I see in street view that the storefront to the left of the Lowell Theatre entrance has the number 21 on it, so the theater’s address must have been 23 Erie Street.
The Lowell was one of 28 theaters operated by members of the Diamos family between 1912 and the 1970s. The Arizona Historic Society has two boxes of photos, mostly from the 1940s, donated by JoAnn Diamos which can be seen at the society’s library in Tucson. Here is a PDF of the finding aid.
Homeboy: You’re right about the area around Washington and Vermont having been the home of L.A.’s “Film Row” with a number of booking offices, but the only theater I recall in the immediate area was the Boulevard itself, and it was on the northwest corner.
The nearest theater on Vermont to the south was La Tosca, at 30th Street, and to the north there was the Fox Parisian, but that was all the way up at 8th Street.
To the west were the Arlington Theatre, on the north side of Washington just west of Arlington, and the Maynard Theatre, on the south side of Washington just east of Arlington. I don’t remember there being any theaters on Washington east of the Boulevard.
The only cluster of three theaters close together that I recall on the south side was the one around Broadway and Manchester. The Manchester Theatre was the big one, just west of Broadway, and then there were the smaller Mecca and Mayfair Theatres, about a block apart on Broadway south of Manchester.
There were several more theaters on South Vermont, but they were all south of Exposition Park.
The 1941 Baist map shows that the Sanders Theatre has to have been on the site of that building with “2001 A.D.” on its parapet, as the theater was too close to the corner to have been in the building with the White Rabbit Cabaret in it. The 1941 FDY gives the address of the Sanders Theatre as 1106 Prospect. The address 1108 on the map must have been a shop, and 1110 the entrance and stairway to either an upper floor or a basement. It was too narrow to have been anything else. If it was a stairway to an upper floor then the Sanders Theatre has either been demolished or the structure was cut down to a single floor.
The July 4, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World noted the recent opening of the Garrick Photoplay Theatre:
“Addresses by Mayor Nye and other city officials of Minneapolis, Minn., were scheduled for the opening of John C. Karlson’s new Garrick Photoplay Theater at Nicollet Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street. The house, erected at a cost of $30,000, will seat 600.”
Proceedings of the Minneapolis City Council for February 27, 1914, said that Alderman Walker had moved that John Karlson be permitted to erect a canopy in front of the theater at 2541 Nicollet Avenue. The house was granted a moving picture license on April 24. At the Council meeting of November 28, 1913, R. L. Cox and others had made a protest against the granting of a moving picture license for an as yet unnamed theater at 26th and Nicollet Avenue.
Council proceedings from March 28, 1919, noted the issuance of a moving picture relicense to the Garrick Theatre at 2541 Nicollet. A downtown theater called the Garrick had opened in 1915, so the two houses operated under the same name for at least a few years.
The October 13, 1912, issue of The Construction News had an item about a $10,000 moving picture theater to be built at 26th and Nicollet, but given the difference in cost, if this was the same project its scope was expanded considerably. Also, given the gap of more than a year between that item and the opening of the Garrick I don’t think it’s certain that the original architect (the Rose Engineering Company) did the final design, although the protest against granting a license to the theater in November, 1913, suggests that the house might have been completed some time before it was allowed to open.
There is a way for someone in Minneapolis to find out who did the final design for this house (and many other Minneapolis theaters) though. The Minneapolis Plan Vault Collection at the University of Minnesota has copies of plans submitted to the Buildings Inspection Department by architects or builders, and the finding aid lists quite a few theaters among them, including this one. The collection is available for public viewing and, in some cases, copies of items can be made. It is part of the special collections, which are apparently housed at Anderson Library. The library also has the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers, which includes plans and photos of many of the theaters that firm designed.
The earliest mention of the Gem I’ve found so far is from the October 2, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“County Treasurer Swanson, owner of the Gem theater, Hobart, Ind., is to remodel the house. An addition is being built on the rear. Manager Coons has ordered a new picture machine and a new piano.”
