An inventory of potentially significant historic buildings along 12th Street prepared for the City of New Westminster says that the Metro Theatre opened on March 23, 1938, and was designed by Vancouver architect H. H. Simmonds.
The Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada attributes the design of the Clova Theatre to Vancouver architect H. H. Simmonds. The Clova opened on May 26, 1947 with Humphry Bogart in “Dead Reckoning.”
The January 13, 1958 issue of Boxoffice says “[t]he Sapperton Theatre in the New Westminster area, a former Odeon operation dark for the past six months, is being demolished.” The mid-1957 closing had not been the first for the Sapperton. Boxoffice of August 11, 1956, had reported the reopening of the house, which had been closed for about a year. Odeon cited competition from television as the reason for that hiatus.
A July 20, 2012 post at the New Westminster Record web site says that the Sapperton opened on April 22, 1938.
The July 24, 1957 issue of The Levelland Daily Sun News featured a multi-page section about the Wallace Theatres, in observance of their 34th anniversary. On one page was a copy of the above photo, but the caption says it depicts the Wallace Theatre that the Blankenships had opened on July 30, 1923 at Ropesville (Portal to Texas History.)
The original Levelland Wallace Theatre opened in 1925, and was renamed the Rose Theatre in 1928 when the new Wallace was opened across Avenue H, but with its entrance on Houston Street. When the new Rose was built, the old Rose became, rather unimaginatively, the Old Rose Theatre, which was still standing in 1948, according to an article in the August 28 issue of Boxoffice that year, commemorating Wallace Blankenship’s 25th anniversary as an exhibitor. His career had begun with the first Wallace Theatre in Ropesville, in July, 1923. (The Old Rose was still listed in the FDY at least as late as 1950. It should probably have its own page.)
The new Rose can be seen in the left background of at least one of the photos of the new Wallace Theatre which can be found on that house’s Cinema Treasures photo page. It’s address was most likely 512 or 514 Avenue H, as 516 is the address of the building just south of the parking lot where the Rose stood. The original Rose was next door. I’m not sure which direction, but most likely it was north, at 510 Avenue H. If so then it, too, is under the footprint of the parking lot that replaced the new Rose.
The original Wallace Theatre in Levelland opened across Avenue H from the current site, and the Wallace on Houston Street opened in 1928, at which time the former theater was renamed the Rose, which it remained until a new Rose Theatre was built next door to it, at which time it became the Old Rose Theatre. Meanwhile, the new Wallace Theatre thrived, undergoing a major remodeling in 1949 during which the entrance was moved from the center of the building to the corner, a corner vertical sigh was added, and late Art Deco detailing appeared in the house’s interior.
In the 1970s the Wallace was twinned, but business continued to decline and the last movie, “ET” was screened in 1982. The building languished until 2002 when it was bought by a local couple with the intent of restoring it. In 2015 a non=profit organization was formed to take over the project, which has proceeded. A false ceiling installed in the auditorium when it was twinned was removed, revealing the earlier decorations. Live events and movies have been presented intermittently as renovations and restoration have continued, and the organization sponsors many off-site events of the sort that will be presented at the theater itself once renovation is complete.
The official web site has more information, and a number of historic and recent photos on various pages. The theater’s Facebook page provides more frequent progress reports and event news.
Earl Moseley’s column about Central and West Texas theater doings in Boxoffice for December 15, 1956 devoted a few paragraphs to Ulys G. Gregg, who had been a projectionist in Ropesville theaters starting in 1937. He worked for the Wallace Blankenship Theatres there for five years, and when Estes Burgamy rebuilt the storm-damaged theater in 1950 Gregg was the projectionist there from opening night, November 17, 1950, when the feature film was the Technicolor western “Saddle Tramp” with Joel McCrae.
