I added a superfluous “e” to the end of the name Thorp in my earlier comments. The architects for the 2006 remodeling of the Fairview Theatre were Thorp Associates, a firm based in Estes Park, Colorado. Information about, and photos of, ten of the cinema projects they have designed, including this one, can be seen on this page of their web site.
This rather large web page features three photos of the Hoo Hoo Theatre. Two show it in its last days, after the marquee fell into the street, and one shows it still in operation, with the 1975 movie The Dixie Dance Kings listed on the marquee.
The correct address of the Royal Theatre is 625 Main Street.
This PDF document about downtown Arkadelphia, from Arkansas Historic Preservation, says that the rebuilt Royal Theatre was designed by Hot Springs architect Irvin B. McDaniel [sic], and that it closed as a movie theater on August 31, 1976.
The correct spelling of the architect’s name is Irven D. McDaniel. The University of Arkansas Libraries provides this page with a brief biography, but it does not mention this theater.
The Arkadelphia Arts Center was opened in this building in October, 2011. Their Facebook page says nothing about any performance space in the building, so I don’t know if it’s even equipped to show movies.
This web page from Arkansas Historic Preservation briefly mentions the Hoo Hoo Theatre, saying that it was built by a Mr. Wright in the mid-1920s, and that it was called the Wright Theatre before being renamed the Hoo-Hoo Theatre.
This 1997 article in the Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times says:
“The board will also consider the Ca. 1925 Hoo-Hoo Theater on East First Street at Gurdon for listing on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places. Originally a brick structure, the Hoo-Hoo Theater received a stucco veneer and an Art Deco facade designed by Texas architect Jack Corgan in 1940.
“The building is not eligible for the National Register because of its advanced state of deterioration and loss of historic features.”
If the building ever made it onto the Arkansas Register of Historic Places, the status failed to save it from demolition.
Mike, you could crop your JPG to leave off the icon bar by using the crop feature on the IrfanView image viewer. It’s a free program, and very easy to use (I’ve been using it for over ten years.)
Donaldsonville, by Will LeBlanc (Google Books preview), says that this house was built in 1906 by the Donaldsonville Realty Company, and was purchased by local district attorney G. A. Gondran. Numerous print sources confirm the spelling as Gondran Theatre.
Gondran sold the theater in 1912, and it was renamed the Grand Theatre, the name under which it operated for the remainder of its existence. LeBlanc says the Grand was demolished in the mid-1980s, but doesn’t say when it closed as a theater. This web page has a photo of Railroad Avenue from the mid-1950s, but the Grand is not close enough to see the name of the movie on the marquee.
The former Colonial Theatre’s building is a substantial masonry structure, so I doubt that it was moved two blocks through Kokomo’s busy streets, as our description currently says. Most likely it was just the business that was moved to a new building.
Tom Hamilton says that the theater moved in 1927, and I’ve found the Colonial Theatre mentioned in The Moving Picture World as early as 1916, so at its second location the house never had the aka Fairview Theatre. It was the Colonial from the day it opened until closing in the 1960s.
Tom Hamilton mentions the Fairview Theatre in a couple of articles and in his book, but he gives the address as 119 E. Fairview. He also says that it opened in 1909, was soon renamed the Lyric Theatre, and then later renamed the Colonial Theatre. At some point the business was moved to 119 N. Buckeye Street (the book and this article say that this was in 1927, but this article doesn’t specify the date.)
The Colonial Theatre at Kokomo is mentioned in the February 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, so if the move didn’t take place until 1927, the Fairview was last known as the Colonial. The second Colonial Theatre on N. Buckeye has its own Cinema Treasures page.
I’m not sure the building that currently sports the address 217 N. Main is the one the Grand Theatre was in. There’s nothing theater-like about the narrow front, so it might be a new structure built after the theater closed, or it might just have been remodeled beyond recognition. In either case, the Grand probably had a fairly brief life.
As near as I can figure, the Pastime/Hollywood Theatre was in one of the two buildings in this Street View. Both are across the street from the Washington Opera Theatre, which is where the Hollywood was supposed to be. The three-story building is occupied by a business called Anna’s Backstage, but I can’t find its address. The two-story building looks vacant.
The building’s current occupant, Citi Island Laundry Service, has the address 6911 Fresh Pond Road, but Google Maps sticks the pin icon for that number a block off. Using the old address 973 Fresh Pond Road actually gets you closer to the building on Google Maps.
