The remodeling and expansion of the Fairgrounds Square Cinemas in Reading for Cinema Center was designed by the Philadelphia architectural firm JKR Partners, formerly known as JKRoller Architects.
The L.A. County Assessor gives a construction year of 1902 and an effective build year of 1950 for the 10,766 sq. ft. building on this lot. Google’s camera car went up the alley alongside the building, and there is a parking lot behind it, so you can get a good view of the section that once housed the Strand Theatre’s auditorium.
It is currently part of the Marco Polo Pizza parlor, which has its main entrance on Philadelphia Street, but has another door facing the parking lot off of Comstock Avenue. The structure doesn’t look like it would have a ceiling high enough for a movie theater. Perhaps it was lowered as part of the 1950 alterations.
Although the Assessor’s office says the entire building was built in 1902, I suspect that the part with the auditorium might have been a later addition, and the Assessor’s office just lost track of the paperwork for it.
This theater had become the Schuylkill Avenue Picture House by 1913, when the July 12 issue of The Moving Picture World published a photo of its operator, Ben H. Zerr, who had lately been elected treasurer of the Pennsylvania Exhibitors' League. He was also President of the Reading chapter of the League.
Having seen Mr. Zerr’s photo, and those of other exhibitors featured in the article, I can safely say that, had I been a patron at any of their theaters, I would not have been inclined to spit tobacco juice on the floor or put my feet on a seat. An intimidating mien must have been a prerequisite for operating a movie house in those days.
The Capital 8 Theatres seat a total of 1,554, according to this page of the web site of Thorp Associates, the architectural firm that designed the project.
TivFan: Your photo could date from as early as 1913, when the October 4 issue of Moving Picture World reported that the New York Motion Picture Exhibitors' League would meet in Rochester on October 15 and 16. A.N. Wolf of the Colonial Theatre was the local contact for details. The item does not give the address of the theater, though.
Mr. Wolf might have been connected with the League for many years, though, and could have been the local contact for many later conventions. There’s a brief article about the Colonial Theatre, with a photo of Mr. Wolf and a photo of the entrance to the theater itself on this page of the October 18, 1913, issue of the same publication. If Mr. Wolf is also in your photo, maybe you’ll recognize him.
The Porterville, Indio, Calexico, and La Quinta theaters do all have a familial similarity, and I suspect that the connection is that they were probably all designed by Thorp Associates.
Thorp designed the Galaxy Porterville for Rafe Cohen’s newly-launched Galaxy Theatres chain, but prior to entering the exhibition business with this theater, Cohen had long been a developer of theaters that were operated by other chains. Metropolitan might well have been among those chains, and I believe that Resort Theatres was itself a subsidiary of Metropolitan.
The web site of Thorp Associates lists ten of its theater designs, and projects for both Galaxy and Metropolitan are among them, though none of the houses under discussion here are listed.
The Galaxy Porterville originally opened as an 8-screen house. An additional 400-seat auditorium was added the following year. The theater was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates, which has gone on to design a number of other projects for Galaxy Theatres.
The Galaxy 12 Theatre in Monroe, Washington, was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates. It is one of ten of the firm’s cinema designs that is featured on this page of their web site.
The Camino Real Cinemas was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates. It is one of ten of the firms cinema designs featured on this page of their web site.
The Galaxy 12 Theatre in Riverbank was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates. It is one of ten of their cinema designs that is featured on this page of their web site.
The Rancho Mirage 16 Cinemas was designed for Metropolitan Theatres by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates. It is one of ten of their the firm’s projects that is featured on this page of their web site.
I’m unable to find the source for my earlier claim that this theater was designed by Development Design Group, but it was apparently wrong. The MetroLux 14 was designed by Estes Park architectural firm Thorp Associates, and is among ten of their cinema projects features on this page of their web site.
It’s possible that DDG designed some other multiplex in Loveland, as they did design at least one major mixed-use project in that city.
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.
