I’ve been unable to find a Clay Theatre in Clayton, but I did find a Clayton Theatre, operating in the 1950s at 321 E. Main Street. DocSouth’s Going to the Show lists several theaters at Clayton, but the Clay is not among them, nor is the Clayton, though two are listed as “Name Unknown”. Three are listed as being on Railroad Street, which does not appear on Google Maps. I wonder if Main Street used to be called Railroad Street?
This web page (which I believe you need a Google account to see) says that the Ritz Theatre was twinned. This was probably done around 1970, when the building was remodeled, losing its sleek, Streamline Modern Vitrolite to a skin of that fake stone which was so popular during that architecturally challenged decade. The Ritz closed in 1982, a couple of years after the Quin Theaters opened in the East Sylva Shopping Center.
The page has a downloadable digital model of the Ritz which you can apparently print out, cut, and assemble. I haven’t bothered to do so as I don’t have a printer.
Here is a photo of the Ritz from September 3, 1942, with a group of Army recruits posing in front of it.
Here is the list of theaters in Winston-Salem in 1926:
AMUZU THEATRE, 116 w 4th
AUDITORIUM, n Liberty cor 5th
BROADWAY THEATRE, 429 n Liberty
Dunbar Theatre, n Depot cor e 6th
ELMONT THEATRE, 411 n Liberty
GEM THEATRE (The), Waughtown, S'side
Hippodrome Theatre, Kimberly Park
Lafayette Theatre, 108 e 4th
PILOT THEATRE, 111 w 4th
Rex Theatre, 104 e 4th
The FDY did sometimes duplicate a listing if a theater had changed names recently, so it’s still possible that the Colonial was the Broadway renamed. Photos from 1926 or earlier would be helpful to determine if the Colonial was in the same building as the Broadway or a new one.
The 1926 Winston-Salem city directory lists a Broadway Theatre at 429 N. Liberty Street. I wonder if this was the same house as the Colonial, or if it was demolished to make way for the Colonial? The Broadway must have been a fairly important theater, as it is advertised several times in the directory.
Something must have happened to the Niles Theatre in 1936. The December 18, 1937, issue of The Film Daily ran this item:
“Niles Celebrates
“Anamosa, Ia. — When Clifford Niles, owner of the Niles Theater here, celebrates, he celebrates. To mark the first anniversary of the house, he threw the doors open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. with no admish charge and also staged a free dance at Firemen’s Hall.”
Clifford Niles and his son Charles were operating three theaters in Anamosa in 1937, according to another issue of the same publication, though it didn’t give their names. One of them must have been the Circle, but I’ve been unable to find the name of the third.
ShortyP: It’s probable that the McKinley Theatre on North Main Street was a later theater of the same name, and not the one built in 1921-22. The October 9, 1937, issue of The Film Daily had this item about a new theater in Niles:
“Niles, O. — A new corporation, McKinley Theaters, Inc., has been granted permission to issue $50,000 worth of stock for the erection of a new picture house here. Incorporators are George Delis, A. G. Cinstant and Angelo Alex. The new theater will be one of a chain of houses controlled by Southwestern New York Theater Corp.”
Another item said that National Theatre Supply Co. of Cleveland was equipping the new McKinley Theatre at Niles, Ohio, with Super Simplex projectors, Magnarc lamp houses, generators and a Walker screen. The November 6 issue of the same publication said that RCA sound equipment had been purchased for the McKinley Theatre. The November 23 issue listed the McKinley among theaters that had recently been opened.
In light of this, I’m still unable to eliminate the possibility that the Robins Theatre was originally the first McKinley Theatre. If I could find a source indicating that the McKinley Theatre of 1937 was an older house being reopened, that would do it, but so far everything I’ve found suggests that it was a new theater. It would also help if we could find a source giving the opening date, or at least the opening year, or perhaps the name of the architect, of the Robins Theatre.
Shorty, do you have any details about the McKinley Theatre, such as how long it was in operation, how big it was, and what it looked like? It should be given its own page at Cinema Treasures.
205 W. Main Street is currently the location of Knuckleheads, a bar and restaurant with live music. (Google Street View has its numbers a block off, showing this location as being in the 100 block.)
