This is an item from the October 14, 1936, issue of The Film Daily concerning Ferdinand Midelburg’s plans for a new theater in Logan:
“Midelburg Starts $150,000
Theater in Logan, W. Va.
“Logan, W. Va. — Ferd Midelburg, independent chain operator, is building a 1,000-seat house at a cost of $150,000. The theater will be modern in every detail and will include a 400-seat balcony. Meanor & Handloser, Charleston architects, have been engaged to plan the new project. Midelburg operates theaters in Beckley, Madison, Charleston and Logan, W. Va., and in Hazard, Ky.”
As this item was published two years before the Logan Theatre opened, I don’t know if Meanor & Handloser stayed with the project or not. The theater Midelburg owned in Beckley might have been the Beckley Theatre, built in 1935, which was definitely designed by Meanor & Handloser.
There was a house called the Vaudette in Mt. Pleasant as early as 1908, when it was mentioned in the November 14 and 28 issues of The Billboard, but as spinninglens said earlier it apparently wasn’t this house.
In 1908, the Vaudette was presenting vaudeville, but it is mentioned in several issues of The Michigan Film Review in 1917, when it was running movies.
The September 4, 1936, issue of The Film Daily had this item about the Gladwin/Booth Theatre: “Bennett & Straight, architects, are starting work on remodeling the Gladwin Theater for Julius D. London. House will be renamed the Booth, with opening about Oct. 1.”
Articles of incorporation were filed for the New Liberty Theater Company of Cincinnati on March 21, 1916. On March 27 its original capitalization of $1,000 was increased to $60,000. That would have built a good-sized neighborhood theater in the late 1910s.
The April 2, 1936, issue of The Film Daily said that the New Liberty Theatre in Cincinnati had been transferred to George A. Mease by W. Corbus.
That’s as much as I’ve been able to find about the New Liberty on the Internet.
If this house opened in 1915 as the Pantages, and became the Palomar in 1936, when was it called the Rex? I found a reference to John Hamrick being the manager of the Rex Theatre in Seattle in 1917. Could it be that the first Pantages (opened about 1905 at 2nd and Seneca) became the Rex, and not this house?
The source of the AKA’s Rex and Mayfair appears to the the PSTOS page for this theater, but this photo from April, 1965, just two months before the house was demolished, shows the Palomar vertical sign still in place.
This article from The Seatlle Times says that the Pantages became the Palomar in 1936, and doesn’t mention the AKAs Mayfair or Rex.
Maybe somebody with access to old city directories or other such sources can find the Rex and Mayfair names attached to some other theater. I suspect the first Pantages is the most likely candidate. PSTOS might have conflated the histories of the two theaters. They definitely got the opening year of this house wrong, and it apparently never had any names other than Pantages and Palomar.
The Elks Theatre opened on December 22, 1904. It was located at S. 18th Street and Broadway Avenue. In 1914, it became the Orpheum Theatre. The Orpheum operated until it was destroyed by fire on December 20, 1939. It was never rebuilt. There is now a hotel on its site.
There are a couple of photos in Parsons, by David Mattox and Mike Brotherton (Google Books preview.)
The September 15, 1917, issue of Motography said that the Dale Theatre was opened by I. B. and S. Raisman in May, 1914. It originally seated 700, and was built at a cost of $22,000.
Here is an item from the March 2, 1918, issue of the trade journal Motography:
“Architects C. C. and E. A. Weber, Citizens' Building, Cincinnati, O., have prepared plans for the construction of a $35,000 theater three stories in height for Frank Middleburg of Logan.”
Despite the misspelling of Mr. Midelburg’s name, the item must be about this theater.
Engineering News might simply have gotten the name of this house wrong, or the owners or lessees of the theater might have decided before it opened to call it the Strand instead. Any maybe it did open as the Stratford. Our page for the Stratford on 7th Street says that it opened in 1913 as the Becker Theater, but doesn’t give a date for the name change.
But the existence of both the April item about plans for a theater and the September item about construction of a theater, both noting Ketcham & McQuade as builders, one noting the Hoffman company as the designers, make it clear that a big theater was being built at this intersection in 1916. Maybe the Strand was an expansion of or a replacement for a smaller theater that had opened in 1914, or maybe Glazer just got the opening year wrong.
The April 1, 1916, issue of Motography had this item about the Bijou Dream Theatre:
“The Bijou Dream, one of Philadelphia’s first motion picture theaters, has closed after ten years of profitable existence because its location, 1205 Market street, is wanted by an expanding 5 and 10-cent store.”
Here is another 1916 reference to a theater to be built at this intersection, this from the April 1 issue of Motography:
“Theater at Germantown avenue and Venango street, Philadelphia; to Ketchem & McQuade. One story, brick, stone, concrete and terra cotta. For J. Effwager. Cost, $125,000. The Hoffman Company, architects.”
Are we sure that the Strand’s opening year was 1914?
The Majestic Theatre was listed at 215 S. Pruett Street in the 1916 Paragould City Directory. There was also a Majestic Air Dome at 120 W. Emerson Street, which was probably the site where the Capitol Theatre was later built. Block (or Black) & Whitsitt were the proprietors of both theaters. They also operated the Grand Theatre at 218 S. Pruett.
