A Cleveland Legacy: The Architecture of Walker and Weeks, by Eric Johannesen, says that the Haltnorth theater was designed by Walker & Weeks in 1914. Frank Ray Walker was the lead designer of the firm and Harry E. Weeks handled the business affairs. The Haltnorth Theatre project consisted of a three-story retail and office block fronting on 55th Street and the 1,280-seat auditorium extending along Haltnorth Court. The theater had a stage 30 feet deep. It was built on part of the site of Haltnorth’s Gardens, a long-established beer garden popular with the neighborhood’s large German population.
Historic references indicate that by the mid-1930s the Haltnorth Theatre was catering primarily to an African-American audience. Views at the Historic Aerials web site show that the building was still standing at least as late as 1970, but was gone by 2002.
Johannesen’s book notes three other theater projects that the firm of Walker & Weeks designed, but all of them remained unbuilt, so the Haltnorth was probably the only movie theater of their design that was completed. Three non-movie theaters the firm worked on were built: Goodyear Hall, Akron, completed in 1920; Cleveland Public Auditorium (Walker in collaboration with J. Harold McDowell), completed 1922, and Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra, completed in 1931.
The original 1911 facade of the Penn Square Theatre can be seen in the photo I just uploaded. I’m not sure when the alterations were made, but the photo showing the much plainer front that replaced the original must date from 1928, the year Must We Marry?, with Pauline Garan, was released.
The 1911 article I cited did say that there were already plans to add a balcony to the house, so perhaps the front was remodeled at that time, maybe not long after the theater opened. The modernized facade was a bit taller than the original.
The following text accompanied a photo of the Penn Square Theatre in the December 23, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Penn Square Theatre, Cleveland, Ohio.
“This handsome structure is the Penn Theater,
located at Euclid Avenue and East 55th Street,
Cleveland, Ohio. It is a remarkably elaborate
temple of photodrama, both inside and out. At
present the auditorium seats 650, but plans have
already been made for an additional 350, to be
placed in a balcony which is soon to be built.
The appointments at the Penn Square Theater are
sumptuous and insure the comfort of every patron.
“Particular attention is paid at the Penn Square
to the matter of projection, and there are numerous
ingenious electrical devices, which have been built
for the better presentation of the picture upon the
screen. The operating room is a veritable jungle of electrical apparatus, and resembles an electrical laboratory which, in fact, it is. There are
several different voltages of electricity coming into
the building, all of which pass through special
apparatus for improving illumination. Needless to
say that an operator who can hold this job at the
Penn Square Theater, can make good anywhere.
“The manager is Mr. Emil C. Meyer, who ably
conducts the establishment. The Penn Square people are putting up another theater at Woodland Avenue and 38th Street, which will have a seating capacity of 1,600. This new theater will also be managed by Mr. Meyer.”
It’s possible that the Penn Square Theatre was designed by Cleveland architect George Allen Grieble. The item about terrazzo floors I cited in my previous comment refers to the Penn Square Theatre and Building, and a biographical sketch of Grieble published in the early 1920s lists a Penn Square Building as one of his projects from 1911.
I’ve been unable to confirm that these were the same project, though. The office block and the theater might have been designed separately. The Penn Square Theatre’s front is certainly far more ornate than any of the other three theaters Grieble is known to have designed around the same time (the Olympia, the Alhambra, and the Gordon Square), though a bit of its decoration does resemble part of the less elaborate decoration on the Alhambra.
The Alhambra Theatre was built in 1911, and was designed and built by George Allen Grieble.
Grieble began his career as a builder prior to studying architecture with the International Correspondence School. An advertisement for the school that appeared in magazines in the early 1920s featured a biography of Grieble, giving the highlights of his career. It mentioned two 1911 projects he designed and built: the Alhambra Theatre and the Penn Square Building. The Penn Square Building was an office block that also contained the Penn Square Theatre.
A biography of Grieble from the Cleveland Landmarks Commission lists two other Cleveland theaters he designed: the Olympia and the Gordon Square.
A page from the Cleveland Landmarks Commission about builder and architect George Allen Grieble lists the Olympia Theatre as one of his projects, dated 1913. It also lists a Gordon Square Theatre (apparently not yet listed at Cinema Treasures) as a 1911 project.
