A comment on the Cinema Endicott page says that the Elvin Theatre was owned by the Ammerman family. I think perhaps this item in the April 8, 1922, issue of The American Contractor was about the Elvin, and a copy editor just garbled the owner’s name:
“Theatre (M. P.): 1 sty. 52x140. Main St., Endicott, N. Y. Archt. Schenk & Normille, Phelps bldg., Binghamton. Owner S. H. Aminerson, village pres., L. H. Deitrich, care Lyric Theatre, Endicott. Hollow tile & t. c. Drawing plans.”
It wouldn’t be surprising that they got the owner’s name wrong, as they surely misspelled the name of one of the architects, William Normile, and probably the other, who must have been Gerald Schenck, later of Lacey, Schenck & Cummings.
In the letter in the trade ad Tinseltoes linked to, the operator of the theater, B. Worth Dittrich, says: “Just nine years ago we were engaged in the construction of the State in Endicott.” As the letter is dated February 18, 1948, the State must have been completed in 1939.
The Lyric Theatre has been demolished. It was on the southwest corner of Neville and Heber Streets, as seen in this photo. The site is now a parking lot.
Erasmus: The Star Theatre building is still standing, but the interior has long since been reconfigured for use as retail space. You’d essentially have to build a new theater inside the shell, assuming the building is even on the market.
There are issues with this theater’s reported opening year. This PDF of a walking tour of Clarksburg dates Moore’s Opera House to 1917, but also says that it opened on June 10, 1911 with a Charlie Chaplin movie called A Dog’s Lips. Chaplin’s first appearance in a movie was in 1914, and he never made a movie about a dog’s lips, though in 1918 he made one called A Dog’s Life.
I believe the walking tour text is the source of the current description for this theater, as part of it is identical. However, there was evidently no donation of land involved, and Frank Moore continued to own the property long after the theater was built on it as a speculative venture. An item datelined Clarksburg in the March 27, 1918, issue of show business journal The New York Clipper said this:
“What is said to be one of the handsomest and best appointed theatres in the entire South will be opened in Clarksburg shortly. It will be known as the Opera House, and will cost $150,000.
“Frank Moore, formerly a clerk in the United States Supreme Court, is the owner of the theatre. Jack Marks, who made a fortune with a movie theatre here, is manager”
The NRHP Registration form for the Downtown Clarksburg Historic District is more accurate than the guide for the walking tour. It says that the Opera House was built by Jack Marks on land owned by Frank Moore, that it cost $54,000 to build, and that it opened on June 10, 1918, and closed in 1956. It even gets the name of the Chaplin movie shown on opening night right. The document’s estimate of the cost of the project is probably more accurate than the one in the Clipper, too. The Clipper item was most likely sent in by either Jack Marks or Frank Moore, and such press releases typically gave exaggerated estimates of costs.
Opera House was a somewhat grandiose name for this theater. It was a smaller house than the earlier Robinson Grand (AKA Rose Garden) Theatre, and was apparently intended to serve as a movie house from the beginning, though it also had adequate stage facilities. An item in the February 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World says “Frank R. Moore is having plans prepared for a $30,000 moving picture theatre.” This is most likely the project that evolved into the Opera House.
I’m also wondering about the reported seating capacity of 1,150. I’ve seen that exact number on other web sites, CinemaTour and Silent Era, but none cite a source for the number. I came across something about the Powers trial in 1931 (which I have since lost track of) that gave the seating capacity of the Opera House as 600. I don’t know if that was the actual capacity of the theater, or its capacity as it was reconfigured for the trial. Maybe a Film Daily Yearbook would give a different capacity (though that not-always-reliable publication might have been the unnamed source for the 1,150 the three web sites all give, of course.)
A book in the Images of America series, Ashtabula: People and Places, by Evelyn Schaeffer and Richard E. Stoner (Google Books preview), has about a dozen photos related to Shea’s Theatre.
