Robert Kirk Headley’s Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore : An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004 says that Alfred Lowther Forrest was both the original architect of the Victoria Theatre in 1908 and the architect for its rebuilding in 1922.
The January 8, 1910, issue of The Moving Picture World featured this brief article about the Victoria Theatre:
“PEARCE & SCHECK’S VICTORIA THEATER, BALTIMORE, MD.
“From an artistic standpoint the Victoria Theater
is one of the handsomest theaters in the country.
There are two floors — main floor and balcony — filled
with comfortable chairs and eight beautifully decorated boxes. It is of unusually solid construction
and elaborately adorned both inside and out. On the top of the building sits an enormous plaster figure that easily attracts the glance of the passerby. The auditorium and stage are fitted up with many modern conveniences. The decorations of both exterior and interior are handsome, the scheme being terra-cotta and dark green. Much additional beauty is procured by the lavish use of hundreds of electric lights. The house was designed by A. Lowther Forrest, architect. It is very commodious, having a seating capacity of 1,500, and is equipped with an unusually large stage. Mass & Co. were the builders and Henry L. Arntz was the decorator.”
London-born architect Alfred Lowther Forrest (1861-1951) designed more than a dozen theaters, most of them in Baltimore.
The February 1, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Nickelette Theatre at 416 Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton had been destroyed by a fire on January 18. The Nickelet Theatre operating at 406 Lackawanna in March that year could have been the same business moved to a new location. The old location was demolished.
An announcement in the May 13, 1908, issue of The Scranton Truth advertised the opening that day of the 300-seat Hippodrome Theatre, newly built “…where the old Nickelette stood, before the building was destroyed by fire, right opposite Jonas Long’s Sons department store on Lackawanna avenue….”
By October, 1908, there was a Nickelet Theatre located on Penn Avenue, and there was also a World Nickelet at 210 Main Avenue, both mentioned in one issue of the Truth. In 1912, a Nickelet Theatre in Scranton was dismantled, but I don’t know which Nickelet it was. I’ve also found houses called the Nickelet (or Nickelette) Theatre in Allentown, Stroudsburg, and Ashley, and a Unity Nickelet in Archibald, Pennsylvania, operating during this period.
The Roosevelt was one of three theaters in LaVilla, the historically African-American neighborhood adjacent to downtown Jacksonville. The other theaters were the Strand and the Ritz. The neighborhood went into decline in the 1960s and what remained was largely eradicated by an urban renewal project undertaken in the 1990s.
The block of Ashley Street on which the Roosevelt Theatre was located has been absorbed into the campus of the LaVilla Middle School of the Arts, a Duvall County Public Schools magnet school.
The 700 and 800 blocks of W. Ashley Street are now part of the campus of the LaVilla Middle School of the Arts. The Strand was one of three theaters serving the African-American neighborhood of LaVilla, which is now mostly gone. The Strand Theatre was also demolished for the school project, while the Ritz was partly demolished and rebuilt behind its historic front.
This item from the May 23, 1914, issue of The American Contractor might be about the Pastime Theatre:
Berea, O.—Motion Picture Theater, Store & Apartment Bldg.: 2 & 1 sty. 114x33. Archts. Richardson & Yost, 354 Rockefeller bldg., Cleveland. Owner John Martin, Berea. Archts. and owner taking bids.“
The size of the building and the timing of its construction are right, but I haven’t found any other references to a John Martin owning a theater in Berea.
Scott Neff asked if this theater ever had a sign displaying its name when it was the Strand. This PDF file has a photo of the house with the name Strand prominently displayed on the marquee. The caption dates the photo to 1915, but it has to be later. The truck and partial auto visible date from the 1920s.
The name Strand also appears on a sign above the doors in the ca.1917 photo I uploaded to the photo section a few months ago, but it’s partly hidden by the flag, and is barely readable in any case. Both photos show some of the architectural detail that was part of Albert Cornelius’s original 1914 design, most of which was probably removed in Alexander Cantin’s 1940s remodeling, but perhaps even earlier.
