A booklet published in 1974 for Pekin’s sesquicentennial has this bit of information about the Empire Theatre: “The Empire Theater at 327 Court Street was built by the Fluegel family in the 1920’s. It was later operated by the Great States Theater chain of Chicago.”
As Anna Fluegel had the Pekin Theatre built in 1928, it’s likely that the smaller Empire Theatre was rebuilt earlier in the decade. Operation of both houses was taken over by Publix-Great States Theatres in 1937.
The January 23, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World provided this item about the Valentine Theatre:
“CANTON, O. — E. G. Backins and C. H. Frailey have opened their new theater, the Valentine. It has seating capacity for about 800 persons. The house is devoted to the exhibit of moving pictures, but so constructed as to be easily converted into a vaudeville or stock house.”
The Theater Designs of C. Howard Crane, a thesis by Lisa Maria DiChiera (Internet Archive scan) has a list of Crane’s theater projects, and the Capitol Theatre at Steubenville is listed as project #527. The list does not give the dates of projects, but the Capitol is shortly after the Bonstelle Playhouse in Detroit (#518) and before project #549, a theater for Max Allen (the Park Theatre) at Lincoln Park, Michigan, and both of those theaters were built in 1925, so Crane was the original architect of the Steubenville Capitol built that same year.
The April 9, 1938, issue of The Film Daily said that the Court Theatre in Wheeling was to be modernized throughout. The work was to be completed by June 10.
The remodeling is briefly mentioned in a reminiscence about Wheeling’s theaters by Earl Summers, Sr., who had been concertmaster at some of the early houses, including the Court (published in the Autumn/Winter, 1982, issue of Upper Ohio Valley Historical Review, which is available as a PDF here.) Summers says that the Court’s original large stage was greatly reduced to accommodate more seating, so the house was no longer able to present the live road show productions it had once hosted.
Sadly, the 1938 remodeling probably also did away with the original design of the elegant foyer seen in this 1904 photo. I’ve never seen photos of the auditorium, but if it was a good as the foyer it must have been splendid.
Linkrot repair: The 1937 photo of the Rex Theatre can now be seen here.
Also, this 1981 photo from American Classic Images shows the Rex in its last days, when it had been given an aluminum false front and renamed the Coronet Theatre.
Items in various issues of The American Contractor in 1917 indicate that the architect for the rebuilding of the Hippodrome Theatre was Anthony Kunz, Jr. Kunz is best known for a number of Roman Catholic churches and school buildings he designed in the greater Cincinnati area during the first half of the 20th century.
this dual photo from a 1937 brochure published by the Ohio Valley Board of Trade, and now in the Ohio County Public Library collection, shows the Court Theatre at top and the Liberty Theatre at the bottom.
The April 28, 1917, issue of The American Contractor noted the letting of contracts for the Liberty Theatre. The architect was Charles D. McCarty.
The September 16, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World listed the Lyceum Theatre on Cottage Grove Avenue as one of four large neighborhood houses in Chicago that had substituted movies for vaudeville during the summer, but were continuing to show pictures for the fall.
The July 15, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World ran an article called “Chicago Picture Shows” which featured brief reviews of a number of the city’s movie theaters. This is the paragraph about the Garfield Theatre:
“The Garfield Theater, at Madison Street and Francisco Avenue, is another modern house devoted to photoplays. A big electric sign outside announces ‘Photoplays and Songs,’ and another sign below the canopy tells you to ‘Enjoy yourself. We provide the show.’ One can enjoy himself here, all right. The picture on the curtain is very good, the seats comfortably and roomy, and the music excellent. The house seats 740, and though it was a hot night, only a few seats were vacant, showing that the neighborhood had learned to appreciate good pictures. Service is licensed, much like that of the Bell Theater, 2, 7 and 20 days. The light was well handled by Operator Halliday, though a better and brighter picture might be secured if an aluminum curtain were used, as the throw is pretty long and the picture by no means small.”
The “Chicago Letter” in the September 16 issue of MPW also mentioned the Garfield Theatre:
“It is most gratifying… to note that pictures are retaining their hold on most of the managers who were obliged to throw vaudeville overboard during the summer. The Crystal, on North Ave.; the Garfield, on West Madison Street; the Lyceum, on Cottage Grove Ave., and the Oak, on Armitage Ave., all formerly vaudeville houses, with over 700 seats, are continuing pictures, being well satisfied with their summer profits.”
