The Convenient Food Mart at the southwest corner of Main Avenue and Wood Street uses the address 1347 N. Main, so that must be where the Bull’s Head Theatre was located.
I don’t know why I forgot this, as I mentioned it on the Manhattan Theatre page a few hours ago, but the Family Theatre on S. Main Avenue was in operation by 1916. It was a Comerford house.
Scranton had multiple houses called the Family Theatre. The only references to the Family Theatre on Penn Avenue I’ve come across in the newspapers so far are from 1932 and 1933.
Much earlier, there was a house called the Family Theatre at 221 Lackawanna Avenue, in operation at least as far back as 1892, but it probably never showed movies. In 1905, a new Family Theatre opened at 330 Adams Avenue. In 1906 it was operating as a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house. This one might have run movies.
By the mid-1920s, there was a movie house called the Family Theatre operating at 402 South Main Avenue. I’ve been unable to discover how long it lasted, or what became of it.
There are references in various issues of The Scranton Republican to a house called the Period Theatre operating at 1347 or 1349 N. Main Avenue. The earliest I’ve found is from March 6, 1918, and the latest from January 8, 1931. There is a reference to a movie house being in operation in the Bull’s Head district of Scranton in 1917, but the theater’s name was not mentioned.
I’ve also found references to the Lackawanna Central Model Railroad Club having a train display in the old Bull’s Head Theatre in 1972, so the building was still standing at that time.
I’ve come across references to a few houses in Scranton called the Nickelette Theatre. There appears to have been more than one, but the term also appears to have been used locally as a generic term for a five-cent movie theater. One of them opened in 1910 in the Arcade Building, but I haven’t been able to pin down where the Arcade Building was located.
The May 28, 1924, issue of The Scranton Republican said that Comerford’s American Theatre in Pittston was scheduled to open on June 9. Construction firm Breig Brothers was completing the $500,000 project two months ahead of schedule. Claude Wesley was to be the manager of the new house.
The American Theatre was the 84th house in the Comerford chain, and at 2,500 seats was also the largest thus far. There were 1,200 seats on the main floor, 1,100 in the balcony, and 200 in the boxes and loges. The proscenium was fifty feet wide and forty feet high, and the stage thirty-five feet deep. There were ten dressing rooms under the stage. A Kimball organ was being installed.
The February 15, 1924, issue of The Scranton Republican said that M. E. Comerford would remodel a building at 234 Lackawanna Avenue as a location for the Manhattan Theatre on the ground floor an offices for the Scranton Railway Company on the upper floors.
The Manhattan Theatre might have been moving into this building from some other location. Comerford had been operating a theater of that name in Scranton since at least 1916, when the December 9 issue of the Republican listed seven of the theaters then under his control: “Regent, Manhattan, Bijou, Victoria and Orpheum on Lackawanna avenue and the Park and Family in West Scranton.”
An article about Comerford Theatres in the August 31, 1921, issue of The Scranton Republican listed the Capitol Theatre in Wilkes-Barre as one of the houses that had been designed for the chain by Leon H. Lempert Jr. of Leon H. Lempert & Son.
The November 7, 1921, issue of The Scranton Republican reported that the opening of the Comerford chain’s new State Theatre the previous Saturday, November 5, had been a great success.
The Crescent Theatre had been closed for eleven years when plans to remodel and reopen it were announced in the April 11, 1941, issue of The Film Daily:
“Long-Shuttered House Will Be Reconditioned
“Ithaca — Plans to remodel and refurnish the old Crescent Theater to operate as a second-run house and to improve the Strand, have been announced here.
“In announcing the changes, Jules Berinstein, general manager of Cornell Theaters, Inc., said that the Crescent will be reopened as ‘a new theater.’ He said the building will be reconditioned throughout, with 1,200 seats all on one floor. Latest sound equipment will be installed. A new front is also planned. Work is slated to be completed in time for a September opening.
“New seats, a remodeled entrance and new decorations are among the improvements slated for the Strand during the Summer.
