In light of pgrembi’s comment, I’m now wondering if the Victory’s building might have survived the fire that destroyed the theater and still be standing. There’s a building on the north side of Chestnut extending from First to Church, and the section at its west end looks as though it could have easily housed a theater.
I don’t know the source of Chuck’s information, but it probably dates from several years after the Zelda Theatre opened. A 1926 issue of The Film Daily made a reference to “…the late Bill Abrahamson at the Zelda, Duluth….” so F&R probably took over the house after he died; although another Film Daily item from 1926 mentioned a Gus Carlson as operator of the Zelda. He could have been an independent operator, or a manager for F&R.
I’ve found a couple of other mentions of W. M. Abrahamson in publications from the 1910s. A biennial report of the Minnesota treasurer’s office said that the office had received a fifty dollar incorporation fee from the W. M. Abrahamson Theater Co. on February 17, 1913. The 1913-1914 edition of Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide listed a 1200-seat, ground floor vaudeville and picture theater in Duluth called the Empress, with W. M. Abrahamson as manager.
Judging from the photos and captions at PSTOS, the Rivoli was on the east side of 6th Street at or near the corner of of E Street. The address would have been in the range of 301-305 NE 6th Street.
A survey of buildings designed by architect Frank C. Clark lists Hunt and Antle’s Rivoli Theatre at Grants Pass as one of his designs, with the date ca.1915.
For those who don’t like to copy and past, here’s Jack’s link. Comparison of historic photos on that page with the modern Google Street View shows that the theater has been demolished.
A survey of buildings designed by architect Frank C. Clark includes the Roxy, though it is listed as Page Theater Building #2 (the original Page Theatre, opened in 1913, had been severely damaged by fire in 1923 and never reopened. Parts of the original building might have been incorporated into the new theater; the sources I’ve seen are ambiguous. Photos show that the Roxy was much smaller than the Page had been.)
The Roxy was remodeled and renamed the Esquire Theatre in 1947. A link at the bottom of the Roxy page leads to a page about the Esquire Theatre. It includes an ad from February 19, 1956, which it says was the Esquire’s last known film showing.
The survey of Clark’s buildings, which was prepared in 1982-83, lists the theater building as gone, so demolition had to have taken place no later than 1983.
Here is Jack’s link, for people who don’t like to copy and paste. The page indicates that the Rialto closed on January 3, 1953.
A survey of buildings designed by architect Frank C. Clark lists the Rialto Theatre as one of his works, though it gives the year of the project as 1919. I don’t know if they simply got the year wrong, or if it indicates that Clark designed some alterations to the theater in 1919. The 1982-83 survey lists the theater as gone, but doesn’t give the year of its demolition.
Trade publication The Billboard noted in its issue of December 5, 1908, that the Jefferson Theatre in Memphis had opened on the 16th of the previous month. A 1912 book called “Standard History of Memphis, Tennessee: From a Study of the Original Sources,” by John Preston Young and A. R. James, devoted several paragraphs to the Jefferson Theatre ( Google Books scan here.) As it is out of copyright, I’ll quote the entire passage:
“In 1908 a three-story, fire-proof building was erected at 291-3-5 Madison Avenue, by the Madison Avenue Theatre Building Company, for a theatre and leased to the Jefferson Theatre Company November, 1908. This theatre is an ornament to the city with its cream-colored brick and terra-cotta trimmings and an artistic marquee of iron and glass stretching across the sidewalk. The lobby is of variegated Tennessee marble and the interior finishings and seating are in mahogany and leather.
“This new theatre was opened with a dramatic stock company and presented standard and popular plays at popular prices, under the management of Mr. A. B. Morrison.
“Mr. Stainback follows the history of this new play-house, thus:
“‘In September, 1909, the Jefferson opened as a link in the chain of vaudeville theatres under the direction of William Morris. For six weeks high-class vaudeville at popular prices remained the policy of the house, but a few weeks later the theatre again became the home of a stock organization under the management of Mr. Morrison and as such finished the season 1909-1910. During the memorable summer of 1910, when plans for the theatrical war between Klaw and Erlanger (known as the Syndicate) and the Shubert’s was formulated, Klaw and Erlanger secured a long term lease on the Jefferson in which to play their attractions; so the opening in September found the pretty Jefferson presenting the Syndicate shows at high (or standard) prices. At the close of the season 1910-1911 quasi peace was declared between the warring factions of the theatrical world.’
“May 1, 1911, Mr. Stainback, then operating the Bijou Theatre, secured the lease of the Jefferson. The Bijou Company then made some improvements to the theatre and renamed it the Lyric. Under this management it opened in September, 1911, with Mr. Jake Wells, president, and Mr. B. M. Stainback, an experienced theatre man, manager.