The 400-seat Sequoia Theatre that was listed in the 1926 FDY was not this house, but the one downtown on K Street which later became the Sierra Theatre and finally the State Theatre.
In 1926 this stretch of Franklin Boulevard was probably still lined with bean fields. CinemaTour lists the Sequoia/Center Theatre on Franklin Boulevard as having opened in 1949. I see no reason to doubt it. The Sequoia is listed in the 1950 FDY with 900 seats.
This 1913 photo shows the Sequoia Theatre on the ground floor of the Sequoia Hotel building. This 1927 photo of K Street shows the Sequoia Theatre at right. The house had become the Sierra Theatre by the time this photo was made in August, 1932.
The earliest mention of Warwood I’ve found in the trade publications is this item from the February 1, 1913, issue of Motography, which is about a proposed theater two blocks up Warwood Avenue from the Gem’s location:
“Considerable inquiry is being made by citizens of Warwood relative to the time of erecting the building to be used as a nickelodeon, at the corner of Twenty-first and Main streets. C. D. Thompson, of Wheeling, who represents the company which proposes to establish the moving picture show stated, in answer to an inquiry, that work on the building will be commenced shortly after the first of the coming year, and it is expected to open the show for business next spring.”
The item was obviously written quite some time before being published, and I don’t think Mr. Thompson completed the project. However, the Gem must have opened in 1913, as a theater in Warwood is mentioned in the January 10, 1914, issue of Motography:
“L. H. Hoffman will soon begin to enlarge his motion picture theater on Main street, Warwood. This is the only theater in the town and many people are turned away every evening because the place is too small.”
The first mention of the Gem by name appears in the February 21, 1914, issue of the same publication:
“The improvements which were made to the Gem picture house at Warwood are about completed.”
There was a house called the Warwood Theatre in Wheeling, probably in the Warwood district, at least as early as 1918. This item is from the January 6, 1919, issue of The Film Daily:
“Wheeling, W. Va — The Warwood theater reopened Dec. 28th after a shut down of eight weeks due to the epidemic.”
This is the only mention of the house I’ve found. The only theater listed at Warwood in the 1926 FDY is the Patterson, with no seating capacity given, and from 1927 on there is only the 300-seat Lincoln Theatre. I don’t know if Warwood Theater was later name for the Gem or was a different theater.
This page at Historic Indianapolis features a 1941 Baist Real Estate Atlas map showing the wedge-shaped St. Clair Theatre building. There is also a photo of a 1946 traffic accident with the theater in the background.
Michael J. Duffecy originally operated the St. Clair Theatre. The November 22, 1923, issue of the Indianapolis News said that Duffecy would open the St. Clair Theatre on Saturday (November 24.)
On March 5, 1924, Variety said that Duffecy had sold the St. Clair and Oriental Theatres at Indianapolis to Joseph F. Smith. The St. Clair had been open for only a few months. Duffecy had operated the Oriental Theatre since 1918.
Some earlier references to Duffecy in the newspapers indicate that he was a saloon keeper in the early 20th century. Perhaps the prospect of prohibition drove him into the movie business.
This page at HistoryLink says the Crystal, Ballard, and Tivoli Theatres were all operating in Ballard by 1910, but only the Ballard Theatre operated through World War I.
The Junction Building, in which the Crystal Theatre was located, is still standing at 5200-5210 Ballard Avenue. So far I’ve found no references to the Idle Hour Theatre other than the one in MPW in 1916, no references to the Bat Theatre other than the one in Pheasant-Albright’s book, and no references to the Tivoli other than the one at HistoryLink.
Julie D. Pheasant-Albright’s book Early Ballard mentions seven theaters in Ballard: the Bagdad, of course, and the Majestic (on what is now the site of the Majestic Bay Theatre) plus five vanished houses; the Crystal, in the Junction Building; the Bat, on the corner of 63rd Street and 14th Avenue NW; the Empress, at the corner of Market and Tallman Avenue; the Woodland, on 65th Street and 6th Avenue NW; and the Ballard, near the corner of Ballard Avenue and Ione Street. Years of operation are not given.