“The Crescent, acquired by the Cornell Theaters, Inc., in February, 1929, has been closed 11 years.”
I haven’t been able to find anything else about the reopening, so I don’t know if the project was carried out or not, or if so whether the house reopened under its original name or another name.
According to this item from the April 11, 1941, issue of The Film Daily, the Cine Olimpia reopened that year after being completely rebuilt:
“U. S. Equip. Is Feature Of Mexico City Stand
“Mexico City — With Paramount’s ‘Arise, My Love’ on the screen, the new Cine Olimpia, completely rebuilt on the site of the old one, of which Enrico Caruso laid the cornerstone in 1919, has opened on the Avenida 16 de Septiembre, one of Mexico City’s main arteries.
“Formerly American-owned, the new Cine Olimpia is now operated by Edward Noonan and Antonio de G. Osio. It has 2,800 seats from American Seating Co., Western Electric projection and sound system, and is carpeted by Mohawk. The Olimpia is also equipped with air-conditioning. Architect Carlos Crombe, who built the original Olimpia, was responsible for the new house.”
wolfgirl500: Have you ever heard of an early theater in Youngstown called the Luxor? A brief article about it appeared in the July 2, 1910, issue of a trade journal called The Film Index. It’s in the middle column on this page. Unfortunately there’s no photo of it.
Richard Abel’s Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910-1914 mentions the Luxor twice (Google Books preview) saying that it was one the theaters in Youngstown that catered to Italian audiences, but I’ve been unable to find anything else about it on the Internet.
Abel says that th Luxor was one of the theaters that didn’t advertise in the papers, so information might be difficult to find in the Vindicator, but it might have been mentioned in an article at one time or another, especially around the time it opened. Cinema Treasures has no theaters listed for Federal Plaza east of the Park Theatre, so I’m sure it’s not already here under another name.
Some of the cars in the photo of the New and Main Theatres are from the early 1950s. I think this page should be renamed Main Theatre, with Rex as an aka. The Boxoffice item I cited earlier indicates that the Rex Theatre moved into the building at 106 Main Street in 1946, so it had to have become the Main Theatre later, in the 1950s.
The Arkansas Historical Society magazine cited in the introduction was mistaken about the location of the Park Hill Theatre, which was a few miles north of the Liberty. The Liberty Theatre was built in 1940. It is mentioned three times in issue of The Film Daily late that year. This item is from the November 8 issue:
“Little Rock, Ark.— C. C. Mundo,
owner of the Rex, will open a new 300-seat house, the Liberty, at 313 Main St. in December. RCA sound will be installed.”
This is what the December 6 issue said:
“C. C. Mundo is going to manage the new Liberty Theater which E. W. Pickthome, prexy of Central Amusement Co., and his colleagues are building in North Little Rock, Ark.”
The Liberty had apparently opened by the time this item was published on December 20:
“Torch Is Held High
“North Little Rock, Ark.— C. C. Mundo, owner of the Rex in Little Rock, and general manager of the new Liberty Theater here, has not only given latter house a patriotic name but has symbolized ‘Liberty’ via a flaming red torch built on the center section of the marquee. The device is a constant reminder to the community of what Americans must defend in a topsy-turvy world.”
A photo of the Liberty Theatre, and two showing the front of the older and more elaborate Rialto Theatre a block away, can be seen on this web page. The rather plain Liberty looks as though it had been installed in an existing building.
The house on Akansas-Missouri Highway was definitely the Park Hill Theatre, and opened in 1940. The theater was located in what is now the 3400 block of Kennedy Boulevard according to a document about the Park Hill district from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program (PDF here.) This is what the document says about the theater:
“The Park Hill Theater and Community Center in the 3400 block of John F. Kennedy Blvd. (formerly the Arkansas Missouri Highway) was constructed in 1939-1940 and was another design by architects Brueggeman, Swaim and Allen. The complex, often referred to as North Little Rock’s first multiple-store complex, originally housed a drug store, grocery, post office and movie theater. Edward F. Brueggeman headed this local architectural firm, which was responsible for the design of some of the most notable buildings in Park Hill. The firm was best known for its designs for Malco theater buildings nationwide in the 1930s.”
