A brief item from the July 1, 1916, issue of the entertainment industry journal The New York Clipper discussed two large new theaters proposed for the Washington Heights district, and added the editorial opinion that the neighborhood already had enough theaters to satisfy local demand. The final line said: “The Wadsworth, at One Hundred and Eighty-first Street and Wadsworth Avenue, could not pay with any policy, so a bit of advice, don’t be hasty and overdo it.”
As this house opened as the Heights Theatre in 1913, either there must have been another theater at or near this intersection, or the Heights used the name Wadsworth at some point in its early history. Advertisements or theater listings from the period 1913-1916 should reveal which of those was the case. If the Heights and the Wadsworth were the same house, it would have been closed for some time in the first half of 1916.
Here is the complete item (which I cited in a previous comment) about the opening of the Heights Theatre, as reported in the November 15, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Heights Theater.
“The L. & B. Amusement Company opened a new picture theater at Wadsworth Avenue and 181st Street, New York City, on Saturday evening, October 11, to a large patronage and is enjoying a steady patronage of the most satisfactory character. W. A. Landau, formerly proprietor of the Audubon Theater, in 181st Street, is president of the company, and S. G. Bock, who was connected with the St. Nicholas Theater, in the same neighborhood, is secretary and treasurer. The new house is of regular theater construction, seats 600 persons and has twelve exits. The construction is fireproof throughout. Two Standard projecting machines and a mercury arc rectifier have been installed, providing a fine picture at a throw of no feet. The chairs are from the American Seating Company. An indirect lighting system and large exhaust fans for ventilating complete an up-to-date equipment. Retiring rooms for men and women insure the comfort of the patrons. A Hope-Jones unit orchestra provides music for the pictures.”
The Lyceum must have been in operation by 1915. A Lyceum Theatre Company is listed at 906 3rd Avenue in the 1915 edition of Polk’s New York Copartnership and Corporation Directory.
The article Tinseltoes linked to credits the design of the Willow Lawn Theatre to the firm of Budina & Freeman. The firm is still in operation as Freeman Morgan Architects. Their web site says that the firm was founded in 1955, and that A. O. Budina retired in 1972.
The architects names are currently mispelled in the Firm field. It should be Carneal & Johnston.
Although there is no doubt that this theater was designed and built in 1919-1921, a list of Richmond’s theaters in a souvenir booklet published in 1908 includes a Colonial Theatre located at Broad and 8th Streets. I’ve been unable to discover what became of that house, or whether or not it ever showed movies.
The Columbia Theatre was listed in the 1921 Flint City Directory, but not in the 1919-1920 edition. It could have opened after the edition went to press, but must have opened before the end of 1920.
I’ve been unable to find directories for Flint from before 1915 or after 1922. In addition to those two editions, Google Books has 1918, 1919-1920, and 1921. This house is called the Elite in all of them, so the aka’s must date from before 1915 or after 1922.
However, the 1919-1920 and 1921 directories have a listing for a Gem Theatre at 1361 Stever Avenue. There are no theaters listed on that street in the other three directories.
The Savoy Theatre is listed at 302 S. Saginaw in the 1915 and 1922 Flint city directories. I don’t know if the lot was later renumbered, or if a new theater was built on a nearby site.
Interestingly, the 1915 directory also lists 302 S. Saginaw as the office of George J. Bachmann, under the category Theatre Contractors. Bachmann, an architect, designed several theaters in Flint and other Michigan cities. Another page of the 1915 directory lists him a second time, as an architect, with offices in the P. Smith Building, which was across Saginaw Street from the Savoy. I don’t know just what to make of the dual offices and dual professions, but it suggests that Bachmann might have designed the Savoy and might even have been its owner, or part owner.
In the 1920 Flint city directory, the architects are listed as Ernest N. Butler and John MacKenzie. E. N. Butler was listed as the architect of the proposed theater for the Globe Theater Stock Company on Saginaw Road at the foot of Williams Street in the October 25, 1919, issue of The American Contractor. The theater was to be 57x134 feet, one story with balcony.
The Zelda Theatre was in operation before 1920. The May 8, 1914, issue of the Duluth Evening Herald mentions a theft of a plumber’s tools “… from a
chest in the new Zelda theater building, 309 West Superior street.” The item doesn’t say whether the theater was still under construction or the plumber was doing repairs. The house was surely open before the end of 1914, though.
