The Fillmore Street location of the Chutes Amusement Park didn’t fade into history so much as vanish overnight, as most of it was destroyed in a memorable blaze on the morning of May 29, 1911, a little over two years after it had opened. The park had sported both a movie theater and a vaudeville house, and I’m not sure which of the two it was that survived to become the Lyric. The July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had a paragraph about the house in an article about San Francisco’s movie theaters:
“The Lyric theater on Fillmore street, between Turk and Eddy, was erected several years ago, but only recently was devoted to moving pictures. This house was formerly a part of the Chutes and after that amusement enterprise went out of business was dark for a long time. It was recently turned around at a heavy expense and an entrance installed from Fillmore. It has a seating capacity of 1,100 and is conducted by Ackerman & Harris, under the management of Charles Cole.”
A few years after the reopening, the Lyric was again remodeled. The February 14, 1920, issue of Domestic Engineering ran this item:
“Architects Reid Bros, are planning alterations on a motion picture theater at 1226 Fillmore Street. The improvements will cost $20,000 and will include new plumbing and ventilating systems.”
Construction on the building that became the Lyric Theatre began in 1874, and was completed in 1876. The official name of the building was Centennial Hall, but the theater originally operated under the name Paul’s Opera House. Thomas Paul was the builder and original proprietor of the theater, and the building was designed by his son, John T. H. Paul. The younger Paul was born in 1856, so if he had taken any formal training as an architect by 1874 it must have been very limited.
A description of the building published in 1882 said that the auditorium of the opera house was on the third floor, and that it seated 500. The original building was only 100 feet deep, and modern satellite view shows a building about 160 feet deep which appears to have an auditorium at the rear, with a stage house, so an entirely new auditorium must have been added at some point. The Moving Picture World item about the 1917 fire I cited in my earlier comment refers to the “…new Lyric Theatre building….” so perhaps the new auditorium had been added before that fire. I have no idea what was done with the original auditorium on the third floor.
Maryland’s Motion Picture Theaters, by Robert K. Headley, (Google Books preview) says that the Lyric suffered another major fire in 1921 and was subsequently rebuilt. If the new auditorium had not been added before or after the 1917 fire, then it was probably done after the 1921 fire. According to The Fire Insurance Press of November 30, 1921, the fire the previous May had done $30,000 worth of damage to a building with an estimated value of $45,000:
“The Lyric Theater Building, Frostburg, Md., burned for five hours in the morning of May 17, 1921, for several of which the firemen could not locate the fire, on account of the faulty construction of stone walls under the building. The eight persons in the building escaped without injury, but there was $30,000 damage out of a possible $45,000.”
Mariah95: The Lyric Theatre building did not yet exist in 1874. According to Firefighting in Allegany County, by Warren W. Jenkins, Frostburg did suffer two major fires in its business district in 1874, but the book gives no details about them. Possibly an older theater was destroyed by one of them and the opera house was built to replace it.
This web page has many items from the December 9, 2002, issue of The Florida Times-Union, one of which concerns a proposed project on the site of the UA Regency. The theater building was 33,405 square feet on a 6.3 acre parcel, and the address the item gives is 9333 Atlantic Boulevard. The UA Regency was replaced by a Circuit City store, now also closed, and other retail shops, all in new construction.
I have doubts that this UA house was called the Regency I & II. Regency I & II is what Boxoffice called the ABC-Florida State Theatres house at the northeast corner of Regency Square Mall, which is listed at Cinema Treasures as the Regency Twin. It was opened in 1968 or 1969 as a single-screen theater, and closed in 1989 or 1990.
I think the UA Regency might have started out as an 8-screen theater that was later expanded to 12 screens. Its actual name might have been UA Regency Plaza, which is on a list of theaters from a company called Universal Cinema Services. Another 8-screen Jacksonville house on the list was called Movies at Regency Square. The name Regency was used way too often for theaters in Jacksonville. It makes for a lot of confusion.
The Arlington Expressway address we currently list apparently belongs to the shopping center as a whole. I think that a better address to list for the theater would be that of the Piccadilly Cafeteria that replaced it, which was 200 Monument Road. The cafeteria was built on the theater’s parking lot, and the theater’s site became the parking lot for the cafeteria, but Google Maps won’t know the difference. At least listing it at 200 Monument Road should get the pin icon out of that intersection it’s in now.
