Docsouth actually has four entries listing two theaters and one airdome called the Princess in Asheville. A Princess Theatre operated at 9 NW Pack Square from 1912 to 1925; a Princess Airdome operated from about 1913 to about 1916 at 86 Patton Avenue; A Princess Theatre operated from about 1926 to an unknown date at 30 E. College Street, and then operated under the same name as an African-American theater from about 1941 to about 1947.
The addresses Docsouth uses are obsolete. At least parts of Asheville have since been renumbered. The Princess of 1926-1947 must have been in one of two nearly-matching buildings at modern address 120 E. College and 122 E. College. I suspect that it was 120 E. College. This photo of the Majestic Theatre (old address 28 E. College) shows that the building with modern address 120 E. College was once occupied by the offices of The Asheville Times, and their printing press room, if it was on the ground floor, would probably have had a high ceiling and a clear span very suitable for conversion to a theater.
Here is linkrot repair for the photo of the Princess lostmemory linked to earlier. The movie The Cheater Reformed was released in 1921, so the photo depicts the first Princess Theatre on Pack Square, although the text below the photo mistakenly gives the address as 30 E. College. The source the page cites for the address was the 1927 city directory, so that was six years after the photo was taken and a year or two after the theater had moved.
UNC’s Docsouth web site gives the old addresses for the theaters. The Majestic was on the corner of College and Market, with the old address of 28 E. College. The lot must have been renumbered 118, as the building next door to the east now has 120 on its front window, and the building next to that has 122 on the transom above its door.
Docsouth gives 30 E. College as the address of the second Princess Theatre, which it says was an African-American house operating approximately 1941-1947. It also gives 30 E. College as the address of the Paramount from about 1930-unknown. This address confusion is probably what made kencmcintyre think that the Majestic and Paramount were different theaters, but I’m sure they were the same house. Both the Majestic and the Paramount had about 1000 seats, according to Docsouth.
No seating capacity is given for the second Princess. It must have been at either 120 or 122 E. College by the modern numbering system. Old address 28 E. College has to be where the parking lot is now. Why Docsouth gives 30 E. College as the address of the Paramount I don’t know, but neither of the buildings east of the Majestic could possibly have held a theater of 1000 seats, or even the 750 the Paramount had in 1958.
I’m sure that the theater’s history given in the earlier comment by AHCJDR1912 (a grandchild of one of the theater’s architects) is accurate: located on the corner of College and Market; designed around 1912 by Carrier & Smith (Albert Heath Carrier and Richard Sharp Smith); opened as the Majestic; renamed the Paramount around 1930. The web site of the Biographical Dictionary of North Carolina Architects and Builders agrees.
The address for this theater should definitely be changed to 118 E. College Street. Google Street View is already fixed at the correct location, but could be panned left a bit (left click, hold and drag.)
You have an eagle’s eyes, Pepperama. I would never have spotted that sign. But the photo does confirm that the Gem was on what is now the site of the Board of Trade Building, not the parking lot north of it, and thus that it had to have been demolished by 1926.
Thanks for the clue about Street View, TivFan. I had no idea this was available. Everybody should check this out! You can go right down to the stage and use the zoom feature to get a close-up view of the organ console, and close-ups of all the decorations along the way.
Also, it should be noted that the entire town of Niobrara was moved to a new site farther from the Missouri River the year the photos were taken. The Niobrara Theatre was demolished along with everything else.
Niobrara was actually relocated twice. In 1882, the entire town was moved to a new site following a devastating flood. The second relocation, in 1977, was occasioned by a rising water table that flooded the town’s basements and damaged the infrastructure. The 1977 LOC photos and plans were made to document the town before it was demolished.
One of the LOC document scans says that the Koster Theatre was opened by Harry Koster in July, 1930, and that the house was renamed the Niobrara Theatre when he sold it in 1938.
Three photos of the Lakeside Theatre, from 1948, 1953, and 1956, can be seen on this post at the web site of the Lake Tahoe News. The text says that the theater “… was about midway between today’s Applebee’s Restaurant and the Park Avenue stoplight….” That would place it on Lake Tahoe Boulevard very near Park Avenue. Applebee’s is at 3987 Lake Tahoe Boulevard, so the theater must have been at about 3993 Lake Tahoe.
