This Rogers Theatre must be the one that can be seen in the two photos at the top of this page of the November 14, 1936, issue of Boxoffice. At the bottom of the page are two photos of the Central Theatre in Yonkers, New York. The last paragraph of the text says that both houses were designed by architect William Hohauser.
Warren G. Harris’s earlier comment on this house attributing the design to Charles Sandblom says that it was a 1935 project, but didn’t open until 1936. The belated opening must have been related to Sandblom’s 1935 plans being dropped, and Hohauser designing the theater as it was finally built.
An article by Helen Kent with a few photos of the Kiggins Theatre was published in Boxoffice of November 11, 1936 (additional photo on the subsequent page.) In addition, a view of the theater’s stairwell appeared as the frontispiece of that issue’s Modern Theatre section.
Here is a quote from the Landmark Designation Report for the Metro Theatre, regarding the involvement of architect Otto A. Deichmann in the 1941 remodeling of the house, and his professional relationship with Timothy Pflueger:
“While architect Timothy L. Pflueger (1892-1946) has long been associated with the 1941 renovation of the Metro Theatre, his involvement is less clear than that of architect Otto A. Deichmann (1890-1964). A city permit, dated 1941, for interior work and plumbing lists the name of the architect as Otto Deichmann, 321 Bush Street. Historical consultants involved with the 1998 renovation of the theatre believe that Deichmann worked with Timothy Pflueger during the renovation. Research has not confirmed that Deichmann worked in the offices of Pflueger’s firm, Miller and Pflueger, but the two men were associates and overlapped on important projects, most notably the Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939-1940, where Deichmann designed the Shasta-Cascade Building. The well-known mural by Diego Rivera, Pan American Unity, now located at the main campus of City College of San Francisco, was commissioned for the Golden Gate International Exposition. The mural depicts both Pflueger and Deichmann. Pflueger, friend and patron of Rivera, collaborated with him on the mural.”
Click this link to download a PDF file of the Landmark Designation Report. It has a fairly extensive history of the theater.
The building in which the De Luxe Theatre was located, at the southeast corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, was built in 1910, which might have been the year the theater opened. The theater was tucked into a two story “L” shaped structure, which can be seen at the very bottom of this 1956 aerial view, a bit right of center. The auditorium can be distinguished by its roof.
By the 1930s, the building housed a branch of the Thrifty Drug Company, which remained the main tenant for several decades. In 1970, the second floor of the “L” shaped section was removed, and the roof of the former auditorium was rebuilt along with the rest of the roof, at a lower level, so essentially nothing remains of the De Luxe Theatre but the walls.
Ponderpig: In 1923, your father and grandmother would have gone to the De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street. This house on Jefferson Avenue was then called the Favorite Theatre. The De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street was in operation by 1914, and continued at least into 1927. It does not appear in the 1929 city directory, so it had closed by then. My guess would be that it was unable to survive the competition from the new Westlake Theatre, which opened at 636 Alvarado in 1926. I’ve been unable to find any indication that a theater ever operated in this location again.
Note that this means that the earlier comments about the organ that was installed in the De Luxe Theatre in 1921 also pertain to the Alvarado Street house, not this Jefferson Boulevard house.
The Alvarado Street De Luxe is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures. I’ve submitted it for inclusion. A page for it should appear within a day or two, when a link to it will show up in the “Newest Theaters” section on the home page.
The earliest listing I can find for a theater at 1873 Jefferson Boulevard is in the 1923 city directory, in which it is listed as the Favorite Theatre (it might have opened earlier, but I don’t have access to directories between 1915 and 1923.) By 1926, it was listed as the St. Andrews Theatre, which is also listed as in the 1927 and 1929 directories. No theater is listed for the address in the 1932 directory, but by 1936 it was open again as the De Luxe Theatre.
The entry for architect Albert F. Keymar in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Fox-Bay Theatre as one of his works, with the design date of 1949.
According to his listing in the AIA’s American Architects Directory, the architect for the 1947-1948 renovation of the Gorman Theatre was Harry J. Korslund, of Norwood, Massachusetts.
