Mike Rivest’s list has this theater operating from 1914 to 1952, but I think he conflated it with the second Mission Theatre, in the Georgetown district, which opened in 1924.
It looks like I set Street View to the wrong side of the street. The Strand was on the east side. This pre-1911 photo shows the view north along Second Avenue looking across Seneca Street. The Pantages Theatre is on the northeast corner of Second and Seneca, and the Lois Theatre is on the southeast corner. Adjacent to the Lois is a building with a marquee, but I’m unable to read the writing on it. There is also a sign indicating that a five-cent theater might be in the building, which could have been the Ideal/Black Cat.
Comparing this photo with the photo of the Alaska Theatre in The Moving Picture World it looks as though the Alaska building occupied part of the lot where the Lois Theatre had been as well as the entire lot where the Ideal had been. If that was the same building the Ideal was in, it was altered beyond recognition.
John and James Clemmer originally announced that their new moving picture theater on Second Avenue would be called the New Empress. The October 28, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World had this story:
“Seattle, Wash. — A modern, up-to-date $100,000 exclusive photoplay house on Second Avenue is the latest big addition to Seattle’s theatrical enterprises. The new theater will be located at 1412 Second Avenue, between Union and Pike Streets. John H. Clemmer, owner of two theaters in Spokane, and his son, James Q. Clemmer, owner of the Dream Theater in this city, are financing the moving picture venture, and they assert that their new house will be the finest of its kind in the West, and will be opened to the public about March 1. Plans for the new theater are already being drawn by Architect E. W. Houghton, of this city. The theater will be 60 feet by 108 feet, and will seat about 1,500 people. This new enterprise will be known as the New Empress Theater.”
Edwin W. Houghton was very busy around this time, designing several theaters in Seattle and the northwest in the early 1910s. From 1909 to 1911, B. Marcus Pritica was a draftsman in Houghton’s office, but I don’t know if he was there long enough in 1911 to have worked on the Clemmer Theatre.
The July 4, 1914, issue of Electrical Review and Western Electrician featured an article about the Mission Theatre and its unique lighting system (the Google Books scan is askew, and the second page is partly unreadable.) There are photos showing the Mission style facade, the projection booth, and the auditorium with its unusual artificial skylight effect.
In 1916, the first Mission Theatre was being operated by Jensen & Von Herberg. A January 16 article in The Moving Picture World about the opening of the chain’s new Coliseum Theatre noted that they also operated the Alhambra and Liberty Theatres.
The Mission Theatre had a very brief run. An item in the December 20, 1919, issue of Domestic Engineering reported that the theater had been leased to a Chinese syndicate who planned to convert the building into a large cafe.
The 1919 project I cited in my previous comment was not for the original construction of the Liberty Theatre, but was probably for alterations. History Link says that the Liberty Theatre opened on March 12, 1918. It was the first theater built by Frederick Mercy, who by that time already controlled the four other theaters in Yakima: the Majestic, the Empire, the Avenue, and the Yakima. In 1920, he built the Mercy Theatre, later the Capitol.
Mercy must have overextended himself, as by 1920 he was operating the theaters in Yakima in partnership with Jensen and Von Herberg.
Here’s something about the Strand from the October 6, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Seattle to Have Third Orchestra for
Interpreting Pictures.
“Seattle, Wash. — When the Strand theater opens with its first Goldwyn picture, ‘Polly of the Circus,’ on September 22, the house will be all dressed up with new carpets and new paint; and the picture will be interpreted by a new orchestra of twelve expert soloists led by the famous violinist, M. Cherniavsky, one-time teacher of Mischa Elman. With these improvements in his house and in his policy Mr. Smythe expects to capture his share of the increased business that is coming to Seattle theaters with better general business.
“With so many added expenses the Strand manager has found it necessary to raise his admission price in the evening to 20 cents, the matinee price remaining at 15 cents. He is the second theater manager to raise to 20 cents, James Q. Clemmer having made the same change on August 25.”
The October 6, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World gave the opening date of the American Theatre as August 25:
“Big Publicity for Opening of American Theater.