CinemaScope was installed in the Ropes in 1955. At the time the article was written, Ulys Gregg had been at the Ropes for six years, and said that the house had been closed only twice during that period, once when there was a power outage and once when there was a heavy snowfall. The Ropes Theatre is mentioned in the May 1, 1958 issue of The Ropes Plainsman, so was still in operation at that time.
The name Lariat is problematic. It is used in the FDY only in 1938, 1940 and 1941, and is misspelled as Lariot each time. No seating capacity is ever given, and the remainder of the years from 1926 through 1951 in which Ropesville appears (it isn’t listed at all in several editions), the only theater listed is the 150-seat Wallace, except in 1941 when both the Lariot and Wallace are listed, but the Lariot is closed and no seating capacity is given for either house, and in 1945 and 1946, when only the Wallace is listed but with a seating capacity of 275.
Mentions of Ropesville’s theater in trade journals when it was being rebuilt after storm damage in 1950 call it only the Ropes. The construction of the theater, which is still standing, is clearly modern concrete block, and it is large enough to accommodate far more than 150 seats– probably at least twice that number.
Were it not for the fact that I no longer trust the Ropesville-datelined 1936 Film Daily item about the Palace and Princess being transferred to Griffith theaters, I’d think there had actually been two theaters in Ropesville, and the Wallace operated in the larger of the two for a couple of years and the smaller one for the rest of its history. But the fact that the FDY never lists a Palace or Princess at Ropesville, but only the Wallace and the misspelled Lariot, is pretty strong evidence that the 1936 item was mistaken, and so were the 1941, 1944 and 1945 listings in the FDY. Most likely Ropesville only ever had the 150-seat Wallace from 1923, briefly renamed the Lariat in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and that house was so badly damaged by a storm in 1950 that it was replaced by the new Ropes Theatre that year.
One more thing to mention: The theater description says the building is boarded up, which it clearly was in a 2004 photo by Scott Neff at CinemaTour, but this is no longer the case. The theater and two neighboring buildings appear in pretty good repair, all painted the same shade of gray with darker gray trim. An overhead door has been installed in part of the theater’s former entrance, not big enough for a truck to get through, and pretty tight even for a car, but about the right size for a forklift carrying a pallet. There is no signage on any of the three buildings, but they appear to be in use for something, probably related to agriculture or animal husbandry. The Ropes Theatre building is now most likely some sort of storage facility, but the Internet isn’t telling.
Google’s squib for a PDF dated 1972 (I’ve been unable to download it) says that the Palace is the only movie theater in Frobisher Bay (the former name of Iqaluit.) A PDF dated 1973 says that the Palace had recently been converted into a pool hall. It also notes that the town’s older theater, which it doesn’t name but which has to have been the Fox, had also been closed. So the Palace must have closed in either 1972 or 1973, and the Fox before 1972.
The theater’s web site mentions two theaters with 36 and 105 seats respectively, so total seating is down to 141. The house is currently showing first run movies.
As near as I can figure, this theater was part of the Frobisher Bay Air Base, which was established in 1942. The theater was operated by the U.S. military until the mid-1950s, at which time the house was taken over by Bryan Pearson, who would much later (1996) open the Astro Theatre. I haven’t been able to establish a closing date, but it appears to have been prior to 1975. The air base was converted into a civilian commercial airport in 1963.
The April 17, 1909 issue of Show World revealed that the Miles Theatre had opened un 1908 as a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house, with four shows a day. Owner C. H. Miles announced a change in policy effective April 19, 1909 when the house would be booked by Wm. Morris and prices would be advanced to a fifty cent top for evening performances (Sullivan Considine’s seven-act shows typically had a top price of thirty cents.) There would be only two shows a day, as at the rival Orpheum across the street.
One thing in the article contradicts our current theater description above. It says that the Miles had only about 1,100 seats, not the 2,000 our description claims. The larger Orpheum seated about 1,800.