This page of a web site called Elvis Presley Pedia list the opening of the Park Theatre as an event of 1940. No source is cited, but the site lists a few other theaters by opening year and it appears to be accurate in those cases.
Heh. It turns out that one of the sources that attributes the design of the Regent Theatre to C. Howard Crane is a blog at some site called Cinema Treasures. As it appears to be a fairly reliable site, we should probably add that information to this page.
The 1922 book A standard history of Springfield and Clark County, Ohio has this to say about Gus Sun’s Regent Theatre:
“In the realm of Springfield theaters, Gus Sun is easily the dean; he has leased theaters and operated them until he owned them. In 1912 he leased the Grand and in 1917 he purchased it, and in 1919 he dismantled it, constructing the Regent on the site….”
The book also has a bit about the Grand Theatre, the Regent’s predecessor:
“In 1881 the Grand Opera House was built on Limestone Street, on the site of the old Leffel Water Wheel industry. It was built by John W. Bookwalter, with a seating capacity of 1,200, and the advantage of a ground floor and other up-to-date improvements….”
Quite a few sources note that the architect of the Regent Theatre was C. Howard Crane, and that the house opened on August 16, 1920. Some sources also claim that it was built as a legitimate theater that was later converted to show movies, but in fact Gus Sun built the Regent for vaudeville and movies.
Volume one of A standard history of Springfield and Clark County, Ohio, published in 1922, lists a Liberty Theatre among the movie houses then operating in Springfield. In addition to the Regent, the town’s “A” house, the book lists the Majestic, Princess, Hippodrome, Colonial, and Strand as movie theaters. It also mentions the Fairbanks Theatre as a legitimate stage house, and the Sun Theatre as a high-class vaudeville theater.
The Liberty was still in operation at least as late as 1961, when a demonstration was held by Antioch College students protesting the theater’s policy of excluding African Americans. Here is a recent article about the event from The Springfield Paper.
Why do the description and the address field both place this theater in New Hampshire? It’s clearly supposed to be Franklin, Idaho.
Here is a modern photo of the Princess Theatre. This might be the same theater listed in the 1906 Cahn guide as the Franklin Opera House, though I can’t imagine how they ever crammed the 500 seats Cahn’s guide said it held into that tiny building, which looks to be about 30' x 80'. Franklin then had a population of 875, according to Cahn, so I doubt that it supported two theaters.
Erwin and Unicoi County, by Linda Davis March, says that the Capitol Theatre was opened on November 11, 1935. The house has been run by members of the Hendren family since opening. The Hendrens also operated an earlier theater called the Lyric, which was on South Main Street. When the Capitol opened, the Lyric became the “B” house in Erwin.
I think that this item from an April, 1912, issue of The Moving Picture World must be about the Globe/Florence Mills Theatre, which was built that year:
“Plans for a new… theater have been completed by Architect A. Lawrence Valk. Theater being built for John Wagner at Central Avenue, near Jefferson”
Here’s an item published by The Moving Picture World in April, 1912. The theater name and the street are right, but the address doesn’t quite match up, and it was three years after the Empire was supposed to have opened. However, the Empire’s site does include the lots at 1523-1525 Vine as well as 1521, and I don’t know the original source of the opening date of 1909, so I’m posting the item here, just in case the 1909 opening date that’s found all over the Internet is wrong:
“Estimates are being received by Architects Rapp, Zettle & Rapp, for the erection of the Empire Moving Picture Theater, to be erected at 1523-25 Vine Street, by the Empire Theater Co.”
Possibly a small theater from 1909 was replaced by a new, larger building in 1912?
Patsy, there was an earlier Strand Theatre in Asheville, from 1915 to about 1935, but it was on Patton Avenue. It was renamed the State Theatre in the 1930s.
Sources conflict on the name of the first theater in Milledgeville, though they all agree that Oliver Hardy was the projectionist at the house around 1910. While many sources say that the house was called the Electric Theatre, the historical marker for the Milledgeville Hotel is among the sources saying that the theater was called the Palace. It also says that the Palace was across the street from the hotel. As the hotel was located on South Wayne Street, the Palace could not have been the theater on Hancock Street described above. Cinema Treasures lists the Palace Theatre at 133 S. Wayne Street.