CinemaTour has photos of the New Lakeside Cinemas (the 1963 replacement building) and gives the address as 1043 Emerald Bay Road, which is quite some distance from the location of the original Lakeside Theatre. CinemaTour doesn’t list the original Lakeside, and we don’t yet have a page for the New Lakeside.
The second comment by Bill Kingman (near the bottom of the page) on this post about the Lakeside Theatre from the Lake Tahoe News web site says that the Stateline Theatre was on the site now occupied by the Heavenly Village Cinemas, and that before the Stateline opened the site had been part of the first location of the Tahoe Drive-In, which moved to a new site in 1955.
A Hamilton Magazinearticle about Hamilton’s theaters says that the Avalon Theatre “…was designed by the man who went on to become Odeon’s primary architect.” The article doesn’t give his name, but Odeon’s primary architect, until his untimely death in 1947, was Jay English.
There is an ad for the Dominion Theatre on this page of a brochure for the Empress Hotel published in 1916. Dominion Theatres also operated houses in Vancouver and Nanaimo.
In a 1916 lawsuit, Dominion Theatres won a judgment against an express company which had delivered a box of films to their Victoria house a day late. The law digest item on the case said that the theater company had been using the express company to ship boxes of movies from their Vancouver theater to their Victoria theater at 11:00 PM every Wednesday and Saturday night for three years, so the Dominion Theatre in Victoria must have been in operation since at least 1913.
Here is a very belated answer to the question jflundy asked more than three years ago: Putnam Theatre was one of many aka’s for a house that opened in 1885 as the Criterion Theatre, and closed with the same name in 1929. It has now been listed on this Cinema Treasures page.
An item in the January 12, 1927, issue of The Film Daily says that negotiations for the sale of the Grand Theatre in Northfield had been opened. The Grand was at that time Northfield’s only movie theater.
We currently have an obsolete address for this theater. Montreal renumbered its streets after the theater closed. The article at Silent Toronto says that the Laurier Palace was on Sainte-Catherine near rue Dézéry, and that a church was built on the theater’s site in 1954. That church is now the Eglise Evangelique Hispanique Bethel, and its modern address is 3215 Rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montreal, QC H1W 2C5. There is a plaque commemorating the fire on the front of the building.
The Film Daily published an article about the fire in its issue of January 11, 1927. It begins at this link and concludes at this link.
The postcard lostmemory linked to shows that the State Theatre’s entrance was in the narrow building between what is now the Bank of Granite, 207 S. Center Street, and the City Center Building, 211 S. Center Street. The theater’s address must have been 209 S. Center Street, not N. Center Street.
The January 11, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that Carolina Theatres, Inc., planned to open two new houses that month; an unnamed theater at Elizabeth City and the Playhouse at Statesville, which would begin operation on January 29. This web page about theaters in Statesville indicates that they missed their target date, and that the Playhouse opened on February 19, 1927.
The Playhouse opened with a musical review, George White’s Scandals. As the first movie in that series was made in 1934, this had to have been a road company of the stage production. The last movie shown at the Playhouse, The Soggy Bottom Gang, closed on March 7, 1982. Demolition took place in April, 1983.
On May 1, 1969, the Connellsville Daily Courier ran an ad for the Orpheum Theatre that said “Closed for Repairs. Watch for Opening.” but the opening apparently never came. The July 14, 1970, issue of the newspaper had an item about proposed improvements for the former site of the Orpheum Theatre. The house closed at the end of April, 1969, and must have been demolished no more than 15 months later.
Was there more than one location for the Orpheum Theatre at Connellsville, or was this house enlarged at some point? The December 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Orpheum had opened on November 30 and seated 750.
The December 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Shapiro Theatre in Mount Union was nearing completion, and was expected to open by Christmas. The house was designed to accommodate traveling stage shows as well as movies.
The December 9, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Victoria Theatre had opened in 1911, but it gave the location as 17th and Alberta Streets. It also gave the seating capacity as about 400. If the magazine is correct about the location, the Victoria might have moved to a new building sometime in the 1920s. If the magazine got the location wrong, then the theater must have been enlarged.
I’ve set Street View to the modern addresses 120-122 E. College Avenue. The second Princess Theatre was probably in the one on the left.
Docsouth actually has four entries listing two theaters and one airdome called the Princess in Asheville. A Princess Theatre operated at 9 NW Pack Square from 1912 to 1925; a Princess Airdome operated from about 1913 to about 1916 at 86 Patton Avenue; A Princess Theatre operated from about 1926 to an unknown date at 30 E. College Street, and then operated under the same name as an African-American theater from about 1941 to about 1947.
