The earliest mention of a movie theater at Nashville I’ve found in the trade publications is in the September 7, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World, but that house was called the Picture.
The April 13, 1929 issue of Universal Weekly published a letter from W. Wagner of Nashville, Illinois, in which he said that he had been in show business for fourteen years. His theater’s name was not mentioned, but the only theater at Nashville was listed in the FDY as the Gem by 1926. The April 1, 1933 issue of Motion Picture Herald ran a letter from H. R. Hisey of the State Theatre in Nashville.
The October 8 issue of Boxoffice also noted the recent opening of the new State Theatre, replacing the earlier State which was being converted into a garage. The owner of both States was Mrs. Alpha Hisey, the mother of Gradwell Sears, who was then the President of United Artists. The new house originally seated 488 in a building 42x120 feet.
The drawing of the proposed Avon Theatre is signed by E. P. Lipson. This must have been Ed Lipson (I’ve been unable to discover if his first name was Edward or Edwin,) partner in the firm of Lipson & Wallace (Robert W. Wallace.) There is very little about them on the Internet, but the firm was still in operation in the late 1950s when Lipson’s son Alvin (born 1936) joined for a few years before becoming a developer.
Typo in my previous comment. The 1880 Clipper almanac, recording theatrical events of the previous year, said that the Stanford Opera House opened on December 20, 1879, not 1979.
The Lincoln Theatre was at 201 E. Main Street. The building is now occupied by offices for the Chamber of Commerce and various community action agencies. Google Street View.
There might have been two different opera houses at Stanford. The 1883 edition of Jno. B. Jeffrey’s guide listed the Stanford Opera House as a 600-seat theater with a stage 20 by 50 feet. The 1889 edition of the same publication listed Walton’s Opera House, a 500-seat theater with a stage 25 by 60 feet. It might also be that the house was rebuilt, or perhaps misinformation originally published was corrected in later editions.
The 1880 edition of The New York Clipper Almanac said that on December 20, 1979 “[t]he Stanford (Ky.) Opera-house was dedicated by Julia A. Hunt and company, who then began a week’s engagement, playing ‘The Pearl of Savoy’”.
I came across this vintage postcard photo of Walton’s Opera House, probably made in the 1890s. The building next door is still standing in the 100 block of E. Main Street, but the Opera House building has been replaced by something newer, though still not very new.
One source said that the Opera House building also housed the town’s post office and a restaurant. The restaurant was probably in the storefront in the middle that says “The Princess” on its sign. The new building on the site uses the address 101 E. Main Street, but the Opera House entrance was the third door down from the corner, so probably at something like 105 E. Main.
The November 18, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World said that an exhibitor named F. A. Ogden from Winchester, Kentucky, planned to operate the Opera House as a movie theater after negotiating a deal with building owner Hays Foster.
Moving Picture World of February 19, 1916 had this item: “The Thomas Opera House of Horse Cave, Ky., has been re-opened and is now showing the Paramount features on Friday and Saturday nights, two shows being given each of these evenings.”
The October 19, 1945 issue of Film Daily carried a notice saying “[a] new 1,000-seat house is going up in Horse Cave, Ky. It’s the project of Marion Caldwell, exhibitor who operates outlets in Cave City, Scottsville and Manford, Ky.” Was this project carried out? I’ve been unable to find any later mentions of it. Building materials were restricted for several years after the war, and a drive-in was built at Horse Cave in 1950, so maybe the promoters gave up on the indoor project and opted for a new-fangled outdoor theater instead.
The November 9, 1957 issue of Boxoffice said that the Strand Theatre at Horse Cave, Kentucky had been closed.
The February 4, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that the Grand Theatre had shown movies on Sunday for the first time on January 29. Citizens of Sparta had recently voted to repeal a Sunday blue law which had been in effect for 122 years.
I wonder if this might have been a reverse theater, with the screen at the entrance end and the projection booth at the back? The booth being in an addition that was later removed would account for the variation in the building’s length over time.
The Sequoia opened a bit earlier than we thought. This item is from the October 14, 1916 issue of Motography:
“The Sequoia Theater in Redwood City enjoyed a very successful opening. The theater is equipped with every improvement and a $10,000 organ furnishes the music. E. K. Hokhurst is manager.”