The night club on Hancock Street that Ray’s band played in the 1970s might have been the place that for many years was called Dodo’s Pool Room or Dodo’s Opera House, which was located in the building that once housed the Colonial Theatre, which was in operation by 1912. Dodo’s was listed variously at 124 and 128 West Hancock Street. Cinema Treasures lists the Colonial Theatre at 128 W. Hancock.
It’s possible that the Palace Theatre was called the Electric Theatre at the time it opened, or it might be a misunderstanding that there was ever a house in Milledgeville called the Electric Theatre, as the phrase electric theater was sometimes used as a generic term for movie theaters in the early days of the business, rather like nickelodeon. I’ve found a couple of references to the Palace Theatre in trade journals from the 1910s, along with a Star Theatre and the Colonial Theatre, but none to a house called the Electric Theatre.
As it opened in 1990, the River Oaks Plaza 12 must have been designed in the office of architect David K. Mesbur, who was the exclusive designer for Cineplex Odeon from 1983 through 1990.
Salem History changed all its URL’s. The photo of the Wexford Theatre is now at this link. The caption gives the theater’s known period of operation as 1911-1915, but this web page says that the building was probably built in 1909, and that it had been altered into a retail store by 1926.
The building now at this address might or might not have housed a theater. Here is an item from the February 5, 1916, issue of The Motion Picture World tells a different story:
“Judge P. H. D'Arcy, who owns two pieces of theater property in Salem, Ore., is erecting another theater on Court street, on the site of the Wexford theater, recently burned. The building will be 100 by 120 In size, and part of it will be occupied by stores. The auditorium will seat 800 and Judge D'Arcy intends to make the house the finest picture theater in the valley.”
A few weeks later, on February 19 MPW reported that George Bligh had taken over operation of all the movie theaters in Salem, so it’s possible that Mr. D'Arcy had decided to leave the theater business altogether, and rebuilt the D'Arcy Building without a theater in it. I’ve found no references to the Wexford Theatre after the 1916 item, so it’s possible that the Wexford’s career ended with the fire in late 1915 or early 1916.
The Moving Picture World of July 15, 1916, had an article about Carl Laemmle’s first venture into the movie business (Google Books scan here.) There’s a 1906 photo of the White Front Theatre, but it is cropped too close to reveal whether or not it was in the building that now houses the Foot Locker store.
The building did have narrow windows on the upper floor, like the windows in the Foot Locker building, but the article says that the White Front property had a fifty foot frontage, while the Foot Locker building appears to be only half that width. If the theater was at what is now 1257 N. Milwaukee, it’s likely that it has been demolished, as the building now on the site has much wider windows on the second floor. At the very least, the entire facade was replaced.
The MPW article says that Laemmle gave up the theater when his original five-year lease ran out, at that in 1916 the building housed a five-and-ten-cent store.
The Roxy opened a bit earlier than 1939. There is a photo of the recently-built house on this page of Boxoffice, November 14, 1936.
The architect’s rendering of the Crystal Theatre in Boxoffice of November 14, 1936, mentioned in my earlier comment, can be seen at this link.
This Rogers Theatre must be the one that can be seen in the two photos at the top of this page of the November 14, 1936, issue of Boxoffice. At the bottom of the page are two photos of the Central Theatre in Yonkers, New York. The last paragraph of the text says that both houses were designed by architect William Hohauser.
Warren G. Harris’s earlier comment on this house attributing the design to Charles Sandblom says that it was a 1935 project, but didn’t open until 1936. The belated opening must have been related to Sandblom’s 1935 plans being dropped, and Hohauser designing the theater as it was finally built.
An article by Helen Kent with a few photos of the Kiggins Theatre was published in Boxoffice of November 11, 1936 (additional photo on the subsequent page.) In addition, a view of the theater’s stairwell appeared as the frontispiece of that issue’s Modern Theatre section.
Here is a quote from the Landmark Designation Report for the Metro Theatre, regarding the involvement of architect Otto A. Deichmann in the 1941 remodeling of the house, and his professional relationship with Timothy Pflueger:
Click this link to download a PDF file of the Landmark Designation Report. It has a fairly extensive history of the theater.The new page for the De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street can be found at this link.