The book says that the senior center occupies the former lobby of the theater, which is a good-sized space in a building built in 1927 and converted for theater use when the auditorium was built behind it in 1949. The auditorium itself has apparently been dark since 1982, when the house closed after about six years of operation by a local nonprofit group.
The address of the Centier Bank branch now located in the former Miller Theatre building is 650 S. Lake Street. The Miller Historical Society has an early photo of the theater on its Facebook page.
The facade is little changed, aside from the addition of the faux gable and the removal of the vertical sign which once rose from the left corner of the front. The theater didn’t have much of a marquee- just a shallow canopy- probably due to the sidewalk being so narrow. Oddly, there was no attraction board on the front, either. There might have been one on the side of the building facing the parking area.
The Washington Post obituary for architect Joseph Wilkes said this about his position in the firm of Wilkes & Faulkner: “Mr. Wilkes’s business partner, Winthrop W. Faulkner, did most of the firm’s design work. Mr. Wilkes, an expert in construction methods and materials, was responsible for the nuts-and-bolts work of translating the drawings into buildings.”
The cover of the Images of America book Sidney, by Erin Andrews and the Sidney Historical Association, has a photo of this theater on its cover with the name Smalley’s on the marquee (Google Books Preview.) There’s also a photo of the auditorium in the book, the caption for which says the house opened in 1922 with 880 seats, was sold in 1957, and operated as a theater until 1997.
this web page extracts a bit about the theater from a 2002 publication. It gives the exact opening date of Smalley’s Theatre as September 21, 1922, and adds that, as of 2002, the building was being partly demolished, but doesn’t specify which part. The Images of America book says that the building is now occupied by the Emerald City Salon and Joe and Vinny’s Pizzeria.
Google Maps' pin icon is in the wrong place again. The theater building is on the east side of Main Street between Liberty and Avery Streets, almost directly opposite the end of Division Street. In satellite view it looks like the whole, theater-sized building is still there, though it’s possible that a stage house has been removed.
The history section of the Walton Theatre’s official web site says that the original village hall, built around 1883, burned in December, 1912, and the present building opened on April 21, 1914. The building was designed by architect William T. Towner. Movies were shown as early as September, 1914, and became regular fare after the house was leased to William Smalley in 1923.
According to this web page, the Lyric Theatre had two successive locations: 401 Chestnut Street and 907 High Street. It says the Chestnut Street location opened in 1939, but also quotes a December, 1939, newspaper item saying that the Lyric Theatre was participating in a PTA Christmas program for the second year in a row, so maybe it was actually open by late 1938.
The first Lyric was destroyed by a fire, and the new High Street location was in operation by 1945. The facade of the second Lyric is still standing, but the page says that the roof of the building is gone. There are photos of both locations.
Portsmouth Virginia, by Cassandra L. Newby Alexander and Mae Breckenridge-Haywood (Google Books preview) says that the Lyric, along with two other houses in the neighborhood, the Bland and the Capitol, catered to African American audiences.
In 1969, Portland produced a book for its centennial. The town’s web site has a page listing the sponsors of the book, including the “Sun Theater, Operated by Kortes Family since 1929.” I’m not sure the building dates from 1929, though. It looks like it would date from the late 1930s or the 1940s. It might have been remodeled, or could have been an entirely new building replacing an earlier Sun Theatre.
The Kortes family’s Sun Theatre Company also operated houses called the Sun in Grand Lodge, Plainwell and Vicksburg, as well as the Otsego Theatre in Otsego, the 131 Drive-In at Plainwell, the Skyway Drive-In at Hubbard Lake, and the Star Theatre at Rockford.
A list of theaters designed by architect George J. Bachmann published in the 1949-50 edition of Theatre Catalog includes the Eagle Theatre in Pontiac, with the design dated 1925.
The list of Bachmann’s works includes three other theaters in Pontiac: the Orpheum, dated 1920, the State, dated 1921, and the Strand, dated 1925.
