Both the ground floor and upper floor spaces in this complex were originally planned to be theaters, as noted in this item from Manufacturers Record of August 14, 1919: “ $1,000,000 building at 18 W. Lexington St.; 178x120 ft.; 2 theaters under 1 roof; 1st floor seat 3900; 2d, 2500; moving stage; pipe organ, $50,000; 6 elevators for roof service; galleries reached by runway; Jno. J. Zink, Archt., McLachlen Bldg…..”
The decision to open the upper floor as a ballroom instead must have been made after the initial plans had been announced. The conversion of the ballroom to a theater five years later must have been greatly facilitated by the fact that the space had been planned to house a theater to begin with.
A centennial history of Clarence published in 1959 said that the town’s 1938 theater was installed in the north half of the American Legion Hall. With an expanding membership during the post-war period, the Legion decided to remodel the building and use the entire space for their own activities.
I haven’t been able to confirm that the current American Legion hall is the same remodeled building, which was rededicated in 1954, but aside from a fake mansard that probably dates from the 1970s it does have a midcentury look to it. If this was the State Theatre, the building’s address is 304 6th Avenue, just off Lombard Street, which is aka Lincoln Highway.
The Temple Theatre was one of two movie houses listed at Creston in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other was the Comet, listed at 211 N. (probably a typo for W.) Adams.
The name Masonic Theatre appeared in reports of the 1920 fire appearing in safety and insurance industry journals, but I haven’t found it in any theater industry publications yet. Those invariably refer to the house as either the Temple Theatre or the Temple Grand Theatre.
Reports in various entertainment journals in late 1909 indicate that the Temple Grand had a major fire in December that year as well, causing some $40,000 in damage.
The July 9, 1955 issue of Boxoffice said that novice theater operator Maurice Sorenson had taken over the Newell Theatre about two months earlier and had installed a wide screen. I’ve found no later mentions of Mr. Sorenson, but the town’s theater, closed again, is mentioned in the November 13, 1957 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor. The item said “[t]he community of Newell, Iowa, wants its theatre reopened; a group of women is selling season tickets.” I’ve been unable to discover the outcome of their efforts.
The February 10, 1917 issue of Moving Picture World said that “Van Hooser and Layman have purchased the Amuzu theater in Fonda from Smith Bros.”
A 1958 photo of the Amuzu shows it a few doors down Main Street from the First National Bank building, which is still standing at 119 N. Main Street. The photo doesn’t show the entire block, most of which has been demolished in any case, but the theater was perhaps about halfway along it, so the address would have been approximately 109 N. Main.
The June 3, 1959 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor published a letter from Wayne Walker, manager of the Glenn Theatre in Georgetown, Kentucky, who said that the house had recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. A more detailed article in the Louisville Courier-Journal of December 20, 1959 said that the Glenn had opened in 1909 as the Opera House. It was still listed under that name in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory and in editions of the FDY through 1935. The 1936 edition listed the Glenn Theatre for the first time.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide lists the Georgetown Opera House as a ground floor theater with about 1,000 seats, but the FDY lists it with only 500, while the Glenn in its first listing has 638. The Cahn says that the Opera House had 519 seats on the main floor, 209 in the balcony and 246 in the gallery. It seems likely that in its operation as a movie house the balcony and gallery were simply not used, but when the house was renovated and renamed in 1935 the balcony was reopened. A more extensive remodeling took place in 1937, as records of the alterations planned in May through August that year exist in the papers of the Lexington architectural firm Frankel & Curtis.
According to a 2011 article in the La Crosse Tribune, Viroqua’s Vernon Square Shopping Center opened in 1991, and the three-screen cinema opened in 1996, in space vacated by an unsuccessful retail store.
The NRHP registration form for the Masonic Temple Building (PDF here) says that the Temple Theatre opened on July 1, 1922 under the management of local showman Ben C. Brown, who had first shown movies in Viroqua at the old Brown Opera House at 120-122 N. Main Street in 1908, and had later operated an Airdome, a storefront house called the Electric Theatre, and then in 1915 the Star Theatre, which was in a new building at 211 S. Main Street.
In 1931, the Masonic Lodge entered lease agreement with the Paramount-Publix theater chain, which remodeled the theater interior from its original Classical Revival style to the popular, modern Art Deco style, and installed a modern marquee, though the building’s exterior was otherwise unchanged, retaining the Classical Revival look it still has today. Having lost control of the Temple, Ben Brown responded by converting a garage on Court Street into the Vernon Theatre.