The addresses Docsouth uses are obsolete. At least parts of Asheville have since been renumbered. The Princess of 1926-1947 must have been in one of two nearly-matching buildings at modern address 120 E. College and 122 E. College. I suspect that it was 120 E. College. This photo of the Majestic Theatre (old address 28 E. College) shows that the building with modern address 120 E. College was once occupied by the offices of The Asheville Times, and their printing press room, if it was on the ground floor, would probably have had a high ceiling and a clear span very suitable for conversion to a theater.
Here is linkrot repair for the photo of the Princess lostmemory linked to earlier. The movie The Cheater Reformed was released in 1921, so the photo depicts the first Princess Theatre on Pack Square, although the text below the photo mistakenly gives the address as 30 E. College. The source the page cites for the address was the 1927 city directory, so that was six years after the photo was taken and a year or two after the theater had moved.
UNC’s Docsouth web site gives the old addresses for the theaters. The Majestic was on the corner of College and Market, with the old address of 28 E. College. The lot must have been renumbered 118, as the building next door to the east now has 120 on its front window, and the building next to that has 122 on the transom above its door.
Docsouth gives 30 E. College as the address of the second Princess Theatre, which it says was an African-American house operating approximately 1941-1947. It also gives 30 E. College as the address of the Paramount from about 1930-unknown. This address confusion is probably what made kencmcintyre think that the Majestic and Paramount were different theaters, but I’m sure they were the same house. Both the Majestic and the Paramount had about 1000 seats, according to Docsouth.
No seating capacity is given for the second Princess. It must have been at either 120 or 122 E. College by the modern numbering system. Old address 28 E. College has to be where the parking lot is now. Why Docsouth gives 30 E. College as the address of the Paramount I don’t know, but neither of the buildings east of the Majestic could possibly have held a theater of 1000 seats, or even the 750 the Paramount had in 1958.
I’m sure that the theater’s history given in the earlier comment by AHCJDR1912 (a grandchild of one of the theater’s architects) is accurate: located on the corner of College and Market; designed around 1912 by Carrier & Smith (Albert Heath Carrier and Richard Sharp Smith); opened as the Majestic; renamed the Paramount around 1930. The web site of the Biographical Dictionary of North Carolina Architects and Builders agrees.
The address for this theater should definitely be changed to 118 E. College Street. Google Street View is already fixed at the correct location, but could be panned left a bit (left click, hold and drag.)
You have an eagle’s eyes, Pepperama. I would never have spotted that sign. But the photo does confirm that the Gem was on what is now the site of the Board of Trade Building, not the parking lot north of it, and thus that it had to have been demolished by 1926.
Thanks for the clue about Street View, TivFan. I had no idea this was available. Everybody should check this out! You can go right down to the stage and use the zoom feature to get a close-up view of the organ console, and close-ups of all the decorations along the way.
Also, it should be noted that the entire town of Niobrara was moved to a new site farther from the Missouri River the year the photos were taken. The Niobrara Theatre was demolished along with everything else.
Niobrara was actually relocated twice. In 1882, the entire town was moved to a new site following a devastating flood. The second relocation, in 1977, was occasioned by a rising water table that flooded the town’s basements and damaged the infrastructure. The 1977 LOC photos and plans were made to document the town before it was demolished.
One of the LOC document scans says that the Koster Theatre was opened by Harry Koster in July, 1930, and that the house was renamed the Niobrara Theatre when he sold it in 1938.
Three photos of the Lakeside Theatre, from 1948, 1953, and 1956, can be seen on this post at the web site of the Lake Tahoe News. The text says that the theater “… was about midway between today’s Applebee’s Restaurant and the Park Avenue stoplight….” That would place it on Lake Tahoe Boulevard very near Park Avenue. Applebee’s is at 3987 Lake Tahoe Boulevard, so the theater must have been at about 3993 Lake Tahoe.
CinemaTour has photos of the New Lakeside Cinemas (the 1963 replacement building) and gives the address as 1043 Emerald Bay Road, which is quite some distance from the location of the original Lakeside Theatre. CinemaTour doesn’t list the original Lakeside, and we don’t yet have a page for the New Lakeside.