A history of Genesee County published in 1916 features a biographical sketch of Flint, Michigan, architect George J. Bachmann, and mentions the Strand Theatre at Owosso as one of his works. Bachmann would later design the Capitol Theatre (Lebowsky Center) as well. The August 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the new Strand Theatre in Owosso had been opened on July 6.
A history of Genesee County published in 1916 includes a biographical sketch of architect George J. Bachmann, and mentions the Strand Theatre in Flint as one of his works. He also designed the Strand Theatre at Owosso.
The Strand is one of thirteen theaters listed in the 1915 Flint City Directory. Here is the list:
Bijou Theatre, 124-126 E 1st
Della Theatre, 521 S Saginaw
Elite Theatre, 312 S Saginaw
Lyric Theatre, 113 S Saginaw
New Folly Theatre, 2913 Industrial av
Orpheum Theatre, 513-515 S Saginaw
Royal Theatre, 203 S Saginaw
Palestra Theatre, 803 Harriet
Rex Theatre, 1206 N Saginaw
Savoy Theatre, 302 S Saginaw
Star Theatre, 1618 N Saginaw
Stone Theatre, Harrison s e cor E 1st
Strand Theatre The, 507-509 S Saginaw
A list of theaters designed by George J. Bachmann, published in the 1949-50 Theatre Catalog, includes the following theaters in Flint, with the year he designed them. Some of these might have been remodeling jobs:
I misspelled the architect’s name in my previous comment. The 1949-50 Theatre Catalog, and some period sources including a history of Genesee County published in 1916, which has a biographical sketch of him, spell his surname Bachmann.
The 1949-50 edition of Theatre Catalog lists the Orpheum at Pontiac as having been built in 1920. Google Books has only a snippet view of this book available, but I was able to puzzle out from other theaters on the list that it is a list of theaters designed by architect George J. Bachman.
Construction of Kleist Amusement Enterprises' Orpheum Theatre was underway in Pontiac, according to an item in the October 16, 1920, issue of The American Contractor. The item confirms Bachman as the architect, but says that after the steel had been erected, work on the project would be suspended until 1921. There was no explanation why.
The theater is barely visible at right in this photo, from about 1937, but worth posting as photos with the name President Theatre on the marquee are rarely seen.
A comment on the Cinema Endicott page says that the Elvin Theatre was owned by the Ammerman family. I think perhaps this item in the April 8, 1922, issue of The American Contractor was about the Elvin, and a copy editor just garbled the owner’s name:
It wouldn’t be surprising that they got the owner’s name wrong, as they surely misspelled the name of one of the architects, William Normile, and probably the other, who must have been Gerald Schenck, later of Lacey, Schenck & Cummings.In the letter in the trade ad Tinseltoes linked to, the operator of the theater, B. Worth Dittrich, says: “Just nine years ago we were engaged in the construction of the State in Endicott.” As the letter is dated February 18, 1948, the State must have been completed in 1939.
The Lyric Theatre has been demolished. It was on the southwest corner of Neville and Heber Streets, as seen in this photo. The site is now a parking lot.
The Boxoffice item Tinseltoes linked to says that the Manos Theatre was designed by architect Victor A. Rigaumont.
Erasmus: You’re too late for this one. The Manos Theatre has been purchased by the International Mother’s Day Shrine and is already being renovated.
Erasmus: The Star Theatre building is still standing, but the interior has long since been reconfigured for use as retail space. You’d essentially have to build a new theater inside the shell, assuming the building is even on the market.
There are issues with this theater’s reported opening year. This PDF of a walking tour of Clarksburg dates Moore’s Opera House to 1917, but also says that it opened on June 10, 1911 with a Charlie Chaplin movie called A Dog’s Lips. Chaplin’s first appearance in a movie was in 1914, and he never made a movie about a dog’s lips, though in 1918 he made one called A Dog’s Life.