On this web page there is a transcription of an interview with Chuck Hankinson, a native of Jacksonville. Mr. Hankinson’s answer to question #9 lists many Jacksonville theaters he recalls, and he specifically says that he remembers the Regency both before and after it became a twin, so this house did indeed open as a single-screen operation.
This 2011 article about the closing of the Picadilly Cafeteria that replaced the Regency Twin says that the cafeteria had opened on September 11, 1990. I would assume that the theater had closed early that same year or late in the previous year. The article said that the theater had been in operation for 21 years at the time it closed, which would give an opening year of 1969, or perhaps 1968.
This would make sense, as ABC-Florida State Theatres built many new houses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But most of those were single-screen theaters, many of which were twinned a few years later. In the 1970 and 1980 views at Historic Aerials, the auditoriums section of the theater building looked like a bulged-out oval. I’m wondering if this originally could have been one of the wide-screen UltraVision theaters that were being built during that period? I believe they were in more or less oval buildings, too.
This web page at CinemaData has some very limited information about the Colonial Theatre in a description of an undated postcard. The Colonial Theatre was next door to a theater called the Grand (“The Grand on left, one-story, brick with arched doorway, advertising clearly visible. On right, three-story commercial block with vertical sign ‘Colonial’ with two one-sheets out front.”)
A 1911 postcard for sale on e-Bay (here, while it lasts) shows a building that is still standing now, though somewhat altered, on the south side of West Street between Merchant’s Row (aka Grove Street) and Church Street. The problem is that this building has an even-numbered address. One side of it is currently occupied by a Japanese restaurant called Tokyo House, at 106 West Street #2.
The three-story building next to the Grand, where the Colonial was in the vintage postcard described on the CinemaData page, doesn’t match the description of the building Dave Bonan saw, nor would it have the address 131 West Street. As of 1911 there was no evidence of a theater in it. Today, it is occupied by an outfit called Pyramid Holistic Wellness Center, 116 West Street.
Were there perhaps two different houses called the Colonial Theatre in Rutland? If so, then the one at 131 West Street is missing from the CinemaData list for Rutland, which can be seen on this web page (I had to scroll across on this one- I don’t know if it’s a browser issue or not.) It’s also possible that Dave Bonan misidentified the Clement Building (northeast corner of West Street and Merchant’s Row) as the site of a former theater. It doesn’t look like one to me.
An ad listing theaters showing The March of Time that appeared in the January 10, 1938, issue of Life included the Rex Theatre in Prichard.
If Google Maps is correct, Prichard no longer has any two-digit addresses. The modern address of the Rex Theatre’s site would probably have three digits: maybe the new number would have been 119, but maybe not. None of the ruins or vacant lots in the 100 block of East Man Street as shown in the November, 2007, Google Street View give any indication of having once housed a theater.
Today, the drop-down menu in the search box features ten places called Hamilton, but this Hamilton is still missing. What has JavaScript got against Scotland?
A 1958 aerial view of this location can be fetched at Historic Aerials. The photo is a bit blurry, but you can make out a long, shed-like structure that stood behind the dry cleaning shop that is currently at 619 Chelsea.
It looked to be about 40 feet wide and about 120 feet long, and I think that it must have been the auditorium of the theater. The store building in front was much too small to have held a theater even of only 485 seats, let alone the 800 or so in later FDY’s. The dry cleaning shop or the adjacent storefront at 617,or both, could have held the entrance to the theater.
In modern satellite view you can see an indentation at the south end of the parking lot behind the shops, and in the 1958 view the old structure appears to extend into that space. I think maybe the building could have been expanded at the rear a time or two, which would account for changes in capacity.
Four places called Hamilton appear in the drop-down menu in our search box, but for some reason this Hamilton is not among them. I only found this page for the Gaumont Hamilton from its link on the page for the architect. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t gotten any comments in more than four years.
Becky: The screen in the main auditorium of the Edwards Big Newport is 71 feet wide, at maximum. The screen has masking which can be used to block light from part of it when the theater shows movies that don’t have the right aspect ratio to fill it completely.
I don’t think the auditorium building was actually demolished. It appears to have been gutted and filled with floors, and windows were punched in the side walls. If you move Street View three clicks south, you can see the side of the building across the parking lot. Even the stage house is still standing.
The satellite view of the Joy Cinema shows that the building tapers toward the screen end of the auditorium, as does the auditorium of the Tigard Theatre as seen in the Boxoffice photo Tinseltoes linked to. They probably are the same theater. The Tigard Theatre was designed by Portland architect James W. DeYoung.
