This list of Waterloo’s theaters as they appeared in city directories has the State Theatre listed beginning in 1935. There is no directory available for 1934, so the State might have opened as early as 1933, after that year’s directory had been sent to the printer. The State Theatre is last listed in the 1954 directory.
I’ve been unable to discover if the State was newly built in the 1930s, or was an earlier house called the Crystal, listed at the same address from 1910 through 1928. It might have been remodeled and reopened. No directory is available for 1929, either, so the Crystal might have closed as late as that year. No theater is listed at 212 E. Fourth in directories from 1930, 1931, or 1933.
The Riviera probably opened in January, 1928. The January 3 issue of The Film Daily said that the house would be ready “…around the first of the year….” However, the announcement that the Riviera had opened did not appear until the issue of February 5.
Also, it was the Plaza/Iowa/Orpheum on Fourth Street that was designed by architect Mortimer Cleveland. So far I’ve been unable to discover the architect of the Grand/etc/New Iowa.
Our history for this theater is a bit off, due to two different houses in Waterloo having been called the Iowa Theatre. The house at 608 Commercial Street was never called the Plaza, but it did have the following aka’s: Grand, Family, Garden, Rialto, and Capitol.
This handy list of theaters from the Waterloo Public Library shows that the theater at 608 Commercial Street was first listed in the city directory in 1915 as the Grand Theatre. In 1916 and 1918 it is listed as the Family Theatre. From 1919 through 1921 it is listed as the Garden Theatre.
No theater is listed for this address in the 1922-23 directory, but in 1924 it reappears as the Rialto Theatre. It was still the Rialto in 1928, but no directory is available for 1929, and no theater is listed for the address again until 1936, when it appears as the location of the Capitol Theatre. The name Iowa Theatre first appears at this address in the 1939 directory, and remains through 1961. After that, no theater is listed at 608 Commercial Street.
During most of the 1930s the name Iowa Theatre belonged to the house that opened in 1914 as the Plaza and became the Orpheum sometime in 1938.
A list of Waterloo theaters as they appeared in the city directories shows that the house at 420 W. Fourth Street was first listed, as the Plaza Theatre, in the 1915 directory, and was last listed under that name in the 1928 directory. No directory is available for 1929. In 1930, it was listed as the Iowa Theatre, which it remained through the 1938 directory. In 1939, it was listed as the Orpheum Theatre, and retained that name through the 1952 directory. No directory is available for 1953. In the 1954 directory it is listed as the RKO Orpheum Theatre, and that name remained in the 1954 and 1955 directories. No theater is listed at this address in the 1956 or later directories.
The NRHP registration form for the Babcock Theatre (PDF here) has a detailed history of the theater and numerous photographs, including photos of the original 1907 interior designed by Edwin W. Houghton and of the 1927 interior with decoration in the Spanish Colonial style by Carl F. Berg of the Shearer studios in Seattle. The theater was closed from June 7 to September 24 for the 1927 remodeling project.
The architect for these major alterations, which included moving the theater entrance from an interior arcade to the street front, and the removal of the 300-seat gallery and the boxes, was not named in the document, but it might have been John G. Link, who did work on the building at some point according to this page from the Montana State University Library.
On the night of February 21 and morning of February 22, 1935, the Babcock Theatre was severely damaged by a fire that caused the roof of the auditorium to collapse. The Wutlizer Hope_Jones organ was destroyed. Reconstruction after the fire took almost six months. The rebuilding project was designed by local architect Edwin G. Osness. The decoration, in the Art Deco style, was by the Heinsbergen Studios of Los Angeles.
The Skouras-style remodeling for Fox Theatres, designed by Carl G. Moeller, which is still largely intact, was done in 1955.
I haven’t had much luck finding stuff that has gone missing from earlier comments due to linkrot, but at least I found this page from Boxoffice of March 1, 1947, featuring a couple of interior photos of the Will Rogers Theatre at the bottom of the page.
