Here is an item from the July 1, 1922, issue of The American Contractor about Harry Vonderschmidt’s proposed theater in Bloomington:
“BLOOMINGTON, IND. Theatre (M. P.): $50,000. 1 sty., bal. & bas. 64x130. Bloomington. Archt. Shourds Stoner Co., 511 Tribune bldg., Terre Haute, Ind. Owner H. L Vonderschmitt, Washington, Ind. Brk., steel & semi-frpf., brk. walls, stone trim. Archt. will take bids abt. July 5, 1922. Drawing plans.”
The Shourds-Stoner Company was a design, planning, and engineering firm headed by architect D. B. Shourds and civil engineer George J. Stoner. The firm designed everything from single houses to major projects such as dams, highways, and sewerage systems.
I haven’t yet discovered the architect of the 1934 rebuilding, but the facade of the theater remains very much as Shourds-Stoner designed it in 1922.
This house actually opened in 1925 as the Rainbow Theatre. The August 24, 1925, issue of The Film Daily said under the headline “New Seattle House” that “E. H. Habrocuk recently opened his new 500 seater Rainbow Theater at 140 N. 85th Street.”
The Grand Theatre that was designed by E. W. Houghton, mentioned in the 1909 Seattle Star article I cited earlier, was not this theater, but the Grand Opera House, built in 1898-1900. It was renamed the Hippodrome Theatre in 1915. It was gutted by a fire in 1917 and was later converted into a parking garage. I don’t know if it ever operated as a movie theater.
The remodeling of the LaGrange Theatre by Roy B. Blass in 1948 occasioned a three page article by decorator Hanns R. Teichert in the January 8, 1949, issue of Boxoffice. There are several photos.
Architect Giles P. Greene died in 1941, and his obituary revealed why there is so little about him on the Internet. He practiced architecture only briefly, from 1916 to 1918. Following military service in WWI, he took to designing monuments and mausoleums. As far as I’ve been able to discover, he designed no regular buildings after 1918.
Most of the references to Greene on the Internet concern the Lyric Theatre. An article in the May 5, 1917, issue of The Record, the local newspaper for Endicott, Johnson City, and Union, said that Greene had arrived in Endicott and would remain through the construction of the Lyric, which was expected to open in early August.
The Plaza Theatre in Columbus was another of the theaters based on the prototype Ultra-Vison house (in Charleston, South Carolina) designed by William B. McGehee of the Asheville firm Six Associates. None of the early Ultra-Vision projects departed significantly from his original design.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to mentions “…architect Bill Murphy, starting with the plans of Bill McGehee, architect of the Charleston project….” The Charleston project was the Ultra-Vision Theatre there, the first of its kind, designed by William B. McGehee of the firm Six Associates. I’ve been unable to find anything more about Bill Murphy, but it seems likely that he was either another member of the firm (though neither McGehee nor Murphy was among the founding members, one of whom was theater architect Erle G. Stillwell) or a Florida architect who supervised the project in Ocala.
bilpatrick: Street View has been updated to the correct location since I posted my comment of June 7, 2011. Unfortunately, I can’t edit the comment to remove that part, and I don’t want to remove the whole comment because other information in it is still pertinent.
Also unfortunate, the link I posted in the comment no longer fetches the same page it did two years ago, and I can’t find another copy of the photo it featured. The perils of the ever-changing Internet.
Cinema Treasures also has a page for the Ro-Na Theatre, in case you’d like to comment there. It has only one comment from anyone who has actually seen the theater, and could use more.
Google’s camera car has returned to Ironton since my earlier comment, and there are now views of 3rd Street, so our Street View can be reset closer to the theater.
Linkrot repair: The 1957 Boxoffice article about the remodeling of the Dover Theatre is now at this link (the text continues on this page, but the only photos are at the first link.)
A larger version of the “before” photo of the auditorium appears at bottom right of this page of Boxoffice of January 8, 1949.
Clickable link to the Boxoffice article KenLayton cited. The article says that the architect for the remodeling was Paul Carlsen. Though it calls him a “nationally known theatre architect” I can find nothing else about him on the Internet.
The page also needs a credit for the original architect, A. J. Russell. Ambrose J. Russell had an interesting life and career. Born to missionary parents in India, he studied architecture at the University of Glasgow and at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. On emigrating to America, he worked in the office of H. H. Richardson, then in Worcester, Massachusetts, Kansas City, and St. Louis. He practiced in partnership with his former schoolmate Bernard Maybeck for a while before settling in Tacoma in 1892. Alone or in various partnerships he designed a number of notable buildings in the northwest, including the Governor’s mansion in Olympia, Washington.
The Campus Drive-In rated this page in Boxoffice of February 3, 1949. There are four photos. The Campus was designed by San Diego architect George Lykos.