The February 24, 1915 issue of The Insurance Press reported a fire causing $5,700 damage at the Majestic Theatre in Paragould. That’s the earliest mention of the Majestic I’ve found so far.
The photo of the Orpheum matches a photo of a Waterloo house called the Plaza Theatre that was operating in 1915. It suffered a fire in 1921, according to the November 30 issue of The Insurance Press that year.
The Plaza Theatre was designed by architect Mortimer Cleveland in the Prairie style, though the eclectic interior had some Italian and Egyptian decorative elements.
The Mary Jane Theatre was operating by June 15, 1933, per the local newspaper item I cited in my 2:21 PM comment September 24. Whoever captioned the old photo in the book CSWalczak linked to must have gotten the year of that name change wrong.
An article about the Park Theater in the Amherst News-Times of June 13, 2000, can be found at this link. Advertisements for the Park Theater can be found in issues of the same newspaper during the late 1910s-early 1920s.
During the early 1930s this house was called the Colonial Theatre. A renaming contest was held in 1930, and the winner was announced in the June 19 issue of the Amherst News-Times. The same publication’s issue of March 2, 1933, said that the Colonial Theatre would be closed for one week for remodeling. I can’t find it mentioned in the paper after that date, so that was probably when the name was changed to Mary Jane Theatre.
The Empire Theatre is advertised in the November 8, 1917, issue of the Amherst Times. The Mary Jane Theatre is mentioned in the June 15, 1933, issue of the Amherst News-Times.
The address 248 Park Avenue turns out to have been the location of Amherst’s other silent era movie house, the Park Theatre, which operated from ca.1915 to ca.1923.
The Empire and the Mary Jane were the same theater according to the September-October, 2008, issue of The Grindstone, the newsletter of the Amherst Historical Society. 253 Church Street is the correct address. After it was called the Mary Jane, the house became the Amherst Theatre. Page 8 of The Grindstone has a photo from the mid-1950s>.
Today’s Amherst Cinema is almost directly across the street from the site of the Empire/Mary Jane/Amherst Theatre. The Cinema must be newer than its Cinema Treasures description currently says it is. The old theater lasted at least long enough to have its picture taken with that mid-1950s Pontiac parked nearby.
The entry for architect Raymond F. Smith in the 1970 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Almeda Theatre in Houston as one of his works, dated 1939.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to confirms Leon Seligson as architect of the Cinema East, as does his entry in the 1970 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory. Seligson also designed the Kon-Tiki Theatre in Trotwood, Ohio.
The entry for Columbus architect Leon Seligson in the 1970 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Kon-Tiki Theatre among his works for 1968. Seligson also designed the Cinema East in Whitehall, Ohio.
Here is a weblog post about the Logan Theatre.
This is an item from the October 14, 1936, issue of The Film Daily concerning Ferdinand Midelburg’s plans for a new theater in Logan:
As this item was published two years before the Logan Theatre opened, I don’t know if Meanor & Handloser stayed with the project or not. The theater Midelburg owned in Beckley might have been the Beckley Theatre, built in 1935, which was definitely designed by Meanor & Handloser.There was a house called the Vaudette in Mt. Pleasant as early as 1908, when it was mentioned in the November 14 and 28 issues of The Billboard, but as spinninglens said earlier it apparently wasn’t this house.
In 1908, the Vaudette was presenting vaudeville, but it is mentioned in several issues of The Michigan Film Review in 1917, when it was running movies.
The September 4, 1936, issue of The Film Daily had this item about the Gladwin/Booth Theatre: “Bennett & Straight, architects, are starting work on remodeling the Gladwin Theater for Julius D. London. House will be renamed the Booth, with opening about Oct. 1.”
Articles of incorporation were filed for the New Liberty Theater Company of Cincinnati on March 21, 1916. On March 27 its original capitalization of $1,000 was increased to $60,000. That would have built a good-sized neighborhood theater in the late 1910s.
The April 2, 1936, issue of The Film Daily said that the New Liberty Theatre in Cincinnati had been transferred to George A. Mease by W. Corbus.
That’s as much as I’ve been able to find about the New Liberty on the Internet.
If this house opened in 1915 as the Pantages, and became the Palomar in 1936, when was it called the Rex? I found a reference to John Hamrick being the manager of the Rex Theatre in Seattle in 1917. Could it be that the first Pantages (opened about 1905 at 2nd and Seneca) became the Rex, and not this house?
The source of the AKA’s Rex and Mayfair appears to the the PSTOS page for this theater, but this photo from April, 1965, just two months before the house was demolished, shows the Palomar vertical sign still in place.
This article from The Seatlle Times says that the Pantages became the Palomar in 1936, and doesn’t mention the AKAs Mayfair or Rex.
Maybe somebody with access to old city directories or other such sources can find the Rex and Mayfair names attached to some other theater. I suspect the first Pantages is the most likely candidate. PSTOS might have conflated the histories of the two theaters. They definitely got the opening year of this house wrong, and it apparently never had any names other than Pantages and Palomar.