The only mention of an earlier Ballard Theatre in Seattle that I’ve been able to find in the trade publications is a short review of a movie serial, published in the June 14, 1924, issue of Exhibitors Trade Review, that was signed “Ballard Theatre – Seattle, Washington.”
In 1916, Ballard had a house called the Idle Hour Theatre, mentioned in the September 30 issue of The Moving Picture World. The house had been closed for some time and was to be reopened by a J. T. Nelson.
Another early movie house in Ballard was mentioned in the January 25, 1919, issue of The Film Daily, which said that the Empress Theatre in Ballard had been sold to Martin McClanahan by A. C. Alden.
The Empress was still operating under that name when Jensen & von Herberg began construction of the Bagdad, according to this page at HistoryLink. The partners had bought the Empress and another Ballard house, the Majestic, by November, 1926. The page also says that the Bagdad opened in May, 1927.
As for the Bagdad, if it was listed as open in 1926 there might have been an earlier house of that name somewhere in Seattle as well. The July 8, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News also indicates that the Bagdad had opened recently:
“CLAUDE JENSEN, Portland member of the Jensen-Von Herberg firm that now operates a string of suburban houses in Seattle and Portland, left here last week after having spent several days in this city conferring with John G. Von Herberg and Leroy V. Johnson, the president and managing director of the circuit, respectively. During his stay, Mr. Jensen attended the opening of his new Bagdad Theatre in the Ballard district.”
I think we can assume that the first Ballard Theatre was in the Ballard district, and if it was operating by 1924 and still open as late as 1929 we can also assume that there were at least three theaters in Ballard before the Bagdad opened, and perhaps at least four, if Idle Hour was not an early aka for the Majestic, the Empress, or the first Ballard. The Majestic was operating at least as early as 1917, when it was mentioned in the February 3 issue of The Moving Picture World.
One of the few items about the Shorewood Theatre I’ve found is from the May 11, 1928, issue of The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, and it doesn’t mention George Zagel. Instead, it attributes the design of the Shorewood to H. D. Werwath:
The Werwath firm, of which H. D. Werwath is president, has become one of the leading designers and builders in the city of homes of distinction, apartments and theaters. The firm has concentrated its activities in Shorewood, which it has materially aided in becoming one of the finest residential suburbs in the country. The firm designed, and built the beautiful Shorewood Theater building on Oakland avenue, which is regarded architecturally as one of the most distinctive structures of its kind in this state. This building has become Shorewood’s community center, containing besides the theater, a large meeting hall, offices for physicians and dentists, bowling alleys, lunch room, and stores for various types of business. It is in this building that the Werwath firm has its offices and display rooms….“
Advertisements for Werwath appearing in various publications in the late 1920s also usually boast that the firm designed and built the Shorewood Theatre. There is even less information about Werwath on the Internet than there is about Zagel, and I’ve been unable to discover anything about his background.
Some sources say that Zagel frequently worked with builders and often didn’t put his own name on his designs. It is possible that Zagel did work for Werwath on this project, and if he did then it’s also possible that he also worked on the Brin Theatre building in Menasha, which the Wisconsin Historical Society attributes to Werwath. I’d like to see a photo of the Shorewood Theatre to see if it resembles the Brin. The Brin Theatre building does have a fairly close resemblance to some of the apartment and commercial buildings of the period that are known to have been designed by Zagel.
The January 12, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News reported that the Brin Theatre in Menasha had opened recently.“An article in the December 21, 1928, issue of The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle said that the Brin Theatre would open on Christmas Day. Leonard K. Brin had just taken over the Fischer-Paramount theater chain, which included eight existing theaters (including the Brin, which had not yet been named) and options Fischer-Paramount held on five sites for prospective theaters. Brin already owned two Milwaukee houses, the Majestic and the Garden.
The Wisconsin Historical Society says that the Brin Building was designed by H. D. Werwath. Period sources indicate that Werwath owned a design-build firm headquartered in the Shorewood Theatre building in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood.
The March 12, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that Williamsport architect F. Arthur Rianhard was designing a part 1-story and part 2-story theater, 39 x 120 feet, to be built at Muncy, Pennsylvania, for J. F. Fahnestock.