The October 24, 1940, issue of The Film Daily had this announcement about the Park Hill Theatre:
“New Malco House Seats 750
“North Little Rock, Ark.— Malco’s new community theater, which will be constructed at Arkansas-Missouri Highway and D St. in Park Hill, will have a seating capacity of 750 and will be of stadium-type design. Work on the new house is expected to start construction is expected to start soon, M. S. McCord, general manager of the Malco Realty Corp., announces here.
“The structure will contain a modern theater with a seating capacity of 750 persons, three stores 25 ft. in width each and one 40 ft. in width. Malco Theaters, Inc., which operates the Rialto and Princess Theaters in North Little Rock, has leased the building.
“The theater will be of stadium-type design and will have a small stage. Interior of the structure will be finished in ornamental plaster and treated for proper acoustics. The projection booth will be installed against the front, behind the loges.
“A parkway with trees and shrubbery will be in front of the building. Ample parking space will be provided on the premises. Space at one end of the parkway will be reserved for erection of a service station.
“Store fronts will be of plate and structural glass designed to suit the needs of tenants and in keeping with the general design.”
The “D St.” mentioned in the article is actually called D Avenue, and is the beginning of the 3400 block of Kennedy Boulevard.
If there was also a house called the Park Theatre in North Little Rock, it had to have been the theater on Main Street, not the one on Arkansas-Missouri Highway/Kennedy Boulevard, and the address 406 might have belonged to it. The 400 block of Main Street is in the old commercial district of the town, and would have been a block or two from the Rialto and Liberty Theatres. We don’t have the Princess Theatre listed, but I would imagine it was in the same area.
This item about the Midway Theatre is from the “Theatres Under Construction” of the December 16, 1938, issue of The Film Daily: “Los Angeles — New, 600 seats, 3140 Pico Blvd.; Builder: Frank A. Schilling; Architect: M. P. Miller; Operator: Louis Berkoff; To be completed 12-15-38.”
Architect Marcus P. Miller is little-known, even though he designed one of the iconic landmarks of Los Angeles; The Dark Room, a Wilshire Boulevard camera shop with a front designed to look like a camera. The Midway Theatre was built the same year as The Dark Room.
The “Theatres Under Construction” column of The Film Daily for December 16, 1938, includes this brief note for the Main Theatre: “Ephrata — Main, 750 seats; Architect: D. Supowitz; Operator: Harry Stiefer; To be completed 12-15-38.”
A brief history of Hurley (PDF here) has this paragraph with information about the Tejo Theatre:
“By late 1911 and early 1912, business houses and recreation facilities were starting. A new modern saloon on Cortez street, still in use as the Mexican Casino, was built. Also, an open air theater was built of corrugated iron 8-foot walls, dirt floor, wooden benches and, for the first summer, the star-decked heaven for a roof. A tin roof was added later. It showed silent movies and tickets were $.15 each. It stood where the Chino Club is now, and was operated by Lee Gooding, the village tailor. It was replaced in 1915 with a new modern building built by Chino and located on the corner of First and Cortez. It was leased to Mr. Murray and his son Leroy (the father and brother of Mrs. Beryl Sweske who still lives here). The next manager was Eddie Ward, an ex-Copper League baseball player. He named it the Tejo Theater and it was on the Gibraltar circuit. He ran it until 1955 when it was sold to John W. Galbraith along with the townsite, resold and then torn down and hauled to Deming in 1958. The foundation still remains.”
The earliest reports about the Hellman Theatre indicate that the project was downsized before it was completed. The theater was originally planned with a balcony and was to be equipped with Todd-AO, according to this item from the November 6, 1958, issue of Motion Picture Daily:
“Plans Suburban Theatre for Albany, Phila.