An item about the growing popularity of terrazzo flooring in Cleveland appeared in the August, 1911, issue of The Ohio Architect, Engineer and Builder. It noted that the lobby of the new Penn Square Theatre had a terrazzo floor installed by the Venetian Art Mosaic Company of Cleveland.
A 1940 photo, with an inexplicable “Grand Opening Friday October 6” displayed on the marquee (perhaps the theater had been closed for a while for renovations.)
The Emerald Theatre was in operation by 1915, according to the date the Kansas City Library gives this photo of it. The following year the operators opened an airdome across the street, according to this item from the July 22, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Emerald Airdome Opens.
“Kansas City, Mo.—The open air Emerald theater, with a seating capacity of 1,000, has opened, at Thirty-sixth street and Prospect avenue. The management believes in giving the open air as good service as is given in the ‘winter’ theater across the street, and the projection is particularly well cared for. The charge is five cents. Business up to winter standards is expected. The program, too, is kept up.”
Regarding the link in my previous comment, you have to scroll up a couple of pages in the Google Books preview to reach the section about the Little Theatre of the Movies.
John Vacha’s Showtime in Cleveland (Google Books preview) says that the Band Box Was originally the Priscilla Theatre, a vaudeville house. In 1927, after closing as the Band Box, it reopened as the Little Theatre of the Movies, operating as Cleveland’s first art house. Its opening attraction was Eisenstein’s Potemkin.
However, by the end of that year the house had dropped the movies and returned to stage productions as simply the Little Theatre. It was one of Cleveland’s more adventurous theaters, presenting premiers of works by Eugene O'Neill and Maxwell Anderson. The house’s time as a legitimate theater only lasted a bit longer than its time as a movie house, and by the end of the 1920s it had been converted into a burlesque house, taking the name Empress Theatre.
As the Band Box, this theater had been the scene of comedian Bob Hope’s earliest stage success. It was here that he refined the act he later took on the road for Gus Sun’s vaudeville circuit. As near as I’ve been able to determine, the Priscilla Theatre was opened (or perhaps taken over) by Gus Sun before 1910, and it was renamed the Band Box sometime after 1918. I’ve been unable to discover how long it operated as the Empress, or what became of it after 1929.
The January 4, 1933, issue of The Film Daily said that the Terminal Theatre in downtown Cleveland, after many years as a grind house, was returning to a first-run policy on January 7. The Terminal Theatre was then owned by E. C. Flanigon, B. C. Steele, and Samuel Rosenthal.
The first-run policy apparently didn’t work out. The April 18 issue of The Film Daily said that the Terminal Theatre had converted from first-run foreign pictures to a burlesque policy.
The Strand Theatre was mentioned in the January 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. Text below this photo says that the building, erected in 1891, was remodeled in 1915. That’s most likely when the theater was added. The building was demolished in 1972.
The Empire Theatre opened in 1900 as the first house in Cleveland built specifically for vaudeville. Within a few years it had been converted into a burlesque theater. I’ve found references to the Empire operating as a burlesque house as late as 1923, but the building was most likely demolished in 1925, the year construction began on the Ohio Bell Building (now the AT&T Huron Road Building) which now occupies the theater’s site.
I’ve been unable to discover if the Empire Theatre ever showed movies, but IMDb says that it was in one.
According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, the Lyceum Theatre was demolished in 1913. The Lyceum is listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as having 1,131 seats. So far I’ve been unable to find anything indicating that the house ever showed movies.
Driveintheatre2001: Cinema Treasures e-mail notifications used to be automatic if you commented on a page, but they are now an opt-in feature. If you want e-mail notifications of new comments on a particular theater’s page, you have to click the “Subscribe to this theater” link at the bottom of the page. After you subscribe, the page renews and the link converts to an “Unsubscribe” link, which you can later click if you no longer want the e-mail notifications from that page.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to says that the Fox Garvey Theatre was designed by Platt & Associates. Sidney S. Platt designed the Garvey Center, in which this theater was located, and several other major projects in Wichita.
In this interview published in the April 29, 1911, issue of the St. Louis Business Journal, architect Don Rataj said that the late-1980s remodeling of the Halls Ferry Cine was his first project for the Wehrenberg Theatres circuit. His firm has been designing Wehrenberg’s theaters since 1987.