Neither the local Masonic lodge nor Paramount-Publix prospered in Viroqua in the early years of the depression, and by 1935 the Masons had lost their building and Paramount its lease on the theater. The building’s new owner, William Dyson, sold the upstairs lodge facilities back to the Masons, but retained ownership of the ground floor, leasing the theater to a local operator, though it was not Brown. The new operator, Jacob Eskin, refreshed the house and installed new seating with four more inches between rows.
By 1951, when Ben Brown celebrated his sixtieth anniversary in show business (he had started as a promoter of shows in the town’s Brown Opera House in 1891) he was once again a partner in the Temple Theatre.
There’s a fly loft /behind/ the Vernon Theatre, but it’s across the alley and belongs to the Temple Theatre. The Vernon was strictly a movie house, installed in an older building. The guide for a walking tour of downtown Viroqua says the building was a garage before being converted into a theater by Ben Brown, who had operated the Temple Theatre from its opening until 1931, when the owners leased the house to Paramount-Publix.
The Palace was either rebuilt or moved to a new building in 1912. This item is from the July 20 issue of Motograpahy that year:
“‘The Palace’ is the name of a handsome new motion picture theater recently opened at Cedar Rapids by Mr. Ford. It has a brilliantly-lighted entrance and the interior is provided with the best indirect lighting system that can be had as well as the best ventilating system. The roof beams have a mission effect, the walls are handsomely decorated and the mural decorations are excellent. Special attention will be given to feature films.”
The partnership of architects F. Russell Stuckert and Maurice M. Sloan only lasted a bit over five years, from 1909 to 1915, but was quite productive. Much of their work was for the Horn & Hardart restaurant chain, both in Philadelphia and New York City. Sloan appears to have retired to Atlantic City when the firm was dissolved in 1915, but his partner continued to practice after changing the firm name to Stuckert & Co., remaining in Philadelphia until 1930 and removing the office to New York for the last five years of its operation.
Neither partner appears to have designed any theaters on their own, but as partners they designed not only the four currently attributed to them at Cinema Treasures, but perhaps three other neighborhood houses in Philadelphia. One was a 1913 project for Kahn and Greenburg, located on North Broad Street near W. Thompson Street. Bids were being taken in September, 1913, but I’ve been unable to find any later notices about the project, so can’t be sure it was carried out.
A 350-seat house called the Tivoli was built for Jacob Weinreich and Bros. in 1913, at 1131 Fairmont Avenue.
The third project was a house on E. Lehigh Avenue for the Felt brothers, original owners of the Locust. Contracts were let in December, 1913, but I’ve been unable to discover the name of the house. Some notices say it was on Lehigh near Richmond Street, but one says Lehigh near Salmon Street. Most of the area between Richmond and Salmon is now occupied by an elevated highway, so chances of this one’s survival are slim to none.
Jakorns (on May 20, 2004) apparently got the opening year of the Olympic wrong, as well as the address in their next comment. This item appeared in the June, 1912 issue of Motography: “‘The Olympic’ is the name of the new motion picture theater recently opened at South Third street and Twelfth avenue, Cedar Rapids.”
Moving Picture World of September 26, 1908 confirms construction of the Magic Theatre that year, but also reveals that, despite the large stage, it was also a movie house from the beginning: “Ft. Dodge, Ia. The Magic Theater, on South Eighth street, is practically complete and will open to the general public in a few days with the latest and best moving pictures.”
The Magic appears to have undergone remodeling or perhaps repairs in 1911. The July 21 issue of the Marshalltown, Iowa Evening Times-Republican reported that two masons working on the Magic Theatre in Fort Dodge had been injured when the 22-foot high scaffolding on which they were standing gave way. A number of concrete blocks also fell, but fortunately none struck anyone.
A puzzling claim appears in an article in the October 30, 1909 issue of Show World, which referred to Fort Dodge as Iowa’s largest “theaterless town.” Professional wrestler Frank Gotch of Humboldt Iowa was considering the construction of a playhouse at Fort Dodge as an investment. I’ve found no follow-up items to indicate if Mr. Gotch carried out his plans or not, but as the item was dated a year after the opening of the Magic, I wonder why it said that Fort Dodge had no theater? Could it be that the Magic’s stage was only added sometime after the house opened with movies in 1908?
Fort Dodge: 1850 to 1970 by Roger B. Natte, part of the Arcadia Press “Images of America” series, says that the Princess Theatre was opened in 1910 as a vaudeville house, closed in 1934, and the building was converted into a bank in 1939 and razed in the 1970s.
