Boxoffice predecessor Motion Picture Times published an illustrated two-page article about Michael Mindlin’s new theater in Newark, in its issue of June 3, 1930.
The theater for which construction contracts had just been let, according to an item in the January 14, 1922, issue of The American Contractor, must have been the Kearse:
“Theater: $250,000. 4 or 5 sty. Charleston, VV. Va. Archt. Mills & Millspaugh Co., 67 E. Long st., Columbus. Owner T. K. Kearse, Circuit of Theaters. T. L. Mearse, gen. mgr., Strand Theater bldg., cor. Summers & State sts., Charleston. Gen. contr., including excav. fdn., let to E. L. Harris, 1568 Jackson St., Charleston. Brk. mas. & carp, work by supt. Rfg. to W. F. Shawer, Eagan St., Charleston. Fdns. drawn.”
The official web site still exists, but has no shows of any sort listed at all. Instead, it touts the shops and restaurant in the building. When was the last time any events took place in this theater?
The history section of the web site says that the house opened on June 4, 1926, not 1924. An article about the takeover of the Aztec by Publix, in the January 7, 1930, issue of Motion Picture Times, gives the same date, as does every other print source I’ve found.
A De Luxe Theatre at Johnson City is listed in the 1922 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide. The Deluxe Theatre placed a courtesy ad in the 1923 edition of The Buffalo, the senior class yearbook of Milligan College in Johnson City. A 2007 book called Fiddlin' Charlie Bowman, by Bob L. Cox, says that Mr. Bowman appeared at the Deluxe Theatre in Johnson City in the spring of 1924, and adds that the “…stately entertainment center had been built just four years previously….” It’s quite possible that the Deluxe opened in 1920, and it was certainly open by 1922.
The scan is a bit blurry, but in Boxoffice of August 17, 1946, there are two pairs of before-and-after photos depicting the results of a remodeling of the Majestic. The auditorium looked atmospheric originally, but the whole house became Art Moderne when remodeled. No architect or designer was credited in the article.
The obituary LouB linked to says that the Circle Arts closed in 1963. This matches up with the claim on this web page, which also supports Eastsidekid’s memory of the former Varsity Theatre having been called the Circle Arts for a while:
“In early 1962 Fred Keller leased the theatre and renamed it the Circle Arts, and, as the new name implied, he specialized in European films. A year or so later he lost the lease and moved to the Varsity Theatre on Bailey and took the Circle Arts name with him.”
The obituary also notes that the former Circle Theatre now serves as a mosque.
The Palace Theatre in the picture DonLewis linked to is not this house, but one on Main Street in Downtown Buffalo. It isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures. As far as I’ve been able to discover, that Palace was always a burlesque house.
This house might have been called the Circle Arts Theatre, if the claim about Fred Keller, operator of the earlier Circle Arts Theatre, on this web page is correct:
“In early 1962 Fred Keller leased the theatre [the Circle] and renamed it the Circle Arts, and, as the new name implied, he specialized in European films. A year or so later he lost the lease and moved to the Varsity Theatre on Bailey and took the Circle Arts name with him.”
Here is a weblog post from early 2010 about Abraham Cisse (though they misspelled his surname as Cissie), who had recently bought the Uptown Theatre and was in the process of renovating it. I’ve been unable to find any more recent information about the project, but Mr. Cisse is apparently still the owner of the property.
Here is another recent photo of this house as the Uptown.
The June, 1989, issue of the Bulletin published by the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada has small versions of the photos of the Garden Theatre that CSWalczak linked to. The text says that the house was built in 1911, and was designed by architect J. Hunt Stanford.
A PDF of the Bulletin is available from this link. The issue is devoted to theaters, and has dozens of historic photos, but the PDF is quite large (almost 8MB.) The photos of the Garden Theatre are on page 48.
I’ve updated the street view to the Lovejoy Pool building, which has the address 1171 E. Lovejoy Street, at the corner of Gold Street. The building is obviously the former third Lovejoy Theatre, built in the 1940s. I think I might have seen a rendering of the Lovejoy in an issue of Boxoffice a couple of weeks ago, but I can’t remember which issue it was and I’ve been unable to find it again.
Ground was being cleared for the new theater that was to become the Doric, according to an item in The American Contractor of September 3, 1917. Architects Greenbaum & Hardy had designed the house for owner Mrs. Margaret D. C. Ridge.
An item about the Doric Theatre’s new organ appeared in the November 29, 1919, issue of Music Trades Review:
“ORGAN IS VERSATILE
“Kimball Piano Co. Makes Telling Window Display of Big Organ Manual Board
“KANSAS CITY, MO., Nov. 26.—The Kimball Piano Co. is showing in its display window the manual board of the new Kimball pipe organ, which is now being installed at the Doric Theatre in this city. This instrument is one of the finest of its kind in the United States and is the largest to be installed in any theatre in the west. While it takes up less space than many of the others, it contains many stops which are an innovation in pneumatic construction. In addition to a full tones set of pipes, the instrument by means of double touch kevs possesses the equipment of an orchestra, string, brass or both, a marimba band, brass band, or can manage solos on a variety of instruments against a background of orchestral or organ music. The double touch keys are distinctly new and do away with the organ stops.”
Following the explosion which severely damaged the Doric Theatre in 1922, the December 16 issue of The American Contractor said that architects Greenbaum, Hardy & Schumacher were drawing preliminary plans for a theater on the site, but I’ve found no evidence that the project was ever carried out.
Here are fresh links to the photos of the Doric Theatre at the Kansas City Public Library. All are dated 1918:
According to the book Remembering Plant City, by Gilbert Gott, the Capitol was in the Young and Moody Building, which is on the northeast corner of W. Reynolds and N. Evers Streets. Gott says that the theater was on Reynolds Street, and opened in 1924.
Judging from the configuration of the building, the auditorium must have occupied the back half of the square structure, with the screen end along Evers Street where the second-floor wall is still blank brick, while the rest of that facade has fenestration. The theater entrance must have been at the east end of the Reynolds Street side of the building, farthest from the street corner, at about 110 W. Reynolds. Here is a recent photo of the Young and Moody Building.
Long-lost drawings of the Ritz Theatre by architect M. Leo Elliot were discovered a couple of years ago. Here is one of them.
Elliott labeled the drawing Haya Theater. According to this web page, the theater was built on the site of Ybor City’s first cigar factory, founded by Serafin Sanchez and Ignacio Haya in 1886. It’s possible that members of the Haya family were involved in the development of the Ritz Theatre.
The entry for architect Emile Fuhrmann in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Delta Theatre at New Orleans as one of his projects from the year 1945.
The Capitol Theatre was designed by architect Bertram C. Hill. This item appeared in the July 13, 1922, issue of Manufacturers Record:
“Tex., Dallas—Popular Amusement Co. (Leon Gohlman and associates) will erect $50,000 theater, 1519-21 Elm St.; Bertram C. Hill Co., Archt. (Lately noted.)”
Two photos of the Capitol survive in the collection of Hill’s papers at Southern Methodist University.
The original architect of the Regent Theatre in 1916 was H. Alexander Drake, who also designed Frank Newman’s Royal Theatre of 1914 and the Newman Theatre of 1919, which later became the Paramount. According to the March 4, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, the Regent was then nearing completion:
“REGENT MAY OPEN MARCH 10.
“Kansas City, Mo.—Work on the new Regent theatre being erected here at 107 East 12th St., by Frank L. Newman, manager of the Royal, is rapidly progressing and the theatre will probably be opened by March 10. One of the problems of Alexander Drake, the architect, was to design a house with a capacity of 700, as the Regent will have, on a lot 38x76 feet. This was accomplished by an unusual balcony, made possible by the fact that the theater is fifty feet high. A grilled celling, above which three 36-inch fans will suck air into ventilating shafts is one of the many interesting features being introduced by Mr. Newman. The entire cost of the structure is to be $60,000.”
Here is a larger version of the same photo of the Webbo Theatre that is linked twice in earlier comments. The movie advertised on the banner under the marquee, Western Mail starring Tom Keene was released in 1942.
Here is a photo of the Delbee Theatre, probably from 1920. There is a poster for director William Desmond Taylor’s 1920 film, The Furnace, at lower left. The brick facade now on the building doesn’t resemble the original theater front at all.
The web site of the Liberty Theatre’s current owner, the Greater Cincinnati Deaf Club, features this photo gallery which includes a few shots of events taking place in the upstairs hall. It appears that the original auditorium was divided into two floors, with offices, rest rooms, smaller meeting rooms and such on the ground floor and a large hall occupying the upper half.
The ceiling looks like it might be pressed tin, and is probably the Liberty’s original ceiling. The stage in the hall appears to have been built above the original stage, and its proscenium is probably part of the original, though it was most likely raised above its original level, which would not have come so close to the theater’s ceiling.
The Blue Mouse was on Washington at 11th, not 10th. A parking deck for the office building at 10th and Washington now sits on its site.
PSTOS has a couple of photos on this web page, though it also gives the wrong location of 10th and Washington. In the exterior photo, the ornate facade on 11th next to the three-story theater entrance building was actually the auditorium’s back wall. The doors are the auditorium’s exits.
Gary Lacher and Steve Stone’s book Theatres of Portland gives the correct location of the Blue Mouse, and has several photographs (Google Books preview.) The book gives the original opening date of the Globe as September 12, 1912.
A 1919 issue of a retail clothing industry trade journal called The Boys' Outfitter published a photo of the Globe Theatre’s auditorium with an audience of children attending a movie as guests of a local retail store.
Here is an article about the Adams Theatre from Boxoffice of January 3, 1942. The conclusion of the article is several pages later, so here’s a direct link to it. The architect for the conversion of the skating rink into a theater was Roger G. Rand.
All the old links to Boxoffice articles that were posted at issuu.com are dead, and I’m gradually updating them as I come across them. Archived issues of Boxoffice are now in a section called The Vault at the magazine’s own web site.
I’ve noticed that a lot of the old links have the wrong issue dates or wrong pages. Either I made a lot of mistakes, or the magazines at issuu.com were different editions than the ones now available at The Vault (Boxoffice published a national edition and multiple regional editions, and the content didn’t always match up.)
The magazine has also set up The Vault in a way that makes it inaccessible to search engines, so I can’t always find the new locations of the articles I cited in earlier comments. The article about the Colonial is one of those I can’t find, but I have found the drawing of the proposed redesign of the theater, at the upper right corner of this page of the April 26, 1941, issue.
The only other mention of the Grand I can recall in Boxoffice was the drawing in the “Just Off the Boards” feature of the April 26, 1941, issue, but it’s the same drawing that appears in the 1942 article.
Boxoffice predecessor Motion Picture Times published an illustrated two-page article about Michael Mindlin’s new theater in Newark, in its issue of June 3, 1930.
The theater for which construction contracts had just been let, according to an item in the January 14, 1922, issue of The American Contractor, must have been the Kearse:
The official web site still exists, but has no shows of any sort listed at all. Instead, it touts the shops and restaurant in the building. When was the last time any events took place in this theater?
The history section of the web site says that the house opened on June 4, 1926, not 1924. An article about the takeover of the Aztec by Publix, in the January 7, 1930, issue of Motion Picture Times, gives the same date, as does every other print source I’ve found.
A De Luxe Theatre at Johnson City is listed in the 1922 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide. The Deluxe Theatre placed a courtesy ad in the 1923 edition of The Buffalo, the senior class yearbook of Milligan College in Johnson City. A 2007 book called Fiddlin' Charlie Bowman, by Bob L. Cox, says that Mr. Bowman appeared at the Deluxe Theatre in Johnson City in the spring of 1924, and adds that the “…stately entertainment center had been built just four years previously….” It’s quite possible that the Deluxe opened in 1920, and it was certainly open by 1922.
The scan is a bit blurry, but in Boxoffice of August 17, 1946, there are two pairs of before-and-after photos depicting the results of a remodeling of the Majestic. The auditorium looked atmospheric originally, but the whole house became Art Moderne when remodeled. No architect or designer was credited in the article.
The obituary LouB linked to says that the Circle Arts closed in 1963. This matches up with the claim on this web page, which also supports Eastsidekid’s memory of the former Varsity Theatre having been called the Circle Arts for a while:
The obituary also notes that the former Circle Theatre now serves as a mosque.The Palace Theatre in the picture DonLewis linked to is not this house, but one on Main Street in Downtown Buffalo. It isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures. As far as I’ve been able to discover, that Palace was always a burlesque house.
This house might have been called the Circle Arts Theatre, if the claim about Fred Keller, operator of the earlier Circle Arts Theatre, on this web page is correct:
Here is a weblog post from early 2010 about Abraham Cisse (though they misspelled his surname as Cissie), who had recently bought the Uptown Theatre and was in the process of renovating it. I’ve been unable to find any more recent information about the project, but Mr. Cisse is apparently still the owner of the property.Here is another recent photo of this house as the Uptown.
The June, 1989, issue of the Bulletin published by the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada has small versions of the photos of the Garden Theatre that CSWalczak linked to. The text says that the house was built in 1911, and was designed by architect J. Hunt Stanford.
A PDF of the Bulletin is available from this link. The issue is devoted to theaters, and has dozens of historic photos, but the PDF is quite large (almost 8MB.) The photos of the Garden Theatre are on page 48.
I’ve updated the street view to the Lovejoy Pool building, which has the address 1171 E. Lovejoy Street, at the corner of Gold Street. The building is obviously the former third Lovejoy Theatre, built in the 1940s. I think I might have seen a rendering of the Lovejoy in an issue of Boxoffice a couple of weeks ago, but I can’t remember which issue it was and I’ve been unable to find it again.
Ground was being cleared for the new theater that was to become the Doric, according to an item in The American Contractor of September 3, 1917. Architects Greenbaum & Hardy had designed the house for owner Mrs. Margaret D. C. Ridge.
An item about the Doric Theatre’s new organ appeared in the November 29, 1919, issue of Music Trades Review:
Following the explosion which severely damaged the Doric Theatre in 1922, the December 16 issue of The American Contractor said that architects Greenbaum, Hardy & Schumacher were drawing preliminary plans for a theater on the site, but I’ve found no evidence that the project was ever carried out.Here are fresh links to the photos of the Doric Theatre at the Kansas City Public Library. All are dated 1918:
View 1
View 2
View 3.
According to the book Remembering Plant City, by Gilbert Gott, the Capitol was in the Young and Moody Building, which is on the northeast corner of W. Reynolds and N. Evers Streets. Gott says that the theater was on Reynolds Street, and opened in 1924.
Judging from the configuration of the building, the auditorium must have occupied the back half of the square structure, with the screen end along Evers Street where the second-floor wall is still blank brick, while the rest of that facade has fenestration. The theater entrance must have been at the east end of the Reynolds Street side of the building, farthest from the street corner, at about 110 W. Reynolds. Here is a recent photo of the Young and Moody Building.
Long-lost drawings of the Ritz Theatre by architect M. Leo Elliot were discovered a couple of years ago. Here is one of them.
Elliott labeled the drawing Haya Theater. According to this web page, the theater was built on the site of Ybor City’s first cigar factory, founded by Serafin Sanchez and Ignacio Haya in 1886. It’s possible that members of the Haya family were involved in the development of the Ritz Theatre.
The entry for architect Emile Fuhrmann in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Delta Theatre at New Orleans as one of his projects from the year 1945.
The Capitol Theatre was designed by architect Bertram C. Hill. This item appeared in the July 13, 1922, issue of Manufacturers Record:
Two photos of the Capitol survive in the collection of Hill’s papers at Southern Methodist University.David and Noelle’s list of known Boller Brothers theaters says that the remodeling of the Regent Theatre by Robert Boller was a 1947 project.
The original architect of the Regent Theatre in 1916 was H. Alexander Drake, who also designed Frank Newman’s Royal Theatre of 1914 and the Newman Theatre of 1919, which later became the Paramount. According to the March 4, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, the Regent was then nearing completion:
Here is a larger version of the same photo of the Webbo Theatre that is linked twice in earlier comments. The movie advertised on the banner under the marquee, Western Mail starring Tom Keene was released in 1942.
Here is a photo of the Delbee Theatre, probably from 1920. There is a poster for director William Desmond Taylor’s 1920 film, The Furnace, at lower left. The brick facade now on the building doesn’t resemble the original theater front at all.
Here is a photo of the Broadway Theatre in the 1930s. Note that the old Hippodrome sign is still on the roof above the Broadway marquee.
The web site of the Liberty Theatre’s current owner, the Greater Cincinnati Deaf Club, features this photo gallery which includes a few shots of events taking place in the upstairs hall. It appears that the original auditorium was divided into two floors, with offices, rest rooms, smaller meeting rooms and such on the ground floor and a large hall occupying the upper half.
The ceiling looks like it might be pressed tin, and is probably the Liberty’s original ceiling. The stage in the hall appears to have been built above the original stage, and its proscenium is probably part of the original, though it was most likely raised above its original level, which would not have come so close to the theater’s ceiling.
The Blue Mouse was on Washington at 11th, not 10th. A parking deck for the office building at 10th and Washington now sits on its site.
PSTOS has a couple of photos on this web page, though it also gives the wrong location of 10th and Washington. In the exterior photo, the ornate facade on 11th next to the three-story theater entrance building was actually the auditorium’s back wall. The doors are the auditorium’s exits.
Gary Lacher and Steve Stone’s book Theatres of Portland gives the correct location of the Blue Mouse, and has several photographs (Google Books preview.) The book gives the original opening date of the Globe as September 12, 1912.
A 1919 issue of a retail clothing industry trade journal called The Boys' Outfitter published a photo of the Globe Theatre’s auditorium with an audience of children attending a movie as guests of a local retail store.
Here is an article about the Adams Theatre from Boxoffice of January 3, 1942. The conclusion of the article is several pages later, so here’s a direct link to it. The architect for the conversion of the skating rink into a theater was Roger G. Rand.
An article about the Brunswick Theatre begins on this page of the January 3, 1942, issue of Boxoffice.
All the old links to Boxoffice articles that were posted at issuu.com are dead, and I’m gradually updating them as I come across them. Archived issues of Boxoffice are now in a section called The Vault at the magazine’s own web site.
I’ve noticed that a lot of the old links have the wrong issue dates or wrong pages. Either I made a lot of mistakes, or the magazines at issuu.com were different editions than the ones now available at The Vault (Boxoffice published a national edition and multiple regional editions, and the content didn’t always match up.)
The magazine has also set up The Vault in a way that makes it inaccessible to search engines, so I can’t always find the new locations of the articles I cited in earlier comments. The article about the Colonial is one of those I can’t find, but I have found the drawing of the proposed redesign of the theater, at the upper right corner of this page of the April 26, 1941, issue.
The only other mention of the Grand I can recall in Boxoffice was the drawing in the “Just Off the Boards” feature of the April 26, 1941, issue, but it’s the same drawing that appears in the 1942 article.
An article about the Bard Theatre begins on this page of the April 25, 1942, issue of Boxoffice.