By the end of 1913, the Garfield Theatre was one of three houses being operated by Charles J. Schaefer. The January 24, 1914, issue of MPW noted that he had just opened the Keystone Theatre (renamed the Mode Theatre in 1935) on Sheridan Road. He also operated the Lyceum Theatre (probably the one on Cottage Grove, though the article didn’t say.)
The January 24, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World said that Charles J. Schaefer had opened the Keystone Theatre on December 17. He was already operating the Lyceum Theatre and the Garfield Theatre, and was contemplating the construction of a 1,600 seat house on the North Side of Chicago. Another source indicates that the Garfield Theatre Schaefer operated was the one at 2844 W. Madison.
The 1935 Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to says that the remodeling of the Keystone Theatre in to the Mode Theatre was designed by the firm of B. Leo Steil & Co.
Boxoffice no longer provides direct links between magazine pages on its web site, so here are links to the three pages on which the article about the Mode appears:
An inventory of historic buildings in Weston says that the Camden Block was built in 1896-1897. It housed a bank, a hotel, shops, and the Camden Opera House. The building was designed by the architectural firm of Yost & Packard. The auditorium was severely damaged by a fire in the 1960s and the remains were demolished, but the rest of the building survives. The inventory only gives the Main Street address of the building, but the theater entrance was probably at about 9 E. 2nd Street.
An inventory of historic buildings in Weston prepared for the NRHP said that the Barnes Building at 241 N. Main Street, built in 1925, was remodeled to accommodate a movie theater in the 1930s, and that the theater closed in the 1950s. It must have been the Hollywood Theatre. At the time the inventory was prepared the building was still standing, with its marquee still intact, but I believe it has since been demolished.
The last year the Hollywood Theatre was listed in the Film Daily Yearbook was 1956.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to says that the original West Columbia Theatres I&II was designed by the architectural firm of Van Wenema & Postman.
The 1928 and 1929 FDYs list a Zazza-Jazz Theatre and a Jazz Theatre, both with the address 1751 Larimer Street. (I recall having seen the name Zarra-Jazz somewhere on the Internet, too, but I can’t recall exactly where.) However, I think it’s likely that the FDY made a mistake, conflating two theaters.
There was another house called simply the ZaZa Theatre, located down the block from the Jazz (at 1727 Larimer Street according to this web page.) The ZaZa was one of the childhood haunts of Neal Cassady in the 1930s. The FDY didn’t include addresses for Denver theaters in 1930, and while the Jazz Theatre is not listed that year the ZaZa Theatre is. In 1931 the Jazz is listed as closed, and the ZaZa is open. In 1932, both theaters are open again. 1933 is the last year the Jazz is listed, and it is again listed as closed. The ZaZa was last listed in 1941.
An out-of-print book called Denver’s Old Theater Row: The Story of Curtis Street and Its Glamorous Show Business, by Forrest Johnson, mentions both the ZaZa and Jazz Theatres in a brief passage that is cited in one of Paul O'Malley’s papers on Denver theaters. In 1922, a Mr. Frank A. Milton took over operation of the Rivoli Theatre, and O'Malley quotes Johnson thusly: “For about two years, Milton had been running the Folly, ZaZa and Jazz [theaters], as Girlie-Girle shows….” So the Jazz Theatre could have been in operation by 1920, and was certainly in operation by 1922, but had either closed permanently or perhaps gone back to some sort of live performances by 1933.
In any case, while there was a Jazz Theatre and there was a ZaZa Theatre down the block from it, odds are that there never was a house called the Zazza-Jazz (or Zarra-Jazz) Theatre, but if there was it was most likely the house later called simply the ZaZa, not the Jazz.
The correct address for this theater is 1746 Curtis Street, and its final name was Gem Theatre. In the 1920s and 1930s it was most commonly listed with 960 seats, but in later years the FDY listed it with between 600 and 700 seats. The three-story Romanesque Revival structure at 1734-1746 Curtis Street was called the Chicago Block, and it housed a theater at the address 1746 from 1890 on.
The first house was the Wonderland Museum and Variety Theatre, operating from 1890-1893. It was a small hall oriented north and south, with its stage at one corner of what would later be the auditorium of an expanded theater. The front section of the Wonderland would later be the lobby of the Isis Theatre.