The 1926 FDY lists the Princess with only 400 seats. I suspect that when the house was operating as a movie theater they simply closed the balcony, and set up the projection equipment in it. As late as 1924, the local Chamber of Commerce publication The Community Builder was noting that a stock company was presenting a new season of plays in the house.
There might have been more than one house in Fort Dodge called the Empire Theatre. This item is from Show World of December 5, 1908: “Fort Dodge, Iowa, Nov. 28. The Empire which closed last week will not re-open. The entire equipment was shipped to Des Moines today.”
The November, 1925 issue of a magazine called The Community Builder, published by the Fort Dodge Chamber of Commerce, said that on May 31 that year the Majestic had been purchased by the A. H. Blank Company of Des Moines. The same company bought Fort Dodge’s Rialto Theatre on October 15.
The March 21, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World made reference to “[m]anager Spencer, of the Delight Theater, Tenth street and Central Avenue, Fort Dodge, Ia….” The Delight in also mentioned in passing (it’s former operator had leased the Opera House in Carroll to operate as a movie theater) in the January 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon. It is not one of the three theaters listed at Ft. Dodge in the 1912 Polk Iowa Gazetteer. Those were the 500-seat Magic Theatre, the 800-seat Princess Theatre, and the Masonic Hall, no capacity listed. Listings in this directory were not always complete, but if the Delight does not appear on the 1912 Sanborn either it’s probable that it was indeed closed by then.
The Magic Theatre was mentioned in the January 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon. It’s manager, who boasted the alliterative name J. Jolly Jones, Jr., had installed a new motion picture machine and planned numerous other improvements to the house. Multiple mentions of the Magic appeared in December, 1909 issues of The New York Dramatic Mirror, one of which noted that Mr. Jones’s predecessor had sold his interest in the house and resigned his position after about a year, moving to St. Joseph, Missouri, to take over management of the Star theatre there.
The Magic was listed with 500 seats in the 1912 Polk Iowa Gazetteer, and is one of three houses listed. It was still listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but no seating capacity was given. The latest mention of the Magic I’ve found is in the May 3, 1919 issue of The Billboard.
In 1923, Rialto manager James Nester had a capsule movie review published in the March 24 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Nester thought the one reel Universal release “Unfermented Bricks” with Neeley Edwards a “fair comedy” that could have been better, though he allowed that his theater’s patrons “seemed pleased” with the offering.
The July 16, 1949 issue of Boxoffice said that good progress was being made on the new,734-seat theater under construction at Rotan, and manager Lance M. Davis planned a fall opening. Davis was already operating the Majestic and Ritz theaters in Rotan in partnership with Robb & Rowley of Dallas.
The Majestic Theatre at Rotan was in operation by late 1913. It was on a list of theaters subscribing to the services of the American Motion Picture League that was published by the company in the December 20 issue of Moving Picture World that year.
The earliest mention of Ruthven I’ve found in the trades is from Moving Picture World of December 20, 1913. The local movie house had just changed hands but its name was not given. The next mention was in the October 9, 1915 issue of the same journal, which again noted the sale of the house, but it was called the Electric Theatre. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory missed Ruthven altogether.
The Electric Theatre still existed in 1926, when the FDY listed it with 240 seats. The listing was unchanged in 1929. The Electric is listed as a silent house in 1931, closed in 1932 and 1933, and Ruthven itself vanishes in 1934, though so do several other cities at the end of the “R” section, so that could have been a mistake by the FDY. The Legion Theater first appears in 1935, with 325 seats. If it was in the same building as the Electric its remodeling must have been extensive.
There are errors in our current description of this theater. It opened on May 18, 1914 with a play called “The Ghost Breaker.” This was the second Germania Opera House in Denison. The February 22, 1913 issue of Moving Picture World which announced the plans for the new Germania Opera House also noted that the old Opera house would be converted into a moving picture theater. The original Germania was located on North Main Street, but I haven’t been able to discover exactly where.
Henry E. Williams and his brother built the Opera House on the west side of Primghar’s Courthouse Square in 1890. After the house had been leased to a stock company for two years, Williams took over operation himself. In the 1914 Polk guide the theater was listed as the Williams Opera House. Henry Williams operated a number of businesses along the 100 block of Green Avenue, and some of the buildings he had built for them in the late 19th and early 20th century are still standing, but the Opera House is sadly not among them. Judging from views at Historic Aerials, it was demolished prior to 1984. The next previous view is from 1949, so that’s as far as it can be narrowed down for now.