The building in which the De Luxe Theatre was located, at the southeast corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, was built in 1910, which might have been the year the theater opened. The theater was tucked into a two story “L” shaped structure, which can be seen at the very bottom of this 1956 aerial view, a bit right of center. The auditorium can be distinguished by its roof.
By the 1930s, the building housed a branch of the Thrifty Drug Company, which remained the main tenant for several decades. In 1970, the second floor of the “L” shaped section was removed, and the roof of the former auditorium was rebuilt along with the rest of the roof, at a lower level, so essentially nothing remains of the De Luxe Theatre but the walls.
Ponderpig: In 1923, your father and grandmother would have gone to the De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street. This house on Jefferson Avenue was then called the Favorite Theatre. The De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street was in operation by 1914, and continued at least into 1927. It does not appear in the 1929 city directory, so it had closed by then. My guess would be that it was unable to survive the competition from the new Westlake Theatre, which opened at 636 Alvarado in 1926. I’ve been unable to find any indication that a theater ever operated in this location again.
Note that this means that the earlier comments about the organ that was installed in the De Luxe Theatre in 1921 also pertain to the Alvarado Street house, not this Jefferson Boulevard house.
The Alvarado Street De Luxe is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures. I’ve submitted it for inclusion. A page for it should appear within a day or two, when a link to it will show up in the “Newest Theaters” section on the home page.
The earliest listing I can find for a theater at 1873 Jefferson Boulevard is in the 1923 city directory, in which it is listed as the Favorite Theatre (it might have opened earlier, but I don’t have access to directories between 1915 and 1923.) By 1926, it was listed as the St. Andrews Theatre, which is also listed as in the 1927 and 1929 directories. No theater is listed for the address in the 1932 directory, but by 1936 it was open again as the De Luxe Theatre.
The entry for architect Albert F. Keymar in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Fox-Bay Theatre as one of his works, with the design date of 1949.
According to his listing in the AIA’s American Architects Directory, the architect for the 1947-1948 renovation of the Gorman Theatre was Harry J. Korslund, of Norwood, Massachusetts.
This page of a web site called Elvis Presley Pedia list the opening of the Park Theatre as an event of 1940. No source is cited, but the site lists a few other theaters by opening year and it appears to be accurate in those cases.
Heh. It turns out that one of the sources that attributes the design of the Regent Theatre to C. Howard Crane is a blog at some site called Cinema Treasures. As it appears to be a fairly reliable site, we should probably add that information to this page.
The 1922 book A standard history of Springfield and Clark County, Ohio has this to say about Gus Sun’s Regent Theatre:
The book also has a bit about the Grand Theatre, the Regent’s predecessor:Quite a few sources note that the architect of the Regent Theatre was C. Howard Crane, and that the house opened on August 16, 1920. Some sources also claim that it was built as a legitimate theater that was later converted to show movies, but in fact Gus Sun built the Regent for vaudeville and movies.Volume one of A standard history of Springfield and Clark County, Ohio, published in 1922, lists a Liberty Theatre among the movie houses then operating in Springfield. In addition to the Regent, the town’s “A” house, the book lists the Majestic, Princess, Hippodrome, Colonial, and Strand as movie theaters. It also mentions the Fairbanks Theatre as a legitimate stage house, and the Sun Theatre as a high-class vaudeville theater.
The Liberty was still in operation at least as late as 1961, when a demonstration was held by Antioch College students protesting the theater’s policy of excluding African Americans. Here is a recent article about the event from The Springfield Paper.
Why do the description and the address field both place this theater in New Hampshire? It’s clearly supposed to be Franklin, Idaho.
Here is a modern photo of the Princess Theatre. This might be the same theater listed in the 1906 Cahn guide as the Franklin Opera House, though I can’t imagine how they ever crammed the 500 seats Cahn’s guide said it held into that tiny building, which looks to be about 30' x 80'. Franklin then had a population of 875, according to Cahn, so I doubt that it supported two theaters.
