An article about the State Theatre in the May 10, 2004, issue of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star said that the house opened on May 23, 1938, and closed on September 3, 1993.
(Google News scan begins here and continues here.)
By 1937, the Opera House was being operated as a movie theater by Pitts' Theatres, who also operated Pitts' Jefferson Theatre in Charles Town, which they had opened in 1932. Both the Opera House and Pitts' Jefferson Theatre appeared on a list of twenty-five houses being operated by Pitts' Theatres in 1949.
The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported on February 21, 1931, that Benjamin Pitts, operator of theaters at Fredericksburg, Front Royal, Warrenton, Culpeper, Killmarnock, and Suffolk, would build a new theater at Leesburg. The Tally-Ho Theatre later appeared on lists of houses operated by Pitts' Theatres as Pitts' Tally-Ho.
This house opened in 1932 as Pitts' Fauquier Theatre. An article in the May 21 issue of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported on a benefit performance for the Warrenton Fire Department Auxillary that had been held the previous night, and referred to Pitts' Farquier Theatre as “…a handsome new building in the chain controlled by the local man….” The article gave the seating capacity as 530, and said that “…last night every seat in the white section was taken, with some standing while a large number of the seats in the colored section were occupied.”
The house was still called Pitts' Fauquier Theatre when it was on a list of the twenty-five houses operated by the Pitts' Theatres chain in 1949.
The 1939 issue of Battlefield, the annual publication of Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, had this courtesy ad from Pitts' Theatres, listing all of the twenty houses the chain had in operation that year.
The NRHP nomination form for this theater (PDF here) attributes its design to a little-known Richmond architect named Nicholas Roney. The form provides very little information about Roney, and attributes only one other building to him as an architect, that being the Bijou Theater in Richmond, designed in 1904 with his then-partner James W. Atkinson.
An article about Benjamin Pitts on this page of Boxoffice for August 14, 1937, lists this theater as one of four hew houses then planned, underway, or recently completed for the Pitts Chain. The others were the East End Theatre in Richmond, the Victoria Theatre in Fredericksburg, and the Pitts Theatre (now the South Theatre) in Emporia.
The State Theatre differs from the other three Pitts projects in lacking a full-width, two-story front, while the other three differ significantly from one another only in their size. I suspect that the other three theaters were all designed by Henry Carl Messerschmidt, to whom we already attribute the East End Theatre. The selection of Roney to design this house is a bit of a puzzle.
Pitts Theatres was headquartered in Fredericksburg, and this house most likely became the chain’s flagship when it opened. It was one of four projects that were either underway, planned, or recently completed when a story about Benjamin Pitts appeared on this page of the August 14, 1937, issue of Boxoffice.
Photos of the Victoria and two of the other projects, the East End Theatre in Richmond and the Pitts Theatre (later renamed the South Theatre) in Emporia, show that they all had essentially the same facade design, differing only in their size (the Victoria was the largest.) The East End Theatre was designed by Richmond architect Henry Carl Messerschmidt, and it is likely that the Victoria and the house in Emporia were also his designs.
I’m not sure why this theater is currently attributed to John and Drew Eberson. It is not listed in the Wolfsonian-FIU project index of their works. The only Eberson project listed for a place called Emporia is a 1913 theater in Emporia, Pennsylvania.
I still think Henry Carl Messerschmidt is the architect most likely to have designed the Pitts-Roth/South Theatre, though so far I have no conclusive evidence that he did. In any case, I’m sure the Ebersons did not design it. The Wolfsonian’s index doesn’t even list a remodeling project by either Eberson in Emporia, Virginia.
There is one problem with my surmise about Messerschmidt designing this house, that being the NRHP nomination form for the very similar Pitts/State Theatre in Culpeper, Virginia, which attributes the design of that house to an obscure Richmond architect named Nicholas Roney, but I’ll address that question on the State Theatre page.
Also, I don’t know why we have this house listed in a place called North Emporia, which apparently doesn’t exist anywhere other than Cinema Treasures. The South Theatre must have been within three blocks of the Shannon Theatre, which we have listed correctly as being in Emporia.
The East End Theatre was one of four new houses either under construction, planned, or recently opened by Benjamin Pitts Enterprises, according to an article on this page of the August 14, 1937, issue of Boxoffice.