The Rubidoux Drive-In was the subject of a two-page article in Boxoffice of February 5, 1949. There are five photos and a floor plan of the concession-rest room building.
According to the section on Bly in a rider’s handbook published by Cycle Oregon, Bly’s movie house “…was
built in 1948 as the Arch Theater but is now called the Star.” It also says that “…a couple part-time
residents, Paul and Ruby Dorris, have converted the building to a combination meeting space/antique gallery . The stage and screen are still up, the floor still slopes like a theater, and the venue has hosted potlucks, old-time fiddlers and more.” The Handbook was published in 2012 (PDF here) and is the most recent information about the Star Theatre that I can find on the web. I can’t find a web site for the Dorrises' operation itself, so I assume they don’t have one.
Michael J. DeAngelis planned a complete remodeling of the Strand Theatre in Endicott in 1945. In the absence of any photos of the theater I can’t say the project was carried out as planned, but there is a drawing at lower left on this page of Boxoffice, December 8, 1945. Maybe somebody who saw the theater will recognize it.
Here is the page with Robert Boller’s drawing of the Colonial Theatre in Boxoffice of December 8, 1945. Despite the long delay in construction, the drawing looks very much the same as later photographs of the theater as actually built.
The original Broadway Theatre on this same site opened in 1916 as the Strand Theatre, and was renamed the Broadway Theatre in 1924. An announcement that the Strand Theatre was soon to open appeared in the October 7, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. Owner H.T. Drake already operated a smaller movie house called the Lyric Theatre.
This article posted on the Fayetteville Flyer web site on May 17, 2011, refers to the U Ark Theatre’s marquee as “…a 71-year old Dickson Street landmark….” If the theater was the same age, it would have opened around 1940.
I’m pretty sure the Palace Theatre became the Freeport Theatre. The Palace is first listed in the Film Daily Yearbook in 1930, without a seating capacity listed. From 1931 through 1936 it is listed with 500 seats. In 1937 the Palace vanishes, but the Freeport is listed with 500 seats. It sounds like a name change.
The Princess/Port connection is tenuous. The Princess is listed until 1929 with 325 seats. It is not listed in 1930, but reappears in 1931, now with 478 seats and an asterisk, which FDY used to denote houses that didn’t have sound yet. It is then listed in 1932, 1933, and 1934 as closed. It then vanishes. The Port Theatre first appears in the 1941 FDY, with no seating capacity listed. In 1942 the Port is listed with 400 seats. There’s a definite possibility that the Port was the Princess reopened and renamed, but it’s not certain.
The Ora Theatre was certainly not the first movie house in Freeport. The July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had this item:
“Freeport, Tex.—A new theater has been opened at Freeport. Texas, known as the Princess, and is under the management of H. A. Owens.”
An item in the December 4, 1941, issue of The Freeport Facts said that the new Long circuit theater soon to be built on Second Street would be Freeport’s fourth movie house. I believe that this was probably the Showboat Theatre, which was on Second Street and opened in the early 1940s. At that time, Long operated Freeport’s three other movie theaters as well.
The article also mentioned the Ora Theatre, so this house was definitely in operation by late 1941. Long also had plans to build a new theater in Velasco, a nearby town that merged with Freeport in 1957. I don’t know if Long’s plans for the Velasco house were carried out, as a site for that theater had not yet been acquired, and after the United States entered WWII a few weeks after the article ran, building restrictions were soon imposed throughout the country. Many theater projects had to be put on hold until after the war.
marmer: I can’t remember which page the list of Shult’s theaters was on. I tried checking the index of the 1950-51 catalog, but Shult is not mentioned in it. I started going through the book, but my browser keeps crashing (I don’t think it likes the site’s format) so I haven’t gotten very far. I’ll keep looking, and if I find the list I’ll post here again with a link. It might take quite a while, though. The site is slow, and my computer is uncooperative.
A typesetter at Boxoffice must have been drinking heavily. The 1949 issue I cited previously butchered the name of the architect. “Howell Ewald” was actually Howard George Elwell, according to the 1950-51 edition of Jay Emanuel’s Theatre Catalog.
An article published in the Medina Daily Journal in 1922 said that the Hi-Art Theatre in Lockport was located on West Avenue near the Big Bridge (now called Locks Plaza.) Another page of the newspaper has an ad for a real estate company at 13 West Avenue with the notation “Over the Hi-Art Theatre.” This block of West Avenue was later renamed West Main Street, which is confirmed by an ad for a fishing tackle shop in a 1938 issue of the newspaper, which gives its location as “16 W. Main—Opposite Hi-Art.”
A building with a tattoo parlor in it is at the current address 19 West Main, and east of that is a double-width building with a tan brick front, which is probably at 15-17 West Main. That means that the Hi-Art, on the ground floor below 13 West Main, was probably at the modern address 11 West Main, the lot just east of the tan brick building. Here is a Google Street View.