The Liberty Theatre opened in early December, 1917, according to the December 8 issue of Motography that year.
The Elks Theatre opened on December 22, 1904. It was located at S. 18th Street and Broadway Avenue. In 1914, it became the Orpheum Theatre. The Orpheum operated until it was destroyed by fire on December 20, 1939. It was never rebuilt. There is now a hotel on its site.
There are a couple of photos in Parsons, by David Mattox and Mike Brotherton (Google Books preview.)
The September 15, 1917, issue of Motography said that the Dale Theatre was opened by I. B. and S. Raisman in May, 1914. It originally seated 700, and was built at a cost of $22,000.
Here is an item from the March 2, 1918, issue of the trade journal Motography:
Despite the misspelling of Mr. Midelburg’s name, the item must be about this theater.Engineering News might simply have gotten the name of this house wrong, or the owners or lessees of the theater might have decided before it opened to call it the Strand instead. Any maybe it did open as the Stratford. Our page for the Stratford on 7th Street says that it opened in 1913 as the Becker Theater, but doesn’t give a date for the name change.
But the existence of both the April item about plans for a theater and the September item about construction of a theater, both noting Ketcham & McQuade as builders, one noting the Hoffman company as the designers, make it clear that a big theater was being built at this intersection in 1916. Maybe the Strand was an expansion of or a replacement for a smaller theater that had opened in 1914, or maybe Glazer just got the opening year wrong.
The Rite Aid parking lot is on the northeast corner of 7th and Dickinson. The Stratford Theater has been demolished, in any case.
The April 1, 1916, issue of Motography had this item about the Bijou Dream Theatre:
Here is another 1916 reference to a theater to be built at this intersection, this from the April 1 issue of Motography:
Are we sure that the Strand’s opening year was 1914?The Majestic Theatre was listed at 215 S. Pruett Street in the 1916 Paragould City Directory. There was also a Majestic Air Dome at 120 W. Emerson Street, which was probably the site where the Capitol Theatre was later built. Block (or Black) & Whitsitt were the proprietors of both theaters. They also operated the Grand Theatre at 218 S. Pruett.
The February 24, 1915 issue of The Insurance Press reported a fire causing $5,700 damage at the Majestic Theatre in Paragould. That’s the earliest mention of the Majestic I’ve found so far.
The photo of the Orpheum matches a photo of a Waterloo house called the Plaza Theatre that was operating in 1915. It suffered a fire in 1921, according to the November 30 issue of The Insurance Press that year.
The Plaza Theatre was designed by architect Mortimer Cleveland in the Prairie style, though the eclectic interior had some Italian and Egyptian decorative elements.
The March, 1921, issue of Iowa Engineer said that the Strand Theatre in Waterloo had opened in January of that year.
According to the Boxoffice articles Tinseltoes linked to, the architect for the 1941 remodeling of the Ken Theatre was Roy B. Blass.
The Mary Jane Theatre was operating by June 15, 1933, per the local newspaper item I cited in my 2:21 PM comment September 24. Whoever captioned the old photo in the book CSWalczak linked to must have gotten the year of that name change wrong.
An article about the Park Theater in the Amherst News-Times of June 13, 2000, can be found at this link. Advertisements for the Park Theater can be found in issues of the same newspaper during the late 1910s-early 1920s.
During the early 1930s this house was called the Colonial Theatre. A renaming contest was held in 1930, and the winner was announced in the June 19 issue of the Amherst News-Times. The same publication’s issue of March 2, 1933, said that the Colonial Theatre would be closed for one week for remodeling. I can’t find it mentioned in the paper after that date, so that was probably when the name was changed to Mary Jane Theatre.
The Empire Theatre is advertised in the November 8, 1917, issue of the Amherst Times. The Mary Jane Theatre is mentioned in the June 15, 1933, issue of the Amherst News-Times.
The address 248 Park Avenue turns out to have been the location of Amherst’s other silent era movie house, the Park Theatre, which operated from ca.1915 to ca.1923.
The Empire and the Mary Jane were the same theater according to the September-October, 2008, issue of The Grindstone, the newsletter of the Amherst Historical Society. 253 Church Street is the correct address. After it was called the Mary Jane, the house became the Amherst Theatre. Page 8 of The Grindstone has a photo from the mid-1950s>.
Here is the newsletter in PDF format and here it is as a Google Documents page.
Today’s Amherst Cinema is almost directly across the street from the site of the Empire/Mary Jane/Amherst Theatre. The Cinema must be newer than its Cinema Treasures description currently says it is. The old theater lasted at least long enough to have its picture taken with that mid-1950s Pontiac parked nearby.
The entry for architect Raymond F. Smith in the 1970 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Almeda Theatre in Houston as one of his works, dated 1939.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to confirms Leon Seligson as architect of the Cinema East, as does his entry in the 1970 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory. Seligson also designed the Kon-Tiki Theatre in Trotwood, Ohio.
The entry for Columbus architect Leon Seligson in the 1970 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Kon-Tiki Theatre among his works for 1968. Seligson also designed the Cinema East in Whitehall, Ohio.