The May 29, 1936 item cited above indicates that the Palace Theatre was moved from its original location to a building on Main Street that year. Apparently this was larger location, as the 1936 FDY lists the Palace with 400 seats and the 1937 edition lists it with 500.
The Trigg Theatre building is still standing. The correct address is 135 N. Public Square, and the current occupant is the law firm of Herbert, Herbert & Pack. Google street views from July 2018 and July 2019 show the same structure, the only significant difference being that it has been stripped of its Vitrolite tiles since the earlier view was made.
The Mecca is mentioned in the July 10, 1926 issue of Motion Picture News and in the July 12 issue of Film Daily that same year. Both items noted that the Mecca was operating only one day a week. As it wasn’t listed in the 1926 FDY it probably opened that year, but after the yearbook went to press.
The Pitts Theatre was mentioned in the March 15, 1925 issue of Film Daily, which said that the house had just been sold to J. Jourdaine. So far I’ve been unable to find any mentions of the Lillian Theatre.
Given its downtown location it is quite possible that this was an older theater that was triplexed and renamed Cinema III in 1990. In 1971, Central City had a house called the Towne Theatre, but I’ve only ever found one mention of it, in the June 21 issue of Boxoffice, and I haven’t been able to find out anything about it.
For a long time the main (and perhaps only) theater operating in Central City was the State, opened in 1921 as the Selba Theatre, but announcements of its construction say it was to be 70x112 feet, and the Cinema 4 looks no more than forty feet wide. Also the State was listed in the 1950 FDY with 878 seats, so quite a bit larger than Cinema 4.
SethG: Two different theaters called the Empress are partly conflated in the description. The second Empress opened in early 1937 and its building was probably the one that was converted into an electronics store in 1954. The first Empress, which was the one at 112 N. First Street, was probably the house listed in the 1914-1915 edition of the Gus Hill directory, and we don’t know when it closed but it isn’t listed in the 1926 FDY, or at least not as the Empress (it could have been operating as the Corbin, the Hippodrome, or the Union.) There is a photo of it dated 1921 at CinemaTour. I haven’t been able to find an address for the second Empress, or whether or not it was in operation all the way to 1954.
Here is an item from the October 10, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News:
“Robbinsdale— Plans are being drawn for theatre bldg. to be erected on site at corner of West Broadway Avenue and the New Rockford Road. Approx. cost $50,000; Seat. Cap. 350. W. E. Westby is the Archt. and Wm. Mueller the owner of the new building which will contain four stores.”
Big Screen Cinema Guide says the Strand opened in 1926. This item from Motion Picture News of October 10, 1925 was probably about it: “Winsted— L. J. Thompson of New Britain is drawing plans for the erection of theatre bldg. on Main St. Owner, John E. Panara.”
I wonder if this item from the October 10, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News could have been about the Strand?
“Long Branch— Plans are being drawn by Maximilian Zipkes, Archt. of 25 West 43rd St.. N. Y. for erection of theatre bldg. at corner of North Broadway and Second Ave. Approx. Cost $350,000. Seat. Cap. 1,500. Plot 155 ft. x 145 ft. Owner— Lucinor Holding Corp. of N. Y.”
This item from the October 10, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News must be about the Linden Circle Theatre:
“Memphis— Anker F. Hanson, Archt. with offices in the Shrine Bldg. is drawing plans for the erection of theatre bldg. in Linden Circle. Approx. Cost $50,000.”
Vincent Astor’s book Memphis Movie Theatres says that in 1966 the Linden Circle became a live music venue, hosting many well-known country and western acts, but doesn’t say how long it operated as such. I’ve found references to shows there in the early 1970s. Another source says that a church moved into the building in 2004, and another indicates that it was auctioned off for back taxes in 2013. The building is currently occupied by a non-profit outfit called Lending a Hand Recovery Center, offering mental health counseling under the auspices of a religious organization called Lending a Hand Ministries.
The building at 123 W. 4th appears on a 1900 Sanborn map as a commercial building with an opera house on the second floor. The ground floor is noted to have iron columns running the length of the center. I’m starting to doubt that the ground floor ever housed a theater, and if this building housed the Lyric it was probably in the second floor opera house space.