“Walla Walla, Wash.— When A. W. Eiler opened the new American theater on August 25 the entire motion picture section of the leading paper of the town was devoted to his house. The six pages which made up this section had nothing on them that did not pertain to the American theater. The feature of the opening day was Norma Talmadge in "The Law of Compensation,” handled by the De Luxe Feature Film Company of Seattle.“
This Pantages Theatre opened in August, 1915. An article in the October 13 issue of the Spokane Spokesman-Review that year told of a Spokane exhibitor and his partner from Montana who had taken a lease on the Lois Theatre in Seattle and planned to operate it as a movie house. The article said that the Lois Theatre was the old Pantages Theatre, and that Alexander Pantages had been operating it as a combination house since opening the new Pantages Theatre in August.
I noticed that the ad for the Ideal and one of the ads for the Black Cat both use the line “Next Door to the Lois”. That must have been the Lois Theatre, a house that Alexander Pantages began operating as a legitimate stock theater in 1905. It was named for his wife, and was located on the corner of 2nd and Seneca, so the Strand could not have been too far from that intersection.
As near as I can discover, the Lois never showed movies, but was destroyed by a fire in December, 1911. When a new Pantages Theatre opened in 1915, the old Pantages was renamed the Lois and became a movie house.
Also, a modern office block stands where the Strand used to be, so we can mark this theater demolished.
In Street View, it looks like the branch Post Office at this address occupies the former lobby of the theater. The furniture store that occupies some of the storefronts along the side of the auditorium advertises a 20,000 square foot showroom. That has to include the auditorium itself.
There is also a women’s clothing store in two of the storefronts, but it probably doesn’t extend into the auditorium. I don’t know why the Internet says the furniture store is at 3448 Jerome. In Street View that’s just a small building with an H & R Block office in it. Maybe the furniture store added that space to its operation since August, 2011, when Google’s camera car went by.
The link to Historic Aerials in my previous comment no longer fetches the Maple Theater’s location. Here is a fresh link. The 1952 view is the clearest.
The address 5206 Maple Avenue is for the first Maple Theatre. The second Maple was at 5139 Maple. That’s the one in the aerial photos.
Satellite View says paulnelson is correct. The building is still standing. Even the stage house is still there.
Also, we have our Google Street View set to the wrong side of the street, and a bit too far south. The Egyptian Theatre’s entrance was where Aladdin Falafel and the storefronts either side of it are now. The Dollar Tree store tdickensheets mentions is at the stage end of the theater.
If you take Street View around to the Brooklyn Avenue side of the block you can see the theater building across the parking lot, and it’s pretty obvious what it used to be.
This article about the New Alaska Theatre appeared in The Moving Picture World of November 14, 1914. It says that the theater was designed by the local architectural firm of W. H. Milner & Co.
This essay from The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History says that the Alaska Theatre was on the site of an earlier movie house called the Black Cat Theatre, which itself had opened in 1909 as the Ideal Theatre, the name having been changed in 1911. The essay claims that the existing building was extensively remodeled when it became the Alaska Theatre. I’ve been unable to find any period sources with information about the Ideal or the Black Cat. The essay also says that the Strand operated well into the 1930s.
The new Majestic Bay Theatre has its own Cinema Treasures page. See the earlier comment by kateymac01 on May 6, 2005, quoting the newspaper article which says that the developers were unable to save any of the original Bay Theatre because the structure was beyond salvaging. If an old theater is demolished to make way for an entirely new building on the same site, the new theater will usually get its own CT page.
The December 3, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Trade Review noted the recent opening of Michael Comerford’s State Theatre in Scranton. The Miles Theatre, which in 1923 would become Comerford’s Capitol Theatre, had been opened by H. S. Miles about the same time.
The October, 1916, issue of the Scranton Board of Trade Journal said that Michael Comerford’s Strand Theatre had been opened on September 23. Leon H. Lempert Jr. was the architect for the conversion of Robert W. Gibson’s 1901 Merchants and Mechanics Bank Building and an adjacent structure into a theater. Construction supervision was by local architect H. C. Rutherford.
Nancy McDonald’s If You Can Play Scranton says that the Capitol Theatre opened as the Miles Theatre on November 7, 1921. It started out attempting to compete with the Poli Theatre, then Scranton’s leading vaudeville house, but had little success. In 1923 it was sold to Michael Comerford who renamed it the Capitol Theatre. Comerford’s management so completely reversed its fortunes that he was able to buy Poli’s Theatre in 1925.