I believe the walking tour text is the source of the current description for this theater, as part of it is identical. However, there was evidently no donation of land involved, and Frank Moore continued to own the property long after the theater was built on it as a speculative venture. An item datelined Clarksburg in the March 27, 1918, issue of show business journal The New York Clipper said this:
The NRHP Registration form for the Downtown Clarksburg Historic District is more accurate than the guide for the walking tour. It says that the Opera House was built by Jack Marks on land owned by Frank Moore, that it cost $54,000 to build, and that it opened on June 10, 1918, and closed in 1956. It even gets the name of the Chaplin movie shown on opening night right. The document’s estimate of the cost of the project is probably more accurate than the one in the Clipper, too. The Clipper item was most likely sent in by either Jack Marks or Frank Moore, and such press releases typically gave exaggerated estimates of costs.Opera House was a somewhat grandiose name for this theater. It was a smaller house than the earlier Robinson Grand (AKA Rose Garden) Theatre, and was apparently intended to serve as a movie house from the beginning, though it also had adequate stage facilities. An item in the February 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World says “Frank R. Moore is having plans prepared for a $30,000 moving picture theatre.” This is most likely the project that evolved into the Opera House.
I’m also wondering about the reported seating capacity of 1,150. I’ve seen that exact number on other web sites, CinemaTour and Silent Era, but none cite a source for the number. I came across something about the Powers trial in 1931 (which I have since lost track of) that gave the seating capacity of the Opera House as 600. I don’t know if that was the actual capacity of the theater, or its capacity as it was reconfigured for the trial. Maybe a Film Daily Yearbook would give a different capacity (though that not-always-reliable publication might have been the unnamed source for the 1,150 the three web sites all give, of course.)
Erasmus: Moore’s Opera House was demolished in the 1990s. I believe the only old theater still standing in Clarksburg is the Rose Garden Theatre.
A book in the Images of America series, Ashtabula: People and Places, by Evelyn Schaeffer and Richard E. Stoner (Google Books preview), has about a dozen photos related to Shea’s Theatre.
The book says that the senior center occupies the former lobby of the theater, which is a good-sized space in a building built in 1927 and converted for theater use when the auditorium was built behind it in 1949. The auditorium itself has apparently been dark since 1982, when the house closed after about six years of operation by a local nonprofit group.
The address of the Centier Bank branch now located in the former Miller Theatre building is 650 S. Lake Street. The Miller Historical Society has an early photo of the theater on its Facebook page.
The facade is little changed, aside from the addition of the faux gable and the removal of the vertical sign which once rose from the left corner of the front. The theater didn’t have much of a marquee- just a shallow canopy- probably due to the sidewalk being so narrow. Oddly, there was no attraction board on the front, either. There might have been one on the side of the building facing the parking area.
The Washington Post obituary for architect Joseph Wilkes said this about his position in the firm of Wilkes & Faulkner: “Mr. Wilkes’s business partner, Winthrop W. Faulkner, did most of the firm’s design work. Mr. Wilkes, an expert in construction methods and materials, was responsible for the nuts-and-bolts work of translating the drawings into buildings.”
The cover of the Images of America book Sidney, by Erin Andrews and the Sidney Historical Association, has a photo of this theater on its cover with the name Smalley’s on the marquee (Google Books Preview.) There’s also a photo of the auditorium in the book, the caption for which says the house opened in 1922 with 880 seats, was sold in 1957, and operated as a theater until 1997.
this web page extracts a bit about the theater from a 2002 publication. It gives the exact opening date of Smalley’s Theatre as September 21, 1922, and adds that, as of 2002, the building was being partly demolished, but doesn’t specify which part. The Images of America book says that the building is now occupied by the Emerald City Salon and Joe and Vinny’s Pizzeria.
Google Maps' pin icon is in the wrong place again. The theater building is on the east side of Main Street between Liberty and Avery Streets, almost directly opposite the end of Division Street. In satellite view it looks like the whole, theater-sized building is still there, though it’s possible that a stage house has been removed.
The Boxoffice item Tinseltoes linked to says that the Colonial Theatre was designed by architect Paul Brysselbout.