“Albany will be one of two cities where Neil Hellman will build suburban theatres next year. Philadelphia is the other.
“He announced here that a 1,200-seat house, equipped with Todd-AO and escalators to the balcony, will be constructed in the spring on a five-acre site adjoining his Thruway Motel and opposite the State Campus. The State of New York has erected several large buildings there, and plans others.
“The location is within the city limits and only 10 minutes from Schenectady, by the State Thruway. Present plans are for the presentation of road show pictures, first-runs and art films. Leon Einhorn, theatre and motel architect, will design the house. Parking facilities will be provided for 500 cars.
“Cost is expected to be around $500,000; the house to be in readiness for operation by Labor Day.
“Hellman will also put up a 1,400-seat suburban theatre on a 6 ½-acre site in Philadelphia, where he now operates the Lincoln and Andalusia drive-ins. Cost of that project is estimated at $750,000. This includes parking for 500 cars.
“Ed Potash, who retired from Universal’s Philadelphia exchange last spring to become Hellman’s general manager, will supervise the two new suburbans.”
A later issue of the magazine said that the completion date of the project had been moved up:
“Move Up Date for ‘Suburban’ Theatre
“Special to THE DAILY
“ALBANY, N. Y., Nov. 13. – Neil Hellman has announced the moving up of the date for the completion of a proposed 1,200-seat $500,000 ‘suburban’ theatre on Upper Washington Avenue, within the city limits, from Labor Day to July 15.
“He said that construction work will begin within three weeks. Originally it was not to start until spring. Hellman stated that the job will be put up for bids in the near future.
“Parking facilities for 500 cars are one of the features. The house, which will also have a stage and dressing rooms, is to seat 1,000 on the main floor, and 200 in the balcony. The latter will be reached by escalators.”
As built, the Hellman Theatre had 140 fewer seats than originally announced, the balcony was not built, and Cinerama replaced the planned Todd-AO installation. Apparently it had neither stage nor dressing rooms, eihter. That the house actually opened in April, 1960, rather than July, 1959, and that a second architect (Schenker) was brought on to the project, must have been the result of these changes.
The building the Double D Lounge is in has a structure at the back that looks like a former stage house. As the Strand/first State/Alpine was the only theater listed for Point Pleasant in the 1930-1943 FDYs, and the Park was the only house other than the State listed from 1947 on, it must have been the the theater on the 1931 and 1948 maps.
The opera house on the 1931 map might have been either the Lyric or the Grand, listed in the 1927 and 1928 FDY’s. Right where one would expect to find 309 Main there is a three-story building with an arched center bay. It looks like it could have had an auditorium on the upper floors. Satellite view shows that its roof is the same height from front to back, and pitched, as an auditorium roof could be expected to be. It’s big enough to hold way more than the 250 seats listed for the Lyric, though, so if it was one of the two it was probably the Grand.
The Convenient Food Mart at the southwest corner of Main Avenue and Wood Street uses the address 1347 N. Main, so that must be where the Bull’s Head Theatre was located.
I don’t know why I forgot this, as I mentioned it on the Manhattan Theatre page a few hours ago, but the Family Theatre on S. Main Avenue was in operation by 1916. It was a Comerford house.
Scranton had multiple houses called the Family Theatre. The only references to the Family Theatre on Penn Avenue I’ve come across in the newspapers so far are from 1932 and 1933.
Much earlier, there was a house called the Family Theatre at 221 Lackawanna Avenue, in operation at least as far back as 1892, but it probably never showed movies. In 1905, a new Family Theatre opened at 330 Adams Avenue. In 1906 it was operating as a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house. This one might have run movies.
By the mid-1920s, there was a movie house called the Family Theatre operating at 402 South Main Avenue. I’ve been unable to discover how long it lasted, or what became of it.