In 1937, Clifford Niles and his son Charles operated three theaters in Anamosa, according to an item in The Film Daily of November 15. The names of the theaters were not given, but the Circle must have been one of them, along with the Niles. I’ve been unable to find the name of the third theater.
Arby is correct. The Colonial Theatre has been demolished, along with every other building on the east side of Liberty Street between 4th and 5th Streets, including the State Theatre.
This 1960 photo shows the Colonial Theatre sporting a banner under its marquee reading “4 Big Features,” so it was definitely not a first run house at that time.
The FDY’s address had to have been wrong, Ken. Not only does the third photo I linked to in my previous comment show the Hollywood Theatre in the same block as the Colonial Theatre (at 427 N. Liberty), but the address 512 N.Liberty would be under the footprint of the large government building (probably the Post Office) which is on the northwest corner of 5th and Liberty, and looks like it was built no later than the 1930s.
The Hollywood Theatre was at 411 N. Liberty, and both it and the nearby Colonial Theatre have been demolished.
This article from the Wake Forest Gazette says that M. E. Joyner opened the Collegiate Theatre in 1936. It was burned and rebuilt in 1939, and was closed 1956.
The Forest Theatre was on South White Street, not Main Street, which is where the town’s old business district is. The book Wake Forest University says that the Forest and Collegiate Theatres were across the street from each other, so the Collegiate was on White Street too. There are photos of the Collegiate’s box office and the Forest’s auditorium (Google Books preview.)
Wake Forest, by Jennifer Smart, says that the Forest Theatre was on South White Street. There’s a photo (Google Books preview.) White Street is confirmed as the theater’s location by this page at the Wake Forest Fire Department’s web site, which says that the Forest Theatre was gutted by a fire on July 1, 1966.
This page from the Wake Forest Gazette says that the town has been without a movie theater since the Forest burned. It also says that the house opened as the Castle Theatre in 1927, and was renamed Forest Theatre in 1940.
DocSouth’s Going to the Show says that the Stevenson Theatre was probably built in 1927.
There are a few period references to the Stevenson Theaters Company, a small circuit headed by S.S. Stevenson, and headquartered in the Stevenson Building. DocSouth lists two other houses in Henderson operated by the chain: the Princess and the Liberty. The chain also had houses in Burlington, Greenville, Mebane, and Raleigh.
The Stevenson Building, seen in this modern photo, is part of the Henderson Central Business Historic District, #87001249 on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Lyric Theatre as designed by John McElfatrick was Romanesque Revival in style, but sometime around 1920 the 6th Street facade was entirely replaced with a new Beaux Arts front. The side wall along Court Street remains Romanesque to this day.
Thanks, Ken. I really enjoyed researching this theater. There is a surprising amount of information about it in the two newspaper archives, even if it’s scattered about multiple issues of two different papers. The latest bit I’ve discovered proves that the New Brewster Theatre was a different theater than the original Brewster.
The New Brewster Theatre was in the Montesi Building, a three-story and basement brick structure built by Alexander Montesi on the site of a Masonic lodge that had been destroyed by fire in 1918. A theater was planned as part of the project from the beginning, as was a new lodge hall for the Masons on the third floor.
The May 13, 1921, issue of the Brewster Standard described the proposed building. It would have a 60 foot frontage on Main Street, and would extend back 180 feet. The theater would be at the back of the building, and would be 70x45 feet, with a stage 12x25 feet. It would be entered through and arcade 14x90 feet, which would be flanked by two stores.
Although the dimensions differ somewhat, I think it’s likely that the Montesi Building was the project noted in the April 20, 1921, issue of The American Architect, which said that Danbury architect and engineer F. E. Rowe was preparing plans for a 70x145 foot, three story lodge and theater building on Main Street in Brewster.
There is today one building on Main Street, on the second lot east of Park on the south side, that has a footprint about the size of the Montesi Building, but it is only one story. I wonder if it could have been the Montesi Building, and has had its two top floors removed? This is not unusual for old buildings that have upper floor spaces that have become obsolete and are a financial burden for the owners. It is occupied by a business called The Pool Hall, which seems an apt use for an old theater building.
But even if this isn’t what is left of the former theater building, it could be a post-1939 building on the same site. Neither of the buildings right on the corners of Park and Main look new enough to have been built after 1939, and neither has a big enough lot to have accommodated the Montesi Building.