Both the ground floor and upper floor spaces in this complex were originally planned to be theaters, as noted in this item from Manufacturers Record of August 14, 1919: “ $1,000,000 building at 18 W. Lexington St.; 178x120 ft.; 2 theaters under 1 roof; 1st floor seat 3900; 2d, 2500; moving stage; pipe organ, $50,000; 6 elevators for roof service; galleries reached by runway; Jno. J. Zink, Archt., McLachlen Bldg…..”
The decision to open the upper floor as a ballroom instead must have been made after the initial plans had been announced. The conversion of the ballroom to a theater five years later must have been greatly facilitated by the fact that the space had been planned to house a theater to begin with.
A centennial history of Clarence published in 1959 said that the town’s 1938 theater was installed in the north half of the American Legion Hall. With an expanding membership during the post-war period, the Legion decided to remodel the building and use the entire space for their own activities.
I haven’t been able to confirm that the current American Legion hall is the same remodeled building, which was rededicated in 1954, but aside from a fake mansard that probably dates from the 1970s it does have a midcentury look to it. If this was the State Theatre, the building’s address is 304 6th Avenue, just off Lombard Street, which is aka Lincoln Highway.
The Temple Theatre was one of two movie houses listed at Creston in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other was the Comet, listed at 211 N. (probably a typo for W.) Adams.
The name Masonic Theatre appeared in reports of the 1920 fire appearing in safety and insurance industry journals, but I haven’t found it in any theater industry publications yet. Those invariably refer to the house as either the Temple Theatre or the Temple Grand Theatre.
Reports in various entertainment journals in late 1909 indicate that the Temple Grand had a major fire in December that year as well, causing some $40,000 in damage.
The July 9, 1955 issue of Boxoffice said that novice theater operator Maurice Sorenson had taken over the Newell Theatre about two months earlier and had installed a wide screen. I’ve found no later mentions of Mr. Sorenson, but the town’s theater, closed again, is mentioned in the November 13, 1957 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor. The item said “[t]he community of Newell, Iowa, wants its theatre reopened; a group of women is selling season tickets.” I’ve been unable to discover the outcome of their efforts.
The February 10, 1917 issue of Moving Picture World said that “Van Hooser and Layman have purchased the Amuzu theater in Fonda from Smith Bros.”
A 1958 photo of the Amuzu shows it a few doors down Main Street from the First National Bank building, which is still standing at 119 N. Main Street. The photo doesn’t show the entire block, most of which has been demolished in any case, but the theater was perhaps about halfway along it, so the address would have been approximately 109 N. Main.
The June 3, 1959 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor published a letter from Wayne Walker, manager of the Glenn Theatre in Georgetown, Kentucky, who said that the house had recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. A more detailed article in the Louisville Courier-Journal of December 20, 1959 said that the Glenn had opened in 1909 as the Opera House. It was still listed under that name in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory and in editions of the FDY through 1935. The 1936 edition listed the Glenn Theatre for the first time.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide lists the Georgetown Opera House as a ground floor theater with about 1,000 seats, but the FDY lists it with only 500, while the Glenn in its first listing has 638. The Cahn says that the Opera House had 519 seats on the main floor, 209 in the balcony and 246 in the gallery. It seems likely that in its operation as a movie house the balcony and gallery were simply not used, but when the house was renovated and renamed in 1935 the balcony was reopened. A more extensive remodeling took place in 1937, as records of the alterations planned in May through August that year exist in the papers of the Lexington architectural firm Frankel & Curtis.
According to a 2011 article in the La Crosse Tribune, Viroqua’s Vernon Square Shopping Center opened in 1991, and the three-screen cinema opened in 1996, in space vacated by an unsuccessful retail store.
The NRHP registration form for the Masonic Temple Building (PDF here) says that the Temple Theatre opened on July 1, 1922 under the management of local showman Ben C. Brown, who had first shown movies in Viroqua at the old Brown Opera House at 120-122 N. Main Street in 1908, and had later operated an Airdome, a storefront house called the Electric Theatre, and then in 1915 the Star Theatre, which was in a new building at 211 S. Main Street.
In 1931, the Masonic Lodge entered lease agreement with the Paramount-Publix theater chain, which remodeled the theater interior from its original Classical Revival style to the popular, modern Art Deco style, and installed a modern marquee, though the building’s exterior was otherwise unchanged, retaining the Classical Revival look it still has today. Having lost control of the Temple, Ben Brown responded by converting a garage on Court Street into the Vernon Theatre.