There are references in various issues of The Scranton Republican to a house called the Period Theatre operating at 1347 or 1349 N. Main Avenue. The earliest I’ve found is from March 6, 1918, and the latest from January 8, 1931. There is a reference to a movie house being in operation in the Bull’s Head district of Scranton in 1917, but the theater’s name was not mentioned.
I’ve also found references to the Lackawanna Central Model Railroad Club having a train display in the old Bull’s Head Theatre in 1972, so the building was still standing at that time.
I’ve come across references to a few houses in Scranton called the Nickelette Theatre. There appears to have been more than one, but the term also appears to have been used locally as a generic term for a five-cent movie theater. One of them opened in 1910 in the Arcade Building, but I haven’t been able to pin down where the Arcade Building was located.
The Dome’s main entrance was three doors west of Hazel, so 204 sounds about right. The Dome also had a secondary entrance from Hazel Street.
The May 28, 1924, issue of The Scranton Republican said that Comerford’s American Theatre in Pittston was scheduled to open on June 9. Construction firm Breig Brothers was completing the $500,000 project two months ahead of schedule. Claude Wesley was to be the manager of the new house.
The American Theatre was the 84th house in the Comerford chain, and at 2,500 seats was also the largest thus far. There were 1,200 seats on the main floor, 1,100 in the balcony, and 200 in the boxes and loges. The proscenium was fifty feet wide and forty feet high, and the stage thirty-five feet deep. There were ten dressing rooms under the stage. A Kimball organ was being installed.
The February 15, 1924, issue of The Scranton Republican said that M. E. Comerford would remodel a building at 234 Lackawanna Avenue as a location for the Manhattan Theatre on the ground floor an offices for the Scranton Railway Company on the upper floors.
The Manhattan Theatre might have been moving into this building from some other location. Comerford had been operating a theater of that name in Scranton since at least 1916, when the December 9 issue of the Republican listed seven of the theaters then under his control: “Regent, Manhattan, Bijou, Victoria and Orpheum on Lackawanna avenue and the Park and Family in West Scranton.”
Ron, the stage of the Hippodrome backed up to Commerce Street, but the theater entrance was through an arcade opening on Federal Street.
An article about Comerford Theatres in the August 31, 1921, issue of The Scranton Republican listed the Capitol Theatre in Wilkes-Barre as one of the houses that had been designed for the chain by Leon H. Lempert Jr. of Leon H. Lempert & Son.
The November 7, 1921, issue of The Scranton Republican reported that the opening of the Comerford chain’s new State Theatre the previous Saturday, November 5, had been a great success.
The November 1, 1926, issue of The Scranton Republican said that Comerford’s new West Side Theatre had been designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son.
The Crescent Theatre had been closed for eleven years when plans to remodel and reopen it were announced in the April 11, 1941, issue of The Film Daily:
I haven’t been able to find anything else about the reopening, so I don’t know if the project was carried out or not, or if so whether the house reopened under its original name or another name.According to this item from the April 11, 1941, issue of The Film Daily, the Cine Olimpia reopened that year after being completely rebuilt:
The Park Hill Theatre actually opened on March 30, 1941, according to the April 11 issue of The Film Daily.
wolfgirl500: Have you ever heard of an early theater in Youngstown called the Luxor? A brief article about it appeared in the July 2, 1910, issue of a trade journal called The Film Index. It’s in the middle column on this page. Unfortunately there’s no photo of it.
Richard Abel’s Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910-1914 mentions the Luxor twice (Google Books preview) saying that it was one the theaters in Youngstown that catered to Italian audiences, but I’ve been unable to find anything else about it on the Internet.
Abel says that th Luxor was one of the theaters that didn’t advertise in the papers, so information might be difficult to find in the Vindicator, but it might have been mentioned in an article at one time or another, especially around the time it opened. Cinema Treasures has no theaters listed for Federal Plaza east of the Park Theatre, so I’m sure it’s not already here under another name.