On this web page there is a photo of the section of 4th Street near Washington Street, and it shows an ordinary storefront where the H&R Block office is now. In the next block is a sign with a crossbar at top with the letters LY clearly readable, and the word THEATRE vertically below it. That has to have been the Lyric. It was, as Norman Plant noted above, probably at 203 W. 4th Street. The text accompanying the photo mentions the Opera House, but doesn’t mention the Lyric Theatre ever having been in the building at 123 W. 4th. Another page of that web site does mention the Lyric having been in that building, but places it at 306 N. Washington, now the entrance of the Masonic lodge, so probably originally the entrance of the upstairs Opera house and then the Lyric. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory gives the location of the Lyric as 4th and Jefferson Street. As there is (and was) no Jefferson Street in Salem, it was probably meant to say 4th and Washington.
This page from the downtown Salem walking tour says of the site in the next block of 4th Street that “Ken and Olive Preston purchased the property next and tore down the hotel. They had a building built to house the Lyric Movie Theater.” Unfortunately, the text doesn’t say when this happened. So the question is when was the Lyric at (probably) 203 W. 4th built? I haven’t found the name Preston in connection with Salem in the trade journals in the 1920s. In 1921 and 1929 the Lyric was owned by W. A. Donaldson, and in 1929 was bought by L. L. Lewis. It is most likely that the Lyric at 204 W. 4th was the project mentioned in the May 2, 1936 issue of Film Daily, and the earlier Lyric, owned by Donaldson and then Lewis, was the former Opera House. The 1926 FDY lists the Lyric with 210 seats, so it was smaller than the new Lyric built by the Prestons.
Pages 27 through 30 of this digital document have considerably more information about this theater. In addition to the names Park Theatre, Shea’s Theatre and Shea’s Court Street Theatre, it operated under the names Music Box Theatre (from 1929) and Teatro Italia (from 21 January 1934 until around 1941.) The document also says that “[t]he Catholic Actors’s Guild rented this theatre for their performances c.1935–c.1939, and printed ‘Shea’s Court Street Theatre’ on their programmes.”
The theater was designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son. This web page has an early photo of the house as Shea’s Theatre. In its early days it used the address 40 Court Street. The site had earlier been occupied by Wahle’s Opera House, which itself was called the Court Street Theatre for a time. Plans to remodel the original theater were abandoned in 1903 in favor of demolition and the construction of an entirely new building.
Here is an item from the December 3, 1921 issue of Moving Picture World: “W. A. Donaldson has purchased the Lyric Theatre at Salem, Mo., from Sankey Bros. He takes charge on November 29.”
I wonder if the project in this item from the January 14, 1937 issue of Film Daily got built or not. Are we missing any theaters in Salem?
“Salem, Mo.— F. V. Mercer of Perryville, Mo., will open bids Friday on the construction of a new 600-seat motion picture theater here. Johnson & Maack, Chemical Building, St. Louis, are the architects.”
The July, 1911 issue of Motography ran a brief notice saying “[t]he Star Theater at Manchester has been purchased by Milton Wilkinson.”
The earliest mention of a movie theater at Nashville I’ve found in the trade publications is in the September 7, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World, but that house was called the Picture.
The April 13, 1929 issue of Universal Weekly published a letter from W. Wagner of Nashville, Illinois, in which he said that he had been in show business for fourteen years. His theater’s name was not mentioned, but the only theater at Nashville was listed in the FDY as the Gem by 1926. The April 1, 1933 issue of Motion Picture Herald ran a letter from H. R. Hisey of the State Theatre in Nashville.
The October 8 issue of Boxoffice also noted the recent opening of the new State Theatre, replacing the earlier State which was being converted into a garage. The owner of both States was Mrs. Alpha Hisey, the mother of Gradwell Sears, who was then the President of United Artists. The new house originally seated 488 in a building 42x120 feet.
The drawing of the proposed Avon Theatre is signed by E. P. Lipson. This must have been Ed Lipson (I’ve been unable to discover if his first name was Edward or Edwin,) partner in the firm of Lipson & Wallace (Robert W. Wallace.) There is very little about them on the Internet, but the firm was still in operation in the late 1950s when Lipson’s son Alvin (born 1936) joined for a few years before becoming a developer.
Typo in my previous comment. The 1880 Clipper almanac, recording theatrical events of the previous year, said that the Stanford Opera House opened on December 20, 1879, not 1979.
The Lincoln Theatre was at 201 E. Main Street. The building is now occupied by offices for the Chamber of Commerce and various community action agencies. Google Street View.