The March 11, 1916, issue of the same publication has an article about the Gem and its operator, H. T. Coons. So far I haven’t found any items about the house when it was called the Colonial.
It’s possible that this item from the July 5, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald World is about the Vogue Theater:
“EAST CHICAGO.— E. A. Varger & Company has plans by L. H. Warriner, 723 Washington street, Gary, Ind., for a two-story brick theatre to be located at Chicago and Forsythe streets. Cost estimated, $100,000.”
Forsythe Street was the former name of Indianapolis Boulevard.
The May, 1925, issue of The Crimson, a monthly publication of Goshen High School, had an ad for “Ye Olde Hobbie Shoppe” which was “Opening Above Circle Theatre June 10.”
This theater was around for quite a while before being renamed the Strand, and had operated as the Colonial Theatre and the Gem Theatre. This is from the entry (#57) for 236 Main Street on a 1979 list of historic buildings in downtown Hobart compiled by the Hobart Historical Society:
“236 Main Street…. was the Colonial Theater owned by Ed Spencer who sold to Pliny J. Truesdell who sold to H.T. Coons of Chicago, August 19, 1913. The Theater was called ‘The Gem’ until Sam Routes bought it and renamed it ‘The Strand.’ In 1913 the program listed three one-reel movies and two acts of vaudeville. [Ed] Prusieckis took over The Strand in 1939. It is now a saloon. This building and the next one on the corner were built in 1893.”
Ed Prusieckis built the Art Theatre in 1941. The 1979 list can be found here at Scribd. Here is a photo of the Gem Theatre taken in 1916.
The January 4, 1941, issue of Showman’s Trade Review reported that James and Peter Bikos, operators of the Roxy Theatre, were contemplating a new theater to be built at Broadway and 39th Avenue. I don’t believe the project was carried out, but later that year V. U. Young began construction on the Ridge Theatre, located around the corner from the Roxy.
Additional research has revealed that James and Peter Bikos were cousins, not brothers, but Peter Bikos' brothers Dan and Nick also operated theaters in Gary.
The Roosevelt Theatre was operated by the Nick Bikos Theatre Company. Nick Bikos was involved in movie exhibition it Gary at least as early as 1919 and was operating the Roosevelt at least as early as 1932.
The Tolleston Theatre was one of several Gary houses operated by the Nick Bikos Theatre Company. Other houses in the local chain included the Roosevelt, Indiana, and Fifth Avenue Theatres.
Historic Evansville says that Marble Hall was built in the early 1850s, and before it became the Ohio Theatre it had also operated as a movie house called the Riverside Theatorium. This house was mentioned in the January 14, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“The Riverside Theatorium, although a small house, is known as the house with the ‘Mirror Screen’ and is running first-class independent films. Mr. W. Huddy, the proprietor of the Theatorium, has started to renovate his house, and his plans are to follow the advice of our Construction Page by using somber colors. Mr. Huddy hopes to secure a lease on the next building and, if successful, he will double his seating capacity”
The house was also mentioned in the March 8, 1910, issue of the Goshen Democrat:
“PREVENT PANIC AT THEATER
“Doorkeepers Pacify Crowd When Department Answers False Alarm.
“Evansville, Ind., March 4—Cool headedness on the part of the doorkeepers prevented a panic in the Riverside Theatorium when the fire department was summoned on a false alarm that the picture machine in the Theatorium had exploded. One hundred persons were in the Theatorium at the time.”
The Historic Evansville page indicates that the Riverside Theatorium was operating in 1909, and that Marble Hall was remodeled into a theater in 1912. I would imagine that the Theatorium originally operated in the original hall, which was most likely upstairs, and that the 1912 remodeling moved it to the ground floor.
The page credits Manson Gilbert as the architect. I don’t think that F. Manson Gilbert was around when the building was built in the 1850s, so he must have been the one who designed the 1912 remodeling. This might also have been when the building lost the third floor that is seen in the earlier photos of it.
The May 17, 1919, issue of Electrical Review said that the New Majestic Theatre in Evansville was to undergo a remodeling that would cost between $50,000 and $75,000. The Evansville architectural firm Harry E. Boyle & Co. was providing the plans.