I found that the New Brewster Theatre opened in January, 1923. The January 5 edition of the Brewster Standard said that Meily and Gauntlett would open the house for public inspection that evening. Full operation would have to wait for the installation of the theater’s heating system.
In August, 1923, Miley and Gauntlett sold the New Brewster Theatre to William O'Neil and Feora Marasco. The August 31 issue of the Standard carried a notice saying that O'Neil and Marasco would open the former New Brewster Theatre as the Cameo Theatre that night.
So this house operated as the New Brewster Theatre for a few months in 1923, then became the Cameo Theatre, and finally the Ritz Theatre from 1935 until closing in 1939. The only question that remains is whether the New Brewster Theatre was the same house as the Brewster Theatre which operated from at least 1917 until at least the end of 1921, or if it was a new theater at a different location.
My guess would be that either the Brewster Theatre had moved to a new location in 1922, or had been remodeled by the new owners. I found references to the New Brewster Theatre in issues of the Brewster Standard in 1922. The original Brewster Theatre dated back at least as far as 1919.
The Strand Theatre was scheduled to open in December, 1921, but the opening was delayed. I haven’t found the exact opening date, but it was definitely in operation before February 24, 1922, when it advertised in the Standard.
I was wrong about nobody opening a third theater in Brewster in the 1920s. It turns out that the Strand itself was a third theater. There are ads in the Standard from this period for both live performances and movies at the Town Hall. I think this must have been the actual Town Hall, rather than a dedicated theater, though.
One ad for the New Brewster Theatre boasted that it was the only ground-floor theater in Brewster, so the Strand and Town Hall were both upper floor theaters. Items in the Standard also confirm that the Strand was the theater in the Schneider Block that Benjamin Zorn was planning to open in 1921. References to the Schnieder Block vanished at that time, as the building came to be called the Strand Building. It was across the street from the Town Hall, but I don’t know where the Town Hall was in 1922. If we find the location of either, we find both.
The Brewster Standard was a weekly paper, and it is available from Northern New York Historical Newspapers. However, it isn’t linked from their search page, so you have to use this link to reach it. NNYHN has archives of a few dozen newspapers from seven counties available, and would be a useful resource for anybody researching theaters in the area.
I found the first Cameo mentioned in the January 4, 1933, issue of The Film Daily, and have found ads for it in issues of the Courier from March, April, and June 1933. I haven’t found any issues of the Courier from 1934, and I think they might be missing from the Old Fulton History archive. If that’s the case,then it’s quite possible that the Cameo was open in 1934.
As the Ritz, the house appears to have always been operated by the Sussman Circuit. A 1939 Boxoffice article about the new Cameo Theatre that Sussman opened that year mentioned its manager, Henry Flechsenhaar, and said that he had previously been manager of the Ritz. I’m quite sure the Ritz closed when, or before, the new Cameo opened in 1939.
The December 6, 1923, issue of Variety mentions two theaters operating in Brewster, with about 1,000 seats between them. They were the Brewster Theatre and the Strand Theatre (I’ve not seen any ads for the Strand in the Courier.) It’s possible that the Strand was the theater that was to have been opened by Benjamin Zorn in 1921, noted in my previous comment.
So far I’ve found only the one mention of the Strand in Variety, and none in the other entertainment trade publications or the Courier, but an item in the October, 1922, issue of Millinery Trade Review said that Mrs. Violet Sweet had opened a millinery shop in the Strand Building at Brewster, New York.
There is also a mention of the Strand on this web page about Brewster’s Boy Scout Troop 1, which says that the managers of the Strand Theatre had made a Memorial Day film in 1925, featuring the local scouts.
The Cameo must have been either a new theater built in the early 1920s or the Brewster Theatre renamed. As the Cameo was being advertised as early as 1923, and the Strand was still open in 1925, the Strand and the Cameo wouldn’t have been the same theater. I can’t imagine anybody opening a third theater in a town with a population of 1,800 (according to Variety) and having existing theaters able to accommodate over half of it, so if the Cameo was a new theater, then the Brewster must have been either dismantled or destroyed. If the Cameo was a new name for an existing theater, it must have been the Brewster.