This must be the same theater as the Washington Opera Theatre featured on this web page. The page doesn’t mention anything about it having been a movie theater, but the NRHP nomination form for the Russell Theatre does:
“In 1910, the Washington Opera Theatre opened a ‘first-class moving picture show’ sponsored by William C. Walker. The theater converted into a ‘movie house’ placing less emphasis on theatrical performances. By the late 1920s, only one live performance was featured. The Washington Opera House continued to show movies until 1963, when it was put up for sale.”
The Washington Opera Theatre was built on the site of an earlier theater that burned in 1898. It is located at 116 West Second Street. The Maysville Opera Theatre is now the home of the Maysville Players, who purchased the building in 1968. Here is their (official web site). It now seats about 450. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
A history of Maysville theaters that was included in the NRHP nomination form for the Russell Theatre says that the Hollywood Theatre opened in April, 1909, as the Pastime Theatre. It was located at 113 West Second Street, in the Knights of Pythias building, which was across the street from the Washington Opera Theatre. The Pastime Theatre had 225 seats.
In 1926 the house changed hands, and was renamed the Hollywood Theatre. It was sold again, in 1938, to the operators of the Washington Opera Theatre, who closed it in 1941.
This house had become the National Theatre by 1922, nine years after it had opened as the Big Nickel Theatre. Manager S. Garr’s promotional efforts on behalf of Universal’s feature Robinson Crusoe were noted in the July 29, 1922, issue of the studio’s house organ, Universal Weekly.
I’m pretty sure that the building on the theater’s site is the old Masonic Lodge, but its two upper floors have been lopped off. If the auditorium was on the ground floor, it must still be there in some form.
The long-missing Motion Picture Times article about the dismantling of the Crystal Theatre in 1928 can now be found at this fresh link.
The article notes that the Crystal was expanded after the construction of the larger Washington Theatre across the street. That expansion, which doubled the width of the theater, must have been the project noted in the April 9, 1913, issue of American Architect and Architecture. I think we can safely list I.A. Walker as the architect of the Crystal Theatre.
BoxRec’s bout list for boxer Mike Moran has him fighting at the Sipe Theatre in Kokomo on June 14, 1920, and at the Strand Theatre in Kokomo on September 2, 1921, so the name change took place between those dates.
The August 28, 1920, issue of Indiana Construction Reporter has a notice saying that contracts had been let for alterations and an addition to a theater in Kokomo owned by Ben Barton, Sipe Theatre Company. I’ve found quite a few references to Barton in connection with the Sipe Theatre around this time. The remodeling project, which was designed by Indianapolis architects Bass, Knowlton & Graham, must have been for this house. The renaming probably took place at the time of this remodeling.
Frank Cullen’s Vaudeville, Old & New lists this house both as Sipe’s Theatre and as B. F. Keith’s Strand Theatre during the period it was part of the Keith-Albee circuit.
Howard Regional Health System’s Downtown Kokomo Campus, which is on the site of the Victory/Indiana Theatre, uses the address 322 N. Main, so that was most likely the address of the theater as well.
According to this article by Tom Hamilton, the theater at 110 W. Mulberry Street was in operation in 1920 as the Paramount Theatre. I’ve found references to the Paramount Theatre in Kokomo as late as 1936, when the May 7 issue of The Film Daily reported that the house, then being operated by Stanley Theaters, was to be remodeled.
It must have been across the street from Lacey’s Tax Services, as the odd numbers are on the north side of Main Street (Lacey’s building has 112 on it, but if the number is properly placed the offices probably occupy former storefronts from 108 to 114.) The theater must have been on part of the parking lot that has all the school buses on it.
The Motion Picture supplement of the 1921 Cahn guide lists the Kossuth Theatre at 973 Fresh Pond Road, so the entrance must have been on that side of the building. Despite the fact that a search for that address at Google Maps goes right to the intersection of Fresh Pond and 70th Avenue, for some reason Street View gives two-digit addresses to this block.
Is there any chance that the correct address for this theater was 202 N. Broad Street? The second building north of 2nd Avenue on the east side of Broad Street looks like it might have housed a theater. It has Streamline Modern detailing and a wide entrance that has been closed with a conventional retail front. York appears to be too small to have supported two theaters.