An article about Benjamin Pitts Enterprises' expansion program in Boxoffice of August 14, 1937, said that the new Pitts Theatre in Emporia had opened a few weeks earlier. The expansion program included new houses in Richmond (the East End Theatre), Fredericksburg (the Victoria Theatre), and Culpeper (the Pitts Theatre, now called the State Theatre), and improvements to a theater in Manassas.
I’ve been unable to find any period sources naming the architect of the South Theatre, but photos of it and the East End and Victoria show that they all had very similar fronts. The State had a different configuration, but a very similar style. It seems likely that all four were designed by the same architect. Our page for the East End Theatre attributes its design to Richmond architect Henry Carl Messerschmidt.
Pitts had taken over the Weiss Theatre in Emporia in 1931, according to an item in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star of October 20 that year, and the house was listed as the Pitts Weiss Theatre in the 1936 FDY. I’m not sure if the Pitts chain continued to operate the Pitts-Weiss Theatre after the new Pitts-Roth Theatre opened.
The August 14, 1937, issue of Boxoffice reported that the Metro Theatre in Durban had been opened on Friday. As August 14 was a Saturday, the house would have opened on the 13th. The item also said that Metro houses had recently opened in Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Lima, and that the Metro Theatre in Brisbane was slated to open on October 1. All these houses were part of an international expansion program by MGM’s theater division.
The Regent Theatre was built by local exhibitor Paul Schlossman, who later built the Michigan Theatre, now the Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts. Like the Michigan, the Regent was designed by Detroit architect C. Howard Crane.
Schlossman’s obituary in Billboard of January 28, 1950, said that he bought three theaters at Muskegon in 1913, and later built the Regent and Michigan Theatres in Muskegon and the Strand Theatre in Muskegon Heights.
This brief biography7 of Schlossman at the Frauenthal Center web site notes that he also built the Rialto and Majestic Theatres in Muskegon, and says that they were also designed by Crane.
A timeline of Michigan City history here says that the Tivoli Theatre opened in 1922. The Grand Opera House had burned in 1921. Plans for the rebuilding were announced in the May 21, 1921, issue of The American Contractor:
“Theatre (Tivoli, fire rebld.), Stores & Offices: $226,000. 3 sty. & bas. 125x60 Franklin St., bet. 5th & 6th sts., Michigan City, Ind. Archt. Henry L. Newhouse. 4620 Prairie av., Chicago. Owner The Michigan City Theatre Corp., Jacob Walherstein. pres., Starland Theatre, Michigan City. Brk. T. c. Owner will take bids soon. Finishing plans.”
Either the 1941 listing or the Sarasota Herald-Tribune of December 20, 1942, had the seating capacity of the Bonifay Theatre wrong. The newspaper reported that 500 patrons had escaped unharmed when the Bonifay Theatre was destroyed by a fire (Google News.)
The June, 1934, issue of The Architect & Engineer had this item about the remodeling of the Piedmont Theatre:
“Extensive alterations and additions are to be made to the Piedmont Theater, Oakland, from plans by A. A. Cantin, 557 Market Street, San Francisco. About $10,000 will be expended on the improvements, which will be in charge of A. J. Hopper.”
The May, 1934, issue of The Architect & Engineer had an item about a theater project in Alameda then being designed by architect F. Frederic Amandes, and it ended with this line: “Mr. Amandes has also made plans for extensive alterations to the Fox-Virginia theater in Vallejo.”
The March 23, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that the new Sierra Theatre in Susanville would soon be opened. The May, 1934, issue of The Architect & Engineer ran this brief item about two proposed theaters in Northern California:
“The T & D Enterprises will erect a two story reinforced concrete moving picture house in Susanville, and a one story reinforced concrete theater at Redding. They will cost $40,000 and $120,000 respectively. L. H. Nishkian of San
Francisco is the structural engineer.”
The theater to be built in Redding must have been the Cascade. As both theaters were being built for the same company, and the Cascade was designed by San Francisco architect J. Lloyd Conrich, it seems likely that Conrich would have designed the Sierra Theatre as well. A 2001 post by Warren E. Bechtolt on this message board says: “Research from AIA lists over 190 projects designed by Conrich, 31 of which are theatres.” It does seem very likely that the Sierra would be among them.