The Historical Marker Database has a page that includes the inscription and photos from the EACO Theatre marker here. The text reads:
“On this site once stood the EACO Theatre. In 1921, Dr. L.D. Whitaker organized the Educational Amusement Company for the purpose of constructing a modern theatre. A capital stock of $40,000 was subscribed to by about 100 local citizens and the EACO Theatre was soon completed on the corner of Main and Fourth Street. In 1940, the Richmond based firm Neighborhood Theatres Inc., purchased the EACO Theatre and renamed it the State Theatre. The last organization to use the building was Farmville’s Theatre Group ‘The Waterworks Players’; this group continues to perform in the Town of Farmville. The theatre collapsed unexpectedly on February 11, 1994, thus ending a 72-year old landmark for entertainment in Farmville.”
When Community Theatres took over the Lee and EACO Theatres in 1940, a brief notice of their reopening under new management appeared in the August 5 issue of Motion Picture Daily. Among the guests at the event was the architect of the remodeling, A. O. Budina.
This item is from the “Theater Changes” column of the July 17, 1940, issue of Motion Picture Daily:
“Open Kansas House Soon
“Kansas City, July 16. — The new theatre at Caney, Kan., practically rebuilt from the old Liberty by Larry Larsen, architect and builder, will be opened shortly by C. R. Gregg. The new house, renamed the Gregg, has been closed for two months.”
The Liberty Theatre at Caney, Kansas, was mentioned in the June 7, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World. Earlier than that I’ve found a Strand Theatre (new front to be installed, MPW April 6, 1918) and an Iris Theatre (recently opened, MPW August 28, 1915) in Caney. Possibly earlier names for the same theater?
The Ritz Theatre at Chenoa, Illinois, was listed as a new theater in the May 21, 1936, issue of The Film Daily. The only earlier reference to a specific theater in Chenoa I’ve found in the trade journals is an item in the August 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World saying that “Charles E. Hawkins of Mahornet is remodeling the Rex theater, which he recently purchased from Arch C. Howard.”
The most complete history of movie theaters in Chenoa is from a Centennial history published in 1954, but it’s wording is rather ambiguous. It never explicitly states that the Lyceum and the Ritz were one and the same, but doesn’t say they weren’t. It does say that the Rex was on the site of the Ritz:
“THE RITZ THEATER
“The first motion picture theatre (silent pictures) in Chenoa, known as the Rex, was owned and operated by Dexter and Clagget of Lexington about 1909, at the present location of the Ritz Theatre. Among others who later owned or operated the theatre were C. D. Caster, A. M. Blake, Richardson and Broadwell, Mr. Hawkins and Arch Swan.
“In August, 1919 the Rex was purchased and operated by John Pittman, now of Fairbury, who continued operation with the assistance of Lewis (Tubby) Claudon, until 1925. Mr. Claudon was closely connected with the motion picture industry here for many years. The first multi-reel picture shown here was ‘The Christian.’
“Later motion pictures were also shown at the Lyceum for many years, Les Twomey operating the machine.
“Music and entertainment was furnished at these shows by numerous local young people, among whom were Bernadine Twomey Elson, Clara Power Green, Myrtle Bower Winter and Georgia Green Power.
“On Feb. 8, 1938 under management of Elmer Larsen, the Ritz Theatre, in the present location was opened, and we might add it was 22 degrees below on that day. In 1944 the building was remodeled as it is now and was the first to operate a "talking picture” movie theatre in Chenoa. The Ritz burned on Dec. 19, 1940 and re-opened in March, 1941, still under management of Elmer Larsen.
“Mr. Tom Whetzell of Urbana, purchased the Ritz in May, 1951, which continues operations with Paul Hallbeck as manager and Ray Moore, machine operator.”
In this Bing Maps bird’s eye view, the Ritz Theatre building can be seen on the west side of South Veto Street just north of East Owsley Street.
jlinamen1229 is correct. The Grove Theatre’s building is still standing at the corner of Grove Avenue and Prairie Street, as seen in Street View. Part of the building is still occupied by the Prairie Rock Grill, reopened in 2012. The former auditorium, however, once the location of the microbrewery, is now occupied by Discover Church. A new entrance was built for the church at 200 Prairie Street.