The April 17, 1909 issue of Show World said that the new Glamour Theatre in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood had opened “last Saturday.” As the 17th itself was a Saturday, the opening would have taken place on the 10th. The 298-seat house cost $14,000 and opened with two acts of vaudeville, an illustrated song, and motion pictures. The policy of the new house was three changes of program per week, with admission ten cents for evenings and five cents for matinees.
The PDF I linked to in my previous comment does confirm that the Bijou and the Rivoli were the same theater. The reopening of the former Bijou Theatre as the Rivoli took place on August 30, 1920, according to the September 2 issue of The Monroe County Mail that year.
An 1885 Sanborn map of Fairport shows Shaw’s Hall on the south side of West Avenue, just east of a point midway between Main Street and Perrin Street. The entire area has been redeveloped, but the site of the Rivoli was across the street and a bit east of a modern business called the Moonlight Creamery, which is at 36 West Avenue, so the Rivoli must have been at about 33-35 West Avenue. (I can’t read the address on the Sanborn map, as my computer fails to get it in focus.)
The Academy Theatre is listed at Ironton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It was also mentioned on March 18, 1912 in the Journal of the House of Representatives section of The Congressional Record.
The Grand Theatre operated well past the 1950s. A survey made in 1988 said that the Grand was then the oldest known operating theater in Missouri built expressly for the exhibition of motion pictures. The adjacent bank, which had owned the lot the theater was on since 1975, announced the building’s impending demolition in 1991, but the actual demolition took place in the summer of 1992. I haven’t been able to discover the date the house closed, but it could have been only shortly before the building was demolished.
The original Grand Theatre was demolished in 1991, and had been in operation at least a late as 1988. The new Grand was opened by the old theater’s last lessee, a resident of Boonville named Johnny Griggs. According to a survey of Fayette’s historic buildings, the new Grand was installed in its historic commercial building in the spring of 1992.
The historic marker for the Rollamo Theatre mentions the Lyric Theatre on Pine Street, which showed silent movies. The 400-seat Lyric first appears in the FDY in 1928, suggesting a 1927 opening, but the 1926 and 1927 editions both list a 400-seat Rolla Theatre, the only house in town. After that only the Lyric appears, except in 1930 when only the Rollo is listed again. It goes back to Lyric in 1931. This suggests that there might have simply been a name change in 1927, and the Lyric was not a new house. Neither name appears in the 1932 edition, which lists only the new Rolla-Mo Theatre.
The earliest mention of the Rivoli I’ve found in the trade publications is in the December 25, 1925 Exhibitors Herald, at which time it was being run by a Mr. H. A. Shelling. A brief note in the July 19, 1933 issue of Film Daily says “Fairport, N. Y. — Don R. Stevenson has closed the Rivoli.”
Early on, the Bijou had been called the Bijou Dream, which occupied a 19th century community building called Shaw’s Hall. The building began as a church in 1844. When the congregation outgrew the building and built a new church the building was moved to West Avenue and converted into Shaw’s Hall. This had been done by 1873. The 1889 Jeffrey guide lists Shaw’s Hall as a 549 seat house, but provides no structural details. Other sources indicate that the Hall was upstairs.
The Bijou Dream opened in May, 1907, though movies had actually been screened at least once the previous year when it was still called Shaw’s Hall. Originally a wood-framed building with some Classical detailing, sometime after 1913 it received a new brick veneer exterior with some Renaissance details. The building was razed in 1975 as part of an urban redevelopment project, though a couple of sources say it had suffered a fire before its demolition.
This two-page PDF from the local historical society has a bit of the theater’s history and a good photo of the building after the brick front was installed.
Here is an item datelined Eldora from the May 18, 1918 Moving Picture World: “M. W. Moir, proprietor Diamond theater, has taken over the Grand.” Having gained control of the Grand (which he would sell to its long-time owner L. F. Walcott in 1924) it seems likely that Mr. Moir would have closed the Diamond soon, if not immediately.