O'Brien and Werner were experienced theater architects, by the way, having already designed several San Francisco houses including the first Mission Theatre, the Princess Theatre (later the Ellis), the first post-fire Orpheum (later the Garrick), the Valencia Theatre, and the 16th Street Theatre (later the Victoria.)
Various issues of Building and Industrial News in 1911 indicate that the firm of O'Brien and Werner had already drawn the plans for this building before Alexander Pantages entered the project as lessee of the theater portion. At that time, B. Marcus Priteca was brought in to modify the theater design for Pantages. Had Priteca designed the building from the ground up, I’m sure the exterior would have been far more ornate than Matthew O'Brien and Carl Werner’s restrained commercial block.
The August 1, 1911, issue of Building and Industrial News had this item about a proposed theater in San Leandro:
“Theatre. 1 story and base, brick, $12,500. Architect W. H. Weeks. 251 Kearny St., S. F. Owner Daniel Best. The building has been designed for a modern moving picture house, and will have a seating capacity of about 800 people. There will be a modern ventilating system. The exterior will be faced with pressed brick. The plans for the work are complete and the architect is taking figures on the construction.”
There is a photo of the Best Theatre on page 87 of San Leandro, by Cynthia Vrilakas Simons. Lloyd Bridges Sr., father of the actor, was apparently connected with the theater in some way, as he appears in the photo.
Architect William H. Weeks designed hundreds of buildings in Northern California, a large percentage of them being schools, although Cinema Treasures does currently attribute two other theaters to him.
The College Arms Theatre might be the house mentioned in the November 15, 1913, issue of Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer, which said that bids were being taken for construction of a theater at Claremont that had been designed by Pomona architect Paul F. Higgs. The firm of Davis & Higgs also designed a theater at Pomona in 1911, but I’ve been unable to discover which one it was.
In June, 1911, The Architect & Engineer of California published this item:
“Architect B. Marcus Priteca of Seattle will open offices in San Francisco in the near future. He is associated with Messrs. Miller and Colmesnil in designing the new Pantages theatre to be erected on Market street by the A. E. Long Construction Company. In addition to the theatre a seven-story class A office building will be put up. Priteca’s offices will be in the Westbank building.”
Miller & Colmesnil were listed as the architects for the project in an item in the July 4, 1911, issue of the San Francisco trade journal Building and Industrial News, which noted that the contract for the structural steel and iron work on the project had just been awarded to the Central Iron Works.
Given the fact that Priteca was Pantages' protégé, hired specifically to design theaters, he undoubtedly designed the theater interior, but as he still had only limited experience as an architect (he was 22 years old), it seems most likely that Miller & Colmesnil, an established firm familiar with San Francisco’s building codes, designed the building itself. They surely would have designed the office building fronting the theater.
Around 1907, James Rupert Miller and George T. de Colmesnil hired Timothy Pflueger, then 15 years old, as an apprentice. in the late 1910s, after Colmesnil withdrew from the firm, Pflueger became a partner in the firm of Miller & Pflueger. As he had been with the firm for several years at the time the Pantages was built, it’s likely that he was involved in the project in some way, perhaps quite extensively. It’s easy to imagine Pflueger being impressed with the accomplishments of Priteca, who was less than three years his elder. Perhaps his involvement with the Pantages project had some influence on his decision to design theaters later in his career.
The caption of the photo of the Empress Theatre that Tinseltoes linked to on August 10 says that the architect was Geo. J. Bockmann of Flint. It must be a misspelling of George J. Bachmann, who designed several theaters in Michigan during the first half of the 20th century.
Here is a notice published in the July 19, 1924, issue of Building & Engineering News:
“Siebert & Hedden, Brock Bldg., associates with Frank Wynkoop, Kress Bldg., Long Beach, assoc. architect and engineers, have prepared preliminary sketches for a $35,000. two-story store, theatre and office building to be erected at the southwest corner of Seventh St. and Redondo Ave., Long Beach, for A. T. Shaw. Stucco exterior, tile and composition roof, plate glass store fronts.”
The Ritz doesn’t appear to have been exactly on the corner, but magazines weren’t always precise when giving locations, so there’s a good chance the project was the Ritz. If someone could discover the opening year it would help.