The Putnam County Courier has ads for the Ritz from 1935 to 1939 (the latest I’ve found is from May 4, 1939), but prior to 1935 it has ads for a Cameo Theatre going back to at least 1923. They were the same theater. The name change took place before March, 1935. On the first of that month, a Courier article said:
“Irving Wernick, who originally remodeled the old Cameo Theatre, which is now the Ritz, will again take charge of the management of the Ritz Theatre.”
Mr. Wernick’s remodeling and renaming might have taken place in late 1934 or early 1935.
The Ritz building must have been at least two floors, as in the late 1920s there are ads for a Cameo Beauty Shoppe, located “Over the Cameo Theatre.” An article in the May 6, 1921, issue of the Courier mentions a Brewster Theatre, and the July 1, 1921, issue has an ad for it. This could be an even earlier aka for the Ritz, but I’ve been unable to establish that for certain. I’ve never seen more than one theater in Brewster advertised at any given time. The Brewster Theatre was advertised as early as 1919.
An undated issue of the Courier from the fall of 1921 has an item about a Benjamin Zorn who was preparing to open a new movie theater in the Schnieder Block sometime in November. That house might also have been the first Cameo/Ritz, but the project might also have failed. I’ve found no later references to Mr. Zorn, or to a Schneider Block.
Street View is currently fixed on the Anderson Theatre, which was built at 143 N. Main Street in 1938. The older Mullins Theatre was in the red brick building next door, at 141 N. Main.
No, wait. The Facebook page has a link to this web site, but it has only a request for donations and volunteers, and a notice of a board meeting and an open house, both held last month. Whether this will eventually become an official web site or not I don’t know.
The Corpus Christi Public Library has a few photos of the Grande Theatre.
This one from September 6, 1937, shows the R&R logo on the side wall.
This view is from October 3, 1940. Like the Melba across the street, the Grande probably ran Spanish language movies at least part of the time.
This photo was made in 1961, after the theater had closed but before the building was incorporated into the Breslau Furniture store. The Moderne front looks like it dates from the 1940s or maybe the early 1950s.
The original facade of the Grande was remarkably similar to the Melba’s front, though the Grande’s parapet was a bit plainer. It makes me wonder if the Grande was designed by the Melba’s architects, Hardy & Curran?
I’ve been unable to find a Clay Theatre in Clayton, but I did find a Clayton Theatre, operating in the 1950s at 321 E. Main Street. DocSouth’s Going to the Show lists several theaters at Clayton, but the Clay is not among them, nor is the Clayton, though two are listed as “Name Unknown”. Three are listed as being on Railroad Street, which does not appear on Google Maps. I wonder if Main Street used to be called Railroad Street?
When the Ritz Theatre opened in 1942, the Lyric was renamed the Rodeo Theatre and operated until about 1948 with a policy of western movies.
This web page (which I believe you need a Google account to see) says that the Ritz Theatre was twinned. This was probably done around 1970, when the building was remodeled, losing its sleek, Streamline Modern Vitrolite to a skin of that fake stone which was so popular during that architecturally challenged decade. The Ritz closed in 1982, a couple of years after the Quin Theaters opened in the East Sylva Shopping Center.
The page has a downloadable digital model of the Ritz which you can apparently print out, cut, and assemble. I haven’t bothered to do so as I don’t have a printer.
Here is a photo of the Ritz from September 3, 1942, with a group of Army recruits posing in front of it.
Here is the list of theaters in Winston-Salem in 1926:
AMUZU THEATRE, 116 w 4th
AUDITORIUM, n Liberty cor 5th
BROADWAY THEATRE, 429 n Liberty
Dunbar Theatre, n Depot cor e 6th
ELMONT THEATRE, 411 n Liberty
GEM THEATRE (The), Waughtown, S'side
Hippodrome Theatre, Kimberly Park
Lafayette Theatre, 108 e 4th
PILOT THEATRE, 111 w 4th
Rex Theatre, 104 e 4th
The FDY did sometimes duplicate a listing if a theater had changed names recently, so it’s still possible that the Colonial was the Broadway renamed. Photos from 1926 or earlier would be helpful to determine if the Colonial was in the same building as the Broadway or a new one.
No showtimes are listed for the Goodhand Theatre on any of the listing web sites. I guess it’s been closed.