Some of the cars in the photo of the New and Main Theatres are from the early 1950s. I think this page should be renamed Main Theatre, with Rex as an aka. The Boxoffice item I cited earlier indicates that the Rex Theatre moved into the building at 106 Main Street in 1946, so it had to have become the Main Theatre later, in the 1950s.
The Arkansas Historical Society magazine cited in the introduction was mistaken about the location of the Park Hill Theatre, which was a few miles north of the Liberty. The Liberty Theatre was built in 1940. It is mentioned three times in issue of The Film Daily late that year. This item is from the November 8 issue:
This is what the December 6 issue said:The Liberty had apparently opened by the time this item was published on December 20:A photo of the Liberty Theatre, and two showing the front of the older and more elaborate Rialto Theatre a block away, can be seen on this web page. The rather plain Liberty looks as though it had been installed in an existing building.The house on Akansas-Missouri Highway was definitely the Park Hill Theatre, and opened in 1940. The theater was located in what is now the 3400 block of Kennedy Boulevard according to a document about the Park Hill district from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program (PDF here.) This is what the document says about the theater:
The October 24, 1940, issue of The Film Daily had this announcement about the Park Hill Theatre:The “D St.” mentioned in the article is actually called D Avenue, and is the beginning of the 3400 block of Kennedy Boulevard.If there was also a house called the Park Theatre in North Little Rock, it had to have been the theater on Main Street, not the one on Arkansas-Missouri Highway/Kennedy Boulevard, and the address 406 might have belonged to it. The 400 block of Main Street is in the old commercial district of the town, and would have been a block or two from the Rialto and Liberty Theatres. We don’t have the Princess Theatre listed, but I would imagine it was in the same area.
This item from the January 10, 1923, issue of The Film Daily indicates that there was an earlier Rex Theatre in El Dorado:
This item about the Midway Theatre is from the “Theatres Under Construction” of the December 16, 1938, issue of The Film Daily: “Los Angeles — New, 600 seats, 3140 Pico Blvd.; Builder: Frank A. Schilling; Architect: M. P. Miller; Operator: Louis Berkoff; To be completed 12-15-38.”
Architect Marcus P. Miller is little-known, even though he designed one of the iconic landmarks of Los Angeles; The Dark Room, a Wilshire Boulevard camera shop with a front designed to look like a camera. The Midway Theatre was built the same year as The Dark Room.
The “Theatres Under Construction” column of The Film Daily for December 16, 1938, includes this brief note for the Main Theatre: “Ephrata — Main, 750 seats; Architect: D. Supowitz; Operator: Harry Stiefer; To be completed 12-15-38.”
A brief history of Hurley (PDF here) has this paragraph with information about the Tejo Theatre:
The earliest reports about the Hellman Theatre indicate that the project was downsized before it was completed. The theater was originally planned with a balcony and was to be equipped with Todd-AO, according to this item from the November 6, 1958, issue of Motion Picture Daily:
A later issue of the magazine said that the completion date of the project had been moved up:As built, the Hellman Theatre had 140 fewer seats than originally announced, the balcony was not built, and Cinerama replaced the planned Todd-AO installation. Apparently it had neither stage nor dressing rooms, eihter. That the house actually opened in April, 1960, rather than July, 1959, and that a second architect (Schenker) was brought on to the project, must have been the result of these changes.The building the Double D Lounge is in has a structure at the back that looks like a former stage house. As the Strand/first State/Alpine was the only theater listed for Point Pleasant in the 1930-1943 FDYs, and the Park was the only house other than the State listed from 1947 on, it must have been the the theater on the 1931 and 1948 maps.
The opera house on the 1931 map might have been either the Lyric or the Grand, listed in the 1927 and 1928 FDY’s. Right where one would expect to find 309 Main there is a three-story building with an arched center bay. It looks like it could have had an auditorium on the upper floors. Satellite view shows that its roof is the same height from front to back, and pitched, as an auditorium roof could be expected to be. It’s big enough to hold way more than the 250 seats listed for the Lyric, though, so if it was one of the two it was probably the Grand.