If that building isn’t the former Sumter Theatre, then the theater has probably been demolished. There’s a modern, single-story building where 220 N. Broad probably was.
I added a superfluous “e” to the end of the name Thorp in my earlier comments. The architects for the 2006 remodeling of the Fairview Theatre were Thorp Associates, a firm based in Estes Park, Colorado. Information about, and photos of, ten of the cinema projects they have designed, including this one, can be seen on this page of their web site.
This rather large web page features three photos of the Hoo Hoo Theatre. Two show it in its last days, after the marquee fell into the street, and one shows it still in operation, with the 1975 movie The Dixie Dance Kings listed on the marquee.
The correct address of the Royal Theatre is 625 Main Street.
This PDF document about downtown Arkadelphia, from Arkansas Historic Preservation, says that the rebuilt Royal Theatre was designed by Hot Springs architect Irvin B. McDaniel [sic], and that it closed as a movie theater on August 31, 1976.
The correct spelling of the architect’s name is Irven D. McDaniel. The University of Arkansas Libraries provides this page with a brief biography, but it does not mention this theater.
The Arkadelphia Arts Center was opened in this building in October, 2011. Their Facebook page says nothing about any performance space in the building, so I don’t know if it’s even equipped to show movies.
This web page from Arkansas Historic Preservation briefly mentions the Hoo Hoo Theatre, saying that it was built by a Mr. Wright in the mid-1920s, and that it was called the Wright Theatre before being renamed the Hoo-Hoo Theatre.
This 1997 article in the Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times says:
If the building ever made it onto the Arkansas Register of Historic Places, the status failed to save it from demolition.Mike, you could crop your JPG to leave off the icon bar by using the crop feature on the IrfanView image viewer. It’s a free program, and very easy to use (I’ve been using it for over ten years.)
Donaldsonville, by Will LeBlanc (Google Books preview), says that this house was built in 1906 by the Donaldsonville Realty Company, and was purchased by local district attorney G. A. Gondran. Numerous print sources confirm the spelling as Gondran Theatre.
Gondran sold the theater in 1912, and it was renamed the Grand Theatre, the name under which it operated for the remainder of its existence. LeBlanc says the Grand was demolished in the mid-1980s, but doesn’t say when it closed as a theater. This web page has a photo of Railroad Avenue from the mid-1950s, but the Grand is not close enough to see the name of the movie on the marquee.
The former Colonial Theatre’s building is a substantial masonry structure, so I doubt that it was moved two blocks through Kokomo’s busy streets, as our description currently says. Most likely it was just the business that was moved to a new building.
Tom Hamilton says that the theater moved in 1927, and I’ve found the Colonial Theatre mentioned in The Moving Picture World as early as 1916, so at its second location the house never had the aka Fairview Theatre. It was the Colonial from the day it opened until closing in the 1960s.
Tom Hamilton mentions the Fairview Theatre in a couple of articles and in his book, but he gives the address as 119 E. Fairview. He also says that it opened in 1909, was soon renamed the Lyric Theatre, and then later renamed the Colonial Theatre. At some point the business was moved to 119 N. Buckeye Street (the book and this article say that this was in 1927, but this article doesn’t specify the date.)
The Colonial Theatre at Kokomo is mentioned in the February 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, so if the move didn’t take place until 1927, the Fairview was last known as the Colonial. The second Colonial Theatre on N. Buckeye has its own Cinema Treasures page.
I’m not sure the building that currently sports the address 217 N. Main is the one the Grand Theatre was in. There’s nothing theater-like about the narrow front, so it might be a new structure built after the theater closed, or it might just have been remodeled beyond recognition. In either case, the Grand probably had a fairly brief life.
As near as I can figure, the Pastime/Hollywood Theatre was in one of the two buildings in this Street View. Both are across the street from the Washington Opera Theatre, which is where the Hollywood was supposed to be. The three-story building is occupied by a business called Anna’s Backstage, but I can’t find its address. The two-story building looks vacant.
The building’s current occupant, Citi Island Laundry Service, has the address 6911 Fresh Pond Road, but Google Maps sticks the pin icon for that number a block off. Using the old address 973 Fresh Pond Road actually gets you closer to the building on Google Maps.
