The March 13, 1942, issue of The Film Daily had an item about the Tower Theatre:
“$80,000 Tower Theater Ends Ft. Worth Building
“Ft. Worth — The last new theater locally, probably for the duration, has opened. It is the Tower Theater in Riverside addition, completed at a cost of $80,000, a joint enterprise of Interstate Circuit, Inc., and James F. Hightower and son, Dennis.
“The modernistic buff structure with 800 seats represents the latest in design. Representative of Texas and the Southwest are the decorative cactus murals in the lobby.”
If it was listed as the Pix in 1950 then it had gone back to an earlier name. The January 30, 1942, issue of The Film Daily said: “Chicago’s Victory Theater, formerly the Pix, has reopened after extensive modernization.”
The streamline modern front on the Jo Theatre dated from 1947. The August 8 issue of The Film Daily noted the project in their “About the Trade” column:
“The contract for the in-
stallation of a modern theater front for the Jo Theater, St. Joseph, Mo., recently was awarded to the Glaze Construction Co., St. Joseph, by the owners… . William R. Scott manages the theater… .”
The January 24, 1933, issue of The Film Daily ran this report of a fire at the Rialto Theatre:
“ST. JOSEPH HOUSE BURNED
“St. Joseph, Mo. — Nate Block’s Orpheum, operated by O. G. Amusement, was destroyed by fire yesterday with loss estimated at $50,000. Police are investigating. The house was picketed several months ago, due to trouble with operators.”
The March 30 issue reported that the theater would be rebuilt:
“REBUILDING ST. JOSEPH HOUSE
“St. Joseph, Mo. — The Orpheum, destroyed by fire recently, will be rebuilt into a 1,200-seat house. Nate Block is the owner.”
According to St. Joseph Memory Lane, the rebuilt Orpheum reopened on October 14, 1933. The Orpheum was sold in 1958 to Mechanics Bank, which had the building demolished to make way for a parking lot.
St. Joseph Memory Lane says that the Uptown Theatre was still called the Rivoli Theatre in 1934. The Uptown showed its last movie on Tuesday, March 1, 1955.
The Rivoli Theatre was listed in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook.
St. Joseph Memory Lane gives the address of the Jo Theatre as 124 N. 3rd Street. It also says that the house had been known as the Charwood Theatre and the Louis Theatre. It reopened as the Jo Theatre on June 26, 1942, and its last day of operation was Saturday, February 12, 1955.
I’ve found a single mention of the Charwood Theatre in the trade publications. The Film Daily of May 25, 1933, said that the Charwood Theatre had been transferred from Mrs. Charles T. Phelps to McKinney & McManus. Memory Lane says it was called the Louis Theatre from 1939-1941.
Andrew, the Fox Pasadena Theatre opened around 1910 as Clune’s Pasadena Theatre. It was called simply the Pasadena Theatre during the 1920s. William Fox didn’t take over the West Coast Theatres circuit until the very late 1920s. That was probably the house in which the organ was installed.
The March 17, 1923, issue of Exhibitors Trade Review had this item about the Strand Theatre:
“BNDICOTT, N. Y The new Strand Theatre has been opened in Endicott, N. Y. The Strand is a 1000 seat house, designed and erected by A. E. Badgley of Binghamton. A Link orchestral organ has been installed. The interior decorations were done by Continental studios of Chicago.”
Andrew, this house opened in 1911 as the Orpheum Theatre and kept that name until the new Orpheum opened at 842 Broadway in February, 1926. This house was then called the Broadway Palace Theatre for a few years before becoming simply the Palace Theatre. I suppose it’s possible that an organ was installed in early 1926. As the Orpheum it had been a two-a-day vaudeville house, and would not have needed an organ. I don’t think it showed movies with any regularity until after becoming the Broadway Palace.
Unless the project fell through, or something happened to the original building, this theater must have opened by 1914. Here is an item from the August 9, 1913, issue of Motography:
“Contracts are to be given out for a one-story brick moving-picture theater to be erected at 182 and 184 Belmont avenue, Newark, for Joseph Stern. Hyman Rosensohn is the architect of the project, which will cover a plot 42x100 feet. The roofing will be reinforced concrete and steel. There will be a seating capacity of about 650. About $12,000 will be expended on the building.”
It’s possible that the house opened under another name and only became the National Theatre in the 1920s.
The August 9, 1913, issue of Motography had this item about the opening of a house called the Colonial Theatre, but it gives a different location for it:
“Crowds flocked to the handsome new Colonial theater at Atlantic avenue, between New York and Kentucky avenues, Atlantic City, the afternoon of July 2, to attend the opening performance. Words of praise were heard on all sides for the up-to-date manner in which the new house is to be conducted and for its general appearance. Six capital pictures are shown each afternoon and evening. Chris S. Hand is the able general manager of the house and he has a competent staff of assistants.”