A newspaper page from the Norwood News, dated November 7, without a year displayed but from the period 1903-1905, has this item about the Hetrick Opera House:
“Some strange things have happened out in Kansas. Oil has been discovered, and men who a few days ago were poor are now rich.
“One of the most striking cases is that of a man named Frank Hetrick. He owned a farm near the town of Chanute, and bad a hard time keeping the wolf from the door. He can neither read nor write.
His oil royalties now amount to $800 a month He has just completed the finest opera house in Kansas. It occupies half a block in Chanute. He said he Wanted to leave something for a monument.
“Mr. Hetrlck gives a box party at each performance, and Hetrick himself is always behind the scenes, seeing how the actors and actresses do things. They are having the times of their lives, and Chanute has become one of the best theatre towns in the west.”
As the Hetrick Opera House is mentioned in the February 13, 1904, issue of The Billboard, it must have opened either in 1903 or in early 1904.
The 1929 article in Motion Picture News that Tinseltoes linked to earlier was written by Victor A. Rigaumont, architect of the remodeling job that had recently been done at the Avon Theatre.
It is possible that the part of the building the theater was in dated from 1905 and was incorporated into the 1917 project. In the early photo at the Rialto Cafe, the theater part of the building, given a fancy new facade when converted into a bank in 1930, and the office and commercial building on the corner, remodeled in a simpler style at some point, then had a single, unified facade.
The Rohs Theatre, in the photo above, now the home of The Cynthiana-Harrison County Museum, is at 134 S. Walnut Street. This is the museum’s web site.
Cynthiana is also the home of The Rohs Opera House, an entirely different theater located at 133 E. Pike Street. The two are conflated all over the Internet, and we don’t want to be adding to the confusion. According to various web sites, the Opera House dates back to 1871, but a movie theater was installed on the ground floor (the Opera House was upstairs) in 1941.
The Rohs Theatre is mentioned in the trade publications a few times, though the earliest I’ve found so far is from 1929, but there is also an item in the May 10, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World announcing the recent opening of the 400-seat “Prows Theater” in Cynthiana. It’s possible that a typesetter scanning hastily scribbled notes misread “Rohs” as Prows, but it’s also possible that there was a Prows Theater, as an Internet search brings up quite a few people with the surname Prows in that region of Kentucky. The latter seems less likely than the former to me, though. Plus, from its architectural style, the Rohs Theatre building looks quite likely to have been built in the early 1910s.
The January 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World listed the Crown Theatre as one of six Louisville movie houses being operated by the Broadway Amusement Company. The Crown was also mentioned in the January 4, 1913, issue of the magazine.
Here is an indoor Google Street View of a photo hanging on the wall of the Rialto Cafe, 108 W. Wilshire Avenue in Fullerton. The photo shows the Rialto at the left, probably about the time it opened. This is the only photo of the Rialto I’ve found on the Internet.
Unless the project incorporated an existing building (which it might have done), the building dates from 1917, not 1905. The Rialto itself certainly opened in 1917, though, and the project of which it was a part was mentioned in issues of Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer that year.
The first mention of the project was in the issue of February 3, and did not include the theater, but the March 17 issue described an expanded project in which a theater was now included:
“Frank K. Benchley is completing plans for the 2-story reinforced concrete business block for the Fullerton Improvement Company. Part of the lower floor will be devoted to a moving picture theater and the rest of the ground floor will be occupied by the improvement company as a store. The second story will be equipped as club quarters for the Fullerton Club.”
The April 28 issue of the magazine says that ground had been broken for the project, and notes the location as the corner of Wilshire Avenue and Spadra Avenue (now Harbor Boulevard.) The theater was to have a frontage of forty feet and extend the depth of the building.
Frank K. Benchley was probably Fullerton’s most active architect during this period, and a number of his buildings are still standing.