The Heathman Hotel, which contains the entrance to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, was designed by Portland architects James W. DeYoung and Knud A. Roald. Knud & Roald also acted as supervising architects for the construction of the Paramount Theatre. 23 photos of the interior of the Paramountare in the DeYoung and Roald Architectural Plans and Photographs collection at the University of Oregon Library at Eugene, Oregon. The collection is open to the public, but can be viewed only in the Special Collections & University Archives Reading Room.
Another photo has solved the mystery of the two different old addresses for the Bijou. The Bijou occupied two different locations. This photo shows what must have been the first Bijou, of 1904. It is on the east side of Main Street several doors north of Washington. The building with the white awning near the corner of Washington, at right, was the Lyric Theatre, at old address 132 N. Main Street. That means that old address 140 N.Main probably was the correct address of the Bijou of 1904-1906.
The second location of the Bijou, which became the Majestic, was in one of the buildings farther up the block on the left side of Main Street. I think that the library’s interior photo must show the second Bijou. The first Bijou looks like it was a storefront nickelodeon conversion. Its replacement most likely opened in 1906, which the interior photo’s caption gives as the Bijou’s closing date, and operated as the Bijou until becoming the Majestic in 1912.
The photo from the Time Theatre’s web site (linked in my first comment on this thread) shows that the Bijou was contemporary with the Superba, which operated under that name from 1908 until 1911 or 1912.
The address 132 N. Main Street is obsolete. In 1957 Oshkosh renumbered the lots on Main Street. The old 100 block became the modern 400 block.
This historical photo shows that the Lyric Theatre was almost at the corner of Washington Street. The Lyric and its neighbors were demolished long ago when the site was cleared for the First National Bank building, which appears to have been erected in the 1920s. The modern address of the Lyric’s lot would probably be either 402 or 404 N. Main Street.
Caption information for this interior photo of the Bijou says that it opened on January 18, 1904, closed in 1906, and reopened as the Majestic Theatre in 1912. But then it also gives the address of the Bijou as 140 N. Main Street, so I don’t know how accurate the other information is.
Oshkosh did renumber many of its lots in 1907, as well as during the more general overhaul of 1957, so it’s entirely possible that, as of 1904, the Bijou’s lot was numbered 140 N. Main. The 1907 renumbering included changing the odd and even-numbered sides of many streets, which prior to that had not followed a standardized pattern. It’s possible that no other American city ever endured so irregular a street numbering system as Oshkosh did, or for so long a time.
165-167 was the historic address of the Bijou/Majestic Theatre. Oshkosh renumbered the lots on Main Street in 1957, and the modern address of the building that housed the theater is 439 N. Main Street.
The first photo in the Historical Photos section of the web site of the Time Community Theatre shows the Time’s predecessor, the Superba Theatre, with the Bijou in the foreground. The building has lost its ornate cornice and parapet, but is still recognizable.
We need to find a modern address for the Plaza Theatre. Oshkosh renumbered the lots on Main Street in 1957, and the former 200 block became the modern 500 block. The address of The Magnet, a billiard parlor across the street from the former entrance of The Plaza, is 519 N. Main. The address of Mainview Apartments, which appears the be the former entrance to the Raulf Hotel, is 530 N. Main. I would guess that the theater entrance, which was at the south end of the hotel’s frontage, was approximately at modern address 518 N. Main.
Street View needs to be reset, too. It currently shows the Time Theatre, in the modern 400 block of Main Street.
The Time Theatre was in part-time operation earlier this year, with events on Fridays and Saturdays, including some movies. The last event was held on October 20, and the Calender of Events on the theater’s web site currently shows only board meetings scheduled, but perhaps there will be more events next year.
The web site’s photo gallery has an album of historical photos, including several showing the Rex Theatre. There is also an album showing the renovation work, and three albums with photos from live events that have since been presented in the theater.
Bruce is correct. Oshkosh renumbered the lots on many of its streets, including Main Street, in 1957. 157 N. Main was the Oshkosh Theatre’s old address. 427 N. Main is the modern address.
Volume 3 of a 1994 publication called History of the City of Oshkosh, by Clarence Jungwirth, has a chapter about the theaters in Oshkosh, and it says that the Oshkosh Theatre was on the site of an earlier house called the Orpheum. The text is a bit ambiguous, so I don’t know if the Oshkosh was entirely new construction or was an extensive remodeling of the Orpheum. There are photos of both theaters, the Orpheum on page 33 and the Oshkosh on page 37. A digital scan of the chapter can be seen online at this link, courtesy of the Oshkosh Public Library.
