The Washington Theatre/Cinema 35 closed in 1983 and the building was demolished in 1988 according to this page at Historic Evansville. The “View all images” link on that page fetches several additional photos of the theater, including an interior shot of the spacious auditorium. There is also a Sanborn map from 1962.
This theater opened about 1908 as the West End Electric Palace, and was rebuilt as the Franklin Theatre in 1912. An advertisement for the house’s first anniversary as the Franklin can be seen on this web page.
This page at Historic Evansville says the theater was remodeled in 1941, became an adult theatre in 1983, and was demolished in 1994. That page has a link to several additional photos of the theater.
Two additional photos of the Carlton Theatre are linked from this page at Historic Evansville. In a late 1937 shot, the marquee says “The New Carlton Will Open Christmas Day.” The largest version shows some of the Art Deco detailing at the top of the Vitrolite facade.
This page at Historic Evansville gives the American Theatre the AKA Novelty Theatre. According to the December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World, the Novelty Theatre had opened early that year.
Though designed primarily as a movie house, the Novelty boasted a small stage and four dressing rooms. In addition to a piano, the theater had a three-piece orchestra. The mirror screen was 13x17 feet, and movies were projected with two Simplex machines.
Click on the “View all images” link on this page at Historic Evansville to see many additional photos of the Grand Theatre, most of them from its early years. Unfortunately there is only one interior shot, taken while the building was being demolished in 1962.
Historic Evansville says that this house opened as the People’s Theatre on November 7, 1892, was renamed the Orpheum in 1908, and burned to the ground in 1917.
The Roxy Theatre in Yorkton was designed by architect Max Zev Blankstein, according to a list of some of his projects on this page of the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada. The list also includes the similar Roxy Theatre in Saskatoon.
This page from the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Broadway Theatre in Regina as one of the works of Winnipeg architect Max Zev Blankstein.
Architect Max Blankstein’s middle initial was not E. His middle name was Zev. This page from the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada has a list of some of Blankstein’s designs, and it includes the Roxy. Blankstein’s office was in Winnipeg, quite some distance from Saskatoon.
I’ve found only a couple of period references to F. F. LeMaistre; one from 1915 listing him as a draftsman and one from 1939 listing him as an architect with offices at 112 Bryce Street in Winnipeg. I’ve been unable to discover anything about LeMaistre’s role in the Roxy project. However, I do see considerable resemblance between the Roxy and the Palace Theatre in Winnipeg, built in 1912 and expanded and remodeled in 1927-28, with Max Blankstein being both the original architect and the architect for the remodeling.
A list of buildings designed by architect Max Zev Blankstein includes the Rose Theatre on Sargent Avenue, but gives the year he designed the project as 1916.
Though the Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to gives the architect’s name as Blackstein, the architect for the conversion of the Pace Twin into the Polo Park Theatre was Cecil Blankstein. His father, Max Blankstein, was architect of at least seven theaters, including Winnipeg’s Palace Theatre. Cecil Nathan Blankstein was the lead architect for the entire Polo Park Shopping Centre, and also designed Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall.
The Capitol is long gone. It was situated in a building built in 1865 at the corner of Water Street and Market Square (near Winthrop Street.) It was converted into the Capitol Theatre in 1930. The building was demolished in 1983 after a major fire, the third in the building’s history.
The building is landmark #18 on this web page. There’s a small photo from the pre-Capitol period.
This house was called the Fox Commercial Theatre in 1930, when the January 19 issue of The Film Daily ran a piece about Fox’s (apparently aborted) intention to replace it with a new, larger theater on the same site. Here is the item:
“SEMI-ATMOSPHERE HOUSE FOR FOX IN CHICAGO AREA
“Chicago— Plans for a 3,000-seat semi-atmospheric theater and office building costing about $2,000,000, to replace the recently leased Fox Commercial at 92nd and Commercial Ave. are announced by Sidney Meyer, vice president and general manager of the Fox Chicago Theaters. The house, of Spanish architecture and especially adapted for talkers, will have a stage 30 feet deep for big productions. Work of tearing down the present structure will start immediately, and it is expected to have the new building completed by September.
“Among the unusual features of the house will be a main entrance and foyer, 5O feet wide and 100 feet long, completely cut off from the auditorium so that outside noises will not interfere with the performances; a bridge-like proscenium arch allowing performers to stroll across it apparently in the open air; one of the largest switchboards in the country, and other advanced ideas.”