I noticed a “Contact” link at the bottom of each page of the IHS web site, but my e-mail isn’t working right now and won’t be until I get a new computer set up, so I can’t contact them. Even if I could, I’m not sure they’d fix errors. I contacted the Los Angeles Public Library about several errors in their photo collection several years ago, and the errors are still there.
More institutions should have Flickr accounts like the Library of Congress does. The LOC has gotten a lot of useful information from people posting comments on their photos at Flickr.
David you’re right. I hadn’t noticed the back of that building, which does look like an old stage house. Its modern address is 1116 Prospect, though. If that’s the Sanders Theatre building, the lots on the block must have been renumbered since the old directories were published.
DavidAE: For those who don’t know HTML, Cinema Treasures now supports Markdown Code, for which you need only square brackets and parentheses to embed a link in your text. Scroll down to the LINKS section of the page to see the example code. All you will need at Cinema Treasures are inline-style links, so all you have to do is put the text you want to become the link in square brackets, and then paste your copied URL between parentheses immediately following the closing bracket.
Here is the Markdown code output for the three links you posted:
Lost Memory’s photo link has gone missing, but I think this is probably the same photo. The description with the photo mistakenly gives the location and history of the other Strand Theatre (the Capitol Theatre,) but the photo has to depict this house at 1330 E. Washington. The Capitol Theatre building was very different.
It looks to me like the entrance to the Fountain Square Theatre is at 1111 Prospect Street, not 1105 Shelby Street. The latter appears to be the address of the attached office building.
Here is the official web site. It says “[c]losed and gutted in the late 1950’s the former theatre space housed a Woolworth five and dime store, then years later a thrift shop.” The current interior is more a reinterpretation than a restoration, although the page also says that some original architectural features remain intact on the mezzanine level. The photo gallery includes one shot of the original interior, and it was quite different from what is there now.
The photo we are currently displaying depicts the Fountain Square Theatre at 1105 Prospect Street. The Sanders Theatre must have been across the street. On its site (1106-1110 Prospect) there is an old-looking brick commercial building that has “2001 A.D.” carved in its parapet, so the theater might have been demolished, unless the date denotes an extensive renovation of the building.
Polk’s 1919 Indianapolis City Directory lists the Sanders Theatre at 1106-08 Prospect Street. The 1916 directory lists it as the Quality Theater, Fred W. Sanders, Proprietor.
In 1916, The Indianapolis Star was listing two houses called the Palms Theatre. In addition to the one on North Illinois Street there was one at 30th Street and Highland Place.
I see in street view that the storefront to the left of the Lowell Theatre entrance has the number 21 on it, so the theater’s address must have been 23 Erie Street.
The Lowell was one of 28 theaters operated by members of the Diamos family between 1912 and the 1970s. The Arizona Historic Society has two boxes of photos, mostly from the 1940s, donated by JoAnn Diamos which can be seen at the society’s library in Tucson. Here is a PDF of the finding aid.
Homeboy: You’re right about the area around Washington and Vermont having been the home of L.A.’s “Film Row” with a number of booking offices, but the only theater I recall in the immediate area was the Boulevard itself, and it was on the northwest corner.
The nearest theater on Vermont to the south was La Tosca, at 30th Street, and to the north there was the Fox Parisian, but that was all the way up at 8th Street.
To the west were the Arlington Theatre, on the north side of Washington just west of Arlington, and the Maynard Theatre, on the south side of Washington just east of Arlington. I don’t remember there being any theaters on Washington east of the Boulevard.
The only cluster of three theaters close together that I recall on the south side was the one around Broadway and Manchester. The Manchester Theatre was the big one, just west of Broadway, and then there were the smaller Mecca and Mayfair Theatres, about a block apart on Broadway south of Manchester.
There were several more theaters on South Vermont, but they were all south of Exposition Park.