Kurt Krueger became a partner in 2000 and the firm was renamed Rataj-Krueger Architects, Inc. at that time. Rataj retired at the end of 2012. Geoffrey Crowley is now a principal of the firm, but I don’t know if there are any plans to rename it or not.
The Galaxy Cine 14 was designed by Rataj-Krueger Architects, Inc. There are a few photos on their web site. Don Rataj has been designing Wehrenberg’s theaters since 1987, when he drew the plans for a remodeling and expansion of the circuit’s Halls Ferry Cine in Ferguson, Missouri.
Now that we have photographs of both of them, I can see the remarkable similarity between the Mark Twain Theatre and the slightly earlier Valley Circle Theatre in San Diego, California, also designed by Harold W. Levitt.
I don’t know how many theaters Levitt designed for National General during the company’s rapid expansion of the 1960s, but the three houses in California that I know he designed for them (the Valley Circle, the National Theatre in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, and the South Coast Plaza Theatre in Costa Mesa) have all been demolished. I hope Missouri will decide to shame California by preserving the Mark Twain Theatre, thus demonstrating a greater appreciation for the theater designs of this talented Midcentury architect than his home state has shown.
It’s probably the fact that West State Street no longer exists between Orange Street and Eureka Street that has caused Google Maps to put its pin icon on East State Street. I’ve set Street View to look down the former alignment of the mostly-obliterated thoroughfare. The Loma Theatre was probably three to four hundred feet west of the intersection.
There was a Park Theatre operating in Philadelphia in 1922, when the October 22 issue of The Film Daily ran an ad for Warner Brothers with photos of several Warner houses in the city. The Park is at the right of this page.
This house appears to have been called the Dazzleland Theatre earlier in its history, rather than later. The October 22, 1922, issue of The Film Daily has an ad for Warner Brothers featuring inset photos of Philadelphia theaters running Warner pictures, and the theater pictured at lower left on this page has the name New Dazzleland above the entrance.
The Dazzleland Theatre is also mentioned in a 1916 issue of The Moving Picture World, as well as in the 1917 Cahn guide and the 1924 Film Daily Yearbook. Most likely it opened as the Dazzleland and was renamed the Cameo with the 1925 or the 1929 remodeling.
A letter from J. L. Derfus in the November 20, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World says that “[t]he Empress runs only once in a while, or twice in a long, long while.” The town’s other two movie houses, the Grand and the Majestic, were operating seven days a week.
A Cleveland Legacy: The Architecture of Walker and Weeks, by Eric Johannesen, says that the Haltnorth theater was designed by Walker & Weeks in 1914. Frank Ray Walker was the lead designer of the firm and Harry E. Weeks handled the business affairs. The Haltnorth Theatre project consisted of a three-story retail and office block fronting on 55th Street and the 1,280-seat auditorium extending along Haltnorth Court. The theater had a stage 30 feet deep. It was built on part of the site of Haltnorth’s Gardens, a long-established beer garden popular with the neighborhood’s large German population.
Historic references indicate that by the mid-1930s the Haltnorth Theatre was catering primarily to an African-American audience. Views at the Historic Aerials web site show that the building was still standing at least as late as 1970, but was gone by 2002.
Johannesen’s book notes three other theater projects that the firm of Walker & Weeks designed, but all of them remained unbuilt, so the Haltnorth was probably the only movie theater of their design that was completed. Three non-movie theaters the firm worked on were built: Goodyear Hall, Akron, completed in 1920; Cleveland Public Auditorium (Walker in collaboration with J. Harold McDowell), completed 1922, and Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra, completed in 1931.
The original 1911 facade of the Penn Square Theatre can be seen in the photo I just uploaded. I’m not sure when the alterations were made, but the photo showing the much plainer front that replaced the original must date from 1928, the year Must We Marry?, with Pauline Garan, was released.
The 1911 article I cited did say that there were already plans to add a balcony to the house, so perhaps the front was remodeled at that time, maybe not long after the theater opened. The modernized facade was a bit taller than the original.