The Fillmore Street location of the Chutes Amusement Park didn’t fade into history so much as vanish overnight, as most of it was destroyed in a memorable blaze on the morning of May 29, 1911, a little over two years after it had opened. The park had sported both a movie theater and a vaudeville house, and I’m not sure which of the two it was that survived to become the Lyric. The July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had a paragraph about the house in an article about San Francisco’s movie theaters:
A few years after the reopening, the Lyric was again remodeled. The February 14, 1920, issue of Domestic Engineering ran this item:Construction on the building that became the Lyric Theatre began in 1874, and was completed in 1876. The official name of the building was Centennial Hall, but the theater originally operated under the name Paul’s Opera House. Thomas Paul was the builder and original proprietor of the theater, and the building was designed by his son, John T. H. Paul. The younger Paul was born in 1856, so if he had taken any formal training as an architect by 1874 it must have been very limited.
A description of the building published in 1882 said that the auditorium of the opera house was on the third floor, and that it seated 500. The original building was only 100 feet deep, and modern satellite view shows a building about 160 feet deep which appears to have an auditorium at the rear, with a stage house, so an entirely new auditorium must have been added at some point. The Moving Picture World item about the 1917 fire I cited in my earlier comment refers to the “…new Lyric Theatre building….” so perhaps the new auditorium had been added before that fire. I have no idea what was done with the original auditorium on the third floor.
Maryland’s Motion Picture Theaters, by Robert K. Headley, (Google Books preview) says that the Lyric suffered another major fire in 1921 and was subsequently rebuilt. If the new auditorium had not been added before or after the 1917 fire, then it was probably done after the 1921 fire. According to The Fire Insurance Press of November 30, 1921, the fire the previous May had done $30,000 worth of damage to a building with an estimated value of $45,000:
Mariah95: The Lyric Theatre building did not yet exist in 1874. According to Firefighting in Allegany County, by Warren W. Jenkins, Frostburg did suffer two major fires in its business district in 1874, but the book gives no details about them. Possibly an older theater was destroyed by one of them and the opera house was built to replace it.
This web page has many items from the December 9, 2002, issue of The Florida Times-Union, one of which concerns a proposed project on the site of the UA Regency. The theater building was 33,405 square feet on a 6.3 acre parcel, and the address the item gives is 9333 Atlantic Boulevard. The UA Regency was replaced by a Circuit City store, now also closed, and other retail shops, all in new construction.
I have doubts that this UA house was called the Regency I & II. Regency I & II is what Boxoffice called the ABC-Florida State Theatres house at the northeast corner of Regency Square Mall, which is listed at Cinema Treasures as the Regency Twin. It was opened in 1968 or 1969 as a single-screen theater, and closed in 1989 or 1990.
I think the UA Regency might have started out as an 8-screen theater that was later expanded to 12 screens. Its actual name might have been UA Regency Plaza, which is on a list of theaters from a company called Universal Cinema Services. Another 8-screen Jacksonville house on the list was called Movies at Regency Square. The name Regency was used way too often for theaters in Jacksonville. It makes for a lot of confusion.
The Arlington Expressway address we currently list apparently belongs to the shopping center as a whole. I think that a better address to list for the theater would be that of the Piccadilly Cafeteria that replaced it, which was 200 Monument Road. The cafeteria was built on the theater’s parking lot, and the theater’s site became the parking lot for the cafeteria, but Google Maps won’t know the difference. At least listing it at 200 Monument Road should get the pin icon out of that intersection it’s in now.
On this web page there is a transcription of an interview with Chuck Hankinson, a native of Jacksonville. Mr. Hankinson’s answer to question #9 lists many Jacksonville theaters he recalls, and he specifically says that he remembers the Regency both before and after it became a twin, so this house did indeed open as a single-screen operation.
This 2011 article about the closing of the Picadilly Cafeteria that replaced the Regency Twin says that the cafeteria had opened on September 11, 1990. I would assume that the theater had closed early that same year or late in the previous year. The article said that the theater had been in operation for 21 years at the time it closed, which would give an opening year of 1969, or perhaps 1968.