Escott O. Norton: The web site of an organization called AltonWorks covers all the public rehabilitation and renovation projects currently underway in Alton, including the Grand Theatre. Plans to give the Grand project priority were put on hold by the pandemic, but the site’s Project Updates page says that the building is being stabilized for future construction.
Rats! I thought two of the theaters lately added were on Edgington Street, but I see that three were on Washington and the one added on Edgington was probably the Diamond. That means the Princess might have been in either this building or the one at 1217 Washington. So we still have no likely location for the Bijou, which an early reference in Moving Picture World (from January, 1911) indicates could have been Eldora’s first successful movie house.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists four movie houses at Eldora: The Diamond and the Bijou, both on Marion (now Edgington) Avenue, and a generically listed M. P. Theatre and a house called the Princess Theater, neither of which were listed with a location. I suspect that the generic M. P. Theatre was actually the Grand, which appears to have opened that year. It was on Marion Avenue, so the likely occupant of this building on Washington Street was the Princess.
As this house occupied space formerly housing a store that sold implements, I wonder if it could have been this project noted in the October 2, 1920 issue of Exhibitors Herald:
“New Theatre for Eldora
“ELDORA, IA.— Frank P. Doane and Ellis McDonald will open a motion picture show about October 1 in the building formerly occupied by the Janssen Implement House. They are remodeling the place preparatory to its reopening.”
The rather ambiguous and awkward wording (“…preparatory to its reopening>” suggests that the theater might have operated earlier at a different location. If so, it could have been either the Bijou or the Princess, both of which were listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the Bijou on Marion (now Edgington) Avenue and the Princess at an unlisted location. Whatever the name of this house, only the Grand was listed at Eldora in the FDY by 1926. Despite no other theaters listed in FDYs from the late 1920s, I did find one reference to a house in Eldora called the Family Theatre in a 1928 issue of Motion Picture News. There is no clue to its location, though.
The Diamond is one of four theaters listed at Eldora in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Of the others a house called the Bijou was also located on Marion Avenue (the former name of Edgington Avenue.) No locations were given for a house called the Princess Theatre and a generically listed M. P. Theatre.
An inventory of potentially significant historic buildings along 12th Street prepared for the City of New Westminster says that the Metro Theatre opened on March 23, 1938, and was designed by Vancouver architect H. H. Simmonds.
The Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada attributes the design of the Clova Theatre to Vancouver architect H. H. Simmonds. The Clova opened on May 26, 1947 with Humphry Bogart in “Dead Reckoning.”
The January 13, 1958 issue of Boxoffice says “[t]he Sapperton Theatre in the New Westminster area, a former Odeon operation dark for the past six months, is being demolished.” The mid-1957 closing had not been the first for the Sapperton. Boxoffice of August 11, 1956, had reported the reopening of the house, which had been closed for about a year. Odeon cited competition from television as the reason for that hiatus.
A July 20, 2012 post at the New Westminster Record web site says that the Sapperton opened on April 22, 1938.
The July 24, 1957 issue of The Levelland Daily Sun News featured a multi-page section about the Wallace Theatres, in observance of their 34th anniversary. On one page was a copy of the above photo, but the caption says it depicts the Wallace Theatre that the Blankenships had opened on July 30, 1923 at Ropesville (Portal to Texas History.)
The original Levelland Wallace Theatre opened in 1925, and was renamed the Rose Theatre in 1928 when the new Wallace was opened across Avenue H, but with its entrance on Houston Street. When the new Rose was built, the old Rose became, rather unimaginatively, the Old Rose Theatre, which was still standing in 1948, according to an article in the August 28 issue of Boxoffice that year, commemorating Wallace Blankenship’s 25th anniversary as an exhibitor. His career had begun with the first Wallace Theatre in Ropesville, in July, 1923. (The Old Rose was still listed in the FDY at least as late as 1950. It should probably have its own page.)