The Capitol operated as a combination house for many years, and though after the 1920s it ran movies most of the time, through the 1930s and 1940s it also hosted performances by the popular bands of the day, and even presented occasional vaudeville shows.
According to this web page, this 1954 advertisement is from the Capitol Theatre in Scranton. Assuming the attribution is correct (the town’s name does not appear on the ad), this is the most recent mention of the Capitol I’ve found.
I’ve found the Valmar Theatre mentioned in the June 23, 1931 issue of The Film Daily. The item noted that the Valmar was operated by Lou Trager and Phil Frease, and had a top ticket price of 25 cents. The house was planning a 24-hour showing of Chaplin’s City Lights.
The Victor Theatre might have been the house called the Victorville Theatre that was on the “New Theatres” list in the May 21, 1936, issue of The Film Daily.
The January 5, 1943, issue of The Film Daily had this item:
“Vallejo, Calif. — After a four-month delay due to the Government’s construction ban, Ray Syufy’s $30,000 Victory Theater here has been completed and opened. It is Syufy’s second house in this bustling Navy town. Permission to complete the stand was granted by the Government because work had been started prior to the restrictions on building.”
The first Rita Theatre must have been the other Syufy house referred to in the item.
The Film Daily of July 20, 1943, reported that the Studio Theatre in Vallejo, formerly a Robert Lippert house, was now being operated by Fox West Coast Theatres.
Here’s an addition to the timeline for this theater. It comes from the February 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Vallejo, Cal. — The Vallejo theater, formerly the Republic, was opened late in December under the management of Bert Langley. The house has a gallery and can accommodate 1,100.”
The Hiltonia Theatre was opened by proprietors Walter Haight and Edward Weeks on December 6, 1913, according to a “Happenings of the Past” feature in the December 16, 1948, issue of The Hilton Record
Fort Wayne, by Randolph L. Harte (Google Books preview) gives the location of the Majestic Theatre as 216 East Berry Street, and says that it was demolished in 1957. That means it must never have been called the Capitol Theatre.
If this house was ever called the Capitol Theatre it had to have been after 1957. The sources I cited in my comments of October 10, 2010, and June 28, 2012, show that it opened as the Majestic on October 24, 1904, and became the Civic Theatre from 1940 until 1957. I’ve found no sources saying what became of it after 1957. If somebody knows for sure that it was renamed the Capitol at that time, please let us know. Until we have such a source, I think the page should be renamed either Majestic Theatre or Civic Theatre, though I’ve also found no sources saying that it ever ran movies as the Civic. It’s possible that the Capitol was an entirely different theater.
Also, ScorpionSkate has me convinced about the location of the Majestic. Looking at the old City Hall in Google Street View and on the aerial view I linked to on October 10, 2010, the Majestic had to have been in the 200 block of East Berry Street. For this reason I have updated Street View to match the location of the postcard view as closely as possible.
Perhaps the mysterious Capitol Theatre actually was at 172 West Berry, and Billy, Don and Billy got the number (and the name) attached to the wrong theater because the postcard mistakenly says the Majestic was on West Berry instead of East Berry? Or perhaps Fort Wayne simply changed its numbering system at some time after the postcard was published.
Mike Rivest’s list has this theater operating from 1914 to 1952, but I think he conflated it with the second Mission Theatre, in the Georgetown district, which opened in 1924.
It looks like I set Street View to the wrong side of the street. The Strand was on the east side. This pre-1911 photo shows the view north along Second Avenue looking across Seneca Street. The Pantages Theatre is on the northeast corner of Second and Seneca, and the Lois Theatre is on the southeast corner. Adjacent to the Lois is a building with a marquee, but I’m unable to read the writing on it. There is also a sign indicating that a five-cent theater might be in the building, which could have been the Ideal/Black Cat.
Comparing this photo with the photo of the Alaska Theatre in The Moving Picture World it looks as though the Alaska building occupied part of the lot where the Lois Theatre had been as well as the entire lot where the Ideal had been. If that was the same building the Ideal was in, it was altered beyond recognition.
