The March 23, 1910, issue of The American Architect had the following item datelined Lynn: “Plans have been prepared by Architect E. W. Maynard, 1226 Tremont St., Boston, for erection of proposed Central Square Theater.”
The July 3, 1897, issue of American Architect and Architecture had this report: “Springfield, Mass.—E. W. Maynard, of Boston has made plans for a $100,000 opera-house to be built on Main and Hampden Sts., for Nelson & Vinton.”
A trade journal called The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer made reference in its issue of March 1, 1899, to “…Fred. Kettler, who painted the Nelson Theatre curtain….” having lately been hired as director of the decorative department of a Springfield outfit called the Old Corner Wall-Paper Company.
A Nelson Theatre was certainly in operation at Springfield in 1908, when part of its program was noted in the May 18 issue of the Springfield Republican that year: “The musical features of the week will include a ‘Kid song festival,’ in which Lillian Payette will be heard in three costume songs, with electrical effects and illustrated songs by Charles L. Taylor of New York, who on Wednesday and Thursday will sing ‘Take me out to the ball game.’”
Either this house was opened earlier than Edward Shear reported it to have been, or it replaced an earlier Nelson Theatre, probably on the same site. If it was the latter, what disaster befell the original Nelson Theatre?
I’m setting Street View to the northwest corner of Logan Boulevard and Burgoon Road. As the location of the Rivoli given above was North Logan Boulevard, it would have to have been at the northwest corner. Burgoon Road is the dividing line between North and South addresses on Logan.
The site is currently the location of the main office of Altoona First Savings Bank, with an address of 203 N. Logan, so that was most likely the Rivoli’s address as well. The bank building might or might not occupy the same footprint as the theater did, but I don’t think it’s the same building.
I saw an eBay listing of a ca.1913 postcard showing the New Britain Opera House building with a vertical sign reading Keeney’s. Keeney’s Theatre at New Britain is mentioned in the December 21, 1907, issue of The Billboard as well, so (assuming that Keeney’s didn’t switch locations during the period) this must have been the theater’s name for several years.
The 1899-1900 Cahn Guide lists the house as the Cosmopolitan Opera House, with New Britain Opera House as an AKA.
I believe that the section of Church Street on which the Lyric Theatre was located no longer exists. Google Maps is fetching a suburban residential neighborhood, but the Lyric was in a part of downtown New Britain that has apparently been redeveloped as a part of the campus of CCSU Institute of Technology.
The November 7, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Lyric Theatre in New Britain had been leased by Cooney and Woolison, theater operators at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and that the house had been closed so that extensive alterations could be made.
The building that the State’s entrance was in, at least, was still standing when Google’s street view truck went by. At that time, 63 N. Main Street was occupied by a comic book store called The Gaming Dungeon, and that store is still listed on multiple web sites, and has a Facebook page active as recently as last April. It was also the location of a CCG event scheduled for September 24 this year.
From Google’s satellite view, the building looks a bit small to have held an auditorium seating over 1,300. There’s a big parking lot behind it that could have been the site of a big auditorium, but it was a parking lot as long ago as 1969, according to an aerial view at Historic Aerials, so if the theater was still operating in the 1970s, as sgtjim says above, then it must have been in the building that shows up in the Google street and satellite views.
The Washington Theatre, which was across Main Street from the State, has definitely been demolished, though. Maybe that’s the theater spectrum was thinking of.
In May, 1921, The Bridgemen’s Magazine reported that bids would soon be taken for a theater to be built on Main Street in New Britain for the William Fox company. The projected cost of the project, designed by architect Thomas Lamb, was “about $500,000.”
Could this have been the theater that became the Strand? The item described the house as being two storeys, and 105x130 feet. A photo of the Strand’s exterior would help. The interior photos in the book shoeshoe cited earlier show that the house was certainly ornate enough to have been a Lamb design, though I don’t know if it would have cost half a million dollars.
The March 2, 1918, issue of The American Contractor published a notice saying that work had started on a one-storey theater that was being built on Washington Street in Canton. The project had been designed by local architect S. L. Milton. The owner’s name was not mentioned.
As the MGM report Ron Salters cited says that the Strand was built “about 1915,” it seems possible that it was this project. Canton had fewer than 6,000 people in 1920, so could conceivably have supported two theaters, but being a commuter suburb of Boston there would have been fairly easy access to that city’s many theaters, which makes it more likely that it would have had only one of its own.