Engineer Leon Hagop Nishkian had a long career which included working as the structural engineer on a number of notable theaters, including the Fox, Loew’s Warfield, Orpheum (both the O'Farrell Street and Market Street locations), and Castro Theatres in San Francisco, and the Paramount in Oakland. He began his career in the office of San Francisco theater architect G. Albert Landsburgh in 1906, and in 1919 he founded an engineering firm that is still in operation today. The Nishkian Companies web site provides this biography of its founder.
The best way to get Google Maps to fetch something close to the proper location for this theater would be to give the address as Washington and Illinois Streets. Here is an item about the opening of the rebuilt theater as the Rialto from the August 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“The Rialto theater, Indianapolis, has been opened. The new house is at the intersection of three streets at the busiest downtown corner. The interior is striking. It probably has the largest number of lights in use of any theater in the state. A Seeberg piano is being installed.”
The third street refereed to in the item was, of course, Kentucky Avenue, this section of which has since been obliterated.
This theater was probably the house built in 1916 as the Holmes Theatre, as noted in the August 5 issue of The Moving Picture World that year:
“The Holmes Brothers of West Terre Haute are building The Holmes theater at 213-15 Paris avenue. The house is just two doors west of the theater being operated by the Holmes Brothers at this time.”
The Haskell Theatre is listed at 118 N. Haskell Avenue in the 1929 Film Daily Yearbook. That would place it in the block between Main and Elm Streets, which would open the possibility that it was the project mentioned in the July 6, 1921, issue of The American Architect:
“Dallas, Texas.—Theatre.
“Dr. C. M. Grigsby, Dallas, will erect a brick, 90 x 72.6 ft. motion picture theatre at Elm St. and Haskell Ave. $45,000. J. F. Woerner & Co., Sumpter Bldg., archts.”
The June 10, 1916, issue of The American Contractor had an item about a proposed movie theater in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania:
“New Bethlehem, Pa. — Theater: About $12,000. 1 sty. 60x100. Archt. H. S. Bair, Vandergrift bldg., Pittsburgh. Owner A. K. Andrews Lumber Co., New Bethlehem. Plans in progress; owner will build and buy material. Work will start shortly.”
Here is an item about the Andrews Theatre form the August 12, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“New Bethlehem to Have Theater.
“C. E. Andrews is erecting a modern 800 seat house at New Bethlehem, Pa. This is the first moving picture theater in the town, which has a population of 2,500. It will be completed in about three months.”
In June, 1936, architect Victor A. Rigaumont received a copyright on plans for alterations to the lobby of a theater at New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As the Arcadia appears to have been the only movie theater in the town, this must have been the one he worked on.
The aka should definitely be Lehigh Orpheum and not Lehigh Emporium. I found a 1915 ad for the Lehigh Orpheum and the wording, aside from the wrong name, was identical to an ad quoted in Raniere and Samuels. I’ve found a reference to a Lehigh Orpheum Company that in operation as late as 1933.
An article about the State Theatre in the May 10, 2004, issue of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star said that the house opened on May 23, 1938, and closed on September 3, 1993.
(Google News scan begins here and continues here.)
By 1937, the Opera House was being operated as a movie theater by Pitts' Theatres, who also operated Pitts' Jefferson Theatre in Charles Town, which they had opened in 1932. Both the Opera House and Pitts' Jefferson Theatre appeared on a list of twenty-five houses being operated by Pitts' Theatres in 1949.
The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported on February 21, 1931, that Benjamin Pitts, operator of theaters at Fredericksburg, Front Royal, Warrenton, Culpeper, Killmarnock, and Suffolk, would build a new theater at Leesburg. The Tally-Ho Theatre later appeared on lists of houses operated by Pitts' Theatres as Pitts' Tally-Ho.
This house opened in 1932 as Pitts' Fauquier Theatre. An article in the May 21 issue of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported on a benefit performance for the Warrenton Fire Department Auxillary that had been held the previous night, and referred to Pitts' Farquier Theatre as “…a handsome new building in the chain controlled by the local man….” The article gave the seating capacity as 530, and said that “…last night every seat in the white section was taken, with some standing while a large number of the seats in the colored section were occupied.”