The remodeling and expansion of the Fairgrounds Square Cinemas in Reading for Cinema Center was designed by the Philadelphia architectural firm JKR Partners, formerly known as JKRoller Architects.
In 2008, architectural firm JKRoller Architects, designers of the Cinema Center at Camp Hill, changed its name to JKR Partners.
The L.A. County Assessor gives a construction year of 1902 and an effective build year of 1950 for the 10,766 sq. ft. building on this lot. Google’s camera car went up the alley alongside the building, and there is a parking lot behind it, so you can get a good view of the section that once housed the Strand Theatre’s auditorium.
It is currently part of the Marco Polo Pizza parlor, which has its main entrance on Philadelphia Street, but has another door facing the parking lot off of Comstock Avenue. The structure doesn’t look like it would have a ceiling high enough for a movie theater. Perhaps it was lowered as part of the 1950 alterations.
Although the Assessor’s office says the entire building was built in 1902, I suspect that the part with the auditorium might have been a later addition, and the Assessor’s office just lost track of the paperwork for it.
This theater had become the Schuylkill Avenue Picture House by 1913, when the July 12 issue of The Moving Picture World published a photo of its operator, Ben H. Zerr, who had lately been elected treasurer of the Pennsylvania Exhibitors' League. He was also President of the Reading chapter of the League.
Having seen Mr. Zerr’s photo, and those of other exhibitors featured in the article, I can safely say that, had I been a patron at any of their theaters, I would not have been inclined to spit tobacco juice on the floor or put my feet on a seat. An intimidating mien must have been a prerequisite for operating a movie house in those days.
The Capital 8 Theatres seat a total of 1,554, according to this page of the web site of Thorp Associates, the architectural firm that designed the project.
TivFan: Your photo could date from as early as 1913, when the October 4 issue of Moving Picture World reported that the New York Motion Picture Exhibitors' League would meet in Rochester on October 15 and 16. A.N. Wolf of the Colonial Theatre was the local contact for details. The item does not give the address of the theater, though.
Mr. Wolf might have been connected with the League for many years, though, and could have been the local contact for many later conventions. There’s a brief article about the Colonial Theatre, with a photo of Mr. Wolf and a photo of the entrance to the theater itself on this page of the October 18, 1913, issue of the same publication. If Mr. Wolf is also in your photo, maybe you’ll recognize him.
The Porterville, Indio, Calexico, and La Quinta theaters do all have a familial similarity, and I suspect that the connection is that they were probably all designed by Thorp Associates.
Thorp designed the Galaxy Porterville for Rafe Cohen’s newly-launched Galaxy Theatres chain, but prior to entering the exhibition business with this theater, Cohen had long been a developer of theaters that were operated by other chains. Metropolitan might well have been among those chains, and I believe that Resort Theatres was itself a subsidiary of Metropolitan.
The web site of Thorp Associates lists ten of its theater designs, and projects for both Galaxy and Metropolitan are among them, though none of the houses under discussion here are listed.
The Galaxy Porterville originally opened as an 8-screen house. An additional 400-seat auditorium was added the following year. The theater was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates, which has gone on to design a number of other projects for Galaxy Theatres.
The Galaxy 12 Theatre in Monroe, Washington, was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates. It is one of ten of the firm’s cinema designs that is featured on this page of their web site.
The Camino Real Cinemas was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates. It is one of ten of the firms cinema designs featured on this page of their web site.
The Galaxy 12 Theatre in Riverbank was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates. It is one of ten of their cinema designs that is featured on this page of their web site.
The Rancho Mirage 16 Cinemas was designed for Metropolitan Theatres by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates. It is one of ten of their the firm’s projects that is featured on this page of their web site.
I’m unable to find the source for my earlier claim that this theater was designed by Development Design Group, but it was apparently wrong. The MetroLux 14 was designed by Estes Park architectural firm Thorp Associates, and is among ten of their cinema projects features on this page of their web site.
It’s possible that DDG designed some other multiplex in Loveland, as they did design at least one major mixed-use project in that city.
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.