Scott Schaut’s book “Historic Mansfield” says that the Madison Theatre was demolished in 1986.
The book also mentions a Majestic Theatre, located on Walnut Street, which was in operation by 1925, and says that the first permanent movie theaters in Mansfield, opened in 1908, were the Orpheum, the Arris, and the Alvin.
The current address of 427 North Main Street would be an unlikely location for a movie house. It’s in an industrial district, and across the street from a railroad line. The 1956 newspaper item Ken quoted above says that the Ritz was “…in the business district….” I suspect that either the address is wrong, or that Mansfield underwent a drastic renumbering at some point. The block of Main Street north of 4th Street currently has addresses with two or three digits, but I suspect that this was historically the 400 block.
The current address of the Mansfield Eagles lodge is 129-135 N. Main Street, but I don’t know if the lodge is still in the same building it was in when it was mentioned in the 1956 article. The building looks considerably more modern than the others on the block, but it does look old enough to have been in existence in 1956. In any case, it’s very likely that this is the block the Ritz was actually in. The lodge hall has parking lots on either side of it, and one or the other of those could have been the site of the Ritz.
There’s currently a Napa Auto Parts store at 1298 Abbott Road, and its building doesn’t have any resemblance to the theater building in the photos. The Towne Theatre must have been demolished.
Two levels of windows have been punched into the side walls of the Park Theatre’s former auditorium, so the space has most likely been filled in with two floors of offices.
The only photo of the building I can find is this close shot of the area where the marquee once would have been.
The March 11, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World refers to a Cape May house called the Perry Street Theatre, run by a Mr. J. P. Cox. It’s probably a safe assumption that Perry Street Theatre was an AKA for the Cox Theatre, and it was probably located on Perry Street. The magazine said that the house was Cape May’s exclusive Paramount theater.
Sometimes the photo is there, and sometimes it isn’t, Chuck. Google Maps is still a work in progress, I guess. But at least they’ve got the Street View matched with the right address in this case.
Encyclopedia Dubuque’s page for the Grand Opera House says that movies were first shown there in 1915, but I found an item in the July 4, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World saying that movies were then being shown there.
The page gives the opening date of the Grand Opera House as August 14, 1890. Photographs reveal the exterior style of the building to be Romanesque Revival. I’ve been unable to discover any photos showing Rapp & Rapp’s 1910 interior.
Although the former Majestic Theater is part of the Five Flags Center, the theater itself is billed as the Five Flags Theater (move Street View closer and see the name on the windows.)
Encyclopedia Dubuque has pages for the Majestic Theatre, which features three interior photos, and for the Orpheum Theatre, which has a photo showing the facade.
The line in the introduction saying that the Majestic was modeled after the original Moulin Rouge in Paris doesn’t make sense, as this is what the original Moulin Rouge looked like.
This page at Encyclopedia Dubuque says that the architect of the Princess Theatre was Thomas T. Carkeek. It, too, says that the theater was renamed the Avon in 1928, but it also displays a complimentary season pass to the Princess Theatre dated 1933.
Encyclopedia Dubuque says that the Strand Theatre was in a building converted from a church in 1919. It was taken over by the Dubinsky circuit in 1976, and the building was gutted by a fire in August, 1980. It remained vacant for a decade, and was demolished in 1989-1990.
The October 30, 1912, issue of The American Architect said that the proposed theater on Fayette Street in Syracuse would be operated under a long term lease by the Eckel Company. Plans for the project, by architect C. Merritt Curtis, were almost complete.
This house was already called the Plaza by 1912, when the September 4 issue of The American Architect said that “…the Plaza Theatre, at Broad and Porter Sts.” had been acquired by William W. Miller, operator of the William Penn Theatre. The item mentioned Charles Oelschlager as architect for the project Miller planned to carry out on the site.
The October 9, 1912, issue of The American Architect carried a notice about a theater that was to be built on White Street. The $20,000 project was being designed by the local firm J.C. & G.A. Delatush. White Street is only two blocks long. I wonder if this 1912 project, assuming it was carried out, is the house that became the Red Bank Art Cinemas?
An 1896 book called The Planning and Construction of American Theatres attributes the design of the Castle Square Theatre to architect E. W. Maynard.
The March 23, 1910, issue of The American Architect had the following item datelined Lynn: “Plans have been prepared by Architect E. W. Maynard, 1226 Tremont St., Boston, for erection of proposed Central Square Theater.”
