It now looks as though the theater was not on the church site after all. This web page at Historic Evansville says that the Woodlawn Theatre was demolished in 1963, after closing in 1957. At the “View all Images” link there is an aerial view from 1947, and the enlarged version of it includes the Woodlawn Theatre, outlined at lower left. It does look like the theater was too far north to have been under what is now the church’s footprint. Also, it had a flat roof, unlike the northern section of the church that I thought might have been what was left of the theater.
The site says that a branch of Hardee’s is on the site of the Woodlawn Theatre. Unfortunately, I updated Street View with a view of the church before I found the Historic Evansville page. Pan the view left to see the Hardee’s. The theater was most likely sited on what is now the parking lot between Hardee’s and the church.
I’m not sure that any part of the Woodlawn Theatre is still standing as part of the church now on its site. Part of the north sidewall of the building looks like it could be fairly old, and that section of the building has a gabled roof, characteristic of theaters built during the 1910s and early 1920s, but most of the building is of unmistakably modern construction.
The Woodlawn was definitely in operation by the early 1920s. A page at the Willard Library dates the photo seen at Chuck’s link as c. 1920. It’s obvious from the outfits the people in the photo are wearing, too. The ankle-length dress on the woman could have dated from the late 1910s.
It looks like the Washington Theatre has been demolished. The only structure on the odd-numbered side of the 900 block is a neo-colonial style building which the Internet lists as the location of Old National Bank, 961 Washington.
There are a couple of early photos of the Washington Theatre near the bottom of this web page, from Willard Library. The caption of one says that the theater opened on November 24, 1936.
The February 21 (not 25,) 1966, Boxoffice item about the Cinema 35 that I linked to in my previous comment has been moved to this link.
Google Maps is off base again. The pin icon on the map looks to be about half a mile west of the theater’s actual location. Street View is from the adjacent expressway, not from the street itself. After I updated it, I discovered that it is possible to get a view from Division Street itself, but only by moving the view eastward, then going off the expressway via an on-ramp just east of Willow Road, then doubling back along Division Street.
This web page from the Willard Library has photos of the Columbia Theatre before and after the 1939 Streamline Modern remodeling job, as well as photos of many other Evansville theaters. The thumbnails are in alphabetical order, so the Columbia photos are near the top of the page.
The web site Historic Evansville says that the New Majestic Theater was built in 1909 to replace an earlier Majestic Theater on the same site. The New Majestic opened in Christmas Day, 1909, and was demolished in 1974.
An item in the July 31, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Switlow Amusement Company of Louisville, Kentucky, had bought the New Majestic Theater in Evansville. The theater had apparently been operating as a legitimate house, as Switlow intended to convert the Majestic to a movie and vaudeville combination house. The architectural firm of Joseph & Joseph had been hired to design a $20,000 remodeling.
Coate and orange are right. I conflated the Cinema 70 with the Cooper 70 in my earlier comment. The Cooper 70 and Ute 70 are not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The 1952 Boxoffice Magazine page with the photo of the Esquire’s sign has been moved to this link. Here’s a shortcut to the rendering of the Melrose matt54 linked to.
The Esquire’s vertical sign is obviously not, as I had suspected it might be, a reworking of the Melrose sign. It’s much bigger, and is even in a different location on the facade than the Melrose sign was. Now that I’ve seen the Melrose as it was before the remodeling, with all its Art Deco detailing, I have to say I preferred it to the Esquire.
The 2002 article about the Capitol Theatre published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to which I linked a few years ago, has been relocated this link. It has two photos, neither of which can be enlarged, unfortunately.
Dismal news about the Capitol appeared in this newspaper article published on January 26, 2011. The company which bought the theater from the City of New London for one dollar in 2006 not only failed to carry out the promised renovations, but has lost the building due to non-payment of taxes. The Capitol has been sold at auction to a New York City developer whose intentions are unknown.
The biographical listing of architect John C. Monroe in the 1962 AIA Directory lists the Fairyland Drive-In, Kansas City, Mo., as one of his 1961 projects.
The drive-in was associated with an adjacent amusement park, Fairyland Park, which dated back to the 1920s. Here is a 1987 photo of the drive-in’s sign and attraction board, by Flickr user Darrell James.
