This item from the June 4, 1921, issue of The American Contractor is probably about the Palace Theatre:
“Aurora, Ind.—Theater (moving picture & playhouse): 1 sty. & bas. 53x106. Aurora. Archts. Rendigs, Panzer & Martin, 507 Palace Theater bldg., Cincinnati, O. Owner Palace Theater Co. of Aurora. Mr. Swarthout. in charge. Aurora. Brk. walls & terra cotta trim., re. cone, slabs. Archt. will take bids about June 10. Drawing plans.”
George E. Rendigs, Robert R. Panzer, and James A. Martin formed their partnership in 1920. Prior to that, Rendigs had been the building engineer for the City of Cincinnati, while Panzer and Martin were his two principal assistants.
I’ve found this theater listed as the Dolan Opera House as late as 1900. In 1902, it appears in trade publications as the Dowling Opera House, and it is advertised as Dowling’s Theatre in the 1905-1906 Cahn guide.
During the early days of drive-ins, combination indoor-outdoor theaters were fairly common in regions where winters are harsh. I was a bit surprised to hear that there had been such a theater in palmy Sacramento until I remembered the winter tule fogs that often plague the Central Valley. There were probably many nights when the outdoor screen would have been hard to see even from the front rows, and even assuming that the image from the projector could have reached the screen without fading and blurring.
The Southgate Indoor-Outdoor Theatre is one of several drive-ins featured on this page at Historic Aerials. The United Artists operation opened in 1964 and closed in 1979, according to the author of the caption of the aerial view taken during the early stage of construction. There is now a discount department store on the site.
The March 27, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World ran this item about the Colonial Theatre:
“Rutland, Vt. — The Colonial Theater, a handsome and substantial building on West street, opened on March 10, less than three months after the ground was broken for the foundation. Messrs. Lincoln and Fuller are the owners, and they started in with a fine programme — one of the Biograph ‘Jones’s’ series and some Pathe subjects. The show will consist of pictures and songs exclusively, and the attendance so far has been most encouraging.”
Apparently there were two locations of the Colonial Theatre, but neither of them was at 131 West Street, nor in the building described in our current introduction. The Colonial in the building next door to the Grand Theatre was operating around 1915, so must have been the second location.
An article about the Paramount Theatre published in the Rutland Historical Society Quarterly in 2004 (PDF here) has this line: “Other motion picture theatres in the area, who also reached their demise, were the Shrine which became the Strand at 73-77 Wales Street, the Colonial at 107-109 West Street and the Grand at 112 West Street.”
Another source mentions a cigar store opened in 1913 in the Colonial Theatre Building at the corner of West and Cottage Streets. That means that the original Colonial Theatre was on the site of what is now the parking lot of the church across the street from the Grand Theatre.
Why there was a Colonial Theatre in the building next door to the Grand by 1915 I don’t know. The original theater might have been destroyed by a fire, or converted to some other use, or perhaps continued to operate after 1915 under a different name, but I’ve found nothing on the Internet to confirm any of these surmises. In any case, the Colonial Theatre opened at 107-109 West Street on March 10, 1909, and the building has been demolished.
I’ve finally found the Little Grand Theatre mentioned by another source. It was on a list of nickelodeons that was published in the July 18, 1908, issue of The Billboard (PDF here.) It is listed at 857 “Broadway.” As there is no street called Broadway in Augusta, they must have meant Broad Street. Little Grand Theatre must be an early aka of the Star. No house called the Star appears on the 1908 list.
David: Cinema Treasures supports Markdown, a simplified substitute for HTML code. If you want to use inline links all you need are square brackets and parentheses. It is described in the LINKS section of this page.
I have a suspicion (but no firm evidence) that either the State or the Trail was at 148 W. Mountain, in the building now occupied by the Trail Head Tavern (Street View), which still sports a theater-style marquee.
The first America Theatre was supposed to have been at 150 W. Mountain. It’s possible that the address of that building the theater was in was shifted to 148 at some point, or it might be that the America (which might have become the State), was in the building next door to the tavern, now housing the Steak-Out Saloon (with secondary sign saying Scrivner’s Grocery & Market.)
Even if the State was in the building at 150, the Trail might still have been in the building at 148, of course. The building isn’t very wide, but it’s deep enough that it could have accommodated 400 seats, though probably with very little leg room.
But until somebody finds an old city directory or telephone book or other source with the addresses, or somebody who remembers seeing the theaters themselves turns up, we can’t be sure which theaters were where.
This item from the February 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World could be about this theater:
“New Isis at Victor, Col.