The extravagance of demolishing and replacing a large theater not even ten years old was foregone, but William Fox’s empire soon collapsed anyway. Sic transit gloria.
Somerset Theatres, Inc. were the original operators of the Strand, according to an early 1930 issue of The Film Daily. The first manager was named Newall E. Ware.
I’m now thinking that Boxoffice might have had the correct spelling of the theater’s name. A court case in the 1970s consistently refers to the company operating this house as Beech Cinema Inc. or Twin Beech Cinema Inc. The law tends to place considerable importance on correct spelling. The theater was a considerable distance from any beach, but I have no doubt there are still plenty of beech trees in its neighborhood.
The theater was quite a way northeast of the spot where Google Maps has placed its pin and where Street View is currently set. In the absence of a correct address, Main Street and Dayton Lane would probably be a better location to list than Beach Shopping Center. Google Maps finds the intersection easily enough.
I got the name Ron Lesser Enterprises from the description of the CT page for the Beach Theatre in Peekskill. The caption of this photo of the Beach in Boxoffice, January 15, 1968, just says it was opened by Lesser Enterprises.
In any case, it’s possible that the Ronnie Lesser who was associated with Howard Lesser and Edmund Linder in the Lesser Enterprises theater chain in the 1960s (see the Boxoffice item linked in the earlier comment by Tinseltoes) was not the same Ron Lesser who, in 1974, founded the booking agency Lesser Theatre Services, but there is plenty of documentation that someone named Ron Lesser was developing and operating theaters in the state of New York in the 1960s, and the Triangle was one of his houses.
I think it’s likely that Ron the operator and Ron the booker were one and the same, though. Had Ron Lesser the booker never been a theater operator it seems unlikely that he would have become President of the Independent Theater Owners Association (ITOA) or served on the Board of Directors for National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), as noted in his brief biography on the web site of Andromeda Studios.
I’m not sure what the relationship between Howard and Ron Lesser was. They might have been father and son or they might have been brothers. A Howard Lesser was operating theaters around New York in partnership with Louis Kessler at least as early as 1928, but there could have been a Howard Lesser Jr. as well, and of course the operator from the 1920s might have been an entirely different Howard Lesser. Lesser is not that uncommon a name, especially in the movie business.
Many additional photos of the Columbia Theatre can be found on this page at Historic Evansville.
The Washington Theatre/Cinema 35 closed in 1983 and the building was demolished in 1988 according to this page at Historic Evansville. The “View all images” link on that page fetches several additional photos of the theater, including an interior shot of the spacious auditorium. There is also a Sanborn map from 1962.
This theater opened about 1908 as the West End Electric Palace, and was rebuilt as the Franklin Theatre in 1912. An advertisement for the house’s first anniversary as the Franklin can be seen on this web page.
This page at Historic Evansville says the theater was remodeled in 1941, became an adult theatre in 1983, and was demolished in 1994. That page has a link to several additional photos of the theater.
Two additional photos of the Carlton Theatre are linked from this page at Historic Evansville. In a late 1937 shot, the marquee says “The New Carlton Will Open Christmas Day.” The largest version shows some of the Art Deco detailing at the top of the Vitrolite facade.
This page at Historic Evansville gives the American Theatre the AKA Novelty Theatre. According to the December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World, the Novelty Theatre had opened early that year.
Though designed primarily as a movie house, the Novelty boasted a small stage and four dressing rooms. In addition to a piano, the theater had a three-piece orchestra. The mirror screen was 13x17 feet, and movies were projected with two Simplex machines.
Click on the “View all images” link on this page at Historic Evansville to see many additional photos of the Grand Theatre, most of them from its early years. Unfortunately there is only one interior shot, taken while the building was being demolished in 1962.
Historic Evansville says that this house opened as the People’s Theatre on November 7, 1892, was renamed the Orpheum in 1908, and burned to the ground in 1917.
The Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Seneca Theatre in Niagara Falls as a 1940 project designed by architect Jay English.
The Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Park Theatre in Windsor as a 1939 design by architect Jay English.
The Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Geneva Theatre in Orillia as a 1939 project of architect Jay English.
The Roxy Theatre in Yorkton was designed by architect Max Zev Blankstein, according to a list of some of his projects on this page of the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada. The list also includes the similar Roxy Theatre in Saskatoon.
This page from the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada lists the Broadway Theatre in Regina as one of the works of Winnipeg architect Max Zev Blankstein.