The 1941 Baist map shows that the Sanders Theatre has to have been on the site of that building with “2001 A.D.” on its parapet, as the theater was too close to the corner to have been in the building with the White Rabbit Cabaret in it. The 1941 FDY gives the address of the Sanders Theatre as 1106 Prospect. The address 1108 on the map must have been a shop, and 1110 the entrance and stairway to either an upper floor or a basement. It was too narrow to have been anything else. If it was a stairway to an upper floor then the Sanders Theatre has either been demolished or the structure was cut down to a single floor.
The July 4, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World noted the recent opening of the Garrick Photoplay Theatre:
Proceedings of the Minneapolis City Council for February 27, 1914, said that Alderman Walker had moved that John Karlson be permitted to erect a canopy in front of the theater at 2541 Nicollet Avenue. The house was granted a moving picture license on April 24. At the Council meeting of November 28, 1913, R. L. Cox and others had made a protest against the granting of a moving picture license for an as yet unnamed theater at 26th and Nicollet Avenue.Council proceedings from March 28, 1919, noted the issuance of a moving picture relicense to the Garrick Theatre at 2541 Nicollet. A downtown theater called the Garrick had opened in 1915, so the two houses operated under the same name for at least a few years.
The October 13, 1912, issue of The Construction News had an item about a $10,000 moving picture theater to be built at 26th and Nicollet, but given the difference in cost, if this was the same project its scope was expanded considerably. Also, given the gap of more than a year between that item and the opening of the Garrick I don’t think it’s certain that the original architect (the Rose Engineering Company) did the final design, although the protest against granting a license to the theater in November, 1913, suggests that the house might have been completed some time before it was allowed to open.
There is a way for someone in Minneapolis to find out who did the final design for this house (and many other Minneapolis theaters) though. The Minneapolis Plan Vault Collection at the University of Minnesota has copies of plans submitted to the Buildings Inspection Department by architects or builders, and the finding aid lists quite a few theaters among them, including this one. The collection is available for public viewing and, in some cases, copies of items can be made. It is part of the special collections, which are apparently housed at Anderson Library. The library also has the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers, which includes plans and photos of many of the theaters that firm designed.
The earliest mention of the Gem I’ve found so far is from the October 2, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The March 11, 1916, issue of the same publication has an article about the Gem and its operator, H. T. Coons. So far I haven’t found any items about the house when it was called the Colonial.It’s possible that this item from the July 5, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald World is about the Vogue Theater:
Forsythe Street was the former name of Indianapolis Boulevard.The May, 1925, issue of The Crimson, a monthly publication of Goshen High School, had an ad for “Ye Olde Hobbie Shoppe” which was “Opening Above Circle Theatre June 10.”
The photo just doesn’t extend high enough to show the second floor. The sliver of doorway seen at the left is the entrance to the upstairs.
This theater was around for quite a while before being renamed the Strand, and had operated as the Colonial Theatre and the Gem Theatre. This is from the entry (#57) for 236 Main Street on a 1979 list of historic buildings in downtown Hobart compiled by the Hobart Historical Society:
Ed Prusieckis built the Art Theatre in 1941. The 1979 list can be found here at Scribd. Here is a photo of the Gem Theatre taken in 1916.Tinseltoes' link to Boxoffice is no longer working. Here are fresh links to the first page and second pageof the article.
The article notes that the Art Theatre was designed by Chicago theater architect Erwin G. Frederick.
I should have noted in my previous comment that the Ridge Theatre and was renamed the Glen Theatre in 1968.
The January 4, 1941, issue of Showman’s Trade Review reported that James and Peter Bikos, operators of the Roxy Theatre, were contemplating a new theater to be built at Broadway and 39th Avenue. I don’t believe the project was carried out, but later that year V. U. Young began construction on the Ridge Theatre, located around the corner from the Roxy.
Additional research has revealed that James and Peter Bikos were cousins, not brothers, but Peter Bikos' brothers Dan and Nick also operated theaters in Gary.
The Roosevelt Theatre was operated by the Nick Bikos Theatre Company. Nick Bikos was involved in movie exhibition it Gary at least as early as 1919 and was operating the Roosevelt at least as early as 1932.