John and James Clemmer originally announced that their new moving picture theater on Second Avenue would be called the New Empress. The October 28, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World had this story:
Edwin W. Houghton was very busy around this time, designing several theaters in Seattle and the northwest in the early 1910s. From 1909 to 1911, B. Marcus Pritica was a draftsman in Houghton’s office, but I don’t know if he was there long enough in 1911 to have worked on the Clemmer Theatre.The July 4, 1914, issue of Electrical Review and Western Electrician featured an article about the Mission Theatre and its unique lighting system (the Google Books scan is askew, and the second page is partly unreadable.) There are photos showing the Mission style facade, the projection booth, and the auditorium with its unusual artificial skylight effect.
In 1916, the first Mission Theatre was being operated by Jensen & Von Herberg. A January 16 article in The Moving Picture World about the opening of the chain’s new Coliseum Theatre noted that they also operated the Alhambra and Liberty Theatres.
The Mission Theatre had a very brief run. An item in the December 20, 1919, issue of Domestic Engineering reported that the theater had been leased to a Chinese syndicate who planned to convert the building into a large cafe.
The 1919 project I cited in my previous comment was not for the original construction of the Liberty Theatre, but was probably for alterations. History Link says that the Liberty Theatre opened on March 12, 1918. It was the first theater built by Frederick Mercy, who by that time already controlled the four other theaters in Yakima: the Majestic, the Empire, the Avenue, and the Yakima. In 1920, he built the Mercy Theatre, later the Capitol.
Mercy must have overextended himself, as by 1920 he was operating the theaters in Yakima in partnership with Jensen and Von Herberg.
Here’s something about the Strand from the October 6, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The October 6, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World gave the opening date of the American Theatre as August 25:
This Pantages Theatre opened in August, 1915. An article in the October 13 issue of the Spokane Spokesman-Review that year told of a Spokane exhibitor and his partner from Montana who had taken a lease on the Lois Theatre in Seattle and planned to operate it as a movie house. The article said that the Lois Theatre was the old Pantages Theatre, and that Alexander Pantages had been operating it as a combination house since opening the new Pantages Theatre in August.
I noticed that the ad for the Ideal and one of the ads for the Black Cat both use the line “Next Door to the Lois”. That must have been the Lois Theatre, a house that Alexander Pantages began operating as a legitimate stock theater in 1905. It was named for his wife, and was located on the corner of 2nd and Seneca, so the Strand could not have been too far from that intersection.
As near as I can discover, the Lois never showed movies, but was destroyed by a fire in December, 1911. When a new Pantages Theatre opened in 1915, the old Pantages was renamed the Lois and became a movie house.
Also, a modern office block stands where the Strand used to be, so we can mark this theater demolished.
In Street View, it looks like the branch Post Office at this address occupies the former lobby of the theater. The furniture store that occupies some of the storefronts along the side of the auditorium advertises a 20,000 square foot showroom. That has to include the auditorium itself.
There is also a women’s clothing store in two of the storefronts, but it probably doesn’t extend into the auditorium. I don’t know why the Internet says the furniture store is at 3448 Jerome. In Street View that’s just a small building with an H & R Block office in it. Maybe the furniture store added that space to its operation since August, 2011, when Google’s camera car went by.
The link to Historic Aerials in my previous comment no longer fetches the Maple Theater’s location. Here is a fresh link. The 1952 view is the clearest.
The address 5206 Maple Avenue is for the first Maple Theatre. The second Maple was at 5139 Maple. That’s the one in the aerial photos.
Satellite View says paulnelson is correct. The building is still standing. Even the stage house is still there.
Also, we have our Google Street View set to the wrong side of the street, and a bit too far south. The Egyptian Theatre’s entrance was where Aladdin Falafel and the storefronts either side of it are now. The Dollar Tree store tdickensheets mentions is at the stage end of the theater.
If you take Street View around to the Brooklyn Avenue side of the block you can see the theater building across the parking lot, and it’s pretty obvious what it used to be.
This article about the New Alaska Theatre appeared in The Moving Picture World of November 14, 1914. It says that the theater was designed by the local architectural firm of W. H. Milner & Co.
This essay from The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History says that the Alaska Theatre was on the site of an earlier movie house called the Black Cat Theatre, which itself had opened in 1909 as the Ideal Theatre, the name having been changed in 1911. The essay claims that the existing building was extensively remodeled when it became the Alaska Theatre. I’ve been unable to find any period sources with information about the Ideal or the Black Cat. The essay also says that the Strand operated well into the 1930s.