Bertie Crewe designed at least one other theater in Balfast besides the Royal Hippdrome/New Vic, though I don’t know if the project was carried out or not, and if it was I don’t know its name. The August 8, 1915, issue of The Building News said that demolition of the Theatre Royal had begun, and that the house was to be replaced by a modern picture theatre of 1,500 seats, which had been designed by the architect of the Royal Hippodrome, Mr. Crewe.
this web page has a history of the Theatre Royal, but nothing about its fate. It says that the theater was on Arthur Square, which Bing Maps (Google doesn’t identify it, and the intersection has been closed to traffic so Google’s street view camera never captured it) informs me was a small open area just east of the intersection of Castle Lane and Arthur Street, which is a half block east of the site of the Gaumont Belfast. Unless the theater that was to have replaced the Theatre Royal was never built, there must have been another large house in the neighborhood of the Gaumont that we don’t have listed yet.
Looking at Bing Maps' bird’s eye view, there’s a modern building on the southwest corner of Castle Lane and Arthur Street which looks like its parcel is big enough to have once held a theater, though 1,500 seats would have been a tight squeeze. The only other likely site would have been the southeast corner of William Street South and Ann Street, where Bing’s view, dated this year, shows modern construction underway.
The Fresno Bee story cited by RonP in his comment of July 12, 2009, is confirmed by items published in Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer in 1914. It was Robert Boller, not Carl, who worked on the White Theatre, with Lee DeCamp, and the firm was Boller & DeCamp, not Boller Brothers. The architect who supervised construction was Edward T. Foulkes.
Robert Boller joined his older brother Carl’s firm in 1905 as an apprentice draftsman. He was then 18 years old, about half Carl’s age. In 1911, Robert moved to San Francisco to become the construction supervisor for the theaters Lee DeCamp was designing for the Sullivan & Considine vaudeville circuit. By 1914 Sullivan & Considine was on the verge of collapse, and Boller & DeCamp had begun doing other projects, such as the White Theatre. Boller returned to Kansas City in 1915, and took over operation of the Boller Brothers office there when Carl moved to Los Angeles to open a branch office in the early 1920s.
I haven’t been able to find much about Lee DeCamp on the Internet, and almost all of what I have found deals with his association with Sullivan & Considine. He maintained some association with the Bollers even after his partnership with Robert was dissolved, as I’ve found references to him supervising some Boller projects as late as the 1930s.
Of the three architects associated with the White Theatre, Edward T. Foulkes was probably the one with the most impressive training. He apprenticed in Boston with Clarence Blackall, then worked in New York City, first in the offices of Cass Gilbert and then with Carrere & Hastings. After winning a scholarship in 1903, he studied at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris, then traveled extensively not only in Britain and Europe but in the Middle East, India, China, and Japan, before establishing his office in San Francisco in 1906. He opened a Fresno office in 1910, but the White Theatre was probably among his last projects there. He returned to the Bay Area later in 1914 to work on projects associated with the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, and thereafter designed many buildings in the area, especially in Oakland.
The May 4, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Codman Square Theatre was rapidly nearing completion and that the date of its opening would soon be announced. It was to be combination house (vaudeville and movies) with two shows a day.
Here is an an updated link to the 1941 Boxoffice article with three photos of the Pine Theatre’s original interior.
A brief item from the July 1, 1916, issue of the entertainment industry journal The New York Clipper discussed two large new theaters proposed for the Washington Heights district, and added the editorial opinion that the neighborhood already had enough theaters to satisfy local demand. The final line said: “The Wadsworth, at One Hundred and Eighty-first Street and Wadsworth Avenue, could not pay with any policy, so a bit of advice, don’t be hasty and overdo it.”
As this house opened as the Heights Theatre in 1913, either there must have been another theater at or near this intersection, or the Heights used the name Wadsworth at some point in its early history. Advertisements or theater listings from the period 1913-1916 should reveal which of those was the case. If the Heights and the Wadsworth were the same house, it would have been closed for some time in the first half of 1916.
Here is the complete item (which I cited in a previous comment) about the opening of the Heights Theatre, as reported in the November 15, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The Lyceum must have been in operation by 1915. A Lyceum Theatre Company is listed at 906 3rd Avenue in the 1915 edition of Polk’s New York Copartnership and Corporation Directory.
The article Tinseltoes linked to credits the design of the Willow Lawn Theatre to the firm of Budina & Freeman. The firm is still in operation as Freeman Morgan Architects. Their web site says that the firm was founded in 1955, and that A. O. Budina retired in 1972.
The architects names are currently mispelled in the Firm field. It should be Carneal & Johnston.