Here is an item from the July 1, 1922, issue of The American Contractor about Harry Vonderschmidt’s proposed theater in Bloomington:
The Shourds-Stoner Company was a design, planning, and engineering firm headed by architect D. B. Shourds and civil engineer George J. Stoner. The firm designed everything from single houses to major projects such as dams, highways, and sewerage systems.I haven’t yet discovered the architect of the 1934 rebuilding, but the facade of the theater remains very much as Shourds-Stoner designed it in 1922.
This house actually opened in 1925 as the Rainbow Theatre. The August 24, 1925, issue of The Film Daily said under the headline “New Seattle House” that “E. H. Habrocuk recently opened his new 500 seater Rainbow Theater at 140 N. 85th Street.”
The Grand Theatre that was designed by E. W. Houghton, mentioned in the 1909 Seattle Star article I cited earlier, was not this theater, but the Grand Opera House, built in 1898-1900. It was renamed the Hippodrome Theatre in 1915. It was gutted by a fire in 1917 and was later converted into a parking garage. I don’t know if it ever operated as a movie theater.
The remodeling of the LaGrange Theatre by Roy B. Blass in 1948 occasioned a three page article by decorator Hanns R. Teichert in the January 8, 1949, issue of Boxoffice. There are several photos.
Architect Giles P. Greene died in 1941, and his obituary revealed why there is so little about him on the Internet. He practiced architecture only briefly, from 1916 to 1918. Following military service in WWI, he took to designing monuments and mausoleums. As far as I’ve been able to discover, he designed no regular buildings after 1918.
Most of the references to Greene on the Internet concern the Lyric Theatre. An article in the May 5, 1917, issue of The Record, the local newspaper for Endicott, Johnson City, and Union, said that Greene had arrived in Endicott and would remain through the construction of the Lyric, which was expected to open in early August.
The Plaza Theatre in Columbus was another of the theaters based on the prototype Ultra-Vison house (in Charleston, South Carolina) designed by William B. McGehee of the Asheville firm Six Associates. None of the early Ultra-Vision projects departed significantly from his original design.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to mentions “…architect Bill Murphy, starting with the plans of Bill McGehee, architect of the Charleston project….” The Charleston project was the Ultra-Vision Theatre there, the first of its kind, designed by William B. McGehee of the firm Six Associates. I’ve been unable to find anything more about Bill Murphy, but it seems likely that he was either another member of the firm (though neither McGehee nor Murphy was among the founding members, one of whom was theater architect Erle G. Stillwell) or a Florida architect who supervised the project in Ocala.
bilpatrick: Street View has been updated to the correct location since I posted my comment of June 7, 2011. Unfortunately, I can’t edit the comment to remove that part, and I don’t want to remove the whole comment because other information in it is still pertinent.
Also unfortunate, the link I posted in the comment no longer fetches the same page it did two years ago, and I can’t find another copy of the photo it featured. The perils of the ever-changing Internet.
Cinema Treasures also has a page for the Ro-Na Theatre, in case you’d like to comment there. It has only one comment from anyone who has actually seen the theater, and could use more.
Google’s camera car has returned to Ironton since my earlier comment, and there are now views of 3rd Street, so our Street View can be reset closer to the theater.
Linkrot repair: The 1957 Boxoffice article about the remodeling of the Dover Theatre is now at this link (the text continues on this page, but the only photos are at the first link.)
A larger version of the “before” photo of the auditorium appears at bottom right of this page of Boxoffice of January 8, 1949.
Clickable link to the Boxoffice article KenLayton cited. The article says that the architect for the remodeling was Paul Carlsen. Though it calls him a “nationally known theatre architect” I can find nothing else about him on the Internet.
The page also needs a credit for the original architect, A. J. Russell. Ambrose J. Russell had an interesting life and career. Born to missionary parents in India, he studied architecture at the University of Glasgow and at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. On emigrating to America, he worked in the office of H. H. Richardson, then in Worcester, Massachusetts, Kansas City, and St. Louis. He practiced in partnership with his former schoolmate Bernard Maybeck for a while before settling in Tacoma in 1892. Alone or in various partnerships he designed a number of notable buildings in the northwest, including the Governor’s mansion in Olympia, Washington.
Here is a 1947 view of the Auditorium before its modernization.
This 1964 view shows the later, simplified design.
The Campus Drive-In rated this page in Boxoffice of February 3, 1949. There are four photos. The Campus was designed by San Diego architect George Lykos.
The Rubidoux Drive-In was the subject of a two-page article in Boxoffice of February 5, 1949. There are five photos and a floor plan of the concession-rest room building.
Linkrot repair: The 1949 Gullistan Carpet ad with the photo of the Stamm Theatre’s lobby is now at this link.