“W. C. Lemaster, of Victor, Col., has sold his Isis theater and will soon open a house to be known as the New Isis. This will give Victor four motion picture theaters.”
The operator’s correct name was William Clifford LeMaster, according to this weblog post written by one of his modern relations.
LeMaster was mentioned as manager of the Opera House at Victor in the July 5, 1919, issue of Motion Picture News. The Opera House had been converted into a movie theater by the Hall brothers the same year the New Isis opened, according to an item in the February 5 issue of The Moving Picture World. The fourth theater in Victor in 1916 was the Fox, formerly owned by the Hall brothers but sold to Jesse E. Jones in 1916.
The news that the Empress was originally the Orpheum is interesting, Ken. The photo of the auditorium on the page you linked to also appears in a book called Cinema Treasures: A New Look at Classic Movie Theaters, by some guys named Ross Melnick and Andreas Fuchs (whoever the hell they are.)
The Orpheum is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide with John Cort as the New York representative of the house.
Near the bottom of this web page from the Fort Collins Historical Society is a paragraph about the Orpheum. The theater opened on November 21, 1907.
The Orpheum appears on a list of small town movie theaters that was published in the September 10, 1910, issue of The Billboard.
I haven’t yet found any sources specifically naming the Trail Theatre, but the July 11, 1947, issue of The Film Daily has this item that probably refers to it:
“Fort Collins, Colo. — W. F. Aydelott has started construction of a 400-seat subsequent-run theater.”
Fort Collins also had the Opera House, built in 1881 and converted into a dance hall in 1917. I don’t know if it ever operated as a movie house, though one source said that movies of the San Francisco earthquake and fire were shown there in 1906. Today the building houses shops and offices as the Opera Galleria, at 123 N. College Avenue.
I wonder if the State Theatre that appeared in the 1933 listings was the original America/American Theatre? According to the page that said the Empress was in a one story building there was a third movie house opened at 150 W. Mountain Avenue around 1925. If the writer was right about that, at least, that must have been the America. The State is still listed in the 1943 FDY, with 375 seats.
In any case, the Empress was renamed the America in 1927, and is still listed with 891 seats in 1943. The Lyric was listed as closed. All three houses were controlled by Fox Intermountain Theaters.
Scott’s link, plus our page for theMaya Theatre. They do look very nearly identical, and they both bear some resemblance to some other theaters designed in the 1940s by S. Charles Lee. There are two cards in the L.A. library’s California Index that cite items about Lee-designed projects in Dinuba and Perris.
The item about the project in Perris is from Southwest Builder & Contractor of September 21, 1945, and says that Lee was drawing plans for a $75,000 theater at Perris for Tom Sharpe. The Dinuba theater was a pre-war project noted in the October 1, 1940, issue of the same publication. It was a 600-seat house that Lee was designing for Leo L. Smith, and was to cost $35,000.
It looks as though Lee just recycled his 1940 Dinuba design for this 1945 house in Perris. I also see a resemblance to Lee’s somewhat larger and fancier 1940 Temple Theatre in Temple City, California. Like these two, the Temple had an auditorium with a gabled roof. I’d dearly love to see interiors of the Perris and the Maya, as the Temple had a king post truss roof which I thought was unique, but perhaps these two houses had them as well.
The City of Perris bought the Perris Theatre a few years ago and, according to this article from the April 9, 2011, issue of the Press-Enterprise, had already spent $75,000 on exterior renovations.
The article also reveals that this house was never called the Chief Theatre. That name had been placed on the building by the producers of a 1993 movie called Calendar Girl, which was partly shot in Perris.
The MetroLux 12 opened on November 10, 1995. MetroLux Theatres moved its operations to its new 14-screen multiplex on October 28, 2005, so the last day of operation for this house was probably the 27th. After sitting vacant for several years, the property was converted into the new home of Foundations Church in 2013.
There was once a source on the Internet attributing the design of a MetroLux Theatre in Loveland to the Baltimore architectural firm Development Design Group, but it has been removed (I believe it was on DDG’s own web site, but unfortunately I can’t find it now even on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.) I originally thought that the project referred to was the MetroLux 14, but I have since found that that house was designed by another firm, so it must have been the MetroLux 12 that was designed by DDG.
The expanded Rialto Theatre Center was opened in April, 2012. This article from the Reporter-Herald, published shortly before the opening, features an interactive graphic with plans of the first two floors of the new building adjacent to the historic theater.