Architect Max Blankstein’s middle initial was not E. His middle name was Zev. This page from the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada has a list of some of Blankstein’s designs, and it includes the Roxy. Blankstein’s office was in Winnipeg, quite some distance from Saskatoon.
I’ve found only a couple of period references to F. F. LeMaistre; one from 1915 listing him as a draftsman and one from 1939 listing him as an architect with offices at 112 Bryce Street in Winnipeg. I’ve been unable to discover anything about LeMaistre’s role in the Roxy project. However, I do see considerable resemblance between the Roxy and the Palace Theatre in Winnipeg, built in 1912 and expanded and remodeled in 1927-28, with Max Blankstein being both the original architect and the architect for the remodeling.
A list of buildings designed by architect Max Zev Blankstein includes the Rose Theatre on Sargent Avenue, but gives the year he designed the project as 1916.
Though the Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to gives the architect’s name as Blackstein, the architect for the conversion of the Pace Twin into the Polo Park Theatre was Cecil Blankstein. His father, Max Blankstein, was architect of at least seven theaters, including Winnipeg’s Palace Theatre. Cecil Nathan Blankstein was the lead architect for the entire Polo Park Shopping Centre, and also designed Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall.
Here is an updated link to architect Erwin G. Fredrick’s rendering of the new theater for Hartford in Boxoffice of August 17, 1946.
Updated link to the 1930 Boxoffice article about the Carlton Theatre.
Here is an updated link to the page with the photo of the Ross Theatre’s auditorium in Boxoffice of May 6, 1950.
The Capitol is long gone. It was situated in a building built in 1865 at the corner of Water Street and Market Square (near Winthrop Street.) It was converted into the Capitol Theatre in 1930. The building was demolished in 1983 after a major fire, the third in the building’s history.
The building is landmark #18 on this web page. There’s a small photo from the pre-Capitol period.
The Boxoffice article Tinsetoes linked to says that Richard L. Crowther & Associates were the on-site architects for this theater.
This house was called the Fox Commercial Theatre in 1930, when the January 19 issue of The Film Daily ran a piece about Fox’s (apparently aborted) intention to replace it with a new, larger theater on the same site. Here is the item:
The extravagance of demolishing and replacing a large theater not even ten years old was foregone, but William Fox’s empire soon collapsed anyway. Sic transit gloria.Direct link to the issue of Life rivest266 cites. Thank goodness Mason City was protected from porn! (Or not.)
Somerset Theatres, Inc. were the original operators of the Strand, according to an early 1930 issue of The Film Daily. The first manager was named Newall E. Ware.
I’m now thinking that Boxoffice might have had the correct spelling of the theater’s name. A court case in the 1970s consistently refers to the company operating this house as Beech Cinema Inc. or Twin Beech Cinema Inc. The law tends to place considerable importance on correct spelling. The theater was a considerable distance from any beach, but I have no doubt there are still plenty of beech trees in its neighborhood.
The theater was quite a way northeast of the spot where Google Maps has placed its pin and where Street View is currently set. In the absence of a correct address, Main Street and Dayton Lane would probably be a better location to list than Beach Shopping Center. Google Maps finds the intersection easily enough.
I got the name Ron Lesser Enterprises from the description of the CT page for the Beach Theatre in Peekskill. The caption of this photo of the Beach in Boxoffice, January 15, 1968, just says it was opened by Lesser Enterprises.
In any case, it’s possible that the Ronnie Lesser who was associated with Howard Lesser and Edmund Linder in the Lesser Enterprises theater chain in the 1960s (see the Boxoffice item linked in the earlier comment by Tinseltoes) was not the same Ron Lesser who, in 1974, founded the booking agency Lesser Theatre Services, but there is plenty of documentation that someone named Ron Lesser was developing and operating theaters in the state of New York in the 1960s, and the Triangle was one of his houses.
I think it’s likely that Ron the operator and Ron the booker were one and the same, though. Had Ron Lesser the booker never been a theater operator it seems unlikely that he would have become President of the Independent Theater Owners Association (ITOA) or served on the Board of Directors for National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), as noted in his brief biography on the web site of Andromeda Studios.
I’m not sure what the relationship between Howard and Ron Lesser was. They might have been father and son or they might have been brothers. A Howard Lesser was operating theaters around New York in partnership with Louis Kessler at least as early as 1928, but there could have been a Howard Lesser Jr. as well, and of course the operator from the 1920s might have been an entirely different Howard Lesser. Lesser is not that uncommon a name, especially in the movie business.