The State Theatre opened in March, 1919, as Keeney’s Theatre. The announcement in the March 28 issue of The Film Daily said that the new theater occupied the site of the Lycoming Opera House.
Keeney’s was taken over by new operators in late 1926, and renamed the Keystone Theatre prior to July 15, 1927.
The April 21, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News had an article about the Comerford chain’s plans to rebuild the Strand in Sunbury. The plans, which would have nearly doubled the seating capacity of the house to between 1,600 and 1,700 must have been scaled back.
Oddly, the article said that the project had been designed by a George Morris of Scranton. This is the first time I’ve come across a claim that anyone other than Leon H. Lempert Jr. had designed a theater for Comerford in the 1920s. I’ve been unable to find any other references to a Scranton architect named George Morris, but a 1916 newspaper item mentions a George Morris managing a Comerford house in Scranton. I suspect that Motion Picture News got the information scrambled somehow. The Strand project, like other Comerford projects of the period, was almost certainly designed by Leon Lempert.
The article noted that Comerford had taken over the People’s Theatre in 1919 and it had been renamed Strand at that time.
The conversion of the Capitol Theatre into the Community Arts Center was designed by the Altoona architectural firm Hayes Large Architects. There are five photos of the house on this page of the firm’s web site. The 28,000 square foot expansion is almost as large as the 32,000 square feet of existing building that was restored.
After many years as an all-night grind house, the Florence Theatre operated as a burlesque house called the New Paris Theatre in the 1970s, when it was frequently raided by the police, and then as a legitimate house called the Pioneer Square Annex Theatre during the 1980s.
The architect of the Grand Opera House was Edwin Walker Houghton. Although the theater was gutted by a fire in 1917, the building survived. The 1917 fire was actually the second serious conflagration at the house. It had been damaged by a 1906 fire, as well, but the 1917 fire ended its theatrical career. In 1923, what remained of the damaged interior was removed and a parking garage was built inside the shell of the building, and is still in operation as the Cherry Street Garage today. A bit of Houghton’s Romanesque Revival detailing remains intact on the facade.
The Grand Opera House was originally one of John Cort’s theaters, and for a while was the most popular house in Seattle, but it went into eclipse when Cort opened the Moore Theatre in 1907. Construction of the Grand Opera House began in 1898, but it took two years to complete because Cort was short of funds. The basement was completed early in the project, though, and for most of the time construction was going on above Cort operated a combination theater and beer hall called the Palm Gardens there. This was closed when the Opera House opened in 1900.
Here is th Goshen Theater’s web site (they use the -er spelling of the T word.) The history section says that the original Jefferson Theatre was destroyed by a fire in 1906, and the house was rebuilt in 1907.
The May 25, 1907, issue of the Chicago-based business journal The Economist said that the architectural firm Patton & Miller (Normand Smith Patton and Grant C. Miller) were designing the New Jefferson Theatre. The firm and its predecessors Patton & Fisher and Paton, Fisher & Miller, are best known today for having designed more than 100 Carnegie libraries nationwide, including the one in Goshen.
If anyone is a subscriber to newspapers.com, page four of the January 14, 1889, issue of the Salem, Ohio, Daily News has an article about the proposed Odd Fellows Hall in Kent, and I think it might mention the name of the architect, but the OCR text, which is all non-subscribers can read, is too garbled to make it out.
Robert Kirk Headley’s Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore : An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004 says that Alfred Lowther Forrest was both the original architect of the Victoria Theatre in 1908 and the architect for its rebuilding in 1922.
The January 8, 1910, issue of The Moving Picture World featured this brief article about the Victoria Theatre:
London-born architect Alfred Lowther Forrest (1861-1951) designed more than a dozen theaters, most of them in Baltimore.The February 1, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Nickelette Theatre at 416 Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton had been destroyed by a fire on January 18. The Nickelet Theatre operating at 406 Lackawanna in March that year could have been the same business moved to a new location. The old location was demolished.