This house was called the Orchards Twin rather than Orchard Twin, as Orchards is the name of the shopping center in which it was located. The shopping center was built in 1976, so the theater was probably opened around that time. It was a Commonwealth Theatres house.
I found the Kiva Theatre at Durango mentioned in the October 13, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News. The item, about the owner of the house recovering from an operation, referred to the Kiva as having been “recently built.”
As the Romanesque Revival business block in which the theater’s entrance was located appears to date from the 19th century, the Kiva must have been either a conversion from some other use or in an addition to the building. I suspect that it was the latter.
The 1960 postcard view shows the theater’s entrance on Main Avenue, but the second photo to which kencmcintyre linked on April 14, 2009, shows that the entrance had been moved around to 8th Street by 1982. I think that the auditorium must have been located in the building to the west, extending down to Narrow Gauge Avenue. This building would have been large enough to hold 550 seats, while the ground floor of the old business block would probably not have been.
The Lyric Theatre was in a building a bit east of the Kissock Block. Here is a view of the entrance dated ca. 1915. The entrance of the Lyric is recognizable in this small photo, dated ca. 1923, which shows the three buildings between Remington Street and Montezuma Fuller Alley. The Lyric was in the center building. All three have been demolished. The side wall of the Kissock Block is visible at far right.
This photo shows a fire at the Lyric Theatre, but is undated. This weblog post has a 1925 Sanborn Map showing the Lyric’s location, and says that the house opened in 1913 and was demolished in 1962.
The Oshkosh Theatre is on a list of the works of the Milwaukee architectural firm of Dick & Bauer that was published in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World.
A list of theaters designed by the Milwaukee architectural firm of Dick & Bauer was published in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World, and it lists the Capitol Theatre at Racine among their works. It’s possible that J. Mandor Matson was the supervising architect for the project, but he was apparently just beginning his career around 1920 when the Capitol was built (the earliest project I’ve seen attributed to him in the trade publications dates from 1922.)
The Capitol Theatre was in operation by 1930, when its design was attributed to architect Walter Earl Bort, in association with architect John H. Ladehoff, in the October 25 issue of Exhibitors Herald-World.
The Bluebird Theatre in Petersburg was designed by architect Fred A. Bishop, according to a partial list of his works that appeared in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World.
The Tivoli Theatre was designed by architect Leonard H. Bailey. It was (as the Princess Theatre) on a list of theaters he had designed that was published in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World.
I think that the Temple Theatre in Ardmore might be the house that appears as the Shrine Theatre in a list of theaters designed by architect Leonard H. Bailey that appeared in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World. There is a Masonic lodge on the fifth floor of the building.
This item from the June 4, 1921, issue of The American Contractor is probably about the Palace Theatre:
George E. Rendigs, Robert R. Panzer, and James A. Martin formed their partnership in 1920. Prior to that, Rendigs had been the building engineer for the City of Cincinnati, while Panzer and Martin were his two principal assistants.Here is a modern photo of the Palace Theatre in Aurora.
I’ve found this theater listed as the Dolan Opera House as late as 1900. In 1902, it appears in trade publications as the Dowling Opera House, and it is advertised as Dowling’s Theatre in the 1905-1906 Cahn guide.
During the early days of drive-ins, combination indoor-outdoor theaters were fairly common in regions where winters are harsh. I was a bit surprised to hear that there had been such a theater in palmy Sacramento until I remembered the winter tule fogs that often plague the Central Valley. There were probably many nights when the outdoor screen would have been hard to see even from the front rows, and even assuming that the image from the projector could have reached the screen without fading and blurring.
The Southgate Indoor-Outdoor Theatre is one of several drive-ins featured on this page at Historic Aerials. The United Artists operation opened in 1964 and closed in 1979, according to the author of the caption of the aerial view taken during the early stage of construction. There is now a discount department store on the site.
The March 27, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World ran this item about the Colonial Theatre:
Apparently there were two locations of the Colonial Theatre, but neither of them was at 131 West Street, nor in the building described in our current introduction. The Colonial in the building next door to the Grand Theatre was operating around 1915, so must have been the second location.An article about the Paramount Theatre published in the Rutland Historical Society Quarterly in 2004 (PDF here) has this line: “Other motion picture theatres in the area, who also reached their demise, were the Shrine which became the Strand at 73-77 Wales Street, the Colonial at 107-109 West Street and the Grand at 112 West Street.”
Another source mentions a cigar store opened in 1913 in the Colonial Theatre Building at the corner of West and Cottage Streets. That means that the original Colonial Theatre was on the site of what is now the parking lot of the church across the street from the Grand Theatre.