The July 3, 1897, issue of American Architect and Architecture had this report: “Springfield, Mass.—E. W. Maynard, of Boston has made plans for a $100,000 opera-house to be built on Main and Hampden Sts., for Nelson & Vinton.”
A trade journal called The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer made reference in its issue of March 1, 1899, to “…Fred. Kettler, who painted the Nelson Theatre curtain….” having lately been hired as director of the decorative department of a Springfield outfit called the Old Corner Wall-Paper Company.
A Nelson Theatre was certainly in operation at Springfield in 1908, when part of its program was noted in the May 18 issue of the Springfield Republican that year: “The musical features of the week will include a ‘Kid song festival,’ in which Lillian Payette will be heard in three costume songs, with electrical effects and illustrated songs by Charles L. Taylor of New York, who on Wednesday and Thursday will sing ‘Take me out to the ball game.’”
Either this house was opened earlier than Edward Shear reported it to have been, or it replaced an earlier Nelson Theatre, probably on the same site. If it was the latter, what disaster befell the original Nelson Theatre?
I’m setting Street View to the northwest corner of Logan Boulevard and Burgoon Road. As the location of the Rivoli given above was North Logan Boulevard, it would have to have been at the northwest corner. Burgoon Road is the dividing line between North and South addresses on Logan.
The site is currently the location of the main office of Altoona First Savings Bank, with an address of 203 N. Logan, so that was most likely the Rivoli’s address as well. The bank building might or might not occupy the same footprint as the theater did, but I don’t think it’s the same building.
Replaced by a parking lot, alas.
I saw an eBay listing of a ca.1913 postcard showing the New Britain Opera House building with a vertical sign reading Keeney’s. Keeney’s Theatre at New Britain is mentioned in the December 21, 1907, issue of The Billboard as well, so (assuming that Keeney’s didn’t switch locations during the period) this must have been the theater’s name for several years.
The 1899-1900 Cahn Guide lists the house as the Cosmopolitan Opera House, with New Britain Opera House as an AKA.
I believe that the section of Church Street on which the Lyric Theatre was located no longer exists. Google Maps is fetching a suburban residential neighborhood, but the Lyric was in a part of downtown New Britain that has apparently been redeveloped as a part of the campus of CCSU Institute of Technology.
The November 7, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Lyric Theatre in New Britain had been leased by Cooney and Woolison, theater operators at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and that the house had been closed so that extensive alterations could be made.
The building that the State’s entrance was in, at least, was still standing when Google’s street view truck went by. At that time, 63 N. Main Street was occupied by a comic book store called The Gaming Dungeon, and that store is still listed on multiple web sites, and has a Facebook page active as recently as last April. It was also the location of a CCG event scheduled for September 24 this year.
From Google’s satellite view, the building looks a bit small to have held an auditorium seating over 1,300. There’s a big parking lot behind it that could have been the site of a big auditorium, but it was a parking lot as long ago as 1969, according to an aerial view at Historic Aerials, so if the theater was still operating in the 1970s, as sgtjim says above, then it must have been in the building that shows up in the Google street and satellite views.
The Washington Theatre, which was across Main Street from the State, has definitely been demolished, though. Maybe that’s the theater spectrum was thinking of.
In May, 1921, The Bridgemen’s Magazine reported that bids would soon be taken for a theater to be built on Main Street in New Britain for the William Fox company. The projected cost of the project, designed by architect Thomas Lamb, was “about $500,000.”
Could this have been the theater that became the Strand? The item described the house as being two storeys, and 105x130 feet. A photo of the Strand’s exterior would help. The interior photos in the book shoeshoe cited earlier show that the house was certainly ornate enough to have been a Lamb design, though I don’t know if it would have cost half a million dollars.
The March 2, 1918, issue of The American Contractor published a notice saying that work had started on a one-storey theater that was being built on Washington Street in Canton. The project had been designed by local architect S. L. Milton. The owner’s name was not mentioned.
As the MGM report Ron Salters cited says that the Strand was built “about 1915,” it seems possible that it was this project. Canton had fewer than 6,000 people in 1920, so could conceivably have supported two theaters, but being a commuter suburb of Boston there would have been fairly easy access to that city’s many theaters, which makes it more likely that it would have had only one of its own.
Scott Schaut’s book “Historic Mansfield” says that the Madison Theatre was demolished in 1986.
