A picture of the Queensboro Theatre’s auditorium illustrates and ad for Link theatre organs on this page of Motion Picture News of December 29, 1928. (Enlarge the picture by clicking on the + sign in the bar at lower right of the page.)
This might have been posted before, but all the old links that might have been to it appear to be dead.
The December 29, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Riviera Theatre at Scranton had opened on December 9. The 1,500-seat house featured a “…Spanish type of architecture….” and had cost $300,000. It was operated by the Comerford chain, and was the first theater in Scranton to have been built specifically to show talking pictures. The first feature presented at the Riviera was Lilac Time,, with Colleen Moore, and the opening night program included an organ recital by professor Lawson Reid.
The December 29, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that a 400-seat house called the Star Theatre had opened in Delano on December 7. The manager was named as H. Yamoto. As the house had a Japanese manager, it was certainly aimed at a minority audience (inland California was a racially intolerant as any place in America in those days.)
I’m beginning to suspect very strongly that the Star Theatre and the West Theatre were the same house. I don’t think Delano was large enough to have supported two theaters for minority groups during that period.
The December 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that Dominick Fresna had opened the remodeled Princess Theatre at Springfield, Illinois, as the Lincoln Theatre on Thanksgiving Day.
The Dodge Theatre is the right age and size to be the house mentioned in the December 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News:
“Bids have been taken for the construction of a theater and commercial building to be erected in Dodge City, Kansas, by Otto Theis. The building complete will cost $150,000 and the theatre will include a main floor, mezzanine and balcony and will cover a site 125 by 115 feet. Ellis Charles and Co. are the architects.”
Otto Theis was a prominent local rancher and businessman, and would not have operated the theater himself, which would have led to the Fox circuit’s involvement. Architect Ellis Charles was based in Wichita, and is little known outside that city.
The December 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Washington Theatre in Granite City had recently been bought by Skouras Brothers Enterprises. Skouras Brothers planned to expend about $25,000 for improvements to the house, including the installation of Vitaphone sound equipment. The value of the sale was not released, but MPM said that the estimated value of the Washington Theatre was $300,000.
A 1938 issue of Motion Picture Herald said that W. R. Vincent had opened the 499-seat De Pere Theatre at De Pere, Wisconsin. The theater was located in a former storage garage, and the conversion had been designed by Green Bay architects Geniesse & Connell. The item also noted that the new house gave De Pere six operating movie theaters, the same number as nearby Green Bay, which had more than five times the population of De Pere.
Information about theaters in De Pere is scant in the early trade publications, but I’ve found a 1913 reference to a Dreamland Theatre which had just moved to a new location in the Roffers Building on Main Avenue; a 1916 reference to a Pearl Theatre, which had reopened on March 4 after being damaged by fire; and a 1915 reference to a planned but yet unnamed theater, two stories and 60x120 feet, to be built that spring.
An issue of Engineering News Record from March, 1921, had this item about plans for a new theater on College Avenue:
“Wis., Appleton—Theater—Elite Theater c/o N. Duffy, mgr., 101 College Ave., having plans prepared by H. Wildhagen, archt., 842 College St, for 2 story, 60 x 135 ft, brick, rein.-con. and tile, on College Ave. About $75,000.”
.If the Elite was indeed designed by Henry Wildhagen, it was one of his later works. He was born in 1856, and by the late 19th century had become one of northern Wisconsin’s leading architects. Many of the buildings he designed are listed on the NRHP.
Neil Duffy opened the first Elite Theatre (probably the house at 101 College Avenue) in Appleton in 1908, according to The Fox Heritage: A History of Wisconsin’s Fox Cities, by Ellen Kort. It was the first movie theater in the Fox River Valley.
It appears that the second Elite Theatre operated for less than thirty years. The headline of a story in the May 15, 1950, issue of the Appleton Post Crescent read “Curtain to ring down Tuesday on last picture in Elite Theater.”
The Carrington Youth Center doesn’t have its own web site, but show times and the name of the current movie are posted on this page of the City of Carrington’s web site.
The December 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that Don Tracy planned to open his new Grand Theatre at Carrington, North Dakota, on December 31.
A photo of the vertical sign of the Dixwell Theatre illustrated an ad for Flexlume Electric Displays on this page of Motion Picture News, December 1, 1928.
There are probably few people who remember the original 1928 look of the Little Carnegie Playhouse. It was a strikingly modern design, most likely inspired, at least in part, by the work of the German Bauhaus. Here are two photos from the December 1, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News showing the auditorium and lounge.