The house was still called Pitts' Fauquier Theatre when it was on a list of the twenty-five houses operated by the Pitts' Theatres chain in 1949.
The 1939 issue of Battlefield, the annual publication of Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, had this courtesy ad from Pitts' Theatres, listing all of the twenty houses the chain had in operation that year.
The NRHP nomination form for this theater (PDF here) attributes its design to a little-known Richmond architect named Nicholas Roney. The form provides very little information about Roney, and attributes only one other building to him as an architect, that being the Bijou Theater in Richmond, designed in 1904 with his then-partner James W. Atkinson.
An article about Benjamin Pitts on this page of Boxoffice for August 14, 1937, lists this theater as one of four hew houses then planned, underway, or recently completed for the Pitts Chain. The others were the East End Theatre in Richmond, the Victoria Theatre in Fredericksburg, and the Pitts Theatre (now the South Theatre) in Emporia.
The State Theatre differs from the other three Pitts projects in lacking a full-width, two-story front, while the other three differ significantly from one another only in their size. I suspect that the other three theaters were all designed by Henry Carl Messerschmidt, to whom we already attribute the East End Theatre. The selection of Roney to design this house is a bit of a puzzle.
Pitts Theatres was headquartered in Fredericksburg, and this house most likely became the chain’s flagship when it opened. It was one of four projects that were either underway, planned, or recently completed when a story about Benjamin Pitts appeared on this page of the August 14, 1937, issue of Boxoffice.
Photos of the Victoria and two of the other projects, the East End Theatre in Richmond and the Pitts Theatre (later renamed the South Theatre) in Emporia, show that they all had essentially the same facade design, differing only in their size (the Victoria was the largest.) The East End Theatre was designed by Richmond architect Henry Carl Messerschmidt, and it is likely that the Victoria and the house in Emporia were also his designs.
I’m not sure why this theater is currently attributed to John and Drew Eberson. It is not listed in the Wolfsonian-FIU project index of their works. The only Eberson project listed for a place called Emporia is a 1913 theater in Emporia, Pennsylvania.
I still think Henry Carl Messerschmidt is the architect most likely to have designed the Pitts-Roth/South Theatre, though so far I have no conclusive evidence that he did. In any case, I’m sure the Ebersons did not design it. The Wolfsonian’s index doesn’t even list a remodeling project by either Eberson in Emporia, Virginia.
There is one problem with my surmise about Messerschmidt designing this house, that being the NRHP nomination form for the very similar Pitts/State Theatre in Culpeper, Virginia, which attributes the design of that house to an obscure Richmond architect named Nicholas Roney, but I’ll address that question on the State Theatre page.
Also, I don’t know why we have this house listed in a place called North Emporia, which apparently doesn’t exist anywhere other than Cinema Treasures. The South Theatre must have been within three blocks of the Shannon Theatre, which we have listed correctly as being in Emporia.
The East End Theatre was one of four new houses either under construction, planned, or recently opened by Benjamin Pitts Enterprises, according to an article on this page of the August 14, 1937, issue of Boxoffice.
An article about Benjamin Pitts Enterprises' expansion program in Boxoffice of August 14, 1937, said that the new Pitts Theatre in Emporia had opened a few weeks earlier. The expansion program included new houses in Richmond (the East End Theatre), Fredericksburg (the Victoria Theatre), and Culpeper (the Pitts Theatre, now called the State Theatre), and improvements to a theater in Manassas.
I’ve been unable to find any period sources naming the architect of the South Theatre, but photos of it and the East End and Victoria show that they all had very similar fronts. The State had a different configuration, but a very similar style. It seems likely that all four were designed by the same architect. Our page for the East End Theatre attributes its design to Richmond architect Henry Carl Messerschmidt.
Pitts had taken over the Weiss Theatre in Emporia in 1931, according to an item in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star of October 20 that year, and the house was listed as the Pitts Weiss Theatre in the 1936 FDY. I’m not sure if the Pitts chain continued to operate the Pitts-Weiss Theatre after the new Pitts-Roth Theatre opened.
