The page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists an unnamed theater at Lakeshore Boulevard West and Fourth Street in New Toronto as a 1929 project. It must have been the Capitol.
The page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Hollywood Theatre as a 1930 project, with an addition dated 1946. The 1946 design must have been for the 1947 twinning of the theater, which was noted in my previous comment on this house, January 7, 2009.
This article from the St. Thomas Times Journal of December 22, 2008, about the closing of the Capitol Theatre, says that the house first opened in 1931. That conforms to the page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada, which lists a theater for Famous Players on Talbot Street in St. Thomas as a 1931 Duerr project.
The page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists an unnamed theater of his design built for for William Dineen, located on King Street North in Waterloo. Designed in 1936 and opened in 1937, this project must have been the Star Theatre/Waterloo Stage.
When Google’s camera car went by, half of the Strand Theatre building was occupied by an insurance agency, McFarlan Rowlands, which has the address 169 Broadway Street. The vacant half of the building is probably 167 Broadway. The theater must have used one or the other of those numbers.
The Regent Theatre in the photos probably opened in early 1923. The October, 1922, issue of The Bridgemens Magazine ran this item:
“Sudbury—Theatre—Regent Theatre, Ltd., had plans prepared by Hall & Duerr, architects, Lumsden building, Toronto. 2-story and basement, 50x120 feet, concrete, brick and steel. $150,000.”
Sudbury: Rail Town to Regional Capital, by Carl Murray Wallace and Ashley Thomson, indicates that this project was a new building for an existing theater. The book doesn’t say if the new Regent was on the same site as the old one or not.
Hall & Duerr designed at least five theaters. After dissolving his partnership (1919-1926) with B. Kingston Hall, architect Herbert George Duerr established his own practice, and over the next quarter century or so he designed or remodeled at least twenty more theaters, many for the Famous Players chain.
The page for architect B. Kingston Hall at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Tivoli Theatre in Hamilton as a 1924 project of the firm of Hall & Duerr. The page lists a total of five theater projects for the firm.
After the firm was dissolved in 1926, partner Herbert George Duerr established his own practice and went on to design at least twenty more theaters.
The page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists his design for an unnamed theater at Yonge Street and Norton Avenue in North York as a 1947 project. It must have been the Willow Theatre.
The caption should read that the theater was converted to retail space in 1921. The retailer’s lease was signed in 1920, and went into effect when the theater’s lease ended in January, 1921.
An item on this web page says that the first movie shown at the Nechako Theatre was The Eddy Duchin Story. The movie was released in the summer of 1956.
Raney, of course, was a well-known Northern California theater architect who designed dozens of movie theaters. Robert Blunk was a Burlingame architect who, as far as I’ve been able to discover, designed only one other house, the Hillbarn Theatre at Foster City, California, (1966) which, like the Hyatt, was a stage venue.
The entry for Atlanta architect John Arthur Busby, Jr., in the 1972 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Festival Cinema as one of his projects, dated 1966. His firm, formed that same year, was Jova/Daniels/Busby. The firm is still in existence, but its web site doesn’t list any theaters among its projects.
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.
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.
The page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists an unnamed theater at Lakeshore Boulevard West and Fourth Street in New Toronto as a 1929 project. It must have been the Capitol.
The page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Hollywood Theatre as a 1930 project, with an addition dated 1946. The 1946 design must have been for the 1947 twinning of the theater, which was noted in my previous comment on this house, January 7, 2009.
This article from the St. Thomas Times Journal of December 22, 2008, about the closing of the Capitol Theatre, says that the house first opened in 1931. That conforms to the page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada, which lists a theater for Famous Players on Talbot Street in St. Thomas as a 1931 Duerr project.
The page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists an unnamed theater of his design built for for William Dineen, located on King Street North in Waterloo. Designed in 1936 and opened in 1937, this project must have been the Star Theatre/Waterloo Stage.
When Google’s camera car went by, half of the Strand Theatre building was occupied by an insurance agency, McFarlan Rowlands, which has the address 169 Broadway Street. The vacant half of the building is probably 167 Broadway. The theater must have used one or the other of those numbers.
The Regent Theatre in the photos probably opened in early 1923. The October, 1922, issue of The Bridgemens Magazine ran this item:
Sudbury: Rail Town to Regional Capital, by Carl Murray Wallace and Ashley Thomson, indicates that this project was a new building for an existing theater. The book doesn’t say if the new Regent was on the same site as the old one or not.Hall & Duerr designed at least five theaters. After dissolving his partnership (1919-1926) with B. Kingston Hall, architect Herbert George Duerr established his own practice, and over the next quarter century or so he designed or remodeled at least twenty more theaters, many for the Famous Players chain.
The page for architect B. Kingston Hall at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Tivoli Theatre in Hamilton as a 1924 project of the firm of Hall & Duerr. The page lists a total of five theater projects for the firm.
After the firm was dissolved in 1926, partner Herbert George Duerr established his own practice and went on to design at least twenty more theaters.
The page for architect Herbert George Duerr at the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists his design for an unnamed theater at Yonge Street and Norton Avenue in North York as a 1947 project. It must have been the Willow Theatre.
The caption should read that the theater was converted to retail space in 1921. The retailer’s lease was signed in 1920, and went into effect when the theater’s lease ended in January, 1921.
An item on this web page says that the first movie shown at the Nechako Theatre was The Eddy Duchin Story. The movie was released in the summer of 1956.
Here is an architectural rendering of the Hyatt Music Theatre. The theater was designed by architects Vincent G. Raney and Robert M. Blunk.
Raney, of course, was a well-known Northern California theater architect who designed dozens of movie theaters. Robert Blunk was a Burlingame architect who, as far as I’ve been able to discover, designed only one other house, the Hillbarn Theatre at Foster City, California, (1966) which, like the Hyatt, was a stage venue.
The entry for Atlanta architect John Arthur Busby, Jr., in the 1972 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Festival Cinema as one of his projects, dated 1966. His firm, formed that same year, was Jova/Daniels/Busby. The firm is still in existence, but its web site doesn’t list any theaters among its projects.
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.