There might have been two different opera houses at Stanford. The 1883 edition of Jno. B. Jeffrey’s guide listed the Stanford Opera House as a 600-seat theater with a stage 20 by 50 feet. The 1889 edition of the same publication listed Walton’s Opera House, a 500-seat theater with a stage 25 by 60 feet. It might also be that the house was rebuilt, or perhaps misinformation originally published was corrected in later editions.
The 1880 edition of The New York Clipper Almanac said that on December 20, 1979 “[t]he Stanford (Ky.) Opera-house was dedicated by Julia A. Hunt and company, who then began a week’s engagement, playing ‘The Pearl of Savoy’”.
I came across this vintage postcard photo of Walton’s Opera House, probably made in the 1890s. The building next door is still standing in the 100 block of E. Main Street, but the Opera House building has been replaced by something newer, though still not very new.
One source said that the Opera House building also housed the town’s post office and a restaurant. The restaurant was probably in the storefront in the middle that says “The Princess” on its sign. The new building on the site uses the address 101 E. Main Street, but the Opera House entrance was the third door down from the corner, so probably at something like 105 E. Main.
The November 18, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World said that an exhibitor named F. A. Ogden from Winchester, Kentucky, planned to operate the Opera House as a movie theater after negotiating a deal with building owner Hays Foster.
Moving Picture World of February 19, 1916 had this item: “The Thomas Opera House of Horse Cave, Ky., has been re-opened and is now showing the Paramount features on Friday and Saturday nights, two shows being given each of these evenings.”
The October 19, 1945 issue of Film Daily carried a notice saying “[a] new 1,000-seat house is going up in Horse Cave, Ky. It’s the project of Marion Caldwell, exhibitor who operates outlets in Cave City, Scottsville and Manford, Ky.” Was this project carried out? I’ve been unable to find any later mentions of it. Building materials were restricted for several years after the war, and a drive-in was built at Horse Cave in 1950, so maybe the promoters gave up on the indoor project and opted for a new-fangled outdoor theater instead.
The November 9, 1957 issue of Boxoffice said that the Strand Theatre at Horse Cave, Kentucky had been closed.
The February 4, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that the Grand Theatre had shown movies on Sunday for the first time on January 29. Citizens of Sparta had recently voted to repeal a Sunday blue law which had been in effect for 122 years.
I wonder if this might have been a reverse theater, with the screen at the entrance end and the projection booth at the back? The booth being in an addition that was later removed would account for the variation in the building’s length over time.
The Sequoia opened a bit earlier than we thought. This item is from the October 14, 1916 issue of Motography:
The May 29, 1936 item cited above indicates that the Palace Theatre was moved from its original location to a building on Main Street that year. Apparently this was larger location, as the 1936 FDY lists the Palace with 400 seats and the 1937 edition lists it with 500.
The Trigg Theatre building is still standing. The correct address is 135 N. Public Square, and the current occupant is the law firm of Herbert, Herbert & Pack. Google street views from July 2018 and July 2019 show the same structure, the only significant difference being that it has been stripped of its Vitrolite tiles since the earlier view was made.
The Mecca is mentioned in the July 10, 1926 issue of Motion Picture News and in the July 12 issue of Film Daily that same year. Both items noted that the Mecca was operating only one day a week. As it wasn’t listed in the 1926 FDY it probably opened that year, but after the yearbook went to press.
The Pitts Theatre was mentioned in the March 15, 1925 issue of Film Daily, which said that the house had just been sold to J. Jourdaine. So far I’ve been unable to find any mentions of the Lillian Theatre.
Given its downtown location it is quite possible that this was an older theater that was triplexed and renamed Cinema III in 1990. In 1971, Central City had a house called the Towne Theatre, but I’ve only ever found one mention of it, in the June 21 issue of Boxoffice, and I haven’t been able to find out anything about it.
For a long time the main (and perhaps only) theater operating in Central City was the State, opened in 1921 as the Selba Theatre, but announcements of its construction say it was to be 70x112 feet, and the Cinema 4 looks no more than forty feet wide. Also the State was listed in the 1950 FDY with 878 seats, so quite a bit larger than Cinema 4.