According to the section on Bly in a rider’s handbook published by Cycle Oregon, Bly’s movie house “…was built in 1948 as the Arch Theater but is now called the Star.” It also says that “…a couple part-time residents, Paul and Ruby Dorris, have converted the building to a combination meeting space/antique gallery . The stage and screen are still up, the floor still slopes like a theater, and the venue has hosted potlucks, old-time fiddlers and more.” The Handbook was published in 2012 (PDF here) and is the most recent information about the Star Theatre that I can find on the web. I can’t find a web site for the Dorrises' operation itself, so I assume they don’t have one.
Michael J. DeAngelis planned a complete remodeling of the Strand Theatre in Endicott in 1945. In the absence of any photos of the theater I can’t say the project was carried out as planned, but there is a drawing at lower left on this page of Boxoffice, December 8, 1945. Maybe somebody who saw the theater will recognize it.
Here is the page with Robert Boller’s drawing of the Colonial Theatre in Boxoffice of December 8, 1945. Despite the long delay in construction, the drawing looks very much the same as later photographs of the theater as actually built.
The original Broadway Theatre on this same site opened in 1916 as the Strand Theatre, and was renamed the Broadway Theatre in 1924. An announcement that the Strand Theatre was soon to open appeared in the October 7, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. Owner H.T. Drake already operated a smaller movie house called the Lyric Theatre.
This article posted on the Fayetteville Flyer web site on May 17, 2011, refers to the U Ark Theatre’s marquee as “…a 71-year old Dickson Street landmark….” If the theater was the same age, it would have opened around 1940.
johninman: Cinema Treasures page for the Santa Maria Theatre is at this link. We don’t yet have a listing for the Studio Theatre in Santa Maria.
I’m pretty sure the Palace Theatre became the Freeport Theatre. The Palace is first listed in the Film Daily Yearbook in 1930, without a seating capacity listed. From 1931 through 1936 it is listed with 500 seats. In 1937 the Palace vanishes, but the Freeport is listed with 500 seats. It sounds like a name change.
The Princess/Port connection is tenuous. The Princess is listed until 1929 with 325 seats. It is not listed in 1930, but reappears in 1931, now with 478 seats and an asterisk, which FDY used to denote houses that didn’t have sound yet. It is then listed in 1932, 1933, and 1934 as closed. It then vanishes. The Port Theatre first appears in the 1941 FDY, with no seating capacity listed. In 1942 the Port is listed with 400 seats. There’s a definite possibility that the Port was the Princess reopened and renamed, but it’s not certain.
I just stumbled across some of that information myself, and posted in on the Ora Theatre page.
The Ora Theatre was certainly not the first movie house in Freeport. The July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had this item:
An item in the December 4, 1941, issue of The Freeport Facts said that the new Long circuit theater soon to be built on Second Street would be Freeport’s fourth movie house. I believe that this was probably the Showboat Theatre, which was on Second Street and opened in the early 1940s. At that time, Long operated Freeport’s three other movie theaters as well.The article also mentioned the Ora Theatre, so this house was definitely in operation by late 1941. Long also had plans to build a new theater in Velasco, a nearby town that merged with Freeport in 1957. I don’t know if Long’s plans for the Velasco house were carried out, as a site for that theater had not yet been acquired, and after the United States entered WWII a few weeks after the article ran, building restrictions were soon imposed throughout the country. Many theater projects had to be put on hold until after the war.
marmer: I can’t remember which page the list of Shult’s theaters was on. I tried checking the index of the 1950-51 catalog, but Shult is not mentioned in it. I started going through the book, but my browser keeps crashing (I don’t think it likes the site’s format) so I haven’t gotten very far. I’ll keep looking, and if I find the list I’ll post here again with a link. It might take quite a while, though. The site is slow, and my computer is uncooperative.
A typesetter at Boxoffice must have been drinking heavily. The 1949 issue I cited previously butchered the name of the architect. “Howell Ewald” was actually Howard George Elwell, according to the 1950-51 edition of Jay Emanuel’s Theatre Catalog.
Maybe this link will work.
An article published in the Medina Daily Journal in 1922 said that the Hi-Art Theatre in Lockport was located on West Avenue near the Big Bridge (now called Locks Plaza.) Another page of the newspaper has an ad for a real estate company at 13 West Avenue with the notation “Over the Hi-Art Theatre.” This block of West Avenue was later renamed West Main Street, which is confirmed by an ad for a fishing tackle shop in a 1938 issue of the newspaper, which gives its location as “16 W. Main—Opposite Hi-Art.”
A building with a tattoo parlor in it is at the current address 19 West Main, and east of that is a double-width building with a tan brick front, which is probably at 15-17 West Main. That means that the Hi-Art, on the ground floor below 13 West Main, was probably at the modern address 11 West Main, the lot just east of the tan brick building. Here is a Google Street View.