The history section of the Walton Theatre’s official web site says that the original village hall, built around 1883, burned in December, 1912, and the present building opened on April 21, 1914. The building was designed by architect William T. Towner. Movies were shown as early as September, 1914, and became regular fare after the house was leased to William Smalley in 1923.
The official web site link is not working. The wt/ has to be removed from the end of it.
According to this web page, the Lyric Theatre had two successive locations: 401 Chestnut Street and 907 High Street. It says the Chestnut Street location opened in 1939, but also quotes a December, 1939, newspaper item saying that the Lyric Theatre was participating in a PTA Christmas program for the second year in a row, so maybe it was actually open by late 1938.
The first Lyric was destroyed by a fire, and the new High Street location was in operation by 1945. The facade of the second Lyric is still standing, but the page says that the roof of the building is gone. There are photos of both locations.
Portsmouth Virginia, by Cassandra L. Newby Alexander and Mae Breckenridge-Haywood (Google Books preview) says that the Lyric, along with two other houses in the neighborhood, the Bland and the Capitol, catered to African American audiences.
Smith & Welton was definitely a department store.
The American Theatre was listed in the 1913-1914 edition of Julius Chan’s guide, with the note “Theatre plays pictures only.”
In 1969, Portland produced a book for its centennial. The town’s web site has a page listing the sponsors of the book, including the “Sun Theater, Operated by Kortes Family since 1929.” I’m not sure the building dates from 1929, though. It looks like it would date from the late 1930s or the 1940s. It might have been remodeled, or could have been an entirely new building replacing an earlier Sun Theatre.
The Kortes family’s Sun Theatre Company also operated houses called the Sun in Grand Lodge, Plainwell and Vicksburg, as well as the Otsego Theatre in Otsego, the 131 Drive-In at Plainwell, the Skyway Drive-In at Hubbard Lake, and the Star Theatre at Rockford.
The correct spelling of the architect’s surname is Bachmann.
A list of theaters designed by architect George J. Bachmann published in the 1949-50 edition of Theatre Catalog includes the Eagle Theatre in Pontiac, with the design dated 1925.
The list of Bachmann’s works includes three other theaters in Pontiac: the Orpheum, dated 1920, the State, dated 1921, and the Strand, dated 1925.
The correct spelling of the architect’s surname is Bachmann.
A history of Genesee County published in 1916 features a biographical sketch of Flint, Michigan, architect George J. Bachmann, and mentions the Strand Theatre at Owosso as one of his works. Bachmann would later design the Capitol Theatre (Lebowsky Center) as well. The August 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the new Strand Theatre in Owosso had been opened on July 6.
A history of Genesee County published in 1916 includes a biographical sketch of architect George J. Bachmann, and mentions the Strand Theatre in Flint as one of his works. He also designed the Strand Theatre at Owosso.
The Strand is one of thirteen theaters listed in the 1915 Flint City Directory. Here is the list:
A list of theaters designed by George J. Bachmann, published in the 1949-50 Theatre Catalog, includes the following theaters in Flint, with the year he designed them. Some of these might have been remodeling jobs:The list is not exhaustive.I misspelled the architect’s name in my previous comment. The 1949-50 Theatre Catalog, and some period sources including a history of Genesee County published in 1916, which has a biographical sketch of him, spell his surname Bachmann.
The 1949-50 edition of Theatre Catalog lists the Orpheum at Pontiac as having been built in 1920. Google Books has only a snippet view of this book available, but I was able to puzzle out from other theaters on the list that it is a list of theaters designed by architect George J. Bachman.
Construction of Kleist Amusement Enterprises' Orpheum Theatre was underway in Pontiac, according to an item in the October 16, 1920, issue of The American Contractor. The item confirms Bachman as the architect, but says that after the steel had been erected, work on the project would be suspended until 1921. There was no explanation why.
The theater is barely visible at right in this photo, from about 1937, but worth posting as photos with the name President Theatre on the marquee are rarely seen.