SethG: Two different theaters called the Empress are partly conflated in the description. The second Empress opened in early 1937 and its building was probably the one that was converted into an electronics store in 1954. The first Empress, which was the one at 112 N. First Street, was probably the house listed in the 1914-1915 edition of the Gus Hill directory, and we don’t know when it closed but it isn’t listed in the 1926 FDY, or at least not as the Empress (it could have been operating as the Corbin, the Hippodrome, or the Union.) There is a photo of it dated 1921 at CinemaTour. I haven’t been able to find an address for the second Empress, or whether or not it was in operation all the way to 1954.
Here is an item from the October 10, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News:
Big Screen Cinema Guide says the Strand opened in 1926. This item from Motion Picture News of October 10, 1925 was probably about it: “Winsted— L. J. Thompson of New Britain is drawing plans for the erection of theatre bldg. on Main St. Owner, John E. Panara.”
I wonder if this item from the October 10, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News could have been about the Strand?
This item from the October 10, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News must be about the Linden Circle Theatre:
Vincent Astor’s book Memphis Movie Theatres says that in 1966 the Linden Circle became a live music venue, hosting many well-known country and western acts, but doesn’t say how long it operated as such. I’ve found references to shows there in the early 1970s. Another source says that a church moved into the building in 2004, and another indicates that it was auctioned off for back taxes in 2013. The building is currently occupied by a non-profit outfit called Lending a Hand Recovery Center, offering mental health counseling under the auspices of a religious organization called Lending a Hand Ministries.The building at 123 W. 4th appears on a 1900 Sanborn map as a commercial building with an opera house on the second floor. The ground floor is noted to have iron columns running the length of the center. I’m starting to doubt that the ground floor ever housed a theater, and if this building housed the Lyric it was probably in the second floor opera house space.
On this web page there is a photo of the section of 4th Street near Washington Street, and it shows an ordinary storefront where the H&R Block office is now. In the next block is a sign with a crossbar at top with the letters LY clearly readable, and the word THEATRE vertically below it. That has to have been the Lyric. It was, as Norman Plant noted above, probably at 203 W. 4th Street. The text accompanying the photo mentions the Opera House, but doesn’t mention the Lyric Theatre ever having been in the building at 123 W. 4th. Another page of that web site does mention the Lyric having been in that building, but places it at 306 N. Washington, now the entrance of the Masonic lodge, so probably originally the entrance of the upstairs Opera house and then the Lyric. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory gives the location of the Lyric as 4th and Jefferson Street. As there is (and was) no Jefferson Street in Salem, it was probably meant to say 4th and Washington.
This page from the downtown Salem walking tour says of the site in the next block of 4th Street that “Ken and Olive Preston purchased the property next and tore down the hotel. They had a building built to house the Lyric Movie Theater.” Unfortunately, the text doesn’t say when this happened. So the question is when was the Lyric at (probably) 203 W. 4th built? I haven’t found the name Preston in connection with Salem in the trade journals in the 1920s. In 1921 and 1929 the Lyric was owned by W. A. Donaldson, and in 1929 was bought by L. L. Lewis. It is most likely that the Lyric at 204 W. 4th was the project mentioned in the May 2, 1936 issue of Film Daily, and the earlier Lyric, owned by Donaldson and then Lewis, was the former Opera House. The 1926 FDY lists the Lyric with 210 seats, so it was smaller than the new Lyric built by the Prestons.
Pages 27 through 30 of this digital document have considerably more information about this theater. In addition to the names Park Theatre, Shea’s Theatre and Shea’s Court Street Theatre, it operated under the names Music Box Theatre (from 1929) and Teatro Italia (from 21 January 1934 until around 1941.) The document also says that “[t]he Catholic Actors’s Guild rented this theatre for their performances c.1935–c.1939, and printed ‘Shea’s Court Street Theatre’ on their programmes.”
The theater was designed by Leon H. Lempert & Son. This web page has an early photo of the house as Shea’s Theatre. In its early days it used the address 40 Court Street. The site had earlier been occupied by Wahle’s Opera House, which itself was called the Court Street Theatre for a time. Plans to remodel the original theater were abandoned in 1903 in favor of demolition and the construction of an entirely new building.
Here is an item from the December 3, 1921 issue of Moving Picture World: “W. A. Donaldson has purchased the Lyric Theatre at Salem, Mo., from Sankey Bros. He takes charge on November 29.”
I wonder if the project in this item from the January 14, 1937 issue of Film Daily got built or not. Are we missing any theaters in Salem?