Neither the local Masonic lodge nor Paramount-Publix prospered in Viroqua in the early years of the depression, and by 1935 the Masons had lost their building and Paramount its lease on the theater. The building’s new owner, William Dyson, sold the upstairs lodge facilities back to the Masons, but retained ownership of the ground floor, leasing the theater to a local operator, though it was not Brown. The new operator, Jacob Eskin, refreshed the house and installed new seating with four more inches between rows.
By 1951, when Ben Brown celebrated his sixtieth anniversary in show business (he had started as a promoter of shows in the town’s Brown Opera House in 1891) he was once again a partner in the Temple Theatre.
There’s a fly loft /behind/ the Vernon Theatre, but it’s across the alley and belongs to the Temple Theatre. The Vernon was strictly a movie house, installed in an older building. The guide for a walking tour of downtown Viroqua says the building was a garage before being converted into a theater by Ben Brown, who had operated the Temple Theatre from its opening until 1931, when the owners leased the house to Paramount-Publix.
The Palace was either rebuilt or moved to a new building in 1912. This item is from the July 20 issue of Motograpahy that year:
The partnership of architects F. Russell Stuckert and Maurice M. Sloan only lasted a bit over five years, from 1909 to 1915, but was quite productive. Much of their work was for the Horn & Hardart restaurant chain, both in Philadelphia and New York City. Sloan appears to have retired to Atlantic City when the firm was dissolved in 1915, but his partner continued to practice after changing the firm name to Stuckert & Co., remaining in Philadelphia until 1930 and removing the office to New York for the last five years of its operation.
Neither partner appears to have designed any theaters on their own, but as partners they designed not only the four currently attributed to them at Cinema Treasures, but perhaps three other neighborhood houses in Philadelphia. One was a 1913 project for Kahn and Greenburg, located on North Broad Street near W. Thompson Street. Bids were being taken in September, 1913, but I’ve been unable to find any later notices about the project, so can’t be sure it was carried out.
A 350-seat house called the Tivoli was built for Jacob Weinreich and Bros. in 1913, at 1131 Fairmont Avenue.
The third project was a house on E. Lehigh Avenue for the Felt brothers, original owners of the Locust. Contracts were let in December, 1913, but I’ve been unable to discover the name of the house. Some notices say it was on Lehigh near Richmond Street, but one says Lehigh near Salmon Street. Most of the area between Richmond and Salmon is now occupied by an elevated highway, so chances of this one’s survival are slim to none.
Jakorns (on May 20, 2004) apparently got the opening year of the Olympic wrong, as well as the address in their next comment. This item appeared in the June, 1912 issue of Motography: “‘The Olympic’ is the name of the new motion picture theater recently opened at South Third street and Twelfth avenue, Cedar Rapids.”
Moving Picture World of September 26, 1908 confirms construction of the Magic Theatre that year, but also reveals that, despite the large stage, it was also a movie house from the beginning: “Ft. Dodge, Ia. The Magic Theater, on South Eighth street, is practically complete and will open to the general public in a few days with the latest and best moving pictures.”
The Magic appears to have undergone remodeling or perhaps repairs in 1911. The July 21 issue of the Marshalltown, Iowa Evening Times-Republican reported that two masons working on the Magic Theatre in Fort Dodge had been injured when the 22-foot high scaffolding on which they were standing gave way. A number of concrete blocks also fell, but fortunately none struck anyone.
A puzzling claim appears in an article in the October 30, 1909 issue of Show World, which referred to Fort Dodge as Iowa’s largest “theaterless town.” Professional wrestler Frank Gotch of Humboldt Iowa was considering the construction of a playhouse at Fort Dodge as an investment. I’ve found no follow-up items to indicate if Mr. Gotch carried out his plans or not, but as the item was dated a year after the opening of the Magic, I wonder why it said that Fort Dodge had no theater? Could it be that the Magic’s stage was only added sometime after the house opened with movies in 1908?
Fort Dodge: 1850 to 1970 by Roger B. Natte, part of the Arcadia Press “Images of America” series, says that the Princess Theatre was opened in 1910 as a vaudeville house, closed in 1934, and the building was converted into a bank in 1939 and razed in the 1970s.