In 1894, the house became the Curtis Street Theatre, and then from 1895 to 1899 it was the Orpheum Theatre. It underwent improvements in 1899 and reopened as the Denver Theatre in September. This might have been when the auditorium was expanded to an east-west alignment, running behind all the storefronts in the Chicago Block.
In 1902, it was renamed the Curtis Theatre, but closed after suffering a fire in May, 1904. It reopened on October 3. The house was closed during the 1909-1910 theatrical season, but was remodeled in 1910, reopening as the Iris Theatre, a motion picture house, on June 4.
For the next several years the Iris was one of Denver’s most popular movie theaters, part of the Curtis Street theater district described in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Denver’s moving picture row now extends two blocks along Curtis street, the city’s main thoroughfare. Beginning at the east end is the Iris; directly across the street is the Paris and on the same side is the New Isis with the Plaza opposite. In the next block is the Strand with the Princess within a few doors. Across the street is the Colonial. Around the corner on Sixteenth street is the Lyric which was built on the site of the Theatorium, Denver’s first picture theater. Across Sixteenth street from the Lyric is the Tabor Grand and on Curtis below Sixteenth is the Rialto. There are five other houses in the downtown section on Larimer street—the Joy, the Fun, the Grand and the Annex, all with small seating capacity and five-cent houses.”
The Iris declined in popularity in the early 1920s with the arrival of newer theaters. Although it was listed in the FDY as late as 1926, the Denver City Directory listed its address as the location of the Mars Theatre from 1925 to 1928. The Mars Theatre was never listed in the FDY, and was probably not operated as a movie house.
The house reappears in the FDY in 1933 as the Gem Theatre, the name it retained for the remainder of its history. It was still in operation as an adult theater in the late 1960s, just before the Chicago Block was demolished.
A paper about the theaters at 1746 Curtis Street from 1890 to 1920, by Paul O'Mally, is available in PFD format from Academia.edu at this link, but you have to sign up for the web site if you want to download it.
Construction of the Academy of Music began in 1887. A history of Newburgh’s Masonic Lodge published in 1896 says that in late 1887, while the Academy was under construction, the Masons leased the rooms on the third and fourth floors of the building, and the rooms were complete and ready for a dedication ceremony which was held on September 11, 1888. The theater must have been opened around the same time.
The Academy was probably the first the first theater in Newburgh to open with electric lights, which had been first introduced at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1881. The November 3, 1888, issue of The Electrical World had this item:
“Newburgh, N. Y.—The Edison Electric Illuminating Company, of Newburgh, N. Y., has just finished a number of important changes in the arrangement of their electric apparatus, and have laid another feeder from their station to supply the new Academy of Music with incandescents, and open up a new territory to the Edison light. The Newburgh Company is one of the oldest of the Edison organizations.”
An advertisement in the New York Dramatic Mirror was placed prior to opening by local manager A. S. Wood and New York booking agents Klaw & Erlinger describing the Academy. The ground floor house had 1,252 seats, six boxes, a stage 80 feet wide and 30 feet deep, and boasted “[e]very improvement in heating and electric light” as well as “15 sets of first-class scenery” among its equipment.
I haven’t been able to discover for certain who designed the Academy of Music, but there is a tantalizing reference in a booklet published for the New York Terra Cotta Company in 1891. Terra Cotta in Architecture, by Walter Geer, lists a number of buildings in which the company’s products had been used, and one of the two buildings listed at Newburgh is a Grand Opera House. I’ve found no other references to a Grand Opera House ever having existed in Newburgh, and I think it very likely that the building in question was actually the Academy of Music, misnamed. In 1891, it was the only large theater that had yet been built at Newburgh.
The booklet lists the Albany firm Fuller & Wheeler as the architects. Diana S. Waite’s Architects in Albany includes a brief biography of Albert W. Fuller, by T. Robins Brown, (Google Books preview, page 34) which includes a list of their buildings, but only those in Albany, and it has a drawing of their 1889 Albany YMCA, which was designed in the same Romanesque Revival style as the Academy of Music. The firm designed projects outside Albany, including YMCA buildings as far away as Montreal, Quebec, and Oakland, California, and they assisted in the design of a YMCA in Paris, France, so a project in Newburgh would not have been surprising.
So, while I’ve found no specific attribution of the Academy of Music to any architect, I do think it very likely that it was designed by Albert W. Fuller and William Arthur Wheeler.
