera House was located in the Masonic Hall. The Historical Society has mistakenly identified the building as the Grand Opera House because of the sign jutting from the corner of the building, but the sign merely advertises the Grand Opera House and its basement roller rink, which was probably down the block. Note that the original typed caption on the photo itself identifies the building only as Masonic Hall, not as the Grand Opera House.
I do now see one mistake in my previous comment. The Grand Opera House was on Fifth Street, not Fifth Avenue, and I believe I have identified its exact location. Part of the front wall with its base, face brick faux quoins, and a short length of stringcourse, is still standing, and can be seen in this Google Street View. The Opera House was on the south side of Fifth Street about midway between Third and Fourth Avenues.
An October 28, 1909, item in the Turtle Mountain Star said that the Devils Lake Opera House was scheduled to open on December 16. When the building was demolished in 1971, the main chandelier from the auditorium was salvaged and has since been installed in a building at Lake Region State College.
It turns out that there were two theaters called the Opera House in Devils Lake, and the one that became the Grand Theatre was this one, which was located on Fifth Avenue and built in 1909. It was demolished in 1971. The 1913-1914 Cahn Guide lists the Grand Opera House as a ground-floor theater with 625 seats in the orchestra, 335 in the balcony, and 90 in the boxes and loge. A history of Devils Lake prepared for the national Bicentennial in 1976 (9.9mb pdf here) says this:
The theater featured a ballroom in its basement, which was later used as a roller skating rink. The history also notes the eventual fate of the Grand Theatre:I’ve been unable to discover the exact address of the Grand Theatre, but it was on Fifth Avenue within a block of Fourth Street.The earlier opera house was originally called Wineman’s Opera House, and was a second-floor theater with but 500 seats. The building, but not the theater, was expanded in 1916, going from the original two-story structure at the corner of Fourth Street and Fourth Avenue to the longer three-story building that survives today as the Opera House Apartments. I’ve found no evidence that Wineman’s Opera House was ever used as a movie theater.
This article at Dakotafire says that the Krieger Theatre has closed permanently. The operators were unable to afford the conversion to digital projection.
The February, 1912, issue of Motography said: “The opera house at Devils Lake has changed hands and will now be conducted as a motion picture and vaudeville house.”
An ad for Carl Boller & Bro. Architects, in the January 16, 1916 issue of The Wichita Daily Eagle boasted that the firm designed not only the new Palace Theatre but the Crawford and Princess Theatres as well.
Carl Boller & Bro., Architects, ran an ad in the January 16, 1916 issue of The Wichita Daily Eagle saying that the firm had designed the Princess and Crawford Theatres as well as the new Palace Theatre, which was opening the following day.
Thanks, Chris. It was a temporary name change, then, as the house had returned to its original name by the time the 1921 city directory was published.
The September 13, 1913, issue of The Topeka Daily Capital noted the opening of the Princess Theatre at this address:
I haven’t yet discovered the address of the Princess Theatre mentioned in the 1912 newspaper item, but it must have been the same neighborhood as the item specified that it was in North Topeka..