One of the names in the “Firms” field above is currently misspelled. Architect Donald H. Moeller’s biographical listing in the 1962 AIA Directory says that the Hollywood Theatre remodeling was a 1956 project. The senior partner in the firm was named Cedric Start.
According to the biographical listing of Queens architect Leon A. Miller in the 1962 AIA Directory, he designed the Wantagh Theatre in 1960. He also designed the Glen Cove Theatre and Town Theatre in Glen Cove, NY.
The Town and the adjacent Glen Cove were both designed by Queens architect Leon A. Miller, according to his biographical listing in the 1962 AIA Directory. The Glen Cove was the earlier project, built in 1959. The Town was built in 1961.
The Glen Cove Theatre and Town Theatre were both designed by the same architect, Leon A. Miller. His listing in the 1962 AIA Directory mentions both theaters, saying that the Glen Cove was built in 1959 and the Town in 1961. Miller also designed the Wantagh Theatre at Wantagh, NY, a 1960 project.
The Hippodrome was mentioned several times, though not by name, in various issues of The American Contractor in early 1910. One item in the May 14 issue, announcing the completion of the plans by the architectural firm of Muhlenberg Bros., gives the address of the proposed theater as 751-57 Penn Street. The theater was being built for a Mr. Abe Zable. The seating capacity was given as 960, so the 1925 expansion must have been fairly large.
I’ve been unable to discover the architect of the State Theatre project, but the Muhlenberg firm was still listed in the AIA directory at least as recently as 1962, so they would have been around in 1925 and could have designed the expansion as well.
The marquee is still on the building, which is at the northeast corner of Main and Carroll Street. For some reason, Internet searches for Street View-identifiable businesses on Main Street all return addresses on Market Street. The street apparently has two names. I wonder if it’s been recently changed?
In 1988 or 1989 (or perhaps both,) the Trace Theatre served as the venue for an updated version of “Romeo and Juliet” mounted by the Cornerstone Theater Company, a group from Yale University that has staged productions in small towns in many parts of the United States. I’ve found references to other live theater events in Port Gibson from the 1980s into the 1990s, but haven’t been able to determine if any of these were also held at the Trace Theatre.
For a while, the Trace Theatre was also the site of a night club called Westside. The club’s neon sign, between the entrance doors, can be seen lit up in this photo at Flickr, uploaded November 9, 2010, though I doubt it was taken that day.
Port Gibson has a community theater group, but their venue is called the Blue Barn Theatre, and I don’t think it’s the same building as the Trace Theatre.
The Star Theatre was built in 1923-24 by the Georgedes brothers, and was designed in the Classical Revival style by Salt Lake City architect J. A. Headlund. The theater was leased to a series of operators, In 1964, members of the Georgedes family sold the building to Duane and LaVerne Steele, who converted the theater into retail space.
Wikipedia has this modern photo showing the building’s remarkably well-preserved front.
This web page has a very small interior photo of the Star Theatre’s auditorium, published in the local high school’s yearbook in 1924 (it’s the ninth photo down in the left column.)
Ludington Street has a lot of handsome old buildings. It’s too bad the Rudalt Theatre is no longer among them.
The City of Columbus web site gives the address of the Police Department as 159 S. Ludington Street. The theater’s entrance was closer to the corner, so it might have been at 161 S. Ludington. The style of the Public Safety Building is late Midcentury Modern, with no hint of ‘80s postmodernism about it. I’d guess it was most likely built in the 1960s or 1970s, so the theater was probably demolished during one of those decades.
I’ve been able to move some street views up to a mile or so (unfortunately, these moves always leave the pin icon on the map in the old location.) But I’ve noticed that there are places where Google’s street view camera just didn’t go, and some places where there is a disconnection from one block to another. A couple of times I’ve been able to “take an alternate route” around a disconnection, getting access to a particular block from the opposite direction.
These situations are especially common in small towns, where the camera truck didn’t travel every street, and in old cities with very irregular street layouts. If the views you’ve been trying to move have been in such locations, that might be the problem. I’ve had to update several small town theaters with views from an intersection down the street, simply because Google’s camera truck didn’t cover the block the theater is on. It’s usually not a very good view, but it’s better than none at all.
I think Ken must have adjusted and reset the view for the Liberty early this morning. It was farther away last night.