The 1926 Winston-Salem city directory lists a Broadway Theatre at 429 N. Liberty Street. I wonder if this was the same house as the Colonial, or if it was demolished to make way for the Colonial? The Broadway must have been a fairly important theater, as it is advertised several times in the directory.
Something must have happened to the Niles Theatre in 1936. The December 18, 1937, issue of The Film Daily ran this item:
Clifford Niles and his son Charles were operating three theaters in Anamosa in 1937, according to another issue of the same publication, though it didn’t give their names. One of them must have been the Circle, but I’ve been unable to find the name of the third.ShortyP: It’s probable that the McKinley Theatre on North Main Street was a later theater of the same name, and not the one built in 1921-22. The October 9, 1937, issue of The Film Daily had this item about a new theater in Niles:
Another item said that National Theatre Supply Co. of Cleveland was equipping the new McKinley Theatre at Niles, Ohio, with Super Simplex projectors, Magnarc lamp houses, generators and a Walker screen. The November 6 issue of the same publication said that RCA sound equipment had been purchased for the McKinley Theatre. The November 23 issue listed the McKinley among theaters that had recently been opened.In light of this, I’m still unable to eliminate the possibility that the Robins Theatre was originally the first McKinley Theatre. If I could find a source indicating that the McKinley Theatre of 1937 was an older house being reopened, that would do it, but so far everything I’ve found suggests that it was a new theater. It would also help if we could find a source giving the opening date, or at least the opening year, or perhaps the name of the architect, of the Robins Theatre.
Shorty, do you have any details about the McKinley Theatre, such as how long it was in operation, how big it was, and what it looked like? It should be given its own page at Cinema Treasures.
205 W. Main Street is currently the location of Knuckleheads, a bar and restaurant with live music. (Google Street View has its numbers a block off, showing this location as being in the 100 block.)
In 1937, Clifford Niles and his son Charles operated three theaters in Anamosa, according to an item in The Film Daily of November 15. The names of the theaters were not given, but the Circle must have been one of them, along with the Niles. I’ve been unable to find the name of the third theater.
Arby is correct. The Colonial Theatre has been demolished, along with every other building on the east side of Liberty Street between 4th and 5th Streets, including the State Theatre.
This 1960 photo shows the Colonial Theatre sporting a banner under its marquee reading “4 Big Features,” so it was definitely not a first run house at that time.
The FDY’s address had to have been wrong, Ken. Not only does the third photo I linked to in my previous comment show the Hollywood Theatre in the same block as the Colonial Theatre (at 427 N. Liberty), but the address 512 N.Liberty would be under the footprint of the large government building (probably the Post Office) which is on the northwest corner of 5th and Liberty, and looks like it was built no later than the 1930s.
The Hollywood Theatre was at 411 N. Liberty, and both it and the nearby Colonial Theatre have been demolished.
This article from the Wake Forest Gazette says that M. E. Joyner opened the Collegiate Theatre in 1936. It was burned and rebuilt in 1939, and was closed 1956.
The Forest Theatre was on South White Street, not Main Street, which is where the town’s old business district is. The book Wake Forest University says that the Forest and Collegiate Theatres were across the street from each other, so the Collegiate was on White Street too. There are photos of the Collegiate’s box office and the Forest’s auditorium (Google Books preview.)
Wake Forest, by Jennifer Smart, says that the Forest Theatre was on South White Street. There’s a photo (Google Books preview.) White Street is confirmed as the theater’s location by this page at the Wake Forest Fire Department’s web site, which says that the Forest Theatre was gutted by a fire on July 1, 1966.
This page from the Wake Forest Gazette says that the town has been without a movie theater since the Forest burned. It also says that the house opened as the Castle Theatre in 1927, and was renamed Forest Theatre in 1940.
DocSouth’s Going to the Show says that the Stevenson Theatre was probably built in 1927.
There are a few period references to the Stevenson Theaters Company, a small circuit headed by S.S. Stevenson, and headquartered in the Stevenson Building. DocSouth lists two other houses in Henderson operated by the chain: the Princess and the Liberty. The chain also had houses in Burlington, Greenville, Mebane, and Raleigh.