The following text accompanied a photo of the Penn Square Theatre in the December 23, 1911, issue of The Moving Picture World:
It’s possible that the Penn Square Theatre was designed by Cleveland architect George Allen Grieble. The item about terrazzo floors I cited in my previous comment refers to the Penn Square Theatre and Building, and a biographical sketch of Grieble published in the early 1920s lists a Penn Square Building as one of his projects from 1911.I’ve been unable to confirm that these were the same project, though. The office block and the theater might have been designed separately. The Penn Square Theatre’s front is certainly far more ornate than any of the other three theaters Grieble is known to have designed around the same time (the Olympia, the Alhambra, and the Gordon Square), though a bit of its decoration does resemble part of the less elaborate decoration on the Alhambra.
The Alhambra Theatre was built in 1911, and was designed and built by George Allen Grieble.
Grieble began his career as a builder prior to studying architecture with the International Correspondence School. An advertisement for the school that appeared in magazines in the early 1920s featured a biography of Grieble, giving the highlights of his career. It mentioned two 1911 projects he designed and built: the Alhambra Theatre and the Penn Square Building. The Penn Square Building was an office block that also contained the Penn Square Theatre.
A biography of Grieble from the Cleveland Landmarks Commission lists two other Cleveland theaters he designed: the Olympia and the Gordon Square.
A page from the Cleveland Landmarks Commission about builder and architect George Allen Grieble lists the Olympia Theatre as one of his projects, dated 1913. It also lists a Gordon Square Theatre (apparently not yet listed at Cinema Treasures) as a 1911 project.
An item about the growing popularity of terrazzo flooring in Cleveland appeared in the August, 1911, issue of The Ohio Architect, Engineer and Builder. It noted that the lobby of the new Penn Square Theatre had a terrazzo floor installed by the Venetian Art Mosaic Company of Cleveland.
Linkrot repair: The October 20, 1956, Boxoffice article about the remodeling of the Rockhill Theatre now begins at this link.
Here is some linkrot repair for the Kansas City Public Library images:
1918 photo, showing the original two-story Wirthman Building.
1937 photo, showing the five-story Wirthman Building.
A 1928 photo showing what the library presumes is the lobby of the Isis.
Another 1928 photo showing the theater by night.
A 1940 photo, with an inexplicable “Grand Opening Friday October 6” displayed on the marquee (perhaps the theater had been closed for a while for renovations.)
The Emerald Theatre was in operation by 1915, according to the date the Kansas City Library gives this photo of it. The following year the operators opened an airdome across the street, according to this item from the July 22, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
Regarding the link in my previous comment, you have to scroll up a couple of pages in the Google Books preview to reach the section about the Little Theatre of the Movies.
John Vacha’s Showtime in Cleveland (Google Books preview) says that the Band Box Was originally the Priscilla Theatre, a vaudeville house. In 1927, after closing as the Band Box, it reopened as the Little Theatre of the Movies, operating as Cleveland’s first art house. Its opening attraction was Eisenstein’s Potemkin.
However, by the end of that year the house had dropped the movies and returned to stage productions as simply the Little Theatre. It was one of Cleveland’s more adventurous theaters, presenting premiers of works by Eugene O'Neill and Maxwell Anderson. The house’s time as a legitimate theater only lasted a bit longer than its time as a movie house, and by the end of the 1920s it had been converted into a burlesque house, taking the name Empress Theatre.
As the Band Box, this theater had been the scene of comedian Bob Hope’s earliest stage success. It was here that he refined the act he later took on the road for Gus Sun’s vaudeville circuit. As near as I’ve been able to determine, the Priscilla Theatre was opened (or perhaps taken over) by Gus Sun before 1910, and it was renamed the Band Box sometime after 1918. I’ve been unable to discover how long it operated as the Empress, or what became of it after 1929.
The January 4, 1933, issue of The Film Daily said that the Terminal Theatre in downtown Cleveland, after many years as a grind house, was returning to a first-run policy on January 7. The Terminal Theatre was then owned by E. C. Flanigon, B. C. Steele, and Samuel Rosenthal.
The first-run policy apparently didn’t work out. The April 18 issue of The Film Daily said that the Terminal Theatre had converted from first-run foreign pictures to a burlesque policy.