An announcement in the May 13, 1908, issue of The Scranton Truth advertised the opening that day of the 300-seat Hippodrome Theatre, newly built “…where the old Nickelette stood, before the building was destroyed by fire, right opposite Jonas Long’s Sons department store on Lackawanna avenue….”
By October, 1908, there was a Nickelet Theatre located on Penn Avenue, and there was also a World Nickelet at 210 Main Avenue, both mentioned in one issue of the Truth. In 1912, a Nickelet Theatre in Scranton was dismantled, but I don’t know which Nickelet it was. I’ve also found houses called the Nickelet (or Nickelette) Theatre in Allentown, Stroudsburg, and Ashley, and a Unity Nickelet in Archibald, Pennsylvania, operating during this period.
The Roosevelt was one of three theaters in LaVilla, the historically African-American neighborhood adjacent to downtown Jacksonville. The other theaters were the Strand and the Ritz. The neighborhood went into decline in the 1960s and what remained was largely eradicated by an urban renewal project undertaken in the 1990s.
The block of Ashley Street on which the Roosevelt Theatre was located has been absorbed into the campus of the LaVilla Middle School of the Arts, a Duvall County Public Schools magnet school.
The 700 and 800 blocks of W. Ashley Street are now part of the campus of the LaVilla Middle School of the Arts. The Strand was one of three theaters serving the African-American neighborhood of LaVilla, which is now mostly gone. The Strand Theatre was also demolished for the school project, while the Ritz was partly demolished and rebuilt behind its historic front.
This item from the May 23, 1914, issue of The American Contractor might be about the Pastime Theatre:
The size of the building and the timing of its construction are right, but I haven’t found any other references to a John Martin owning a theater in Berea.Scott Neff asked if this theater ever had a sign displaying its name when it was the Strand. This PDF file has a photo of the house with the name Strand prominently displayed on the marquee. The caption dates the photo to 1915, but it has to be later. The truck and partial auto visible date from the 1920s.
The name Strand also appears on a sign above the doors in the ca.1917 photo I uploaded to the photo section a few months ago, but it’s partly hidden by the flag, and is barely readable in any case. Both photos show some of the architectural detail that was part of Albert Cornelius’s original 1914 design, most of which was probably removed in Alexander Cantin’s 1940s remodeling, but perhaps even earlier.
The 400-seat Sequoia Theatre that was listed in the 1926 FDY was not this house, but the one downtown on K Street which later became the Sierra Theatre and finally the State Theatre.
In 1926 this stretch of Franklin Boulevard was probably still lined with bean fields. CinemaTour lists the Sequoia/Center Theatre on Franklin Boulevard as having opened in 1949. I see no reason to doubt it. The Sequoia is listed in the 1950 FDY with 900 seats.
This 1913 photo shows the Sequoia Theatre on the ground floor of the Sequoia Hotel building. This 1927 photo of K Street shows the Sequoia Theatre at right. The house had become the Sierra Theatre by the time this photo was made in August, 1932.
The earliest mention of Warwood I’ve found in the trade publications is this item from the February 1, 1913, issue of Motography, which is about a proposed theater two blocks up Warwood Avenue from the Gem’s location:
The item was obviously written quite some time before being published, and I don’t think Mr. Thompson completed the project. However, the Gem must have opened in 1913, as a theater in Warwood is mentioned in the January 10, 1914, issue of Motography:The first mention of the Gem by name appears in the February 21, 1914, issue of the same publication:There was a house called the Warwood Theatre in Wheeling, probably in the Warwood district, at least as early as 1918. This item is from the January 6, 1919, issue of The Film Daily:This is the only mention of the house I’ve found. The only theater listed at Warwood in the 1926 FDY is the Patterson, with no seating capacity given, and from 1927 on there is only the 300-seat Lincoln Theatre. I don’t know if Warwood Theater was later name for the Gem or was a different theater.The November 10, 1921, issue of Manufacturers Record has this item: “W. Va., Wheeling- W. H. Morgan will erect $24,000 theater on 17th St., Warwood.”
This page at Historic Indianapolis features a 1941 Baist Real Estate Atlas map showing the wedge-shaped St. Clair Theatre building. There is also a photo of a 1946 traffic accident with the theater in the background.