The Stevenson Building, seen in this modern photo, is part of the Henderson Central Business Historic District, #87001249 on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Lyric Theatre as designed by John McElfatrick was Romanesque Revival in style, but sometime around 1920 the 6th Street facade was entirely replaced with a new Beaux Arts front. The side wall along Court Street remains Romanesque to this day.
Thanks, Ken. I really enjoyed researching this theater. There is a surprising amount of information about it in the two newspaper archives, even if it’s scattered about multiple issues of two different papers. The latest bit I’ve discovered proves that the New Brewster Theatre was a different theater than the original Brewster.
The New Brewster Theatre was in the Montesi Building, a three-story and basement brick structure built by Alexander Montesi on the site of a Masonic lodge that had been destroyed by fire in 1918. A theater was planned as part of the project from the beginning, as was a new lodge hall for the Masons on the third floor.
The May 13, 1921, issue of the Brewster Standard described the proposed building. It would have a 60 foot frontage on Main Street, and would extend back 180 feet. The theater would be at the back of the building, and would be 70x45 feet, with a stage 12x25 feet. It would be entered through and arcade 14x90 feet, which would be flanked by two stores.
Although the dimensions differ somewhat, I think it’s likely that the Montesi Building was the project noted in the April 20, 1921, issue of The American Architect, which said that Danbury architect and engineer F. E. Rowe was preparing plans for a 70x145 foot, three story lodge and theater building on Main Street in Brewster.
There is today one building on Main Street, on the second lot east of Park on the south side, that has a footprint about the size of the Montesi Building, but it is only one story. I wonder if it could have been the Montesi Building, and has had its two top floors removed? This is not unusual for old buildings that have upper floor spaces that have become obsolete and are a financial burden for the owners. It is occupied by a business called The Pool Hall, which seems an apt use for an old theater building.
But even if this isn’t what is left of the former theater building, it could be a post-1939 building on the same site. Neither of the buildings right on the corners of Park and Main look new enough to have been built after 1939, and neither has a big enough lot to have accommodated the Montesi Building.
I found that the New Brewster Theatre opened in January, 1923. The January 5 edition of the Brewster Standard said that Meily and Gauntlett would open the house for public inspection that evening. Full operation would have to wait for the installation of the theater’s heating system.
In August, 1923, Miley and Gauntlett sold the New Brewster Theatre to William O'Neil and Feora Marasco. The August 31 issue of the Standard carried a notice saying that O'Neil and Marasco would open the former New Brewster Theatre as the Cameo Theatre that night.
So this house operated as the New Brewster Theatre for a few months in 1923, then became the Cameo Theatre, and finally the Ritz Theatre from 1935 until closing in 1939. The only question that remains is whether the New Brewster Theatre was the same house as the Brewster Theatre which operated from at least 1917 until at least the end of 1921, or if it was a new theater at a different location.
My guess would be that either the Brewster Theatre had moved to a new location in 1922, or had been remodeled by the new owners. I found references to the New Brewster Theatre in issues of the Brewster Standard in 1922. The original Brewster Theatre dated back at least as far as 1919.
The Strand Theatre was scheduled to open in December, 1921, but the opening was delayed. I haven’t found the exact opening date, but it was definitely in operation before February 24, 1922, when it advertised in the Standard.
I was wrong about nobody opening a third theater in Brewster in the 1920s. It turns out that the Strand itself was a third theater. There are ads in the Standard from this period for both live performances and movies at the Town Hall. I think this must have been the actual Town Hall, rather than a dedicated theater, though.
One ad for the New Brewster Theatre boasted that it was the only ground-floor theater in Brewster, so the Strand and Town Hall were both upper floor theaters. Items in the Standard also confirm that the Strand was the theater in the Schneider Block that Benjamin Zorn was planning to open in 1921. References to the Schnieder Block vanished at that time, as the building came to be called the Strand Building. It was across the street from the Town Hall, but I don’t know where the Town Hall was in 1922. If we find the location of either, we find both.
The Brewster Standard was a weekly paper, and it is available from Northern New York Historical Newspapers. However, it isn’t linked from their search page, so you have to use this link to reach it. NNYHN has archives of a few dozen newspapers from seven counties available, and would be a useful resource for anybody researching theaters in the area.