Why there was a Colonial Theatre in the building next door to the Grand by 1915 I don’t know. The original theater might have been destroyed by a fire, or converted to some other use, or perhaps continued to operate after 1915 under a different name, but I’ve found nothing on the Internet to confirm any of these surmises. In any case, the Colonial Theatre opened at 107-109 West Street on March 10, 1909, and the building has been demolished.
I’ve finally found the Little Grand Theatre mentioned by another source. It was on a list of nickelodeons that was published in the July 18, 1908, issue of The Billboard (PDF here.) It is listed at 857 “Broadway.” As there is no street called Broadway in Augusta, they must have meant Broad Street. Little Grand Theatre must be an early aka of the Star. No house called the Star appears on the 1908 list.
David: Cinema Treasures supports Markdown, a simplified substitute for HTML code. If you want to use inline links all you need are square brackets and parentheses. It is described in the LINKS section of this page.
I have a suspicion (but no firm evidence) that either the State or the Trail was at 148 W. Mountain, in the building now occupied by the Trail Head Tavern (Street View), which still sports a theater-style marquee.
The first America Theatre was supposed to have been at 150 W. Mountain. It’s possible that the address of that building the theater was in was shifted to 148 at some point, or it might be that the America (which might have become the State), was in the building next door to the tavern, now housing the Steak-Out Saloon (with secondary sign saying Scrivner’s Grocery & Market.)
Even if the State was in the building at 150, the Trail might still have been in the building at 148, of course. The building isn’t very wide, but it’s deep enough that it could have accommodated 400 seats, though probably with very little leg room.
But until somebody finds an old city directory or telephone book or other source with the addresses, or somebody who remembers seeing the theaters themselves turns up, we can’t be sure which theaters were where.
DavidAE’s links to photos of the Orpheum:
Roof
1914
1927
1935
“F.W. Bailey has opened a motion picture show in the opera house at DeWitt,” said the Iowa notes section of Moving Picture World for August 14, 1915.
This item from the February 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World could be about this theater:
The operator’s correct name was William Clifford LeMaster, according to this weblog post written by one of his modern relations.LeMaster was mentioned as manager of the Opera House at Victor in the July 5, 1919, issue of Motion Picture News. The Opera House had been converted into a movie theater by the Hall brothers the same year the New Isis opened, according to an item in the February 5 issue of The Moving Picture World. The fourth theater in Victor in 1916 was the Fox, formerly owned by the Hall brothers but sold to Jesse E. Jones in 1916.
The news that the Empress was originally the Orpheum is interesting, Ken. The photo of the auditorium on the page you linked to also appears in a book called Cinema Treasures: A New Look at Classic Movie Theaters, by some guys named Ross Melnick and Andreas Fuchs (whoever the hell they are.)
The Orpheum is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide with John Cort as the New York representative of the house.
Near the bottom of this web page from the Fort Collins Historical Society is a paragraph about the Orpheum. The theater opened on November 21, 1907.
The Orpheum appears on a list of small town movie theaters that was published in the September 10, 1910, issue of The Billboard.
I haven’t yet found any sources specifically naming the Trail Theatre, but the July 11, 1947, issue of The Film Daily has this item that probably refers to it:
Fort Collins also had the Opera House, built in 1881 and converted into a dance hall in 1917. I don’t know if it ever operated as a movie house, though one source said that movies of the San Francisco earthquake and fire were shown there in 1906. Today the building houses shops and offices as the Opera Galleria, at 123 N. College Avenue.Yes, there is definitely a second floor there.
I wonder if the State Theatre that appeared in the 1933 listings was the original America/American Theatre? According to the page that said the Empress was in a one story building there was a third movie house opened at 150 W. Mountain Avenue around 1925. If the writer was right about that, at least, that must have been the America. The State is still listed in the 1943 FDY, with 375 seats.
In any case, the Empress was renamed the America in 1927, and is still listed with 891 seats in 1943. The Lyric was listed as closed. All three houses were controlled by Fox Intermountain Theaters.
Scott’s link, plus our page for theMaya Theatre. They do look very nearly identical, and they both bear some resemblance to some other theaters designed in the 1940s by S. Charles Lee. There are two cards in the L.A. library’s California Index that cite items about Lee-designed projects in Dinuba and Perris.
The item about the project in Perris is from Southwest Builder & Contractor of September 21, 1945, and says that Lee was drawing plans for a $75,000 theater at Perris for Tom Sharpe. The Dinuba theater was a pre-war project noted in the October 1, 1940, issue of the same publication. It was a 600-seat house that Lee was designing for Leo L. Smith, and was to cost $35,000.