The new Rose can be seen in the left background of at least one of the photos of the new Wallace Theatre which can be found on that house’s Cinema Treasures photo page. It’s address was most likely 512 or 514 Avenue H, as 516 is the address of the building just south of the parking lot where the Rose stood. The original Rose was next door. I’m not sure which direction, but most likely it was north, at 510 Avenue H. If so then it, too, is under the footprint of the parking lot that replaced the new Rose.
The original Wallace Theatre in Levelland opened across Avenue H from the current site, and the Wallace on Houston Street opened in 1928, at which time the former theater was renamed the Rose, which it remained until a new Rose Theatre was built next door to it, at which time it became the Old Rose Theatre. Meanwhile, the new Wallace Theatre thrived, undergoing a major remodeling in 1949 during which the entrance was moved from the center of the building to the corner, a corner vertical sigh was added, and late Art Deco detailing appeared in the house’s interior.
In the 1970s the Wallace was twinned, but business continued to decline and the last movie, “ET” was screened in 1982. The building languished until 2002 when it was bought by a local couple with the intent of restoring it. In 2015 a non=profit organization was formed to take over the project, which has proceeded. A false ceiling installed in the auditorium when it was twinned was removed, revealing the earlier decorations. Live events and movies have been presented intermittently as renovations and restoration have continued, and the organization sponsors many off-site events of the sort that will be presented at the theater itself once renovation is complete.
The official web site has more information, and a number of historic and recent photos on various pages. The theater’s Facebook page provides more frequent progress reports and event news.
Earl Moseley’s column about Central and West Texas theater doings in Boxoffice for December 15, 1956 devoted a few paragraphs to Ulys G. Gregg, who had been a projectionist in Ropesville theaters starting in 1937. He worked for the Wallace Blankenship Theatres there for five years, and when Estes Burgamy rebuilt the storm-damaged theater in 1950 Gregg was the projectionist there from opening night, November 17, 1950, when the feature film was the Technicolor western “Saddle Tramp” with Joel McCrae.
CinemaScope was installed in the Ropes in 1955. At the time the article was written, Ulys Gregg had been at the Ropes for six years, and said that the house had been closed only twice during that period, once when there was a power outage and once when there was a heavy snowfall. The Ropes Theatre is mentioned in the May 1, 1958 issue of The Ropes Plainsman, so was still in operation at that time.
The name Lariat is problematic. It is used in the FDY only in 1938, 1940 and 1941, and is misspelled as Lariot each time. No seating capacity is ever given, and the remainder of the years from 1926 through 1951 in which Ropesville appears (it isn’t listed at all in several editions), the only theater listed is the 150-seat Wallace, except in 1941 when both the Lariot and Wallace are listed, but the Lariot is closed and no seating capacity is given for either house, and in 1945 and 1946, when only the Wallace is listed but with a seating capacity of 275.
Mentions of Ropesville’s theater in trade journals when it was being rebuilt after storm damage in 1950 call it only the Ropes. The construction of the theater, which is still standing, is clearly modern concrete block, and it is large enough to accommodate far more than 150 seats– probably at least twice that number.
Were it not for the fact that I no longer trust the Ropesville-datelined 1936 Film Daily item about the Palace and Princess being transferred to Griffith theaters, I’d think there had actually been two theaters in Ropesville, and the Wallace operated in the larger of the two for a couple of years and the smaller one for the rest of its history. But the fact that the FDY never lists a Palace or Princess at Ropesville, but only the Wallace and the misspelled Lariot, is pretty strong evidence that the 1936 item was mistaken, and so were the 1941, 1944 and 1945 listings in the FDY. Most likely Ropesville only ever had the 150-seat Wallace from 1923, briefly renamed the Lariat in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and that house was so badly damaged by a storm in 1950 that it was replaced by the new Ropes Theatre that year.