It’s also of interest that, when the Newburgh Masonic lodge moved out of the Academy building in 1914, Albert Fuller (by then a partner in the firm of Fuller & Robinson) was the architect they chose to design their new building. I think that does indicate some familiarity with his work among citizens of Newburgh.
This item about the Wyatt Theatre is from the September 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“The Hendricksons, well known in Redlands, have leased the Wyatt theater for the coming season. Plans are being made for improvements so that big feature productions may be shown. Two "Power’s 6-B” motor-driven projecting machines will be used in the theater and in the balcony a machine booth, absolutely fireproof, will be built. They have also made plans for a 2,000-seat Airdome, which they expect to erect next spring and operate.“
Here is a brief article about the Chandler Music Hall from the June, 1910, issue of the construction trade journal Concrete:
“CHANDLER MUSIC HALL, RANDOLPH, VT., BUILT OF CONCRETE BLOCK.
“Contractor William S. Teachout, Essex junction, Vt., selected the coldest five months experienced in Vermont in 20 years for the erection of the Chandler Music Hall in Randolph, Vt.
“The building was given to the city by Col. A. B. Chandler and was recently opened with impressive ceremony. The structure was designed by Architect E. N. Boyden, Boston, Mass. It is built of hollow concrete block, 27,946 block being used. The building is divided into a music hall 88'x1OO' and a parish house 30'x100'. The hall seats 800 people. The total cost of the structure, including seats and stage fittings, was $30,000.
“Mr. Teachout was assisted in the construction by J. O. Dubuke. The Teachout block plant at Essex Junction is equipped with ‘Hercules’ block machines and turns out very creditable products.”
E. N. Boyden was probably the son of Elbridge C. Boyden, one of the leading architects in Worcester, Massachusetts in the last half of the 19th century. The younger Boyden is best known for a number of houses he designed in Boston’s Back Bay district.
I’ve found opening dates claimed on theater web sites to be in conflict with the historical record several times. In some cases something bad might have happened to the original theater and it had to be replaced, but in others I think local memory has just gone a bit fuzzy.
The January 14, 1937, issue of The Film Daily lists a Ramona Theatre in Ramona, California, as a new house. It appears in the 1938 FDY with 150 seats, but is not consistent in later editions. In 1939 it is up to 200 seats, in 1943 it reaches 296, then in 1949 it is back down to 230, and in 1956 it is still in operation but with 235 seats.
Why the seating capacity was so variable is as much a mystery as why it had a grand opening in 1947. Perhaps it was reopening after a major renovation that year, or a rebuilding after a fire, or after being taken over by new owners. I think the current theater is the one from 1937, though. Had it been built new as late as 1947 it would most likely have been a freestanding building with its own parking lot. Parking was not yet crucial in the 1930s, but it certainly was in the post-war period, especially in California.
Ramona Mainstage has a web site The “About” page has a photo of the 1947 event, though it is small and doesn’t show much detail. There’s definitely a post-war car parked in front of the theater though (a 1946 or 47 Chevrolet Aero sedan, if I’m not mistaken.)
The Mission Theatre in Fallbrook, California, was listed in the “New Theaters” column of the January 14, 1937, issue of The Film Daily. It was also mentioned in the April 4, 1937, issue of Motion Picture Herald, which said that W. J. Eagleston had purchased the lease and furnishings of the Mission Theatre from the Fallbrook Theatre Corporation.
Cards in the L.A. Public Library’s California Index call this house the Ramona Theatre, which must have been its opening name, probably in late 1924. The July 18, 1924, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor said that the contract for construction of a two-story brick store, theater, and office building at 681-687 Redondo Boulevard in Long Beach had been let to Alfred Butterfield. Frank Wynkoop, of Siebert, Hedden & Wynkoop was the architect. Albert T. Shaw was the owner of the project.
A booklet published in 1974 for Pekin’s sesquicentennial has this bit of information about the Empire Theatre: “The Empire Theater at 327 Court Street was built by the Fluegel family in the 1920’s. It was later operated by the Great States Theater chain of Chicago.”
As Anna Fluegel had the Pekin Theatre built in 1928, it’s likely that the smaller Empire Theatre was rebuilt earlier in the decade. Operation of both houses was taken over by Publix-Great States Theatres in 1937.