The 1926 FDY lists the Princess with only 400 seats. I suspect that when the house was operating as a movie theater they simply closed the balcony, and set up the projection equipment in it. As late as 1924, the local Chamber of Commerce publication The Community Builder was noting that a stock company was presenting a new season of plays in the house.
There might have been more than one house in Fort Dodge called the Empire Theatre. This item is from Show World of December 5, 1908: “Fort Dodge, Iowa, Nov. 28. The Empire which closed last week will not re-open. The entire equipment was shipped to Des Moines today.”
The November, 1925 issue of a magazine called The Community Builder, published by the Fort Dodge Chamber of Commerce, said that on May 31 that year the Majestic had been purchased by the A. H. Blank Company of Des Moines. The same company bought Fort Dodge’s Rialto Theatre on October 15.
The March 21, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World made reference to “[m]anager Spencer, of the Delight Theater, Tenth street and Central Avenue, Fort Dodge, Ia….” The Delight in also mentioned in passing (it’s former operator had leased the Opera House in Carroll to operate as a movie theater) in the January 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon. It is not one of the three theaters listed at Ft. Dodge in the 1912 Polk Iowa Gazetteer. Those were the 500-seat Magic Theatre, the 800-seat Princess Theatre, and the Masonic Hall, no capacity listed. Listings in this directory were not always complete, but if the Delight does not appear on the 1912 Sanborn either it’s probable that it was indeed closed by then.
The Magic Theatre was mentioned in the January 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon. It’s manager, who boasted the alliterative name J. Jolly Jones, Jr., had installed a new motion picture machine and planned numerous other improvements to the house. Multiple mentions of the Magic appeared in December, 1909 issues of The New York Dramatic Mirror, one of which noted that Mr. Jones’s predecessor had sold his interest in the house and resigned his position after about a year, moving to St. Joseph, Missouri, to take over management of the Star theatre there.
The Magic was listed with 500 seats in the 1912 Polk Iowa Gazetteer, and is one of three houses listed. It was still listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but no seating capacity was given. The latest mention of the Magic I’ve found is in the May 3, 1919 issue of The Billboard.
In 1923, Rialto manager James Nester had a capsule movie review published in the March 24 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Nester thought the one reel Universal release “Unfermented Bricks” with Neeley Edwards a “fair comedy” that could have been better, though he allowed that his theater’s patrons “seemed pleased” with the offering.
The July 16, 1949 issue of Boxoffice said that good progress was being made on the new,734-seat theater under construction at Rotan, and manager Lance M. Davis planned a fall opening. Davis was already operating the Majestic and Ritz theaters in Rotan in partnership with Robb & Rowley of Dallas.
The Majestic Theatre at Rotan was in operation by late 1913. It was on a list of theaters subscribing to the services of the American Motion Picture League that was published by the company in the December 20 issue of Moving Picture World that year.
The Lyric and the Opera House are the two theaters listed at Hartley in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The earliest mention of Ruthven I’ve found in the trades is from Moving Picture World of December 20, 1913. The local movie house had just changed hands but its name was not given. The next mention was in the October 9, 1915 issue of the same journal, which again noted the sale of the house, but it was called the Electric Theatre. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory missed Ruthven altogether.
The Electric Theatre still existed in 1926, when the FDY listed it with 240 seats. The listing was unchanged in 1929. The Electric is listed as a silent house in 1931, closed in 1932 and 1933, and Ruthven itself vanishes in 1934, though so do several other cities at the end of the “R” section, so that could have been a mistake by the FDY. The Legion Theater first appears in 1935, with 325 seats. If it was in the same building as the Electric its remodeling must have been extensive.
There are errors in our current description of this theater. It opened on May 18, 1914 with a play called “The Ghost Breaker.” This was the second Germania Opera House in Denison. The February 22, 1913 issue of Moving Picture World which announced the plans for the new Germania Opera House also noted that the old Opera house would be converted into a moving picture theater. The original Germania was located on North Main Street, but I haven’t been able to discover exactly where.
Henry E. Williams and his brother built the Opera House on the west side of Primghar’s Courthouse Square in 1890. After the house had been leased to a stock company for two years, Williams took over operation himself. In the 1914 Polk guide the theater was listed as the Williams Opera House. Henry Williams operated a number of businesses along the 100 block of Green Avenue, and some of the buildings he had built for them in the late 19th and early 20th century are still standing, but the Opera House is sadly not among them. Judging from views at Historic Aerials, it was demolished prior to 1984. The next previous view is from 1949, so that’s as far as it can be narrowed down for now.