One more thing to mention: The theater description says the building is boarded up, which it clearly was in a 2004 photo by Scott Neff at CinemaTour, but this is no longer the case. The theater and two neighboring buildings appear in pretty good repair, all painted the same shade of gray with darker gray trim. An overhead door has been installed in part of the theater’s former entrance, not big enough for a truck to get through, and pretty tight even for a car, but about the right size for a forklift carrying a pallet. There is no signage on any of the three buildings, but they appear to be in use for something, probably related to agriculture or animal husbandry. The Ropes Theatre building is now most likely some sort of storage facility, but the Internet isn’t telling.
Google’s squib for a PDF dated 1972 (I’ve been unable to download it) says that the Palace is the only movie theater in Frobisher Bay (the former name of Iqaluit.) A PDF dated 1973 says that the Palace had recently been converted into a pool hall. It also notes that the town’s older theater, which it doesn’t name but which has to have been the Fox, had also been closed. So the Palace must have closed in either 1972 or 1973, and the Fox before 1972.
The theater’s web site mentions two theaters with 36 and 105 seats respectively, so total seating is down to 141. The house is currently showing first run movies.
As near as I can figure, this theater was part of the Frobisher Bay Air Base, which was established in 1942. The theater was operated by the U.S. military until the mid-1950s, at which time the house was taken over by Bryan Pearson, who would much later (1996) open the Astro Theatre. I haven’t been able to establish a closing date, but it appears to have been prior to 1975. The air base was converted into a civilian commercial airport in 1963.
The April 17, 1909 issue of Show World revealed that the Miles Theatre had opened un 1908 as a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house, with four shows a day. Owner C. H. Miles announced a change in policy effective April 19, 1909 when the house would be booked by Wm. Morris and prices would be advanced to a fifty cent top for evening performances (Sullivan Considine’s seven-act shows typically had a top price of thirty cents.) There would be only two shows a day, as at the rival Orpheum across the street.
One thing in the article contradicts our current theater description above. It says that the Miles had only about 1,100 seats, not the 2,000 our description claims. The larger Orpheum seated about 1,800.
The April 17, 1909 issue of Show World said that the new Glamour Theatre in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood had opened “last Saturday.” As the 17th itself was a Saturday, the opening would have taken place on the 10th. The 298-seat house cost $14,000 and opened with two acts of vaudeville, an illustrated song, and motion pictures. The policy of the new house was three changes of program per week, with admission ten cents for evenings and five cents for matinees.
The PDF I linked to in my previous comment does confirm that the Bijou and the Rivoli were the same theater. The reopening of the former Bijou Theatre as the Rivoli took place on August 30, 1920, according to the September 2 issue of The Monroe County Mail that year.
An 1885 Sanborn map of Fairport shows Shaw’s Hall on the south side of West Avenue, just east of a point midway between Main Street and Perrin Street. The entire area has been redeveloped, but the site of the Rivoli was across the street and a bit east of a modern business called the Moonlight Creamery, which is at 36 West Avenue, so the Rivoli must have been at about 33-35 West Avenue. (I can’t read the address on the Sanborn map, as my computer fails to get it in focus.)
The Academy Theatre is listed at Ironton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It was also mentioned on March 18, 1912 in the Journal of the House of Representatives section of The Congressional Record.
The correct address of the old State Theatre building is 119 N. Main Street. Currently vacant, the building was recently offered for sale at $64,500.
The Grand Theatre operated well past the 1950s. A survey made in 1988 said that the Grand was then the oldest known operating theater in Missouri built expressly for the exhibition of motion pictures. The adjacent bank, which had owned the lot the theater was on since 1975, announced the building’s impending demolition in 1991, but the actual demolition took place in the summer of 1992. I haven’t been able to discover the date the house closed, but it could have been only shortly before the building was demolished.
The original Grand Theatre was demolished in 1991, and had been in operation at least a late as 1988. The new Grand was opened by the old theater’s last lessee, a resident of Boonville named Johnny Griggs. According to a survey of Fayette’s historic buildings, the new Grand was installed in its historic commercial building in the spring of 1992.