The August 14, 1937, issue of Boxoffice reported that the Metro Theatre in Durban had been opened on Friday. As August 14 was a Saturday, the house would have opened on the 13th. The item also said that Metro houses had recently opened in Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Lima, and that the Metro Theatre in Brisbane was slated to open on October 1. All these houses were part of an international expansion program by MGM’s theater division.
The Regent Theatre was built by local exhibitor Paul Schlossman, who later built the Michigan Theatre, now the Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts. Like the Michigan, the Regent was designed by Detroit architect C. Howard Crane.
Schlossman’s obituary in Billboard of January 28, 1950, said that he bought three theaters at Muskegon in 1913, and later built the Regent and Michigan Theatres in Muskegon and the Strand Theatre in Muskegon Heights.
This brief biography7 of Schlossman at the Frauenthal Center web site notes that he also built the Rialto and Majestic Theatres in Muskegon, and says that they were also designed by Crane.
A timeline of Michigan City history here says that the Tivoli Theatre opened in 1922. The Grand Opera House had burned in 1921. Plans for the rebuilding were announced in the May 21, 1921, issue of The American Contractor:
Either the 1941 listing or the Sarasota Herald-Tribune of December 20, 1942, had the seating capacity of the Bonifay Theatre wrong. The newspaper reported that 500 patrons had escaped unharmed when the Bonifay Theatre was destroyed by a fire (Google News.)
The June, 1934, issue of The Architect & Engineer had this item about the remodeling of the Piedmont Theatre:
The May, 1934, issue of The Architect & Engineer had an item about a theater project in Alameda then being designed by architect F. Frederic Amandes, and it ended with this line: “Mr. Amandes has also made plans for extensive alterations to the Fox-Virginia theater in Vallejo.”
The March 23, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that the new Sierra Theatre in Susanville would soon be opened. The May, 1934, issue of The Architect & Engineer ran this brief item about two proposed theaters in Northern California:
The theater to be built in Redding must have been the Cascade. As both theaters were being built for the same company, and the Cascade was designed by San Francisco architect J. Lloyd Conrich, it seems likely that Conrich would have designed the Sierra Theatre as well. A 2001 post by Warren E. Bechtolt on this message board says: “Research from AIA lists over 190 projects designed by Conrich, 31 of which are theatres.” It does seem very likely that the Sierra would be among them.Engineer Leon Hagop Nishkian had a long career which included working as the structural engineer on a number of notable theaters, including the Fox, Loew’s Warfield, Orpheum (both the O'Farrell Street and Market Street locations), and Castro Theatres in San Francisco, and the Paramount in Oakland. He began his career in the office of San Francisco theater architect G. Albert Landsburgh in 1906, and in 1919 he founded an engineering firm that is still in operation today. The Nishkian Companies web site provides this biography of its founder.
The recent opening of the Gem Theatre at Gillett, Wisconsin, was noted in the August 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World.
I’ve found the Palace Theatre in Bethlehem advertised as early as 1922, but this photo of the auditorium is on a picture postcard mailed in 1912.
The best way to get Google Maps to fetch something close to the proper location for this theater would be to give the address as Washington and Illinois Streets. Here is an item about the opening of the rebuilt theater as the Rialto from the August 5, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The third street refereed to in the item was, of course, Kentucky Avenue, this section of which has since been obliterated.This theater was probably the house built in 1916 as the Holmes Theatre, as noted in the August 5 issue of The Moving Picture World that year:
The Haskell Theatre is listed at 118 N. Haskell Avenue in the 1929 Film Daily Yearbook. That would place it in the block between Main and Elm Streets, which would open the possibility that it was the project mentioned in the July 6, 1921, issue of The American Architect:
The June 10, 1916, issue of The American Contractor had an item about a proposed movie theater in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania:
Here is an item about the Andrews Theatre form the August 12, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:In June, 1936, architect Victor A. Rigaumont received a copyright on plans for alterations to the lobby of a theater at New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As the Arcadia appears to have been the only movie theater in the town, this must have been the one he worked on.An early photo of the Lehigh Orpheum Theatre can be seen on this web page.
The aka should definitely be Lehigh Orpheum and not Lehigh Emporium. I found a 1915 ad for the Lehigh Orpheum and the wording, aside from the wrong name, was identical to an ad quoted in Raniere and Samuels. I’ve found a reference to a Lehigh Orpheum Company that in operation as late as 1933.