I found the first Cameo mentioned in the January 4, 1933, issue of The Film Daily, and have found ads for it in issues of the Courier from March, April, and June 1933. I haven’t found any issues of the Courier from 1934, and I think they might be missing from the Old Fulton History archive. If that’s the case,then it’s quite possible that the Cameo was open in 1934.
As the Ritz, the house appears to have always been operated by the Sussman Circuit. A 1939 Boxoffice article about the new Cameo Theatre that Sussman opened that year mentioned its manager, Henry Flechsenhaar, and said that he had previously been manager of the Ritz. I’m quite sure the Ritz closed when, or before, the new Cameo opened in 1939.
The December 6, 1923, issue of Variety mentions two theaters operating in Brewster, with about 1,000 seats between them. They were the Brewster Theatre and the Strand Theatre (I’ve not seen any ads for the Strand in the Courier.) It’s possible that the Strand was the theater that was to have been opened by Benjamin Zorn in 1921, noted in my previous comment.
So far I’ve found only the one mention of the Strand in Variety, and none in the other entertainment trade publications or the Courier, but an item in the October, 1922, issue of Millinery Trade Review said that Mrs. Violet Sweet had opened a millinery shop in the Strand Building at Brewster, New York.
There is also a mention of the Strand on this web page about Brewster’s Boy Scout Troop 1, which says that the managers of the Strand Theatre had made a Memorial Day film in 1925, featuring the local scouts.
The Cameo must have been either a new theater built in the early 1920s or the Brewster Theatre renamed. As the Cameo was being advertised as early as 1923, and the Strand was still open in 1925, the Strand and the Cameo wouldn’t have been the same theater. I can’t imagine anybody opening a third theater in a town with a population of 1,800 (according to Variety) and having existing theaters able to accommodate over half of it, so if the Cameo was a new theater, then the Brewster must have been either dismantled or destroyed. If the Cameo was a new name for an existing theater, it must have been the Brewster.
The Putnam County Courier has ads for the Ritz from 1935 to 1939 (the latest I’ve found is from May 4, 1939), but prior to 1935 it has ads for a Cameo Theatre going back to at least 1923. They were the same theater. The name change took place before March, 1935. On the first of that month, a Courier article said:
Mr. Wernick’s remodeling and renaming might have taken place in late 1934 or early 1935.The Ritz building must have been at least two floors, as in the late 1920s there are ads for a Cameo Beauty Shoppe, located “Over the Cameo Theatre.” An article in the May 6, 1921, issue of the Courier mentions a Brewster Theatre, and the July 1, 1921, issue has an ad for it. This could be an even earlier aka for the Ritz, but I’ve been unable to establish that for certain. I’ve never seen more than one theater in Brewster advertised at any given time. The Brewster Theatre was advertised as early as 1919.
An undated issue of the Courier from the fall of 1921 has an item about a Benjamin Zorn who was preparing to open a new movie theater in the Schnieder Block sometime in November. That house might also have been the first Cameo/Ritz, but the project might also have failed. I’ve found no later references to Mr. Zorn, or to a Schneider Block.
The Putnam County Courier of Thursday, April 29, 1939, said that the new Cameo Theatre in Brewster would open at eight o'clock the following night.
Street View is currently fixed on the Anderson Theatre, which was built at 143 N. Main Street in 1938. The older Mullins Theatre was in the red brick building next door, at 141 N. Main.
No, wait. The Facebook page has a link to this web site, but it has only a request for donations and volunteers, and a notice of a board meeting and an open house, both held last month. Whether this will eventually become an official web site or not I don’t know.
It appears that the Opera House is now using a Facebook page as its only web site.
The Corpus Christi Public Library has a few photos of the Grande Theatre.
This one from September 6, 1937, shows the R&R logo on the side wall.
This view is from October 3, 1940. Like the Melba across the street, the Grande probably ran Spanish language movies at least part of the time.
This photo was made in 1961, after the theater had closed but before the building was incorporated into the Breslau Furniture store. The Moderne front looks like it dates from the 1940s or maybe the early 1950s.
The original facade of the Grande was remarkably similar to the Melba’s front, though the Grande’s parapet was a bit plainer. It makes me wonder if the Grande was designed by the Melba’s architects, Hardy & Curran?