The January 23, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World provided this item about the Valentine Theatre:
The Theater Designs of C. Howard Crane, a thesis by Lisa Maria DiChiera (Internet Archive scan) has a list of Crane’s theater projects, and the Capitol Theatre at Steubenville is listed as project #527. The list does not give the dates of projects, but the Capitol is shortly after the Bonstelle Playhouse in Detroit (#518) and before project #549, a theater for Max Allen (the Park Theatre) at Lincoln Park, Michigan, and both of those theaters were built in 1925, so Crane was the original architect of the Steubenville Capitol built that same year.
The April 9, 1938, issue of The Film Daily said that the Court Theatre in Wheeling was to be modernized throughout. The work was to be completed by June 10.
The remodeling is briefly mentioned in a reminiscence about Wheeling’s theaters by Earl Summers, Sr., who had been concertmaster at some of the early houses, including the Court (published in the Autumn/Winter, 1982, issue of Upper Ohio Valley Historical Review, which is available as a PDF here.) Summers says that the Court’s original large stage was greatly reduced to accommodate more seating, so the house was no longer able to present the live road show productions it had once hosted.
Sadly, the 1938 remodeling probably also did away with the original design of the elegant foyer seen in this 1904 photo. I’ve never seen photos of the auditorium, but if it was a good as the foyer it must have been splendid.
Linkrot repair: The 1937 photo of the Virginia Theatre is now here.
Linkrot repair: The 1937 photo of the Rex Theatre can now be seen here.
Also, this 1981 photo from American Classic Images shows the Rex in its last days, when it had been given an aluminum false front and renamed the Coronet Theatre.
Items in various issues of The American Contractor in 1917 indicate that the architect for the rebuilding of the Hippodrome Theatre was Anthony Kunz, Jr. Kunz is best known for a number of Roman Catholic churches and school buildings he designed in the greater Cincinnati area during the first half of the 20th century.
this dual photo from a 1937 brochure published by the Ohio Valley Board of Trade, and now in the Ohio County Public Library collection, shows the Court Theatre at top and the Liberty Theatre at the bottom.
The April 28, 1917, issue of The American Contractor noted the letting of contracts for the Liberty Theatre. The architect was Charles D. McCarty.
The September 16, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World listed the Lyceum Theatre on Cottage Grove Avenue as one of four large neighborhood houses in Chicago that had substituted movies for vaudeville during the summer, but were continuing to show pictures for the fall.
The July 15, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World ran an article called “Chicago Picture Shows” which featured brief reviews of a number of the city’s movie theaters. This is the paragraph about the Garfield Theatre:
The “Chicago Letter” in the September 16 issue of MPW also mentioned the Garfield Theatre:By the end of 1913, the Garfield Theatre was one of three houses being operated by Charles J. Schaefer. The January 24, 1914, issue of MPW noted that he had just opened the Keystone Theatre (renamed the Mode Theatre in 1935) on Sheridan Road. He also operated the Lyceum Theatre (probably the one on Cottage Grove, though the article didn’t say.)The January 24, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World said that Charles J. Schaefer had opened the Keystone Theatre on December 17. He was already operating the Lyceum Theatre and the Garfield Theatre, and was contemplating the construction of a 1,600 seat house on the North Side of Chicago. Another source indicates that the Garfield Theatre Schaefer operated was the one at 2844 W. Madison.
The 1935 Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to says that the remodeling of the Keystone Theatre in to the Mode Theatre was designed by the firm of B. Leo Steil & Co.
Boxoffice no longer provides direct links between magazine pages on its web site, so here are links to the three pages on which the article about the Mode appears:
First.
Second.
Third.
An inventory of historic buildings in Weston says that the Camden Block was built in 1896-1897. It housed a bank, a hotel, shops, and the Camden Opera House. The building was designed by the architectural firm of Yost & Packard. The auditorium was severely damaged by a fire in the 1960s and the remains were demolished, but the rest of the building survives. The inventory only gives the Main Street address of the building, but the theater entrance was probably at about 9 E. 2nd Street.
An inventory of historic buildings in Weston prepared for the NRHP said that the Barnes Building at 241 N. Main Street, built in 1925, was remodeled to accommodate a movie theater in the 1930s, and that the theater closed in the 1950s. It must have been the Hollywood Theatre. At the time the inventory was prepared the building was still standing, with its marquee still intact, but I believe it has since been demolished.
The last year the Hollywood Theatre was listed in the Film Daily Yearbook was 1956.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to says that the original West Columbia Theatres I&II was designed by the architectural firm of Van Wenema & Postman.