The second comment by Bill Kingman (near the bottom of the page) on this post about the Lakeside Theatre from the Lake Tahoe News web site says that the Stateline Theatre was on the site now occupied by the Heavenly Village Cinemas, and that before the Stateline opened the site had been part of the first location of the Tahoe Drive-In, which moved to a new site in 1955.
A Hamilton Magazine article about Hamilton’s theaters says that the Avalon Theatre “…was designed by the man who went on to become Odeon’s primary architect.” The article doesn’t give his name, but Odeon’s primary architect, until his untimely death in 1947, was Jay English.
The Kenilworth Theatre was listed at the above address in the 1925 Hamilton city directory.
Linkrot repair: The two-page, 1955 Boxoffice article about the remodeling of the Granada into the Downtown Theatre now begins at this link.
There is an ad for the Dominion Theatre on this page of a brochure for the Empress Hotel published in 1916. Dominion Theatres also operated houses in Vancouver and Nanaimo.
In a 1916 lawsuit, Dominion Theatres won a judgment against an express company which had delivered a box of films to their Victoria house a day late. The law digest item on the case said that the theater company had been using the express company to ship boxes of movies from their Vancouver theater to their Victoria theater at 11:00 PM every Wednesday and Saturday night for three years, so the Dominion Theatre in Victoria must have been in operation since at least 1913.
Here is a very belated answer to the question jflundy asked more than three years ago: Putnam Theatre was one of many aka’s for a house that opened in 1885 as the Criterion Theatre, and closed with the same name in 1929. It has now been listed on this Cinema Treasures page.
The Cameo Theatre in Jersey City was set to open the following night, according to an announcement in the January 16, 1927, issue of The Film Daily.
An item in the January 12, 1927, issue of The Film Daily says that negotiations for the sale of the Grand Theatre in Northfield had been opened. The Grand was at that time Northfield’s only movie theater.
We currently have an obsolete address for this theater. Montreal renumbered its streets after the theater closed. The article at Silent Toronto says that the Laurier Palace was on Sainte-Catherine near rue Dézéry, and that a church was built on the theater’s site in 1954. That church is now the Eglise Evangelique Hispanique Bethel, and its modern address is 3215 Rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montreal, QC H1W 2C5. There is a plaque commemorating the fire on the front of the building.
The Film Daily published an article about the fire in its issue of January 11, 1927. It begins at this link and concludes at this link.
The postcard lostmemory linked to shows that the State Theatre’s entrance was in the narrow building between what is now the Bank of Granite, 207 S. Center Street, and the City Center Building, 211 S. Center Street. The theater’s address must have been 209 S. Center Street, not N. Center Street.
The January 11, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that Carolina Theatres, Inc., planned to open two new houses that month; an unnamed theater at Elizabeth City and the Playhouse at Statesville, which would begin operation on January 29. This web page about theaters in Statesville indicates that they missed their target date, and that the Playhouse opened on February 19, 1927.
The Playhouse opened with a musical review, George White’s Scandals. As the first movie in that series was made in 1934, this had to have been a road company of the stage production. The last movie shown at the Playhouse, The Soggy Bottom Gang, closed on March 7, 1982. Demolition took place in April, 1983.
The January 11, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that Universal had opened the Strand at Jonesboro, a $110,000 house seating 1,262.
Here is a fresh link to the 1948 Boxoffice item with a photo of the Paramount’s remodeled lobby.
On May 1, 1969, the Connellsville Daily Courier ran an ad for the Orpheum Theatre that said “Closed for Repairs. Watch for Opening.” but the opening apparently never came. The July 14, 1970, issue of the newspaper had an item about proposed improvements for the former site of the Orpheum Theatre. The house closed at the end of April, 1969, and must have been demolished no more than 15 months later.
Was there more than one location for the Orpheum Theatre at Connellsville, or was this house enlarged at some point? The December 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Orpheum had opened on November 30 and seated 750.
The December 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Shapiro Theatre in Mount Union was nearing completion, and was expected to open by Christmas. The house was designed to accommodate traveling stage shows as well as movies.
The December 9, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Victoria Theatre had opened in 1911, but it gave the location as 17th and Alberta Streets. It also gave the seating capacity as about 400. If the magazine is correct about the location, the Victoria might have moved to a new building sometime in the 1920s. If the magazine got the location wrong, then the theater must have been enlarged.
Here is a photo of the Highland Temple mentioned by ChrisAckerman.