I don’t know how much of the original design was lost in the early 1940s remodeling by Thomas Lamb’s office, but whatever might have remained after that was wiped out in the gut renovation designed by John McNamara that was undertaken in 1952. So far I’ve been unable to discover who the theater’s original architect was.
The ornate Spanish Baroque organ screen of the Palace Theatre at Gary can be seen in this photo illustrating an ad for the George Kilgen & Son organ company in the October 13, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News.
The Wigwam having been on Court Street certainly lets it out as an earlier name for the Roxy Independent.
But I’ve also found another puzzle. A 1928 item in MotionPicture News says that a house called the Strand Theatre had opened in Muskogee on September 30. I can find only one other reference to the Strand, in the 1929 Film Daily Yearbook, which said that the house had been sold to Cauhle and Perry.
I’m reluctant to submit the Strand to Cinema Treasures, as, with no address to go by, it might be an early name for one of the other theaters already listed and described as having opened in the 1930s (the Oklahoma and the Lyric.) Trade publications sometimes listed a theater as new when it was actually an old theater that had been reopened under a new name. In fact the 1928 Strand itself could have been an earlier theater reopened with a new name.
The Murray Theatre is Richmond’s splendid survivor. Opened on October 11, 1909, the 700-seat house was primarily a vaudeville theater. The Murray Theatre was designed by architect Fred W. Elliot.
In 1930 the house closed, but was reopened the following year as the Indiana Theatre, devoted to movies. In 1952 the local theater company, the Richmond Civic Theatre, began leasing the Indiana Theatre for its performances, and the company bought the house in 1966. In 1984, the name Murray Theatre was restored, and the venerable house was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
After more than a half century, the Richmond Civic Theatre continues to operate the Murray Theatre as its main stage, mounting several productions each year. The company also has plans to launch a classic film series some time in the future.
In 2009, local blogger Dan Tate posted this entry in honor of the Murray Theatre’s centennial. It features several vintage illustrations of the Murray, as well as pictures of several other Richmond theaters.
The Murray Theatre is located at 1003 E. Main Street. Here is the web site of the Richmond Civic Theatre.
Marks' Ritz was a splendid little theater. A photo of the front illustrated an ad for Cutler-Hammer dimmers in the October 6, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News. The somewhat eclectic facade was predominantly Spanish Renaissance in style.
An ad for the American Seating Company in the October 6, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News featured a photo of the auditorium of Redmon’s Majestic Theatre.
The 1929 edition of The Film Daily Yearbook included the Ritz in Muskogee in its list of new theaters for 1928, so that must be the year the name was changed.
The Summer, 2000, issue of Three Rivers Historian, the journal of the Three Rivers Museum, had an article about Muskogee’s theaters which said that the Roxy Theatre that opened in 1948 on Okmulgee Avenue had been built to replace an earlier Roxy Theatre that had burned. The burned theater must have been the Roxy Independent.
The building looks like it would have predated the name Roxy, which only came into use after the original Roxy Theatre in New York was opened in 1927. I suspect that the Roxy Independent was an older theater renamed, probably one of the four early theaters mentioned in the journal article the locations of which are not listed: the Gem, the Gaiety, the Wigwam, or the Merchant’s.
An ad in the October 5, 1916, issue of the Muskogee County Democrat places the New Yale Theatre at Broadway and Third. That explains why the building at 208 Broadway looks too small to have held a 1,000-seat theater. It didn’t.
Either the New Yale Theatre isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures or its name was changed and it is listed under the later name, but is missing the AKA. I wonder if it could have become the Palace, which is listed here but without an address? The Palace was advertised as early as 1921, and I haven’t found any mentions of the New Yale later than 1919.
This article from the Muskogee Phoenix says that the Hinton Theatre was built in 1905, was renamed the Orpheum in 1920. It doesn’t give the year the name Ritz was adopted, but it must have been by 1929, as the article says that Procter and Marsh, who renamed the house after taking it over and remodeling, introduced talking pictures at the Ritz. The name Ritz was definitely in use by February, 1930, when it was mentioned in a newspaper item.
The house was still called the Orpheum at least as late as January, 1928, when a production of Phillip Duning and George Abbott’s play Broadway was mounted there by the authors. The Library of Congress has a copy of the program for the production, but it hasn’t been digitized.
It’s likely that the Colonial Theatre was designed by Rubush & Hunter. The July 30, 1910, issue of The American Contractor said that the owners of the Colonial Theatre, which was under lease to the Sullivan & Considine vaudeville circuit, were contemplating alterations to the house, and that Rubush & Hunter would draw the plans for the project. It seems likely that if the theater was being remodeled only a year after it opened that the original architects would be hired to design the project. The Colonial Revival detailing of the facade was certainly characteristic of the firm’s work.