The correct spelling of the theater’s name is Tolleston, which is the district of Gary in which it was located.
The Tolleston Theatre was one of several Gary houses operated by the Nick Bikos Theatre Company. Other houses in the local chain included the Roosevelt, Indiana, and Fifth Avenue Theatres.
The February 18, 1956, issue of Boxoffice said that the Roxy Theatre was being converted into retail space.
The Roxy was one of several Gary theaters operated by the Bikos brothers.
Historic Evansville says that Marble Hall was built in the early 1850s, and before it became the Ohio Theatre it had also operated as a movie house called the Riverside Theatorium. This house was mentioned in the January 14, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The house was also mentioned in the March 8, 1910, issue of the Goshen Democrat:The Historic Evansville page indicates that the Riverside Theatorium was operating in 1909, and that Marble Hall was remodeled into a theater in 1912. I would imagine that the Theatorium originally operated in the original hall, which was most likely upstairs, and that the 1912 remodeling moved it to the ground floor.The page credits Manson Gilbert as the architect. I don’t think that F. Manson Gilbert was around when the building was built in the 1850s, so he must have been the one who designed the 1912 remodeling. This might also have been when the building lost the third floor that is seen in the earlier photos of it.
The May 17, 1919, issue of Electrical Review said that the New Majestic Theatre in Evansville was to undergo a remodeling that would cost between $50,000 and $75,000. The Evansville architectural firm Harry E. Boyle & Co. was providing the plans.
I noticed a “Contact” link at the bottom of each page of the IHS web site, but my e-mail isn’t working right now and won’t be until I get a new computer set up, so I can’t contact them. Even if I could, I’m not sure they’d fix errors. I contacted the Los Angeles Public Library about several errors in their photo collection several years ago, and the errors are still there.
More institutions should have Flickr accounts like the Library of Congress does. The LOC has gotten a lot of useful information from people posting comments on their photos at Flickr.
David you’re right. I hadn’t noticed the back of that building, which does look like an old stage house. Its modern address is 1116 Prospect, though. If that’s the Sanders Theatre building, the lots on the block must have been renumbered since the old directories were published.
DavidAE: For those who don’t know HTML, Cinema Treasures now supports Markdown Code, for which you need only square brackets and parentheses to embed a link in your text. Scroll down to the LINKS section of the page to see the example code. All you will need at Cinema Treasures are inline-style links, so all you have to do is put the text you want to become the link in square brackets, and then paste your copied URL between parentheses immediately following the closing bracket.
Here is the Markdown code output for the three links you posted:
Link one
Link two
Link three
Lost Memory’s photo link has gone missing, but I think this is probably the same photo. The description with the photo mistakenly gives the location and history of the other Strand Theatre (the Capitol Theatre,) but the photo has to depict this house at 1330 E. Washington. The Capitol Theatre building was very different.
It looks to me like the entrance to the Fountain Square Theatre is at 1111 Prospect Street, not 1105 Shelby Street. The latter appears to be the address of the attached office building.
Here is the official web site. It says “[c]losed and gutted in the late 1950’s the former theatre space housed a Woolworth five and dime store, then years later a thrift shop.” The current interior is more a reinterpretation than a restoration, although the page also says that some original architectural features remain intact on the mezzanine level. The photo gallery includes one shot of the original interior, and it was quite different from what is there now.
The photo we are currently displaying depicts the Fountain Square Theatre at 1105 Prospect Street. The Sanders Theatre must have been across the street. On its site (1106-1110 Prospect) there is an old-looking brick commercial building that has “2001 A.D.” carved in its parapet, so the theater might have been demolished, unless the date denotes an extensive renovation of the building.
Polk’s 1919 Indianapolis City Directory lists the Sanders Theatre at 1106-08 Prospect Street. The 1916 directory lists it as the Quality Theater, Fred W. Sanders, Proprietor.
In 1916, The Indianapolis Star was listing two houses called the Palms Theatre. In addition to the one on North Illinois Street there was one at 30th Street and Highland Place.