The historic marker for the Rollamo Theatre mentions the Lyric Theatre on Pine Street, which showed silent movies. The 400-seat Lyric first appears in the FDY in 1928, suggesting a 1927 opening, but the 1926 and 1927 editions both list a 400-seat Rolla Theatre, the only house in town. After that only the Lyric appears, except in 1930 when only the Rollo is listed again. It goes back to Lyric in 1931. This suggests that there might have simply been a name change in 1927, and the Lyric was not a new house. Neither name appears in the 1932 edition, which lists only the new Rolla-Mo Theatre.
The earliest mention of the Rivoli I’ve found in the trade publications is in the December 25, 1925 Exhibitors Herald, at which time it was being run by a Mr. H. A. Shelling. A brief note in the July 19, 1933 issue of Film Daily says “Fairport, N. Y. — Don R. Stevenson has closed the Rivoli.”
Early on, the Bijou had been called the Bijou Dream, which occupied a 19th century community building called Shaw’s Hall. The building began as a church in 1844. When the congregation outgrew the building and built a new church the building was moved to West Avenue and converted into Shaw’s Hall. This had been done by 1873. The 1889 Jeffrey guide lists Shaw’s Hall as a 549 seat house, but provides no structural details. Other sources indicate that the Hall was upstairs.
The Bijou Dream opened in May, 1907, though movies had actually been screened at least once the previous year when it was still called Shaw’s Hall. Originally a wood-framed building with some Classical detailing, sometime after 1913 it received a new brick veneer exterior with some Renaissance details. The building was razed in 1975 as part of an urban redevelopment project, though a couple of sources say it had suffered a fire before its demolition.
This two-page PDF from the local historical society has a bit of the theater’s history and a good photo of the building after the brick front was installed.
Here is an item datelined Eldora from the May 18, 1918 Moving Picture World: “M. W. Moir, proprietor Diamond theater, has taken over the Grand.” Having gained control of the Grand (which he would sell to its long-time owner L. F. Walcott in 1924) it seems likely that Mr. Moir would have closed the Diamond soon, if not immediately.
Escott O. Norton: The web site of an organization called AltonWorks covers all the public rehabilitation and renovation projects currently underway in Alton, including the Grand Theatre. Plans to give the Grand project priority were put on hold by the pandemic, but the site’s Project Updates page says that the building is being stabilized for future construction.
Rats! I thought two of the theaters lately added were on Edgington Street, but I see that three were on Washington and the one added on Edgington was probably the Diamond. That means the Princess might have been in either this building or the one at 1217 Washington. So we still have no likely location for the Bijou, which an early reference in Moving Picture World (from January, 1911) indicates could have been Eldora’s first successful movie house.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists four movie houses at Eldora: The Diamond and the Bijou, both on Marion (now Edgington) Avenue, and a generically listed M. P. Theatre and a house called the Princess Theater, neither of which were listed with a location. I suspect that the generic M. P. Theatre was actually the Grand, which appears to have opened that year. It was on Marion Avenue, so the likely occupant of this building on Washington Street was the Princess.
As this house occupied space formerly housing a store that sold implements, I wonder if it could have been this project noted in the October 2, 1920 issue of Exhibitors Herald:
The rather ambiguous and awkward wording (“…preparatory to its reopening>” suggests that the theater might have operated earlier at a different location. If so, it could have been either the Bijou or the Princess, both of which were listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the Bijou on Marion (now Edgington) Avenue and the Princess at an unlisted location. Whatever the name of this house, only the Grand was listed at Eldora in the FDY by 1926. Despite no other theaters listed in FDYs from the late 1920s, I did find one reference to a house in Eldora called the Family Theatre in a 1928 issue of Motion Picture News. There is no clue to its location, though.The Diamond is one of four theaters listed at Eldora in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Of the others a house called the Bijou was also located on Marion Avenue (the former name of Edgington Avenue.) No locations were given for a house called the Princess Theatre and a generically listed M. P. Theatre.