The book also mentions a Majestic Theatre, located on Walnut Street, which was in operation by 1925, and says that the first permanent movie theaters in Mansfield, opened in 1908, were the Orpheum, the Arris, and the Alvin.
The current address of 427 North Main Street would be an unlikely location for a movie house. It’s in an industrial district, and across the street from a railroad line. The 1956 newspaper item Ken quoted above says that the Ritz was “…in the business district….” I suspect that either the address is wrong, or that Mansfield underwent a drastic renumbering at some point. The block of Main Street north of 4th Street currently has addresses with two or three digits, but I suspect that this was historically the 400 block.
The current address of the Mansfield Eagles lodge is 129-135 N. Main Street, but I don’t know if the lodge is still in the same building it was in when it was mentioned in the 1956 article. The building looks considerably more modern than the others on the block, but it does look old enough to have been in existence in 1956. In any case, it’s very likely that this is the block the Ritz was actually in. The lodge hall has parking lots on either side of it, and one or the other of those could have been the site of the Ritz.
There’s currently a Napa Auto Parts store at 1298 Abbott Road, and its building doesn’t have any resemblance to the theater building in the photos. The Towne Theatre must have been demolished.
Two levels of windows have been punched into the side walls of the Park Theatre’s former auditorium, so the space has most likely been filled in with two floors of offices.
The only photo of the building I can find is this close shot of the area where the marquee once would have been.
The March 11, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World refers to a Cape May house called the Perry Street Theatre, run by a Mr. J. P. Cox. It’s probably a safe assumption that Perry Street Theatre was an AKA for the Cox Theatre, and it was probably located on Perry Street. The magazine said that the house was Cape May’s exclusive Paramount theater.
Sometimes the photo is there, and sometimes it isn’t, Chuck. Google Maps is still a work in progress, I guess. But at least they’ve got the Street View matched with the right address in this case.
Linkrot repair: Here is the October 7, 1950, Boxoffice page with the Heywood-Wakefield ad featuring two photos of the Crest Theatre.
Bonus link: The architect’s rendering of the Crest, as featured in Boxoffice of December 4, 1948.
Encyclopedia Dubuque’s page for the Grand Opera House says that movies were first shown there in 1915, but I found an item in the July 4, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World saying that movies were then being shown there.
The page gives the opening date of the Grand Opera House as August 14, 1890. Photographs reveal the exterior style of the building to be Romanesque Revival. I’ve been unable to discover any photos showing Rapp & Rapp’s 1910 interior.
Although the former Majestic Theater is part of the Five Flags Center, the theater itself is billed as the Five Flags Theater (move Street View closer and see the name on the windows.)
Encyclopedia Dubuque has pages for the Majestic Theatre, which features three interior photos, and for the Orpheum Theatre, which has a photo showing the facade.
The line in the introduction saying that the Majestic was modeled after the original Moulin Rouge in Paris doesn’t make sense, as this is what the original Moulin Rouge looked like.
This page at Encyclopedia Dubuque says that the architect of the Princess Theatre was Thomas T. Carkeek. It, too, says that the theater was renamed the Avon in 1928, but it also displays a complimentary season pass to the Princess Theatre dated 1933.
The Encyclopedia Dubuque says that the Princess Theatre was renamed the Avon Theatre in August, 1928. The web page has a drawing of the theater.
Encyclopedia Dubuque says that the Strand Theatre was in a building converted from a church in 1919. It was taken over by the Dubinsky circuit in 1976, and the building was gutted by a fire in August, 1980. It remained vacant for a decade, and was demolished in 1989-1990.
The October 30, 1912, issue of The American Architect said that the proposed theater on Fayette Street in Syracuse would be operated under a long term lease by the Eckel Company. Plans for the project, by architect C. Merritt Curtis, were almost complete.
This house was already called the Plaza by 1912, when the September 4 issue of The American Architect said that “…the Plaza Theatre, at Broad and Porter Sts.” had been acquired by William W. Miller, operator of the William Penn Theatre. The item mentioned Charles Oelschlager as architect for the project Miller planned to carry out on the site.
Here is Clearview’s web page for the Red Bank Art Cinemas.
The October 9, 1912, issue of The American Architect carried a notice about a theater that was to be built on White Street. The $20,000 project was being designed by the local firm J.C. & G.A. Delatush. White Street is only two blocks long. I wonder if this 1912 project, assuming it was carried out, is the house that became the Red Bank Art Cinemas?