I don’t think that Walker & Eisen should be credited as architects of the Rialto. The only work they did on the building was after the theater had closed, when it was converted into a bank in 1930. The splendid Art Deco facade they designed would have made a nice front for a theater, but it never was.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of April 11, 1924, had an item about the Barton Theatre:
“San Pedro— Foss Designing & Building Company 1007 Pacific Ave, San Pedro, has the contract and has started work on a two-story theater and office building 45x100 feet at northeast corner of Santa Cruz and Pacific; estimated cost, $35,000. The building is being erected by Goebel Bros., who own the market building adjoining and will be under the management of P.H. Poirier. The theater will seat 500. The building will be Mission style throughout.”
The Foss Designing & Building Company was a Pasadena firm established by builder Robert Francis Foss in 1911. The San Pedro branch office was opened in 1923. Operating both as a general contractor for projects designed by other architects and as one of the region’s leading design-build firms, Foss Designing & Building Company was active at least into the 1980s as The Foss Company. The firm’s architectural and business records are held at the Huntington Library in San Marino. It’s possible that the plans for the Barton Theatre are among them, though it is also possible that this was only a contracting project. I’ve found a reference to the Foss company being the builders of the Strand Theatre in San Pedro as well, so it also might have been a Foss design.
For those who might be interested, this PDF of a document prepared by Tim Gregory is about a Foss-designed house in Altadena, but about half of the document is devoted to information about the Foss company.
The April 13, 1937, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Carter Theatre in Cleveland, which had not operated as a movie house for a year, was being redecorated by Community Circuit Theatres and would reopen with films on May 1.
It might have been 1937 when the Opera House was renamed the Holyoke Theatre. The April 7 issue of Motion Picture News ran this item:
“Takes Holyoke House
“Boston, April 8. — The Holyoke Theatre, Inc., has been formed to operate the Opera House in Holyoke, Mass. Frederick E. Lieberman, circuit head, is president of the new corporation, while his brother, Morton Lieberman, is secretary. Samuel Richmond is treasurer.”
This list of Waterloo’s theaters as they appeared in city directories has the State Theatre listed beginning in 1935. There is no directory available for 1934, so the State might have opened as early as 1933, after that year’s directory had been sent to the printer. The State Theatre is last listed in the 1954 directory.
I’ve been unable to discover if the State was newly built in the 1930s, or was an earlier house called the Crystal, listed at the same address from 1910 through 1928. It might have been remodeled and reopened. No directory is available for 1929, either, so the Crystal might have closed as late as that year. No theater is listed at 212 E. Fourth in directories from 1930, 1931, or 1933.
The Riviera probably opened in January, 1928. The January 3 issue of The Film Daily said that the house would be ready “…around the first of the year….” However, the announcement that the Riviera had opened did not appear until the issue of February 5.
Also, it was the Plaza/Iowa/Orpheum on Fourth Street that was designed by architect Mortimer Cleveland. So far I’ve been unable to discover the architect of the Grand/etc/New Iowa.
Our history for this theater is a bit off, due to two different houses in Waterloo having been called the Iowa Theatre. The house at 608 Commercial Street was never called the Plaza, but it did have the following aka’s: Grand, Family, Garden, Rialto, and Capitol.
This handy list of theaters from the Waterloo Public Library shows that the theater at 608 Commercial Street was first listed in the city directory in 1915 as the Grand Theatre. In 1916 and 1918 it is listed as the Family Theatre. From 1919 through 1921 it is listed as the Garden Theatre.
No theater is listed for this address in the 1922-23 directory, but in 1924 it reappears as the Rialto Theatre. It was still the Rialto in 1928, but no directory is available for 1929, and no theater is listed for the address again until 1936, when it appears as the location of the Capitol Theatre. The name Iowa Theatre first appears at this address in the 1939 directory, and remains through 1961. After that, no theater is listed at 608 Commercial Street.
During most of the 1930s the name Iowa Theatre belonged to the house that opened in 1914 as the Plaza and became the Orpheum sometime in 1938.
A list of Waterloo theaters as they appeared in the city directories shows that the house at 420 W. Fourth Street was first listed, as the Plaza Theatre, in the 1915 directory, and was last listed under that name in the 1928 directory. No directory is available for 1929. In 1930, it was listed as the Iowa Theatre, which it remained through the 1938 directory. In 1939, it was listed as the Orpheum Theatre, and retained that name through the 1952 directory. No directory is available for 1953. In the 1954 directory it is listed as the RKO Orpheum Theatre, and that name remained in the 1954 and 1955 directories. No theater is listed at this address in the 1956 or later directories.