“Again quoting Mr. Stainback:
“‘On June 29, 1912, the Lyric closed its first season, the longest and most successful in the history of the theatre. Standard dramas and musical comedies at popular prices, booked through the Stair and Havlin agency, was the policy of the Lyric for the season 1911-1912.’”
Trade journal The Bridgemen’s Magazine reported in its May, 1908, issue that the Jefferson Theatre had been designed by Memphis architect John Gaisford.
Page 20 of a history of Cooper Theatres (a pdf can be downloaded from this web page) says that the Cooper 1-2-3 was an expansion of the Cooper 70. The two new auditoriums were added in 1970.
The Google Maps pin icon is near the southwest corner of the square, but the article Ken linked to on August 23, 2008, says that the Capitol Theatre was at the southeast corner of the square. The band shell the article mentions has now been built on part of the theater’s site, and can be seen in Google Street View.
Jeff: I’m sure that Avalon Boulevard’s name was once South Park Avenue. Long before Victor Gruen’s minions decided to attach the name South Park to the southern part of downtown, Los Angeles already had a neighborhood called South Park, and there still is a park called South Park, at Avalon and 51st.
The Elite Theatre was listed at 3818 South Park Avenue in the 1926 City Directory, but at 3818 Avalon Boulevard in the 1927 directory, so it was probably during 1926 that the name was changed.
Street View shows that the Edison Theatre/Columbia Cinema has been demolished, and a high rise project has been built on its site. Compare the photo Al Alvarez linked to earlier.
The pin icon on the Google Map is too far south. The Roosevelt Theatre was farther north, on the east side of the street. The extension of Temple Street east of Main crosses the site of the theater. It was about where the street’s eastbound lanes and southern sidewalk now are.
The caption also says that the house might once have been called the West Duluth Theatre; but if it ever had that name, it had to have been before 1921. The Doric was mentioned by name in the January 29, 1921, issue of Domestic Engineering, which said that the Northern Plumbing Company had been given a $20,000 contract to install the plumbing and heating equipment in the Doric Theater at Duluth.
Numbered streets don’t match up with the addresses on cross streets in Pacific Grove. The Grove Theatre was at the corner of Lighthouse Avenue and 17th Street. The current occupant of the former theater building appears to be a salon and day spa called Canty & Marquez, the address of which is 618 Lighthouse Avenue. Google Maps gets the pin spot on with that address.
I think I updated Street View to the wrong building. After careful examination of the 1912 photo, it’s clear that the Colonial Theatre was in the building to the right of the building that has the Hallmark shop in Street View. The former theater entrance was in the location now occupied by the Glenn Gobel Custom Frames shop, which is at 562 Lighthouse Avenue.
Several sources indicate that the view above does depict the Prospect Avenue side of the Colonial Hotel. The Euclid Avenue side featured a central cupola, as seen here, that the Prospect Avenue side lacked.
The book “Cleveland: The Making of a City,” by William Ganson Rose, has a brief paragraph about this theater. It says that the house opened in April, 1904, as the Prospect Theatre. Originally the home of the Baldwin-Melville Stock Company, it was taken over by B. F. Keith in 1905, renamed Keith’s Prospect Theatre, and was operated as a vaudeville house.
Some time later, Keith took over the much larger Hippodrome Theatre (in 1908 or 1909, as near as I can find,) and the circuit dropped this house and it reverted to its original name. It operated as a lower-priced independent vaudeville theater for several years, but the building was eventually rebuilt and converted to retail use. A history of Cleveland published in 1910 tells pretty much the same early story about the theater, but gives its opening year as 1903. Another source says that the building was demolished in 1965.
A 1908 issue of Insurance Engineering reported on a fire in Keith’s Theatre which produced “…clouds of smoke so dense that they shut out the sun and drove the crowds, choking and coughing, from Prospect Avenue….” The fire, the report said, had started in a motion picture machine, so the house was showing movies as part of its program at least as early as 1908.
The comment by chadhauris says that the Howard Hodge Theatre is now used by the Midland Downtown Lions Club. The Internet gives the address of the Downtown Lions Activity Center as 200 Plaza Street. It’s a Midcentury Modern building built of that nice buff-colored brick they make in Texas.
Although Cinema Treasures currently attributes the design of this theater to Jack Corgan, the biographical entry for Midland architect Joe Bill Pierce in the 1962 AIA Architects Directory lists the Hodge Theatre among his works. Of course, Pierce could have been only Corgan’s local associate overseeing construction of this project, but I’ve been unable to find any source on the Internet other than Cinema Treasures attributing the design of the Hodge to Corgan.