This would make sense, as ABC-Florida State Theatres built many new houses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But most of those were single-screen theaters, many of which were twinned a few years later. In the 1970 and 1980 views at Historic Aerials, the auditoriums section of the theater building looked like a bulged-out oval. I’m wondering if this originally could have been one of the wide-screen UltraVision theaters that were being built during that period? I believe they were in more or less oval buildings, too.
Here’s a puzzle for someone to work on:
This web page at CinemaData has some very limited information about the Colonial Theatre in a description of an undated postcard. The Colonial Theatre was next door to a theater called the Grand (“The Grand on left, one-story, brick with arched doorway, advertising clearly visible. On right, three-story commercial block with vertical sign ‘Colonial’ with two one-sheets out front.”)
A 1911 postcard for sale on e-Bay (here, while it lasts) shows a building that is still standing now, though somewhat altered, on the south side of West Street between Merchant’s Row (aka Grove Street) and Church Street. The problem is that this building has an even-numbered address. One side of it is currently occupied by a Japanese restaurant called Tokyo House, at 106 West Street #2.
The three-story building next to the Grand, where the Colonial was in the vintage postcard described on the CinemaData page, doesn’t match the description of the building Dave Bonan saw, nor would it have the address 131 West Street. As of 1911 there was no evidence of a theater in it. Today, it is occupied by an outfit called Pyramid Holistic Wellness Center, 116 West Street.
Were there perhaps two different houses called the Colonial Theatre in Rutland? If so, then the one at 131 West Street is missing from the CinemaData list for Rutland, which can be seen on this web page (I had to scroll across on this one- I don’t know if it’s a browser issue or not.) It’s also possible that Dave Bonan misidentified the Clement Building (northeast corner of West Street and Merchant’s Row) as the site of a former theater. It doesn’t look like one to me.
An ad listing theaters showing The March of Time that appeared in the January 10, 1938, issue of Life included the Rex Theatre in Prichard.
If Google Maps is correct, Prichard no longer has any two-digit addresses. The modern address of the Rex Theatre’s site would probably have three digits: maybe the new number would have been 119, but maybe not. None of the ruins or vacant lots in the 100 block of East Man Street as shown in the November, 2007, Google Street View give any indication of having once housed a theater.
Today, the drop-down menu in the search box features ten places called Hamilton, but this Hamilton is still missing. What has JavaScript got against Scotland?
A 1958 aerial view of this location can be fetched at Historic Aerials. The photo is a bit blurry, but you can make out a long, shed-like structure that stood behind the dry cleaning shop that is currently at 619 Chelsea.
It looked to be about 40 feet wide and about 120 feet long, and I think that it must have been the auditorium of the theater. The store building in front was much too small to have held a theater even of only 485 seats, let alone the 800 or so in later FDY’s. The dry cleaning shop or the adjacent storefront at 617,or both, could have held the entrance to the theater.
In modern satellite view you can see an indentation at the south end of the parking lot behind the shops, and in the 1958 view the old structure appears to extend into that space. I think maybe the building could have been expanded at the rear a time or two, which would account for changes in capacity.
This web forum page features several more exterior and interior photos of the Vogue Bingo Club from around the time of its demolition.
Four places called Hamilton appear in the drop-down menu in our search box, but for some reason this Hamilton is not among them. I only found this page for the Gaumont Hamilton from its link on the page for the architect. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t gotten any comments in more than four years.
Becky: The screen in the main auditorium of the Edwards Big Newport is 71 feet wide, at maximum. The screen has masking which can be used to block light from part of it when the theater shows movies that don’t have the right aspect ratio to fill it completely.
I don’t think the auditorium building was actually demolished. It appears to have been gutted and filled with floors, and windows were punched in the side walls. If you move Street View three clicks south, you can see the side of the building across the parking lot. Even the stage house is still standing.
The satellite view of the Joy Cinema shows that the building tapers toward the screen end of the auditorium, as does the auditorium of the Tigard Theatre as seen in the Boxoffice photo Tinseltoes linked to. They probably are the same theater. The Tigard Theatre was designed by Portland architect James W. DeYoung.
The Heathman Hotel, which contains the entrance to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, was designed by Portland architects James W. DeYoung and Knud A. Roald. Knud & Roald also acted as supervising architects for the construction of the Paramount Theatre. 23 photos of the interior of the Paramountare in the DeYoung and Roald Architectural Plans and Photographs collection at the University of Oregon Library at Eugene, Oregon. The collection is open to the public, but can be viewed only in the Special Collections & University Archives Reading Room.