The new Majestic Bay Theatre has its own Cinema Treasures page. See the earlier comment by kateymac01 on May 6, 2005, quoting the newspaper article which says that the developers were unable to save any of the original Bay Theatre because the structure was beyond salvaging. If an old theater is demolished to make way for an entirely new building on the same site, the new theater will usually get its own CT page.
The December 3, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Trade Review noted the recent opening of Michael Comerford’s State Theatre in Scranton. The Miles Theatre, which in 1923 would become Comerford’s Capitol Theatre, had been opened by H. S. Miles about the same time.
The October, 1916, issue of the Scranton Board of Trade Journal said that Michael Comerford’s Strand Theatre had been opened on September 23. Leon H. Lempert Jr. was the architect for the conversion of Robert W. Gibson’s 1901 Merchants and Mechanics Bank Building and an adjacent structure into a theater. Construction supervision was by local architect H. C. Rutherford.
Nancy McDonald’s If You Can Play Scranton says that the Capitol Theatre opened as the Miles Theatre on November 7, 1921. It started out attempting to compete with the Poli Theatre, then Scranton’s leading vaudeville house, but had little success. In 1923 it was sold to Michael Comerford who renamed it the Capitol Theatre. Comerford’s management so completely reversed its fortunes that he was able to buy Poli’s Theatre in 1925.
The Capitol operated as a combination house for many years, and though after the 1920s it ran movies most of the time, through the 1930s and 1940s it also hosted performances by the popular bands of the day, and even presented occasional vaudeville shows.
According to this web page, this 1954 advertisement is from the Capitol Theatre in Scranton. Assuming the attribution is correct (the town’s name does not appear on the ad), this is the most recent mention of the Capitol I’ve found.
I’ve found the Valmar Theatre mentioned in the June 23, 1931 issue of The Film Daily. The item noted that the Valmar was operated by Lou Trager and Phil Frease, and had a top ticket price of 25 cents. The house was planning a 24-hour showing of Chaplin’s City Lights.
The Victor Theatre might have been the house called the Victorville Theatre that was on the “New Theatres” list in the May 21, 1936, issue of The Film Daily.
The January 5, 1943, issue of The Film Daily had this item:
The first Rita Theatre must have been the other Syufy house referred to in the item.The Film Daily of July 20, 1943, reported that the Studio Theatre in Vallejo, formerly a Robert Lippert house, was now being operated by Fox West Coast Theatres.
Here’s an addition to the timeline for this theater. It comes from the February 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The Hiltonia Theatre was opened by proprietors Walter Haight and Edward Weeks on December 6, 1913, according to a “Happenings of the Past” feature in the December 16, 1948, issue of The Hilton Record
Fort Wayne, by Randolph L. Harte (Google Books preview) gives the location of the Majestic Theatre as 216 East Berry Street, and says that it was demolished in 1957. That means it must never have been called the Capitol Theatre.
If this house was ever called the Capitol Theatre it had to have been after 1957. The sources I cited in my comments of October 10, 2010, and June 28, 2012, show that it opened as the Majestic on October 24, 1904, and became the Civic Theatre from 1940 until 1957. I’ve found no sources saying what became of it after 1957. If somebody knows for sure that it was renamed the Capitol at that time, please let us know. Until we have such a source, I think the page should be renamed either Majestic Theatre or Civic Theatre, though I’ve also found no sources saying that it ever ran movies as the Civic. It’s possible that the Capitol was an entirely different theater.
Also, ScorpionSkate has me convinced about the location of the Majestic. Looking at the old City Hall in Google Street View and on the aerial view I linked to on October 10, 2010, the Majestic had to have been in the 200 block of East Berry Street. For this reason I have updated Street View to match the location of the postcard view as closely as possible.
Perhaps the mysterious Capitol Theatre actually was at 172 West Berry, and Billy, Don and Billy got the number (and the name) attached to the wrong theater because the postcard mistakenly says the Majestic was on West Berry instead of East Berry? Or perhaps Fort Wayne simply changed its numbering system at some time after the postcard was published.