The NRHP registration form for the Babcock Theatre (PDF here) has a detailed history of the theater and numerous photographs, including photos of the original 1907 interior designed by Edwin W. Houghton and of the 1927 interior with decoration in the Spanish Colonial style by Carl F. Berg of the Shearer studios in Seattle. The theater was closed from June 7 to September 24 for the 1927 remodeling project.
The architect for these major alterations, which included moving the theater entrance from an interior arcade to the street front, and the removal of the 300-seat gallery and the boxes, was not named in the document, but it might have been John G. Link, who did work on the building at some point according to this page from the Montana State University Library.
On the night of February 21 and morning of February 22, 1935, the Babcock Theatre was severely damaged by a fire that caused the roof of the auditorium to collapse. The Wutlizer Hope_Jones organ was destroyed. Reconstruction after the fire took almost six months. The rebuilding project was designed by local architect Edwin G. Osness. The decoration, in the Art Deco style, was by the Heinsbergen Studios of Los Angeles.
The Skouras-style remodeling for Fox Theatres, designed by Carl G. Moeller, which is still largely intact, was done in 1955.
The Lynn Theatre’s official web site link is dead. It appears that they are now using this Facebook page in lieu of an actual web site.
I haven’t had much luck finding stuff that has gone missing from earlier comments due to linkrot, but at least I found this page from Boxoffice of March 1, 1947, featuring a couple of interior photos of the Will Rogers Theatre at the bottom of the page.
Here is photo of the Gem Theatre. The building now houses a retail store.
The Victory Theatre became the Gaslight Restaurant & Theatre in 1971. Today it is called Gaslight Pizza & Grill. The venue presents live performances.
The Historical Marker Database has a page that includes the inscription and photos from the EACO Theatre marker here. The text reads:
When Community Theatres took over the Lee and EACO Theatres in 1940, a brief notice of their reopening under new management appeared in the August 5 issue of Motion Picture Daily. Among the guests at the event was the architect of the remodeling, A. O. Budina.This item is from the “Theater Changes” column of the July 17, 1940, issue of Motion Picture Daily:
The Liberty Theatre at Caney, Kansas, was mentioned in the June 7, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World. Earlier than that I’ve found a Strand Theatre (new front to be installed, MPW April 6, 1918) and an Iris Theatre (recently opened, MPW August 28, 1915) in Caney. Possibly earlier names for the same theater?The Ritz Theatre at Chenoa, Illinois, was listed as a new theater in the May 21, 1936, issue of The Film Daily. The only earlier reference to a specific theater in Chenoa I’ve found in the trade journals is an item in the August 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World saying that “Charles E. Hawkins of Mahornet is remodeling the Rex theater, which he recently purchased from Arch C. Howard.”
The most complete history of movie theaters in Chenoa is from a Centennial history published in 1954, but it’s wording is rather ambiguous. It never explicitly states that the Lyceum and the Ritz were one and the same, but doesn’t say they weren’t. It does say that the Rex was on the site of the Ritz:
In this Bing Maps bird’s eye view, the Ritz Theatre building can be seen on the west side of South Veto Street just north of East Owsley Street.jlinamen1229 is correct. The Grove Theatre’s building is still standing at the corner of Grove Avenue and Prairie Street, as seen in Street View. Part of the building is still occupied by the Prairie Rock Grill, reopened in 2012. The former auditorium, however, once the location of the microbrewery, is now occupied by Discover Church. A new entrance was built for the church at 200 Prairie Street.
OCRon: BigScreen has a complete list of the Muvico locations acquired by Carmike.
A newspaper page from the Norwood News, dated November 7, without a year displayed but from the period 1903-1905, has this item about the Hetrick Opera House:
As the Hetrick Opera House is mentioned in the February 13, 1904, issue of The Billboard, it must have opened either in 1903 or in early 1904.The 1929 article in Motion Picture News that Tinseltoes linked to earlier was written by Victor A. Rigaumont, architect of the remodeling job that had recently been done at the Avon Theatre.