Another photo has solved the mystery of the two different old addresses for the Bijou. The Bijou occupied two different locations. This photo shows what must have been the first Bijou, of 1904. It is on the east side of Main Street several doors north of Washington. The building with the white awning near the corner of Washington, at right, was the Lyric Theatre, at old address 132 N. Main Street. That means that old address 140 N.Main probably was the correct address of the Bijou of 1904-1906.
The second location of the Bijou, which became the Majestic, was in one of the buildings farther up the block on the left side of Main Street. I think that the library’s interior photo must show the second Bijou. The first Bijou looks like it was a storefront nickelodeon conversion. Its replacement most likely opened in 1906, which the interior photo’s caption gives as the Bijou’s closing date, and operated as the Bijou until becoming the Majestic in 1912.
The photo from the Time Theatre’s web site (linked in my first comment on this thread) shows that the Bijou was contemporary with the Superba, which operated under that name from 1908 until 1911 or 1912.
The address 132 N. Main Street is obsolete. In 1957 Oshkosh renumbered the lots on Main Street. The old 100 block became the modern 400 block.
This historical photo shows that the Lyric Theatre was almost at the corner of Washington Street. The Lyric and its neighbors were demolished long ago when the site was cleared for the First National Bank building, which appears to have been erected in the 1920s. The modern address of the Lyric’s lot would probably be either 402 or 404 N. Main Street.
Caption information for this interior photo of the Bijou says that it opened on January 18, 1904, closed in 1906, and reopened as the Majestic Theatre in 1912. But then it also gives the address of the Bijou as 140 N. Main Street, so I don’t know how accurate the other information is.
Oshkosh did renumber many of its lots in 1907, as well as during the more general overhaul of 1957, so it’s entirely possible that, as of 1904, the Bijou’s lot was numbered 140 N. Main. The 1907 renumbering included changing the odd and even-numbered sides of many streets, which prior to that had not followed a standardized pattern. It’s possible that no other American city ever endured so irregular a street numbering system as Oshkosh did, or for so long a time.
165-167 was the historic address of the Bijou/Majestic Theatre. Oshkosh renumbered the lots on Main Street in 1957, and the modern address of the building that housed the theater is 439 N. Main Street.
The first photo in the Historical Photos section of the web site of the Time Community Theatre shows the Time’s predecessor, the Superba Theatre, with the Bijou in the foreground. The building has lost its ornate cornice and parapet, but is still recognizable.
We need to find a modern address for the Plaza Theatre. Oshkosh renumbered the lots on Main Street in 1957, and the former 200 block became the modern 500 block. The address of The Magnet, a billiard parlor across the street from the former entrance of The Plaza, is 519 N. Main. The address of Mainview Apartments, which appears the be the former entrance to the Raulf Hotel, is 530 N. Main. I would guess that the theater entrance, which was at the south end of the hotel’s frontage, was approximately at modern address 518 N. Main.
Street View needs to be reset, too. It currently shows the Time Theatre, in the modern 400 block of Main Street.
The Time Theatre was in part-time operation earlier this year, with events on Fridays and Saturdays, including some movies. The last event was held on October 20, and the Calender of Events on the theater’s web site currently shows only board meetings scheduled, but perhaps there will be more events next year.
The web site’s photo gallery has an album of historical photos, including several showing the Rex Theatre. There is also an album showing the renovation work, and three albums with photos from live events that have since been presented in the theater.
Bruce is correct. Oshkosh renumbered the lots on many of its streets, including Main Street, in 1957. 157 N. Main was the Oshkosh Theatre’s old address. 427 N. Main is the modern address.
Volume 3 of a 1994 publication called History of the City of Oshkosh, by Clarence Jungwirth, has a chapter about the theaters in Oshkosh, and it says that the Oshkosh Theatre was on the site of an earlier house called the Orpheum. The text is a bit ambiguous, so I don’t know if the Oshkosh was entirely new construction or was an extensive remodeling of the Orpheum. There are photos of both theaters, the Orpheum on page 33 and the Oshkosh on page 37. A digital scan of the chapter can be seen online at this link, courtesy of the Oshkosh Public Library.
The grand opening ad Mike Rivest linked to says that the Fischer Theatre was designed by the Milwaukee architectural firm Chas. J. Keller & Son.
Frank W. Fischer’s circuit was a regional affiliate of Paramount Pictures, Fischer-Paramount Theatres.
The style of the theater was Spanish-Atmospheric.