Erwin and Unicoi County, by Linda Davis March, says that the Capitol Theatre was opened on November 11, 1935. The house has been run by members of the Hendren family since opening. The Hendrens also operated an earlier theater called the Lyric, which was on South Main Street. When the Capitol opened, the Lyric became the “B” house in Erwin.
I think that this item from an April, 1912, issue of The Moving Picture World must be about the Globe/Florence Mills Theatre, which was built that year:
Here’s an item published by The Moving Picture World in April, 1912. The theater name and the street are right, but the address doesn’t quite match up, and it was three years after the Empire was supposed to have opened. However, the Empire’s site does include the lots at 1523-1525 Vine as well as 1521, and I don’t know the original source of the opening date of 1909, so I’m posting the item here, just in case the 1909 opening date that’s found all over the Internet is wrong:
Possibly a small theater from 1909 was replaced by a new, larger building in 1912?Patsy, there was an earlier Strand Theatre in Asheville, from 1915 to about 1935, but it was on Patton Avenue. It was renamed the State Theatre in the 1930s.
Here is a fresh link to what I believe is the 1924 photo of the Strand that lostmemory linked to earlier.
Sources conflict on the name of the first theater in Milledgeville, though they all agree that Oliver Hardy was the projectionist at the house around 1910. While many sources say that the house was called the Electric Theatre, the historical marker for the Milledgeville Hotel is among the sources saying that the theater was called the Palace. It also says that the Palace was across the street from the hotel. As the hotel was located on South Wayne Street, the Palace could not have been the theater on Hancock Street described above. Cinema Treasures lists the Palace Theatre at 133 S. Wayne Street.
The night club on Hancock Street that Ray’s band played in the 1970s might have been the place that for many years was called Dodo’s Pool Room or Dodo’s Opera House, which was located in the building that once housed the Colonial Theatre, which was in operation by 1912. Dodo’s was listed variously at 124 and 128 West Hancock Street. Cinema Treasures lists the Colonial Theatre at 128 W. Hancock.
It’s possible that the Palace Theatre was called the Electric Theatre at the time it opened, or it might be a misunderstanding that there was ever a house in Milledgeville called the Electric Theatre, as the phrase electric theater was sometimes used as a generic term for movie theaters in the early days of the business, rather like nickelodeon. I’ve found a couple of references to the Palace Theatre in trade journals from the 1910s, along with a Star Theatre and the Colonial Theatre, but none to a house called the Electric Theatre.
As it opened in 1990, the River Oaks Plaza 12 must have been designed in the office of architect David K. Mesbur, who was the exclusive designer for Cineplex Odeon from 1983 through 1990.
Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society has this page about the Grand Theatre, with several photos.
The web site Salem History provides this photo from 1992.
Salem History changed all its URL’s. The photo of the Wexford Theatre is now at this link. The caption gives the theater’s known period of operation as 1911-1915, but this web page says that the building was probably built in 1909, and that it had been altered into a retail store by 1926.
The building now at this address might or might not have housed a theater. Here is an item from the February 5, 1916, issue of The Motion Picture World tells a different story:
A few weeks later, on February 19 MPW reported that George Bligh had taken over operation of all the movie theaters in Salem, so it’s possible that Mr. D'Arcy had decided to leave the theater business altogether, and rebuilt the D'Arcy Building without a theater in it. I’ve found no references to the Wexford Theatre after the 1916 item, so it’s possible that the Wexford’s career ended with the fire in late 1915 or early 1916.The Moving Picture World of July 15, 1916, had an article about Carl Laemmle’s first venture into the movie business (Google Books scan here.) There’s a 1906 photo of the White Front Theatre, but it is cropped too close to reveal whether or not it was in the building that now houses the Foot Locker store.
The building did have narrow windows on the upper floor, like the windows in the Foot Locker building, but the article says that the White Front property had a fifty foot frontage, while the Foot Locker building appears to be only half that width. If the theater was at what is now 1257 N. Milwaukee, it’s likely that it has been demolished, as the building now on the site has much wider windows on the second floor. At the very least, the entire facade was replaced.
The MPW article says that Laemmle gave up the theater when his original five-year lease ran out, at that in 1916 the building housed a five-and-ten-cent store.