To complicate things a bit more, CinemaTour has an architectural rendering that is claimed to depict the Hodge Theatre, and it appears to be signed by someone named Fred Carlton. I’ve been unable to discover anything about him.
The Pierce entry in the AUA directory also says that the Hodge Theatre was a 1960 project.
I’ve been unable to identify the original architect of the Florida Theatre, but the architect for the rebuilding after the 1960 fire was Theodore C. Poulos. It is listed among his works in his biographical entry in the 1962 AIA Architects Directory.
meheuck: The Globe/Hollyway is listed at Cinema Treasures under the name Holly Theatre.
In light of pgrembi’s comment, I’m now wondering if the Victory’s building might have survived the fire that destroyed the theater and still be standing. There’s a building on the north side of Chestnut extending from First to Church, and the section at its west end looks as though it could have easily housed a theater.
I don’t know the source of Chuck’s information, but it probably dates from several years after the Zelda Theatre opened. A 1926 issue of The Film Daily made a reference to “…the late Bill Abrahamson at the Zelda, Duluth….” so F&R probably took over the house after he died; although another Film Daily item from 1926 mentioned a Gus Carlson as operator of the Zelda. He could have been an independent operator, or a manager for F&R.
I’ve found a couple of other mentions of W. M. Abrahamson in publications from the 1910s. A biennial report of the Minnesota treasurer’s office said that the office had received a fifty dollar incorporation fee from the W. M. Abrahamson Theater Co. on February 17, 1913. The 1913-1914 edition of Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide listed a 1200-seat, ground floor vaudeville and picture theater in Duluth called the Empress, with W. M. Abrahamson as manager.
Judging from the photos and captions at PSTOS, the Rivoli was on the east side of 6th Street at or near the corner of of E Street. The address would have been in the range of 301-305 NE 6th Street.
A survey of buildings designed by architect Frank C. Clark lists Hunt and Antle’s Rivoli Theatre at Grants Pass as one of his designs, with the date ca.1915.
For those who don’t like to copy and past, here’s Jack’s link. Comparison of historic photos on that page with the modern Google Street View shows that the theater has been demolished.
A survey of buildings designed by architect Frank C. Clark includes the Roxy, though it is listed as Page Theater Building #2 (the original Page Theatre, opened in 1913, had been severely damaged by fire in 1923 and never reopened. Parts of the original building might have been incorporated into the new theater; the sources I’ve seen are ambiguous. Photos show that the Roxy was much smaller than the Page had been.)
The Roxy was remodeled and renamed the Esquire Theatre in 1947. A link at the bottom of the Roxy page leads to a page about the Esquire Theatre. It includes an ad from February 19, 1956, which it says was the Esquire’s last known film showing.
The survey of Clark’s buildings, which was prepared in 1982-83, lists the theater building as gone, so demolition had to have taken place no later than 1983.
Here is Jack’s link, for people who don’t like to copy and paste. The page indicates that the Rialto closed on January 3, 1953.
A survey of buildings designed by architect Frank C. Clark lists the Rialto Theatre as one of his works, though it gives the year of the project as 1919. I don’t know if they simply got the year wrong, or if it indicates that Clark designed some alterations to the theater in 1919. The 1982-83 survey lists the theater as gone, but doesn’t give the year of its demolition.
The 1952 Boxoffice article about the Craterian Theatre, cited in a comment above by Gerald DeLuca, has been moved to this link.
Copying and pasting Robb’s links doesn’t work for me. This might be one of the photos, if this link works.
Here is a link to the UM digital library image search page. Searching with Esquire in one box and theatre (-re spelling) in the other will fetch 22 images of the Esquire.
There’s a photo on this page, where it’s listed under the name Lyric Theatre, but it’s very similar to the photo above.
Trade publication The Billboard noted in its issue of December 5, 1908, that the Jefferson Theatre in Memphis had opened on the 16th of the previous month. A 1912 book called “Standard History of Memphis, Tennessee: From a Study of the Original Sources,” by John Preston Young and A. R. James, devoted several paragraphs to the Jefferson Theatre ( Google Books scan here.) As it is out of copyright, I’ll quote the entire passage:
Trade journal The Bridgemen’s Magazine reported in its May, 1908, issue that the Jefferson Theatre had been designed by Memphis architect John Gaisford.The correct address for the Enean/Showcase Theatre is 1970 Grant Street.
Page 20 of a history of Cooper Theatres (a pdf can be downloaded from this web page) says that the Cooper 1-2-3 was an expansion of the Cooper 70. The two new auditoriums were added in 1970.
The Google Maps pin icon is near the southwest corner of the square, but the article Ken linked to on August 23, 2008, says that the Capitol Theatre was at the southeast corner of the square. The band shell the article mentions has now been built on part of the theater’s site, and can be seen in Google Street View.