The 1928 and 1929 FDYs list a Zazza-Jazz Theatre and a Jazz Theatre, both with the address 1751 Larimer Street. (I recall having seen the name Zarra-Jazz somewhere on the Internet, too, but I can’t recall exactly where.) However, I think it’s likely that the FDY made a mistake, conflating two theaters.
There was another house called simply the ZaZa Theatre, located down the block from the Jazz (at 1727 Larimer Street according to this web page.) The ZaZa was one of the childhood haunts of Neal Cassady in the 1930s. The FDY didn’t include addresses for Denver theaters in 1930, and while the Jazz Theatre is not listed that year the ZaZa Theatre is. In 1931 the Jazz is listed as closed, and the ZaZa is open. In 1932, both theaters are open again. 1933 is the last year the Jazz is listed, and it is again listed as closed. The ZaZa was last listed in 1941.
An out-of-print book called Denver’s Old Theater Row: The Story of Curtis Street and Its Glamorous Show Business, by Forrest Johnson, mentions both the ZaZa and Jazz Theatres in a brief passage that is cited in one of Paul O'Malley’s papers on Denver theaters. In 1922, a Mr. Frank A. Milton took over operation of the Rivoli Theatre, and O'Malley quotes Johnson thusly: “For about two years, Milton had been running the Folly, ZaZa and Jazz [theaters], as Girlie-Girle shows….” So the Jazz Theatre could have been in operation by 1920, and was certainly in operation by 1922, but had either closed permanently or perhaps gone back to some sort of live performances by 1933.
In any case, while there was a Jazz Theatre and there was a ZaZa Theatre down the block from it, odds are that there never was a house called the Zazza-Jazz (or Zarra-Jazz) Theatre, but if there was it was most likely the house later called simply the ZaZa, not the Jazz.
The correct address for this theater is 1746 Curtis Street, and its final name was Gem Theatre. In the 1920s and 1930s it was most commonly listed with 960 seats, but in later years the FDY listed it with between 600 and 700 seats. The three-story Romanesque Revival structure at 1734-1746 Curtis Street was called the Chicago Block, and it housed a theater at the address 1746 from 1890 on.
The first house was the Wonderland Museum and Variety Theatre, operating from 1890-1893. It was a small hall oriented north and south, with its stage at one corner of what would later be the auditorium of an expanded theater. The front section of the Wonderland would later be the lobby of the Isis Theatre.
In 1894, the house became the Curtis Street Theatre, and then from 1895 to 1899 it was the Orpheum Theatre. It underwent improvements in 1899 and reopened as the Denver Theatre in September. This might have been when the auditorium was expanded to an east-west alignment, running behind all the storefronts in the Chicago Block.
In 1902, it was renamed the Curtis Theatre, but closed after suffering a fire in May, 1904. It reopened on October 3. The house was closed during the 1909-1910 theatrical season, but was remodeled in 1910, reopening as the Iris Theatre, a motion picture house, on June 4.
For the next several years the Iris was one of Denver’s most popular movie theaters, part of the Curtis Street theater district described in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The Iris declined in popularity in the early 1920s with the arrival of newer theaters. Although it was listed in the FDY as late as 1926, the Denver City Directory listed its address as the location of the Mars Theatre from 1925 to 1928. The Mars Theatre was never listed in the FDY, and was probably not operated as a movie house.The house reappears in the FDY in 1933 as the Gem Theatre, the name it retained for the remainder of its history. It was still in operation as an adult theater in the late 1960s, just before the Chicago Block was demolished.
A paper about the theaters at 1746 Curtis Street from 1890 to 1920, by Paul O'Mally, is available in PFD format from Academia.edu at this link, but you have to sign up for the web site if you want to download it.
The web site Historic Buildings of Connecticut says that the Redman’s Hall was designed by architect Walter P. Crabtree.
Construction of the Academy of Music began in 1887. A history of Newburgh’s Masonic Lodge published in 1896 says that in late 1887, while the Academy was under construction, the Masons leased the rooms on the third and fourth floors of the building, and the rooms were complete and ready for a dedication ceremony which was held on September 11, 1888. The theater must have been opened around the same time.