I failed to explain in my previous comment that the page of thumbnails can be used to start the video at the point each thumbnail depicts, so you can watch any particular segment over again. Just click on it.
A picture of the Queensboro Theatre’s auditorium illustrates and ad for Link theatre organs on this page of Motion Picture News of December 29, 1928. (Enlarge the picture by clicking on the + sign in the bar at lower right of the page.)
This might have been posted before, but all the old links that might have been to it appear to be dead.
The December 29, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Riviera Theatre at Scranton had opened on December 9. The 1,500-seat house featured a “…Spanish type of architecture….” and had cost $300,000. It was operated by the Comerford chain, and was the first theater in Scranton to have been built specifically to show talking pictures. The first feature presented at the Riviera was Lilac Time,, with Colleen Moore, and the opening night program included an organ recital by professor Lawson Reid.
The December 29, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that a 400-seat house called the Star Theatre had opened in Delano on December 7. The manager was named as H. Yamoto. As the house had a Japanese manager, it was certainly aimed at a minority audience (inland California was a racially intolerant as any place in America in those days.)
I’m beginning to suspect very strongly that the Star Theatre and the West Theatre were the same house. I don’t think Delano was large enough to have supported two theaters for minority groups during that period.
The December 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that Dominick Fresna had opened the remodeled Princess Theatre at Springfield, Illinois, as the Lincoln Theatre on Thanksgiving Day.
The Dodge Theatre is the right age and size to be the house mentioned in the December 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News:
Otto Theis was a prominent local rancher and businessman, and would not have operated the theater himself, which would have led to the Fox circuit’s involvement. Architect Ellis Charles was based in Wichita, and is little known outside that city.The December 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that the Washington Theatre in Granite City had recently been bought by Skouras Brothers Enterprises. Skouras Brothers planned to expend about $25,000 for improvements to the house, including the installation of Vitaphone sound equipment. The value of the sale was not released, but MPM said that the estimated value of the Washington Theatre was $300,000.
A 1938 issue of Motion Picture Herald said that W. R. Vincent had opened the 499-seat De Pere Theatre at De Pere, Wisconsin. The theater was located in a former storage garage, and the conversion had been designed by Green Bay architects Geniesse & Connell. The item also noted that the new house gave De Pere six operating movie theaters, the same number as nearby Green Bay, which had more than five times the population of De Pere.
Information about theaters in De Pere is scant in the early trade publications, but I’ve found a 1913 reference to a Dreamland Theatre which had just moved to a new location in the Roffers Building on Main Avenue; a 1916 reference to a Pearl Theatre, which had reopened on March 4 after being damaged by fire; and a 1915 reference to a planned but yet unnamed theater, two stories and 60x120 feet, to be built that spring.
An issue of Engineering News Record from March, 1921, had this item about plans for a new theater on College Avenue:
.If the Elite was indeed designed by Henry Wildhagen, it was one of his later works. He was born in 1856, and by the late 19th century had become one of northern Wisconsin’s leading architects. Many of the buildings he designed are listed on the NRHP.Neil Duffy opened the first Elite Theatre (probably the house at 101 College Avenue) in Appleton in 1908, according to The Fox Heritage: A History of Wisconsin’s Fox Cities, by Ellen Kort. It was the first movie theater in the Fox River Valley.
It appears that the second Elite Theatre operated for less than thirty years. The headline of a story in the May 15, 1950, issue of the Appleton Post Crescent read “Curtain to ring down Tuesday on last picture in Elite Theater.”
Motion Picture News of December 22, 1928, reported that the remodeled Homewood Theatre would open the following week.
The Carrington Youth Center doesn’t have its own web site, but show times and the name of the current movie are posted on this page of the City of Carrington’s web site.
The December 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that Don Tracy planned to open his new Grand Theatre at Carrington, North Dakota, on December 31.
A photo of the vertical sign of the Dixwell Theatre illustrated an ad for Flexlume Electric Displays on this page of Motion Picture News, December 1, 1928.
There are probably few people who remember the original 1928 look of the Little Carnegie Playhouse. It was a strikingly modern design, most likely inspired, at least in part, by the work of the German Bauhaus. Here are two photos from the December 1, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News showing the auditorium and lounge.
I don’t know how much of the original design was lost in the early 1940s remodeling by Thomas Lamb’s office, but whatever might have remained after that was wiped out in the gut renovation designed by John McNamara that was undertaken in 1952. So far I’ve been unable to discover who the theater’s original architect was.
Here is a circa 1954 photo of the Electric Theatre.
Here are three photos of the Electric Theatre, including two interior shots, from the November 3, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News.