Michael J. Duffecy originally operated the St. Clair Theatre. The November 22, 1923, issue of the Indianapolis News said that Duffecy would open the St. Clair Theatre on Saturday (November 24.)
On March 5, 1924, Variety said that Duffecy had sold the St. Clair and Oriental Theatres at Indianapolis to Joseph F. Smith. The St. Clair had been open for only a few months. Duffecy had operated the Oriental Theatre since 1918.
Some earlier references to Duffecy in the newspapers indicate that he was a saloon keeper in the early 20th century. Perhaps the prospect of prohibition drove him into the movie business.
This page at HistoryLink says the Crystal, Ballard, and Tivoli Theatres were all operating in Ballard by 1910, but only the Ballard Theatre operated through World War I.
The Junction Building, in which the Crystal Theatre was located, is still standing at 5200-5210 Ballard Avenue. So far I’ve found no references to the Idle Hour Theatre other than the one in MPW in 1916, no references to the Bat Theatre other than the one in Pheasant-Albright’s book, and no references to the Tivoli other than the one at HistoryLink.
Julie D. Pheasant-Albright’s book Early Ballard mentions seven theaters in Ballard: the Bagdad, of course, and the Majestic (on what is now the site of the Majestic Bay Theatre) plus five vanished houses; the Crystal, in the Junction Building; the Bat, on the corner of 63rd Street and 14th Avenue NW; the Empress, at the corner of Market and Tallman Avenue; the Woodland, on 65th Street and 6th Avenue NW; and the Ballard, near the corner of Ballard Avenue and Ione Street. Years of operation are not given.
The only mention of an earlier Ballard Theatre in Seattle that I’ve been able to find in the trade publications is a short review of a movie serial, published in the June 14, 1924, issue of Exhibitors Trade Review, that was signed “Ballard Theatre – Seattle, Washington.”
In 1916, Ballard had a house called the Idle Hour Theatre, mentioned in the September 30 issue of The Moving Picture World. The house had been closed for some time and was to be reopened by a J. T. Nelson.
Another early movie house in Ballard was mentioned in the January 25, 1919, issue of The Film Daily, which said that the Empress Theatre in Ballard had been sold to Martin McClanahan by A. C. Alden.
The Empress was still operating under that name when Jensen & von Herberg began construction of the Bagdad, according to this page at HistoryLink. The partners had bought the Empress and another Ballard house, the Majestic, by November, 1926. The page also says that the Bagdad opened in May, 1927.
As for the Bagdad, if it was listed as open in 1926 there might have been an earlier house of that name somewhere in Seattle as well. The July 8, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News also indicates that the Bagdad had opened recently:
I think we can assume that the first Ballard Theatre was in the Ballard district, and if it was operating by 1924 and still open as late as 1929 we can also assume that there were at least three theaters in Ballard before the Bagdad opened, and perhaps at least four, if Idle Hour was not an early aka for the Majestic, the Empress, or the first Ballard. The Majestic was operating at least as early as 1917, when it was mentioned in the February 3 issue of The Moving Picture World.One of the few items about the Shorewood Theatre I’ve found is from the May 11, 1928, issue of The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, and it doesn’t mention George Zagel. Instead, it attributes the design of the Shorewood to H. D. Werwath:
Advertisements for Werwath appearing in various publications in the late 1920s also usually boast that the firm designed and built the Shorewood Theatre. There is even less information about Werwath on the Internet than there is about Zagel, and I’ve been unable to discover anything about his background.Some sources say that Zagel frequently worked with builders and often didn’t put his own name on his designs. It is possible that Zagel did work for Werwath on this project, and if he did then it’s also possible that he also worked on the Brin Theatre building in Menasha, which the Wisconsin Historical Society attributes to Werwath. I’d like to see a photo of the Shorewood Theatre to see if it resembles the Brin. The Brin Theatre building does have a fairly close resemblance to some of the apartment and commercial buildings of the period that are known to have been designed by Zagel.