The Strand Theatre was mentioned in the January 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. Text below this photo says that the building, erected in 1891, was remodeled in 1915. That’s most likely when the theater was added. The building was demolished in 1972.
The Empire Theatre opened in 1900 as the first house in Cleveland built specifically for vaudeville. Within a few years it had been converted into a burlesque theater. I’ve found references to the Empire operating as a burlesque house as late as 1923, but the building was most likely demolished in 1925, the year construction began on the Ohio Bell Building (now the AT&T Huron Road Building) which now occupies the theater’s site.
I’ve been unable to discover if the Empire Theatre ever showed movies, but IMDb says that it was in one.
According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, the Lyceum Theatre was demolished in 1913. The Lyceum is listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as having 1,131 seats. So far I’ve been unable to find anything indicating that the house ever showed movies.
Linkrot repair:
The June 19, 1967 Boxoffice article about the M&R drive-in is now here.
The second article, from October 30, 1967, starts here and is continued here.
Driveintheatre2001: Cinema Treasures e-mail notifications used to be automatic if you commented on a page, but they are now an opt-in feature. If you want e-mail notifications of new comments on a particular theater’s page, you have to click the “Subscribe to this theater” link at the bottom of the page. After you subscribe, the page renews and the link converts to an “Unsubscribe” link, which you can later click if you no longer want the e-mail notifications from that page.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to says that the Fox Garvey Theatre was designed by Platt & Associates. Sidney S. Platt designed the Garvey Center, in which this theater was located, and several other major projects in Wichita.
In this interview published in the April 29, 1911, issue of the St. Louis Business Journal, architect Don Rataj said that the late-1980s remodeling of the Halls Ferry Cine was his first project for the Wehrenberg Theatres circuit. His firm has been designing Wehrenberg’s theaters since 1987.
Kurt Krueger became a partner in 2000 and the firm was renamed Rataj-Krueger Architects, Inc. at that time. Rataj retired at the end of 2012. Geoffrey Crowley is now a principal of the firm, but I don’t know if there are any plans to rename it or not.
The Galaxy Cine 14 was designed by Rataj-Krueger Architects, Inc. There are a few photos on their web site. Don Rataj has been designing Wehrenberg’s theaters since 1987, when he drew the plans for a remodeling and expansion of the circuit’s Halls Ferry Cine in Ferguson, Missouri.
Now that we have photographs of both of them, I can see the remarkable similarity between the Mark Twain Theatre and the slightly earlier Valley Circle Theatre in San Diego, California, also designed by Harold W. Levitt.
I don’t know how many theaters Levitt designed for National General during the company’s rapid expansion of the 1960s, but the three houses in California that I know he designed for them (the Valley Circle, the National Theatre in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, and the South Coast Plaza Theatre in Costa Mesa) have all been demolished. I hope Missouri will decide to shame California by preserving the Mark Twain Theatre, thus demonstrating a greater appreciation for the theater designs of this talented Midcentury architect than his home state has shown.
It’s probably the fact that West State Street no longer exists between Orange Street and Eureka Street that has caused Google Maps to put its pin icon on East State Street. I’ve set Street View to look down the former alignment of the mostly-obliterated thoroughfare. The Loma Theatre was probably three to four hundred feet west of the intersection.
There was a Park Theatre operating in Philadelphia in 1922, when the October 22 issue of The Film Daily ran an ad for Warner Brothers with photos of several Warner houses in the city. The Park is at the right of this page.
This house appears to have been called the Dazzleland Theatre earlier in its history, rather than later. The October 22, 1922, issue of The Film Daily has an ad for Warner Brothers featuring inset photos of Philadelphia theaters running Warner pictures, and the theater pictured at lower left on this page has the name New Dazzleland above the entrance.
The Dazzleland Theatre is also mentioned in a 1916 issue of The Moving Picture World, as well as in the 1917 Cahn guide and the 1924 Film Daily Yearbook. Most likely it opened as the Dazzleland and was renamed the Cameo with the 1925 or the 1929 remodeling.
A letter from J. L. Derfus in the November 20, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World says that “[t]he Empress runs only once in a while, or twice in a long, long while.” The town’s other two movie houses, the Grand and the Majestic, were operating seven days a week.