I don’t know if the magazine just got the location wrong, or if there actually was another, short-lived Colonial Theatre a few blocks from this one.
The contract for the foundations of this theater had been let, but the architects were taking revised bids on the general contract, according to an item in the September 9, 1922, issue of The American Contractor.
Was there a second theater on this block? The August 5, 1926, issue of The Film Daily had an item about new theater projects in St. Joseph which included this paragraph:
“Construction also has started on another house on St. Joseph Ave. between Jefferson and Fillmore Sts. Mrs. Glenn Moskau is the owner. This structure will cost about $30,000”
A later item said that Simplex projectors had been installed in Mrs. Moskau’s new theater, but didn’t give its name or any other details.
The August 23, 1926, issue of The Scranton Republican said that Michael Comerford’s new Capitol Theatre in Hazleton was scheduled to open on Labor Day. That would have been Monday, September 6. Jack Theakston is right about the likely architect. Every house built by Comerford in the 1920s that I’ve found attributed to an architect in newspaper or trade journal items has been attributed to Leon H. Lempert, Jr., or the firm of Leon H. Lempert & Son.
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 March 13, 1942, issue of The Film Daily had an item about the Tower Theatre:
If it was listed as the Pix in 1950 then it had gone back to an earlier name. The January 30, 1942, issue of The Film Daily said: “Chicago’s Victory Theater, formerly the Pix, has reopened after extensive modernization.”
The streamline modern front on the Jo Theatre dated from 1947. The August 8 issue of The Film Daily noted the project in their “About the Trade” column:
The January 24, 1933, issue of The Film Daily ran this report of a fire at the Rialto Theatre:
The March 30 issue reported that the theater would be rebuilt:According to St. Joseph Memory Lane, the rebuilt Orpheum reopened on October 14, 1933. The Orpheum was sold in 1958 to Mechanics Bank, which had the building demolished to make way for a parking lot.St. Joseph Memory Lane says that the Uptown Theatre was still called the Rivoli Theatre in 1934. The Uptown showed its last movie on Tuesday, March 1, 1955.
The Rivoli Theatre was listed in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook.
St. Joseph Memory Lane gives the address of the Jo Theatre as 124 N. 3rd Street. It also says that the house had been known as the Charwood Theatre and the Louis Theatre. It reopened as the Jo Theatre on June 26, 1942, and its last day of operation was Saturday, February 12, 1955.
I’ve found a single mention of the Charwood Theatre in the trade publications. The Film Daily of May 25, 1933, said that the Charwood Theatre had been transferred from Mrs. Charles T. Phelps to McKinney & McManus. Memory Lane says it was called the Louis Theatre from 1939-1941.
Andrew, the Fox Pasadena Theatre opened around 1910 as Clune’s Pasadena Theatre. It was called simply the Pasadena Theatre during the 1920s. William Fox didn’t take over the West Coast Theatres circuit until the very late 1920s. That was probably the house in which the organ was installed.
The March 17, 1923, issue of Exhibitors Trade Review had this item about the Strand Theatre:
Andrew, this house opened in 1911 as the Orpheum Theatre and kept that name until the new Orpheum opened at 842 Broadway in February, 1926. This house was then called the Broadway Palace Theatre for a few years before becoming simply the Palace Theatre. I suppose it’s possible that an organ was installed in early 1926. As the Orpheum it had been a two-a-day vaudeville house, and would not have needed an organ. I don’t think it showed movies with any regularity until after becoming the Broadway Palace.
Unless the project fell through, or something happened to the original building, this theater must have opened by 1914. Here is an item from the August 9, 1913, issue of Motography:
It’s possible that the house opened under another name and only became the National Theatre in the 1920s.The August 9, 1913, issue of Motography had this item about the opening of a house called the Colonial Theatre, but it gives a different location for it:
I don’t know if the magazine just got the location wrong, or if there actually was another, short-lived Colonial Theatre a few blocks from this one.The contract for the foundations of this theater had been let, but the architects were taking revised bids on the general contract, according to an item in the September 9, 1922, issue of The American Contractor.
Was there a second theater on this block? The August 5, 1926, issue of The Film Daily had an item about new theater projects in St. Joseph which included this paragraph:
A later item said that Simplex projectors had been installed in Mrs. Moskau’s new theater, but didn’t give its name or any other details.The August 23, 1926, issue of The Scranton Republican said that Michael Comerford’s new Capitol Theatre in Hazleton was scheduled to open on Labor Day. That would have been Monday, September 6. Jack Theakston is right about the likely architect. Every house built by Comerford in the 1920s that I’ve found attributed to an architect in newspaper or trade journal items has been attributed to Leon H. Lempert, Jr., or the firm of Leon H. Lempert & Son.
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.