The Academy was probably the first the first theater in Newburgh to open with electric lights, which had been first introduced at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1881. The November 3, 1888, issue of The Electrical World had this item:
An advertisement in the New York Dramatic Mirror was placed prior to opening by local manager A. S. Wood and New York booking agents Klaw & Erlinger describing the Academy. The ground floor house had 1,252 seats, six boxes, a stage 80 feet wide and 30 feet deep, and boasted “[e]very improvement in heating and electric light” as well as “15 sets of first-class scenery” among its equipment.I haven’t been able to discover for certain who designed the Academy of Music, but there is a tantalizing reference in a booklet published for the New York Terra Cotta Company in 1891. Terra Cotta in Architecture, by Walter Geer, lists a number of buildings in which the company’s products had been used, and one of the two buildings listed at Newburgh is a Grand Opera House. I’ve found no other references to a Grand Opera House ever having existed in Newburgh, and I think it very likely that the building in question was actually the Academy of Music, misnamed. In 1891, it was the only large theater that had yet been built at Newburgh.
The booklet lists the Albany firm Fuller & Wheeler as the architects. Diana S. Waite’s Architects in Albany includes a brief biography of Albert W. Fuller, by T. Robins Brown, (Google Books preview, page 34) which includes a list of their buildings, but only those in Albany, and it has a drawing of their 1889 Albany YMCA, which was designed in the same Romanesque Revival style as the Academy of Music. The firm designed projects outside Albany, including YMCA buildings as far away as Montreal, Quebec, and Oakland, California, and they assisted in the design of a YMCA in Paris, France, so a project in Newburgh would not have been surprising.
So, while I’ve found no specific attribution of the Academy of Music to any architect, I do think it very likely that it was designed by Albert W. Fuller and William Arthur Wheeler.
It’s also of interest that, when the Newburgh Masonic lodge moved out of the Academy building in 1914, Albert Fuller (by then a partner in the firm of Fuller & Robinson) was the architect they chose to design their new building. I think that does indicate some familiarity with his work among citizens of Newburgh.
This item about the Wyatt Theatre is from the September 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The New York Public Library has this postcard view of the Wyatt Theatre, undated, but probably from the 1910s.Here is a brief article about the Chandler Music Hall from the June, 1910, issue of the construction trade journal Concrete:
E. N. Boyden was probably the son of Elbridge C. Boyden, one of the leading architects in Worcester, Massachusetts in the last half of the 19th century. The younger Boyden is best known for a number of houses he designed in Boston’s Back Bay district.I’ve found opening dates claimed on theater web sites to be in conflict with the historical record several times. In some cases something bad might have happened to the original theater and it had to be replaced, but in others I think local memory has just gone a bit fuzzy.
The January 14, 1937, issue of The Film Daily lists a Ramona Theatre in Ramona, California, as a new house. It appears in the 1938 FDY with 150 seats, but is not consistent in later editions. In 1939 it is up to 200 seats, in 1943 it reaches 296, then in 1949 it is back down to 230, and in 1956 it is still in operation but with 235 seats.
Why the seating capacity was so variable is as much a mystery as why it had a grand opening in 1947. Perhaps it was reopening after a major renovation that year, or a rebuilding after a fire, or after being taken over by new owners. I think the current theater is the one from 1937, though. Had it been built new as late as 1947 it would most likely have been a freestanding building with its own parking lot. Parking was not yet crucial in the 1930s, but it certainly was in the post-war period, especially in California.
Ramona Mainstage has a web site The “About” page has a photo of the 1947 event, though it is small and doesn’t show much detail. There’s definitely a post-war car parked in front of the theater though (a 1946 or 47 Chevrolet Aero sedan, if I’m not mistaken.)
The Broadway Theatre in El Centro, California, was listed as a new theater in the January 14, 1937, issue of The Film Daily.
The Mission Theatre in Fallbrook, California, was listed in the “New Theaters” column of the January 14, 1937, issue of The Film Daily. It was also mentioned in the April 4, 1937, issue of Motion Picture Herald, which said that W. J. Eagleston had purchased the lease and furnishings of the Mission Theatre from the Fallbrook Theatre Corporation.
Cards in the L.A. Public Library’s California Index call this house the Ramona Theatre, which must have been its opening name, probably in late 1924. The July 18, 1924, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor said that the contract for construction of a two-story brick store, theater, and office building at 681-687 Redondo Boulevard in Long Beach had been let to Alfred Butterfield. Frank Wynkoop, of Siebert, Hedden & Wynkoop was the architect. Albert T. Shaw was the owner of the project.