Jeff: I’m sure that Avalon Boulevard’s name was once South Park Avenue. Long before Victor Gruen’s minions decided to attach the name South Park to the southern part of downtown, Los Angeles already had a neighborhood called South Park, and there still is a park called South Park, at Avalon and 51st.
The Elite Theatre was listed at 3818 South Park Avenue in the 1926 City Directory, but at 3818 Avalon Boulevard in the 1927 directory, so it was probably during 1926 that the name was changed.
Street View shows that the Edison Theatre/Columbia Cinema has been demolished, and a high rise project has been built on its site. Compare the photo Al Alvarez linked to earlier.
The pin icon on the Google Map is too far south. The Roosevelt Theatre was farther north, on the east side of the street. The extension of Temple Street east of Main crosses the site of the theater. It was about where the street’s eastbound lanes and southern sidewalk now are.
imrobert: The 20th Century West Theatre has been listed at Cinema Treasures under its later name, Coddingtown Cinemas.
Here is the Clyde Theatre with its vertical sign intact. Thumbnails below the photo include a shot of the theater’s auditorium.
Photo of the Quimby Theatre.
Color photo of the Quimby Theatre.
Here is a ca.1931 photo of the Doric Theatre. Here is a 1925 photo, without all that snow. The caption says that it was remodeled in 1941 and was closed on October 10, 1958.
The caption also says that the house might once have been called the West Duluth Theatre; but if it ever had that name, it had to have been before 1921. The Doric was mentioned by name in the January 29, 1921, issue of Domestic Engineering, which said that the Northern Plumbing Company had been given a $20,000 contract to install the plumbing and heating equipment in the Doric Theater at Duluth.
Numbered streets don’t match up with the addresses on cross streets in Pacific Grove. The Grove Theatre was at the corner of Lighthouse Avenue and 17th Street. The current occupant of the former theater building appears to be a salon and day spa called Canty & Marquez, the address of which is 618 Lighthouse Avenue. Google Maps gets the pin spot on with that address.
I think I updated Street View to the wrong building. After careful examination of the 1912 photo, it’s clear that the Colonial Theatre was in the building to the right of the building that has the Hallmark shop in Street View. The former theater entrance was in the location now occupied by the Glenn Gobel Custom Frames shop, which is at 562 Lighthouse Avenue.
Several sources indicate that the view above does depict the Prospect Avenue side of the Colonial Hotel. The Euclid Avenue side featured a central cupola, as seen here, that the Prospect Avenue side lacked.
The book “Cleveland: The Making of a City,” by William Ganson Rose, has a brief paragraph about this theater. It says that the house opened in April, 1904, as the Prospect Theatre. Originally the home of the Baldwin-Melville Stock Company, it was taken over by B. F. Keith in 1905, renamed Keith’s Prospect Theatre, and was operated as a vaudeville house.
Some time later, Keith took over the much larger Hippodrome Theatre (in 1908 or 1909, as near as I can find,) and the circuit dropped this house and it reverted to its original name. It operated as a lower-priced independent vaudeville theater for several years, but the building was eventually rebuilt and converted to retail use. A history of Cleveland published in 1910 tells pretty much the same early story about the theater, but gives its opening year as 1903. Another source says that the building was demolished in 1965.
A 1908 issue of Insurance Engineering reported on a fire in Keith’s Theatre which produced “…clouds of smoke so dense that they shut out the sun and drove the crowds, choking and coughing, from Prospect Avenue….” The fire, the report said, had started in a motion picture machine, so the house was showing movies as part of its program at least as early as 1908.
The comment by chadhauris says that the Howard Hodge Theatre is now used by the Midland Downtown Lions Club. The Internet gives the address of the Downtown Lions Activity Center as 200 Plaza Street. It’s a Midcentury Modern building built of that nice buff-colored brick they make in Texas.
Although Cinema Treasures currently attributes the design of this theater to Jack Corgan, the biographical entry for Midland architect Joe Bill Pierce in the 1962 AIA Architects Directory lists the Hodge Theatre among his works. Of course, Pierce could have been only Corgan’s local associate overseeing construction of this project, but I’ve been unable to find any source on the Internet other than Cinema Treasures attributing the design of the Hodge to Corgan.
To complicate things a bit more, CinemaTour has an architectural rendering that is claimed to depict the Hodge Theatre, and it appears to be signed by someone named Fred Carlton. I’ve been unable to discover anything about him.
The Pierce entry in the AUA directory also says that the Hodge Theatre was a 1960 project.
I’ve been unable to identify the original architect of the Florida Theatre, but the architect for the rebuilding after the 1960 fire was Theodore C. Poulos. It is listed among his works in his biographical entry in the 1962 AIA Architects Directory.