This must be the same theater as the Washington Opera Theatre featured on this web page. The page doesn’t mention anything about it having been a movie theater, but the NRHP nomination form for the Russell Theatre does:
The Washington Opera Theatre was built on the site of an earlier theater that burned in 1898. It is located at 116 West Second Street. The Maysville Opera Theatre is now the home of the Maysville Players, who purchased the building in 1968. Here is their (official web site). It now seats about 450. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.A history of Maysville theaters that was included in the NRHP nomination form for the Russell Theatre says that the Hollywood Theatre opened in April, 1909, as the Pastime Theatre. It was located at 113 West Second Street, in the Knights of Pythias building, which was across the street from the Washington Opera Theatre. The Pastime Theatre had 225 seats.
In 1926 the house changed hands, and was renamed the Hollywood Theatre. It was sold again, in 1938, to the operators of the Washington Opera Theatre, who closed it in 1941.
This house had become the National Theatre by 1922, nine years after it had opened as the Big Nickel Theatre. Manager S. Garr’s promotional efforts on behalf of Universal’s feature Robinson Crusoe were noted in the July 29, 1922, issue of the studio’s house organ, Universal Weekly.
I’m pretty sure that the building on the theater’s site is the old Masonic Lodge, but its two upper floors have been lopped off. If the auditorium was on the ground floor, it must still be there in some form.
The Temple Theatre in Perry, Florida, was mentioned in the July 22, 1922, issue of the Universal Studios house organ, Universal Weekly.
The long-missing Motion Picture Times article about the dismantling of the Crystal Theatre in 1928 can now be found at this fresh link.
The article notes that the Crystal was expanded after the construction of the larger Washington Theatre across the street. That expansion, which doubled the width of the theater, must have been the project noted in the April 9, 1913, issue of American Architect and Architecture. I think we can safely list I.A. Walker as the architect of the Crystal Theatre.
BoxRec’s bout list for boxer Mike Moran has him fighting at the Sipe Theatre in Kokomo on June 14, 1920, and at the Strand Theatre in Kokomo on September 2, 1921, so the name change took place between those dates.
The August 28, 1920, issue of Indiana Construction Reporter has a notice saying that contracts had been let for alterations and an addition to a theater in Kokomo owned by Ben Barton, Sipe Theatre Company. I’ve found quite a few references to Barton in connection with the Sipe Theatre around this time. The remodeling project, which was designed by Indianapolis architects Bass, Knowlton & Graham, must have been for this house. The renaming probably took place at the time of this remodeling.
Frank Cullen’s Vaudeville, Old & New lists this house both as Sipe’s Theatre and as B. F. Keith’s Strand Theatre during the period it was part of the Keith-Albee circuit.
Howard Regional Health System’s Downtown Kokomo Campus, which is on the site of the Victory/Indiana Theatre, uses the address 322 N. Main, so that was most likely the address of the theater as well.
According to this article by Tom Hamilton, the theater at 110 W. Mulberry Street was in operation in 1920 as the Paramount Theatre. I’ve found references to the Paramount Theatre in Kokomo as late as 1936, when the May 7 issue of The Film Daily reported that the house, then being operated by Stanley Theaters, was to be remodeled.
It must have been across the street from Lacey’s Tax Services, as the odd numbers are on the north side of Main Street (Lacey’s building has 112 on it, but if the number is properly placed the offices probably occupy former storefronts from 108 to 114.) The theater must have been on part of the parking lot that has all the school buses on it.
The Motion Picture supplement of the 1921 Cahn guide lists the Kossuth Theatre at 973 Fresh Pond Road, so the entrance must have been on that side of the building. Despite the fact that a search for that address at Google Maps goes right to the intersection of Fresh Pond and 70th Avenue, for some reason Street View gives two-digit addresses to this block.
Is there any chance that the correct address for this theater was 202 N. Broad Street? The second building north of 2nd Avenue on the east side of Broad Street looks like it might have housed a theater. It has Streamline Modern detailing and a wide entrance that has been closed with a conventional retail front. York appears to be too small to have supported two theaters.
If that building isn’t the former Sumter Theatre, then the theater has probably been demolished. There’s a modern, single-story building where 220 N. Broad probably was.
In the 1913-1914 Cahn guide, the Premier Theatre is listed as a 933-seat, ground floor house playing Loew’s vaudeville.
The Savoy had been renamed the Rialto by 1921, which is how it was listed in the city directory that year.