The ornate Spanish Baroque organ screen of the Palace Theatre at Gary can be seen in this photo illustrating an ad for the George Kilgen & Son organ company in the October 13, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News.
The Wigwam having been on Court Street certainly lets it out as an earlier name for the Roxy Independent.
But I’ve also found another puzzle. A 1928 item in MotionPicture News says that a house called the Strand Theatre had opened in Muskogee on September 30. I can find only one other reference to the Strand, in the 1929 Film Daily Yearbook, which said that the house had been sold to Cauhle and Perry.
I’m reluctant to submit the Strand to Cinema Treasures, as, with no address to go by, it might be an early name for one of the other theaters already listed and described as having opened in the 1930s (the Oklahoma and the Lyric.) Trade publications sometimes listed a theater as new when it was actually an old theater that had been reopened under a new name. In fact the 1928 Strand itself could have been an earlier theater reopened with a new name.
The Murray Theatre is Richmond’s splendid survivor. Opened on October 11, 1909, the 700-seat house was primarily a vaudeville theater. The Murray Theatre was designed by architect Fred W. Elliot.
In 1930 the house closed, but was reopened the following year as the Indiana Theatre, devoted to movies. In 1952 the local theater company, the Richmond Civic Theatre, began leasing the Indiana Theatre for its performances, and the company bought the house in 1966. In 1984, the name Murray Theatre was restored, and the venerable house was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
After more than a half century, the Richmond Civic Theatre continues to operate the Murray Theatre as its main stage, mounting several productions each year. The company also has plans to launch a classic film series some time in the future.
In 2009, local blogger Dan Tate posted this entry in honor of the Murray Theatre’s centennial. It features several vintage illustrations of the Murray, as well as pictures of several other Richmond theaters.
The Murray Theatre is located at 1003 E. Main Street. Here is the web site of the Richmond Civic Theatre.
Marks' Ritz was a splendid little theater. A photo of the front illustrated an ad for Cutler-Hammer dimmers in the October 6, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News. The somewhat eclectic facade was predominantly Spanish Renaissance in style.
An ad for the American Seating Company in the October 6, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News featured a photo of the auditorium of Redmon’s Majestic Theatre.
The 1929 edition of The Film Daily Yearbook included the Ritz in Muskogee in its list of new theaters for 1928, so that must be the year the name was changed.
The Summer, 2000, issue of Three Rivers Historian, the journal of the Three Rivers Museum, had an article about Muskogee’s theaters which said that the Roxy Theatre that opened in 1948 on Okmulgee Avenue had been built to replace an earlier Roxy Theatre that had burned. The burned theater must have been the Roxy Independent.
The building looks like it would have predated the name Roxy, which only came into use after the original Roxy Theatre in New York was opened in 1927. I suspect that the Roxy Independent was an older theater renamed, probably one of the four early theaters mentioned in the journal article the locations of which are not listed: the Gem, the Gaiety, the Wigwam, or the Merchant’s.
An ad in the October 5, 1916, issue of the Muskogee County Democrat places the New Yale Theatre at Broadway and Third. That explains why the building at 208 Broadway looks too small to have held a 1,000-seat theater. It didn’t.
Either the New Yale Theatre isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures or its name was changed and it is listed under the later name, but is missing the AKA. I wonder if it could have become the Palace, which is listed here but without an address? The Palace was advertised as early as 1921, and I haven’t found any mentions of the New Yale later than 1919.
This article from the Muskogee Phoenix says that the Hinton Theatre was built in 1905, was renamed the Orpheum in 1920. It doesn’t give the year the name Ritz was adopted, but it must have been by 1929, as the article says that Procter and Marsh, who renamed the house after taking it over and remodeling, introduced talking pictures at the Ritz. The name Ritz was definitely in use by February, 1930, when it was mentioned in a newspaper item.
The house was still called the Orpheum at least as late as January, 1928, when a production of Phillip Duning and George Abbott’s play Broadway was mounted there by the authors. The Library of Congress has a copy of the program for the production, but it hasn’t been digitized.
It’s likely that the Colonial Theatre was designed by Rubush & Hunter. The July 30, 1910, issue of The American Contractor said that the owners of the Colonial Theatre, which was under lease to the Sullivan & Considine vaudeville circuit, were contemplating alterations to the house, and that Rubush & Hunter would draw the plans for the project. It seems likely that if the theater was being remodeled only a year after it opened that the original architects would be hired to design the project. The Colonial Revival detailing of the facade was certainly characteristic of the firm’s work.
I failed to explain in my previous comment that the page of thumbnails can be used to start the video at the point each thumbnail depicts, so you can watch any particular segment over again. Just click on it.