The January 12, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News reported that the Brin Theatre in Menasha had opened recently.“An article in the December 21, 1928, issue of The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle said that the Brin Theatre would open on Christmas Day. Leonard K. Brin had just taken over the Fischer-Paramount theater chain, which included eight existing theaters (including the Brin, which had not yet been named) and options Fischer-Paramount held on five sites for prospective theaters. Brin already owned two Milwaukee houses, the Majestic and the Garden.
The Wisconsin Historical Society says that the Brin Building was designed by H. D. Werwath. Period sources indicate that Werwath owned a design-build firm headquartered in the Shorewood Theatre building in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood.
The March 12, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that Williamsport architect F. Arthur Rianhard was designing a part 1-story and part 2-story theater, 39 x 120 feet, to be built at Muncy, Pennsylvania, for J. F. Fahnestock.
The State Theatre opened in March, 1919, as Keeney’s Theatre. The announcement in the March 28 issue of The Film Daily said that the new theater occupied the site of the Lycoming Opera House.
Keeney’s was taken over by new operators in late 1926, and renamed the Keystone Theatre prior to July 15, 1927.
The April 21, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News had an article about the Comerford chain’s plans to rebuild the Strand in Sunbury. The plans, which would have nearly doubled the seating capacity of the house to between 1,600 and 1,700 must have been scaled back.
Oddly, the article said that the project had been designed by a George Morris of Scranton. This is the first time I’ve come across a claim that anyone other than Leon H. Lempert Jr. had designed a theater for Comerford in the 1920s. I’ve been unable to find any other references to a Scranton architect named George Morris, but a 1916 newspaper item mentions a George Morris managing a Comerford house in Scranton. I suspect that Motion Picture News got the information scrambled somehow. The Strand project, like other Comerford projects of the period, was almost certainly designed by Leon Lempert.
The article noted that Comerford had taken over the People’s Theatre in 1919 and it had been renamed Strand at that time.
The conversion of the Capitol Theatre into the Community Arts Center was designed by the Altoona architectural firm Hayes Large Architects. There are five photos of the house on this page of the firm’s web site. The 28,000 square foot expansion is almost as large as the 32,000 square feet of existing building that was restored.
After many years as an all-night grind house, the Florence Theatre operated as a burlesque house called the New Paris Theatre in the 1970s, when it was frequently raided by the police, and then as a legitimate house called the Pioneer Square Annex Theatre during the 1980s.
PSTOS has a page for the Florence Theatre with a few photos.
The architect of the Grand Opera House was Edwin Walker Houghton. Although the theater was gutted by a fire in 1917, the building survived. The 1917 fire was actually the second serious conflagration at the house. It had been damaged by a 1906 fire, as well, but the 1917 fire ended its theatrical career. In 1923, what remained of the damaged interior was removed and a parking garage was built inside the shell of the building, and is still in operation as the Cherry Street Garage today. A bit of Houghton’s Romanesque Revival detailing remains intact on the facade.
The Grand Opera House was originally one of John Cort’s theaters, and for a while was the most popular house in Seattle, but it went into eclipse when Cort opened the Moore Theatre in 1907. Construction of the Grand Opera House began in 1898, but it took two years to complete because Cort was short of funds. The basement was completed early in the project, though, and for most of the time construction was going on above Cort operated a combination theater and beer hall called the Palm Gardens there. This was closed when the Opera House opened in 1900.
Here is th Goshen Theater’s web site (they use the -er spelling of the T word.) The history section says that the original Jefferson Theatre was destroyed by a fire in 1906, and the house was rebuilt in 1907.
The May 25, 1907, issue of the Chicago-based business journal The Economist said that the architectural firm Patton & Miller (Normand Smith Patton and Grant C. Miller) were designing the New Jefferson Theatre. The firm and its predecessors Patton & Fisher and Paton, Fisher & Miller, are best known today for having designed more than 100 Carnegie libraries nationwide, including the one in Goshen.
If anyone is a subscriber to newspapers.com, page four of the January 14, 1889, issue of the Salem, Ohio, Daily News has an article about the proposed Odd Fellows Hall in Kent, and I think it might mention the name of the architect, but the OCR text, which is all non-subscribers can read, is too garbled to make it out.