It looks as though Lee just recycled his 1940 Dinuba design for this 1945 house in Perris. I also see a resemblance to Lee’s somewhat larger and fancier 1940 Temple Theatre in Temple City, California. Like these two, the Temple had an auditorium with a gabled roof. I’d dearly love to see interiors of the Perris and the Maya, as the Temple had a king post truss roof which I thought was unique, but perhaps these two houses had them as well.
The City of Perris bought the Perris Theatre a few years ago and, according to this article from the April 9, 2011, issue of the Press-Enterprise, had already spent $75,000 on exterior renovations.
The article also reveals that this house was never called the Chief Theatre. That name had been placed on the building by the producers of a 1993 movie called Calendar Girl, which was partly shot in Perris.
The MetroLux 12 opened on November 10, 1995. MetroLux Theatres moved its operations to its new 14-screen multiplex on October 28, 2005, so the last day of operation for this house was probably the 27th. After sitting vacant for several years, the property was converted into the new home of Foundations Church in 2013.
There was once a source on the Internet attributing the design of a MetroLux Theatre in Loveland to the Baltimore architectural firm Development Design Group, but it has been removed (I believe it was on DDG’s own web site, but unfortunately I can’t find it now even on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.) I originally thought that the project referred to was the MetroLux 14, but I have since found that that house was designed by another firm, so it must have been the MetroLux 12 that was designed by DDG.
The expanded Rialto Theatre Center was opened in April, 2012. This article from the Reporter-Herald, published shortly before the opening, features an interactive graphic with plans of the first two floors of the new building adjacent to the historic theater.
This house was called the Orchards Twin rather than Orchard Twin, as Orchards is the name of the shopping center in which it was located. The shopping center was built in 1976, so the theater was probably opened around that time. It was a Commonwealth Theatres house.
I found the Kiva Theatre at Durango mentioned in the October 13, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News. The item, about the owner of the house recovering from an operation, referred to the Kiva as having been “recently built.”
As the Romanesque Revival business block in which the theater’s entrance was located appears to date from the 19th century, the Kiva must have been either a conversion from some other use or in an addition to the building. I suspect that it was the latter.
The 1960 postcard view shows the theater’s entrance on Main Avenue, but the second photo to which kencmcintyre linked on April 14, 2009, shows that the entrance had been moved around to 8th Street by 1982. I think that the auditorium must have been located in the building to the west, extending down to Narrow Gauge Avenue. This building would have been large enough to hold 550 seats, while the ground floor of the old business block would probably not have been.
The Lyric Theatre was in a building a bit east of the Kissock Block. Here is a view of the entrance dated ca. 1915. The entrance of the Lyric is recognizable in this small photo, dated ca. 1923, which shows the three buildings between Remington Street and Montezuma Fuller Alley. The Lyric was in the center building. All three have been demolished. The side wall of the Kissock Block is visible at far right.
This photo shows a fire at the Lyric Theatre, but is undated. This weblog post has a 1925 Sanborn Map showing the Lyric’s location, and says that the house opened in 1913 and was demolished in 1962.
The Oshkosh Theatre is on a list of the works of the Milwaukee architectural firm of Dick & Bauer that was published in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World.
A list of theaters designed by the Milwaukee architectural firm of Dick & Bauer was published in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World, and it lists the Capitol Theatre at Racine among their works. It’s possible that J. Mandor Matson was the supervising architect for the project, but he was apparently just beginning his career around 1920 when the Capitol was built (the earliest project I’ve seen attributed to him in the trade publications dates from 1922.)
The web site Encyclopedia of the Great Plains has this brief article about architects Ellery Lathrop Davis and Walter F. Wilson.
The Capitol Theatre was in operation by 1930, when its design was attributed to architect Walter Earl Bort, in association with architect John H. Ladehoff, in the October 25 issue of Exhibitors Herald-World.
The Bluebird Theatre in Petersburg was designed by architect Fred A. Bishop, according to a partial list of his works that appeared in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World.
The Tivoli Theatre was designed by architect Leonard H. Bailey. It was (as the Princess Theatre) on a list of theaters he had designed that was published in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World.
I think that the Temple Theatre in Ardmore might be the house that appears as the Shrine Theatre in a list of theaters designed by architect Leonard H. Bailey that appeared in the October 25, 1930, issue of Exhibitors Herald-World. There is a Masonic lodge on the fifth floor of the building.