It is possible that the part of the building the theater was in dated from 1905 and was incorporated into the 1917 project. In the early photo at the Rialto Cafe, the theater part of the building, given a fancy new facade when converted into a bank in 1930, and the office and commercial building on the corner, remodeled in a simpler style at some point, then had a single, unified facade.
The Rohs Theatre, in the photo above, now the home of The Cynthiana-Harrison County Museum, is at 134 S. Walnut Street. This is the museum’s web site.
Cynthiana is also the home of The Rohs Opera House, an entirely different theater located at 133 E. Pike Street. The two are conflated all over the Internet, and we don’t want to be adding to the confusion. According to various web sites, the Opera House dates back to 1871, but a movie theater was installed on the ground floor (the Opera House was upstairs) in 1941.
The Rohs Theatre is mentioned in the trade publications a few times, though the earliest I’ve found so far is from 1929, but there is also an item in the May 10, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World announcing the recent opening of the 400-seat “Prows Theater” in Cynthiana. It’s possible that a typesetter scanning hastily scribbled notes misread “Rohs” as Prows, but it’s also possible that there was a Prows Theater, as an Internet search brings up quite a few people with the surname Prows in that region of Kentucky. The latter seems less likely than the former to me, though. Plus, from its architectural style, the Rohs Theatre building looks quite likely to have been built in the early 1910s.
The January 3, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World listed the Crown Theatre as one of six Louisville movie houses being operated by the Broadway Amusement Company. The Crown was also mentioned in the January 4, 1913, issue of the magazine.
Here is an indoor Google Street View of a photo hanging on the wall of the Rialto Cafe, 108 W. Wilshire Avenue in Fullerton. The photo shows the Rialto at the left, probably about the time it opened. This is the only photo of the Rialto I’ve found on the Internet.
Unless the project incorporated an existing building (which it might have done), the building dates from 1917, not 1905. The Rialto itself certainly opened in 1917, though, and the project of which it was a part was mentioned in issues of Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer that year.
The first mention of the project was in the issue of February 3, and did not include the theater, but the March 17 issue described an expanded project in which a theater was now included:
The April 28 issue of the magazine says that ground had been broken for the project, and notes the location as the corner of Wilshire Avenue and Spadra Avenue (now Harbor Boulevard.) The theater was to have a frontage of forty feet and extend the depth of the building.Frank K. Benchley was probably Fullerton’s most active architect during this period, and a number of his buildings are still standing.
I don’t think that Walker & Eisen should be credited as architects of the Rialto. The only work they did on the building was after the theater had closed, when it was converted into a bank in 1930. The splendid Art Deco facade they designed would have made a nice front for a theater, but it never was.
The Alhambra Theatre, playing motion pictures, is the only San Pedro house listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide. No details were given.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of April 11, 1924, had an item about the Barton Theatre:
The Foss Designing & Building Company was a Pasadena firm established by builder Robert Francis Foss in 1911. The San Pedro branch office was opened in 1923. Operating both as a general contractor for projects designed by other architects and as one of the region’s leading design-build firms, Foss Designing & Building Company was active at least into the 1980s as The Foss Company. The firm’s architectural and business records are held at the Huntington Library in San Marino. It’s possible that the plans for the Barton Theatre are among them, though it is also possible that this was only a contracting project. I’ve found a reference to the Foss company being the builders of the Strand Theatre in San Pedro as well, so it also might have been a Foss design.For those who might be interested, this PDF of a document prepared by Tim Gregory is about a Foss-designed house in Altadena, but about half of the document is devoted to information about the Foss company.
The April 13, 1937, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Carter Theatre in Cleveland, which had not operated as a movie house for a year, was being redecorated by Community Circuit Theatres and would reopen with films on May 1.
It might have been 1937 when the Opera House was renamed the Holyoke Theatre. The April 7 issue of Motion Picture News ran this item: