The web site of Behr Browers Architects, designers of the Mann Arvada 14, features a slide show of the theater. It must have been remodeled to accommodate the all-stadium seating it advertises, as the auditorium photos in the slide show have regular sloped floors.
This multiplex was designed by Behr Browers Architects with a Chinese theme, recalling the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, which was then Mann’s flagship house. Behr Browers' web site has a slide show.
The Rex was in the building now occupied by the easterly section of the Army & Navy store (the part with no windows on the upper floors.)
I don’t know if there’s any point in updating the update to the updated link, but this is probably the 1950 photo that keeps going missing. Vancouver Public Library has a user-hostile web site. If the photo vanishes again, I’ll be willing to let it stay lost.
Thanks for the update, Melissa. As the fourth screen was an addition, the ultimate total seating capacity must have been more than 1,600. Do you have any idea what it was?
I came across a web page about Coddingtown Mall. One of the comments (very near the bottom of the page) says that the theater was demolished, but a reply to the comment indicates that it was only partly demolished and the remainder was incorporated into the retail building currently occupied by Beverly’s Crafts & Fabrics. I’ve set Street View to show the entrance of Beverly’s, but I have no idea if that was where the theater entrance was. The building has a style characteristic of the years around 2000, so it must have been substantially altered.
Little detail is visible in this photo of the Queen’s auditorium, but it’s bright enough to reveal that the house had a stadium seating section. The photo is dated 1960.
Here is a 1928 photo of this house when it was called the Palace, and here’s another view from the same year (click the images to embiggen, then see the “All Image Sizes” link to the right of the next page to fetch even bigger versions.)
In this photo of the Palace, there’s an ad for the 1929 movie “Hot Stuff” with Alice White. This film was a musical, so the Palace had been wired for sound by then.
Oddly, there is no theater name visible on the building in any of these photos. The name and location are derived from text written on the sheets to which the photos are mounted.
Here is a close-up photo of the Rialto’s entrance. The movie advertised is “Captain Blood,” which was released in December, 1935, but a smaller market such as Beeville would probably not have gotten the movie until some weeks later, so the photo was probably taken in 1936, about the time the house reopened. This might even have been the first movie shown in the newly remodeled house.
The caption of this photo says that the truck is parked in front of the Queen Theatre. The photo looks to be from the 1920s. Although there appear to be movie posters on the front of the building with the arches, the Queen was actually in the building to the left, only half seen in this photo. This was probably the original 1916 facade of the building.
After the reopening of the house in 1938, it looked like this (though the undated photo appears to have been taken in a later year.) The windows on the second floor had been bricked up, but the brackets under the cornice are recognizable.
A still later photo is dated 1960, but the movie being advertised was released in 1956. The decorative details of the facade are barely visible, perhaps because this is a night shot, or perhaps because they have been covered by another coat of paint.
Still, the theater’s front appears to have looked about the same throughout its history, except for the addition of a modern marquee, probably in 1938. Any significant changes that resulted from the remodeling done that year, designed by architect David S. Castle, must have been on the interior.
The Cinema Treasures page for the Hart Theatre says that it was opened in 1941, and was designed by architect J. T. Knight Jr., while Somdal Associates' timeline gives 1931 as the year they designed the hotel and theater project for Interstate. Given the ten year delay, the original plans must have been abandoned.
A book published in 2001, “Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Café and Street,” by Keith McKellar, attributes the design of the Grandview Theatre to architect Henry Holdsby Simmonds. It also attributes to Simmonds the design of a theater called the Olympia, presumably also in Vancouver, but I can’t find that house listed at Cinema Treasures.
This photo of the Lincoln Theatre probably dates from 1961. In the larger sizes of the photo, the poster for the 1961 movie “Man Trap” can be made out.
Here is a photo of the Monroe Theatre in its pre-porn days (probably 1961, judging from the movie on the marquee.)
A book published in 2006, “Preserving Paradise: The Architectural Heritage and History of the Florida Keys,” by George Walter Born, gives the address of the Monroe Theatre as 623 Duval Street. The building currently at 612 Duval was clearly built long before 1995, while the building at 623 is clearly of modern construction, though built in a vintage style.
The Flickr photostream of the Florida Keys Public Libraries has three interesting vintage photos of the Strand.
This 1960 photo (the year “September Storm” was released) was taken for the local property appraiser’s office, and the caption says that the Strand was built in 1924.
However, this photo from the early 1920s shows the theater with the same basic form, but a rather different style of facade. The caption of this photo dates it to 1922, but the movie on the marquee was released in 1921. A banner over the entrance says “Our First Birthday,” so perhaps the theater opened in 1921 and brought the same movie it opened with back for its anniversary in 1922. Or perhaps the caption is wrong, and the theater opened in 1920 and had its anniversary in 1921, when “The Man From Lost River” was released.
In either case, the Strand was clearly operating before 1924, but equally clearly it had a rather extensive remodeling done to its facade, probably within a few years of its opening, going from what looks to me like a stripped-down version of American Art Nouveau, to the much more ornate Mannerist-Spanish Colonial style it retained throughout the rest of its history.
What prompted the early remodeling I don’t know. Maybe the original theater was destroyed and only the front wall survived to be incorporated into a rebuilt house, with the addition of a new parapet and decoration, though I haven’t been able to find any references on the Internet to such an event.
The third photo is this color postcard, a nocturnal view of Duval Street with the Strand’s marquee in the foreground. The postcard is undated, and there is no movie name on the Strand’s marquee, but the San Carlos Theatre can also be seen, down the block on the other side of the street, and in the largest size of the photo the name “Give a Girl a Break” can be read on it’s marquee. That movie was released in 1953.
The Lowell Theatre is not located on Main Street. It’s on Erie Street, in another business district (sometimes called Lowell, Arizona) a couple of miles southeast of downtown Bisbee. I’ve been unable to find the exact address, but it would have only two digits. The Zip Code is still 85603.
The building has been sold to an investment and development company called Greenfield Partners, which has been involved in a number of hotel projects. There is speculation that the Texaco-United Artists building is destined to become a boutique hotel. I’m not sure what such a conversion would portend for the theater itself, and Greenfield has made no announcements about their intentions.
Oops. I mistakenly updated Street View to the location of the current Varsity Theatre. The original Varsity was on the same side of the street in the next block east, near the corner of F Street. There’s a one-storey shop building with a hipped roof there now.
The CM Performing Arts Center has a web site. Its history section says that Creative Ministries began the renovation of the Oakdale Theatre in 1996, and that the old movie house had by then been vacant for nine years, so that fits moviegoer’s memory of the Oakdale closing in 1987. The renovated house reopened on May 23, 1997, with a production of “Man of La Mancha.”.
Street View has been set too far south. The Great Northern’s Broad Street entrance was immediately south of the “99 cent deal” sign that is just a short way south of Erie Avenue. There is a gap in Street View along the section of Broad Street just south of the theater’s location. It looks like something temporarily went wrong with the camera, and there’s nothing shown but an orange blur.
Philly History provides this 1925 photo of the Great Northern Theatre.
Another page at Philly History has a paragraph about the Great Northern, saying that it had entrances on both Broad Street and Germantown Avenue, that it was expanded from a nickelodeon on the site in 1912, and that the building was converted into a drug store in 1953. The paragraph does not mention the 1916 expansion designed by Henon & Boyle, which was noted in issues of The Moving Picture World and at least one other trade journal that year.
This Facebook page about businesses on Germantown Avenue lists the Strand, Temple, and Great Northern as the theaters on Germantown between Tioga Street and Erie Avenue. The Strand is listed at Cinema Treasures, but I don’t see a page for the Temple. I’ve been unable to find any other mentions of that house.
Another glimpse of the Broad Street entrance to the Great Northern Theatre can be seen at far left in this ca.1940 photo of the intersection of Broad Street and Erie Avenue. Some of the original details of the facade had been removed by this time, but the entrance is still recognizable.
It’s impossible to tell from Google’s current street view whether the entrance building has been entirely replaced, or just drastically remodeled. The Germantown Avenue side of the building, which has the front entrances of the three retail stores that now occupy the site, looks almost entirely modern, but the theater’s auditorium building appears to still be standing.
The Pipe Organ Database of the Organ Historical Society has this page listing the 2-manual, 20-rank Austin organ that once served the Great Northern Theatre. The organ’s fate is currently unknown.
The March 16, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the new Rialto Theatre in Bremerton had opened on February 6. The house was operated by Eugene Oswald and Jack Rantz, who had been operating Bremerton’s Dream Theatre for several years. The new Rialto had been built at a cost of $50,000, and opened with two Paramount films: Mary Pickford in “Stella Maris” and Fatty Arbuckle in “Out West.”
The July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World carried this announcement about the Shiloh Theatre:
“Beautiful Shiloh Theater Opened.
“Pittsburgh, Pa.—The Shiloh theater, a beautiful new house in the Mt. Washington district, Pittsburgh, was formally opened to the public last week In a most auspicious manner. It is owned by Henry Polk and replaces the old Shiloh theater, which was closed in April. Many exhibitors were present on the opening night and all congratulated Mr. Polk on the high standard he has set. The new Shiloh is up-to-date and complete in its appointments, as well as quite attractive throughout. A pipe organ supplies the music. Feature pictures are shown dally and the admission is 10 cents.”
An Orpheum Theatre was in operation in Kalispell in 1908, when it was mentioned in various issues of The Billboard. The magazine also mentioned three other theaters in Kalispell at the time; the McIntosh Opera House, the Arcade Theatre, and a recently opened house called the Oriental Theatre.
The web site of Behr Browers Architects, designers of the Mann Arvada 14, features a slide show of the theater. It must have been remodeled to accommodate the all-stadium seating it advertises, as the auditorium photos in the slide show have regular sloped floors.
This multiplex was designed by Behr Browers Architects with a Chinese theme, recalling the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, which was then Mann’s flagship house. Behr Browers' web site has a slide show.
The Rex was in the building now occupied by the easterly section of the Army & Navy store (the part with no windows on the upper floors.)
I don’t know if there’s any point in updating the update to the updated link, but this is probably the 1950 photo that keeps going missing. Vancouver Public Library has a user-hostile web site. If the photo vanishes again, I’ll be willing to let it stay lost.
Thanks for the update, Melissa. As the fourth screen was an addition, the ultimate total seating capacity must have been more than 1,600. Do you have any idea what it was?
I came across a web page about Coddingtown Mall. One of the comments (very near the bottom of the page) says that the theater was demolished, but a reply to the comment indicates that it was only partly demolished and the remainder was incorporated into the retail building currently occupied by Beverly’s Crafts & Fabrics. I’ve set Street View to show the entrance of Beverly’s, but I have no idea if that was where the theater entrance was. The building has a style characteristic of the years around 2000, so it must have been substantially altered.
Little detail is visible in this photo of the Queen’s auditorium, but it’s bright enough to reveal that the house had a stadium seating section. The photo is dated 1960.
Here is a 1928 photo of this house when it was called the Palace, and here’s another view from the same year (click the images to embiggen, then see the “All Image Sizes” link to the right of the next page to fetch even bigger versions.)
In this photo of the Palace, there’s an ad for the 1929 movie “Hot Stuff” with Alice White. This film was a musical, so the Palace had been wired for sound by then.
Oddly, there is no theater name visible on the building in any of these photos. The name and location are derived from text written on the sheets to which the photos are mounted.
Here is a close-up photo of the Rialto’s entrance. The movie advertised is “Captain Blood,” which was released in December, 1935, but a smaller market such as Beeville would probably not have gotten the movie until some weeks later, so the photo was probably taken in 1936, about the time the house reopened. This might even have been the first movie shown in the newly remodeled house.
The caption of this photo says that the truck is parked in front of the Queen Theatre. The photo looks to be from the 1920s. Although there appear to be movie posters on the front of the building with the arches, the Queen was actually in the building to the left, only half seen in this photo. This was probably the original 1916 facade of the building.
After the reopening of the house in 1938, it looked like this (though the undated photo appears to have been taken in a later year.) The windows on the second floor had been bricked up, but the brackets under the cornice are recognizable.
A still later photo is dated 1960, but the movie being advertised was released in 1956. The decorative details of the facade are barely visible, perhaps because this is a night shot, or perhaps because they have been covered by another coat of paint.
Still, the theater’s front appears to have looked about the same throughout its history, except for the addition of a modern marquee, probably in 1938. Any significant changes that resulted from the remodeling done that year, designed by architect David S. Castle, must have been on the interior.
The Cinema Treasures page for the Hart Theatre says that it was opened in 1941, and was designed by architect J. T. Knight Jr., while Somdal Associates' timeline gives 1931 as the year they designed the hotel and theater project for Interstate. Given the ten year delay, the original plans must have been abandoned.
A book published in 2001, “Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Café and Street,” by Keith McKellar, attributes the design of the Grandview Theatre to architect Henry Holdsby Simmonds. It also attributes to Simmonds the design of a theater called the Olympia, presumably also in Vancouver, but I can’t find that house listed at Cinema Treasures.
This photo of the Lincoln Theatre probably dates from 1961. In the larger sizes of the photo, the poster for the 1961 movie “Man Trap” can be made out.
Here is a photo of the San Carlos when it was the Palace Theatre and sported a very slick Art Moderne marquee.
Here is a later photo (probably 1961) with the San Carlos marquee on the building.
Here is a photo of the Monroe Theatre in its pre-porn days (probably 1961, judging from the movie on the marquee.)
A book published in 2006, “Preserving Paradise: The Architectural Heritage and History of the Florida Keys,” by George Walter Born, gives the address of the Monroe Theatre as 623 Duval Street. The building currently at 612 Duval was clearly built long before 1995, while the building at 623 is clearly of modern construction, though built in a vintage style.
The Flickr photostream of the Florida Keys Public Libraries has three interesting vintage photos of the Strand.
This 1960 photo (the year “September Storm” was released) was taken for the local property appraiser’s office, and the caption says that the Strand was built in 1924.
However, this photo from the early 1920s shows the theater with the same basic form, but a rather different style of facade. The caption of this photo dates it to 1922, but the movie on the marquee was released in 1921. A banner over the entrance says “Our First Birthday,” so perhaps the theater opened in 1921 and brought the same movie it opened with back for its anniversary in 1922. Or perhaps the caption is wrong, and the theater opened in 1920 and had its anniversary in 1921, when “The Man From Lost River” was released.
In either case, the Strand was clearly operating before 1924, but equally clearly it had a rather extensive remodeling done to its facade, probably within a few years of its opening, going from what looks to me like a stripped-down version of American Art Nouveau, to the much more ornate Mannerist-Spanish Colonial style it retained throughout the rest of its history.
What prompted the early remodeling I don’t know. Maybe the original theater was destroyed and only the front wall survived to be incorporated into a rebuilt house, with the addition of a new parapet and decoration, though I haven’t been able to find any references on the Internet to such an event.
The third photo is this color postcard, a nocturnal view of Duval Street with the Strand’s marquee in the foreground. The postcard is undated, and there is no movie name on the Strand’s marquee, but the San Carlos Theatre can also be seen, down the block on the other side of the street, and in the largest size of the photo the name “Give a Girl a Break” can be read on it’s marquee. That movie was released in 1953.
Here is a 1927 photo showing the original facade of the Pasadena Theatre, prior to the remodeling by Clifford Balch.
Here is a photo of Warner’s Photoplay Theatre. The correct opening year was 1914, not 1915 as I wrote in the introduction.
The Lowell Theatre is not located on Main Street. It’s on Erie Street, in another business district (sometimes called Lowell, Arizona) a couple of miles southeast of downtown Bisbee. I’ve been unable to find the exact address, but it would have only two digits. The Zip Code is still 85603.
The building has been sold to an investment and development company called Greenfield Partners, which has been involved in a number of hotel projects. There is speculation that the Texaco-United Artists building is destined to become a boutique hotel. I’m not sure what such a conversion would portend for the theater itself, and Greenfield has made no announcements about their intentions.
Oops. I mistakenly updated Street View to the location of the current Varsity Theatre. The original Varsity was on the same side of the street in the next block east, near the corner of F Street. There’s a one-storey shop building with a hipped roof there now.
The CM Performing Arts Center has a web site. Its history section says that Creative Ministries began the renovation of the Oakdale Theatre in 1996, and that the old movie house had by then been vacant for nine years, so that fits moviegoer’s memory of the Oakdale closing in 1987. The renovated house reopened on May 23, 1997, with a production of “Man of La Mancha.”.
Street View has been set too far south. The Great Northern’s Broad Street entrance was immediately south of the “99 cent deal” sign that is just a short way south of Erie Avenue. There is a gap in Street View along the section of Broad Street just south of the theater’s location. It looks like something temporarily went wrong with the camera, and there’s nothing shown but an orange blur.
Philly History provides this 1925 photo of the Great Northern Theatre.
Another page at Philly History has a paragraph about the Great Northern, saying that it had entrances on both Broad Street and Germantown Avenue, that it was expanded from a nickelodeon on the site in 1912, and that the building was converted into a drug store in 1953. The paragraph does not mention the 1916 expansion designed by Henon & Boyle, which was noted in issues of The Moving Picture World and at least one other trade journal that year.
This Facebook page about businesses on Germantown Avenue lists the Strand, Temple, and Great Northern as the theaters on Germantown between Tioga Street and Erie Avenue. The Strand is listed at Cinema Treasures, but I don’t see a page for the Temple. I’ve been unable to find any other mentions of that house.
Another glimpse of the Broad Street entrance to the Great Northern Theatre can be seen at far left in this ca.1940 photo of the intersection of Broad Street and Erie Avenue. Some of the original details of the facade had been removed by this time, but the entrance is still recognizable.
It’s impossible to tell from Google’s current street view whether the entrance building has been entirely replaced, or just drastically remodeled. The Germantown Avenue side of the building, which has the front entrances of the three retail stores that now occupy the site, looks almost entirely modern, but the theater’s auditorium building appears to still be standing.
The Pipe Organ Database of the Organ Historical Society has this page listing the 2-manual, 20-rank Austin organ that once served the Great Northern Theatre. The organ’s fate is currently unknown.
The March 16, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the new Rialto Theatre in Bremerton had opened on February 6. The house was operated by Eugene Oswald and Jack Rantz, who had been operating Bremerton’s Dream Theatre for several years. The new Rialto had been built at a cost of $50,000, and opened with two Paramount films: Mary Pickford in “Stella Maris” and Fatty Arbuckle in “Out West.”
The July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World carried this announcement about the Shiloh Theatre:
An Orpheum Theatre was in operation in Kalispell in 1908, when it was mentioned in various issues of The Billboard. The magazine also mentioned three other theaters in Kalispell at the time; the McIntosh Opera House, the Arcade Theatre, and a recently opened house called the Oriental Theatre.