Although there is no doubt that this theater was designed and built in 1919-1921, a list of Richmond’s theaters in a souvenir booklet published in 1908 includes a Colonial Theatre located at Broad and 8th Streets. I’ve been unable to discover what became of that house, or whether or not it ever showed movies.
Kilduffs Baltimore has a page for the Rialto with a vintage photo and scans of ads.
The Columbia Theatre was listed in the 1921 Flint City Directory, but not in the 1919-1920 edition. It could have opened after the edition went to press, but must have opened before the end of 1920.
I’ve been unable to find directories for Flint from before 1915 or after 1922. In addition to those two editions, Google Books has 1918, 1919-1920, and 1921. This house is called the Elite in all of them, so the aka’s must date from before 1915 or after 1922.
However, the 1919-1920 and 1921 directories have a listing for a Gem Theatre at 1361 Stever Avenue. There are no theaters listed on that street in the other three directories.
Pinconning once had a movie theater called the Dreamland, mentioned in the April 16, 1918, issue of Michigan Film Review.
The Savoy Theatre is listed at 302 S. Saginaw in the 1915 and 1922 Flint city directories. I don’t know if the lot was later renumbered, or if a new theater was built on a nearby site.
Interestingly, the 1915 directory also lists 302 S. Saginaw as the office of George J. Bachmann, under the category Theatre Contractors. Bachmann, an architect, designed several theaters in Flint and other Michigan cities. Another page of the 1915 directory lists him a second time, as an architect, with offices in the P. Smith Building, which was across Saginaw Street from the Savoy. I don’t know just what to make of the dual offices and dual professions, but it suggests that Bachmann might have designed the Savoy and might even have been its owner, or part owner.
In the 1920 Flint city directory, the architects are listed as Ernest N. Butler and John MacKenzie. E. N. Butler was listed as the architect of the proposed theater for the Globe Theater Stock Company on Saginaw Road at the foot of Williams Street in the October 25, 1919, issue of The American Contractor. The theater was to be 57x134 feet, one story with balcony.
Also, the Zelda Theatre has not been demolished. Since 1985, the much-altered building has been the location of the Peterson Anderson flower shop.
The Zelda Theatre was in operation before 1920. The May 8, 1914, issue of the Duluth Evening Herald mentions a theft of a plumber’s tools “… from a chest in the new Zelda theater building, 309 West Superior street.” The item doesn’t say whether the theater was still under construction or the plumber was doing repairs. The house was surely open before the end of 1914, though.
O'Brien and Werner were experienced theater architects, by the way, having already designed several San Francisco houses including the first Mission Theatre, the Princess Theatre (later the Ellis), the first post-fire Orpheum (later the Garrick), the Valencia Theatre, and the 16th Street Theatre (later the Victoria.)
Various issues of Building and Industrial News in 1911 indicate that the firm of O'Brien and Werner had already drawn the plans for this building before Alexander Pantages entered the project as lessee of the theater portion. At that time, B. Marcus Priteca was brought in to modify the theater design for Pantages. Had Priteca designed the building from the ground up, I’m sure the exterior would have been far more ornate than Matthew O'Brien and Carl Werner’s restrained commercial block.
The August 1, 1911, issue of Building and Industrial News had this item about a proposed theater in San Leandro:
There is a photo of the Best Theatre on page 87 of San Leandro, by Cynthia Vrilakas Simons. Lloyd Bridges Sr., father of the actor, was apparently connected with the theater in some way, as he appears in the photo.Architect William H. Weeks designed hundreds of buildings in Northern California, a large percentage of them being schools, although Cinema Treasures does currently attribute two other theaters to him.
The College Arms Theatre might be the house mentioned in the November 15, 1913, issue of Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer, which said that bids were being taken for construction of a theater at Claremont that had been designed by Pomona architect Paul F. Higgs. The firm of Davis & Higgs also designed a theater at Pomona in 1911, but I’ve been unable to discover which one it was.
In June, 1911, The Architect & Engineer of California published this item:
Miller & Colmesnil were listed as the architects for the project in an item in the July 4, 1911, issue of the San Francisco trade journal Building and Industrial News, which noted that the contract for the structural steel and iron work on the project had just been awarded to the Central Iron Works.Given the fact that Priteca was Pantages' protégé, hired specifically to design theaters, he undoubtedly designed the theater interior, but as he still had only limited experience as an architect (he was 22 years old), it seems most likely that Miller & Colmesnil, an established firm familiar with San Francisco’s building codes, designed the building itself. They surely would have designed the office building fronting the theater.
Around 1907, James Rupert Miller and George T. de Colmesnil hired Timothy Pflueger, then 15 years old, as an apprentice. in the late 1910s, after Colmesnil withdrew from the firm, Pflueger became a partner in the firm of Miller & Pflueger. As he had been with the firm for several years at the time the Pantages was built, it’s likely that he was involved in the project in some way, perhaps quite extensively. It’s easy to imagine Pflueger being impressed with the accomplishments of Priteca, who was less than three years his elder. Perhaps his involvement with the Pantages project had some influence on his decision to design theaters later in his career.
The caption of the photo of the Empress Theatre that Tinseltoes linked to on August 10 says that the architect was Geo. J. Bockmann of Flint. It must be a misspelling of George J. Bachmann, who designed several theaters in Michigan during the first half of the 20th century.
Here is a notice published in the July 19, 1924, issue of Building & Engineering News:
The Ritz doesn’t appear to have been exactly on the corner, but magazines weren’t always precise when giving locations, so there’s a good chance the project was the Ritz. If someone could discover the opening year it would help.See my comment on the Gaumont Belfast page for information about another possible Bertie Crewe-designed theater in Belfast.
Bertie Crewe designed at least one other theater in Balfast besides the Royal Hippdrome/New Vic, though I don’t know if the project was carried out or not, and if it was I don’t know its name. The August 8, 1915, issue of The Building News said that demolition of the Theatre Royal had begun, and that the house was to be replaced by a modern picture theatre of 1,500 seats, which had been designed by the architect of the Royal Hippodrome, Mr. Crewe.
this web page has a history of the Theatre Royal, but nothing about its fate. It says that the theater was on Arthur Square, which Bing Maps (Google doesn’t identify it, and the intersection has been closed to traffic so Google’s street view camera never captured it) informs me was a small open area just east of the intersection of Castle Lane and Arthur Street, which is a half block east of the site of the Gaumont Belfast. Unless the theater that was to have replaced the Theatre Royal was never built, there must have been another large house in the neighborhood of the Gaumont that we don’t have listed yet.
Looking at Bing Maps' bird’s eye view, there’s a modern building on the southwest corner of Castle Lane and Arthur Street which looks like its parcel is big enough to have once held a theater, though 1,500 seats would have been a tight squeeze. The only other likely site would have been the southeast corner of William Street South and Ann Street, where Bing’s view, dated this year, shows modern construction underway.
The Fresno Bee story cited by RonP in his comment of July 12, 2009, is confirmed by items published in Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer in 1914. It was Robert Boller, not Carl, who worked on the White Theatre, with Lee DeCamp, and the firm was Boller & DeCamp, not Boller Brothers. The architect who supervised construction was Edward T. Foulkes.
Robert Boller joined his older brother Carl’s firm in 1905 as an apprentice draftsman. He was then 18 years old, about half Carl’s age. In 1911, Robert moved to San Francisco to become the construction supervisor for the theaters Lee DeCamp was designing for the Sullivan & Considine vaudeville circuit. By 1914 Sullivan & Considine was on the verge of collapse, and Boller & DeCamp had begun doing other projects, such as the White Theatre. Boller returned to Kansas City in 1915, and took over operation of the Boller Brothers office there when Carl moved to Los Angeles to open a branch office in the early 1920s.
I haven’t been able to find much about Lee DeCamp on the Internet, and almost all of what I have found deals with his association with Sullivan & Considine. He maintained some association with the Bollers even after his partnership with Robert was dissolved, as I’ve found references to him supervising some Boller projects as late as the 1930s.
Of the three architects associated with the White Theatre, Edward T. Foulkes was probably the one with the most impressive training. He apprenticed in Boston with Clarence Blackall, then worked in New York City, first in the offices of Cass Gilbert and then with Carrere & Hastings. After winning a scholarship in 1903, he studied at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris, then traveled extensively not only in Britain and Europe but in the Middle East, India, China, and Japan, before establishing his office in San Francisco in 1906. He opened a Fresno office in 1910, but the White Theatre was probably among his last projects there. He returned to the Bay Area later in 1914 to work on projects associated with the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, and thereafter designed many buildings in the area, especially in Oakland.
Street View needs to shift just a bit right to get a full frontal view of the Rialto’s building, now the Miraculous Word Christian Center.
The May 4, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Codman Square Theatre was rapidly nearing completion and that the date of its opening would soon be announced. It was to be combination house (vaudeville and movies) with two shows a day.