If you move the street view down Charlotte Street, just past the brick apartment house, you can see the side wall of the Liberty’s auditorium with the large plants growing from the roof. If I lived in that house next door, I’d be reluctant to use my side yard for fear that a big chunk of the wall of the theater would collapse onto it. I’m surprised that the local authorities haven’t condemned the auditorium and ordered its demolition.
This theater is currently classified as Gothic Revival in style, but the round arch, dentilated cornice, fanlights in the doors and all are Classical elements. Was the interior Gothic? Funk & Wilcox usually favored the Adamesque or Italian Renaissance styles for theater interiors during this period.
The Franklin Park’s facade is very similar to that of the Strand Theatre in Columbia Street, which was also designed by Funk & Wilcox, and has the same sort of “triumphal arch” entrance. In fact, of the five Funk & Wilcox houses for which Cinema Treasures has either photos or street views available, all have designs firmly rooted in Classicism.
A 1979 booklet called “Living in Dorchester” (available at this link from Archive.org) cites architectural historian Douglass Shand Tucci as saying that Funk & Wilcox’s design for the Strand Theatre featured an Adamesque interior and a Classical Revival facade.
I’m not sure why it’s not working for you, Ron. As long as the “Update” button hasn’t already been used, and thus removed, I’ve always been able to reset the street views to the correct location. It might be a browser issue. I’ve only ever reset views using Opera, so I don’t know whether or not there are other browsers that don’t work properly with the Update feature.
The Capitol must have been the planned theater mentioned in the “Building News” section of the July 24, 1912, issue of The American Architect: “Altoona.-Architect Julian Millard is drawing plans for a theater to be erected for Gamble Bros, on the site of the property at the corner of Eleventh Ave. and Fourteenth St. Cost, $25,000.”
The NRHP has another typo in its information, pasted in lostmemory’s comment of July 31, 2005. The names of the architects were Osterman and Siebert, not Osreman and Siebert.
That the Liberty Theatre should have a somewhat Rhinelandish look is not surprising. Architect Henry Osterman was born near Essen, Germany, in 1862, and only arrived in the United States in 1889. He was a builder before setting himself up as an architect, and was largely self-taught. He practiced on his own until 1912, when he formed his partnership with Victor Siebert, then a recent graduate of the Boston School of Technology.
Osterman probably maintained considerable contact with Germany, to which his three brothers had all returned by 1896. He most likely read German publications and kept up with the stylistic trends of the old country.
I detect in the Liberty’s unusual design strong hints of the Jugendstil, the German form of Art Nouveau which flourished in the late 19th-early 20th century. We could do worse than to classify this theater as Art Nouveau. I think Tudor Revival is certainly less appropriate. The building doesn’t really have much of the Tudor about it.
It now looks as though the theater was not on the church site after all. This web page at Historic Evansville says that the Woodlawn Theatre was demolished in 1963, after closing in 1957. At the “View all Images” link there is an aerial view from 1947, and the enlarged version of it includes the Woodlawn Theatre, outlined at lower left. It does look like the theater was too far north to have been under what is now the church’s footprint. Also, it had a flat roof, unlike the northern section of the church that I thought might have been what was left of the theater.
The site says that a branch of Hardee’s is on the site of the Woodlawn Theatre. Unfortunately, I updated Street View with a view of the church before I found the Historic Evansville page. Pan the view left to see the Hardee’s. The theater was most likely sited on what is now the parking lot between Hardee’s and the church.
I’m not sure that any part of the Woodlawn Theatre is still standing as part of the church now on its site. Part of the north sidewall of the building looks like it could be fairly old, and that section of the building has a gabled roof, characteristic of theaters built during the 1910s and early 1920s, but most of the building is of unmistakably modern construction.
The Woodlawn was definitely in operation by the early 1920s. A page at the Willard Library dates the photo seen at Chuck’s link as c. 1920. It’s obvious from the outfits the people in the photo are wearing, too. The ankle-length dress on the woman could have dated from the late 1910s.
It looks like the Washington Theatre has been demolished. The only structure on the odd-numbered side of the 900 block is a neo-colonial style building which the Internet lists as the location of Old National Bank, 961 Washington.
There are a couple of early photos of the Washington Theatre near the bottom of this web page, from Willard Library. The caption of one says that the theater opened on November 24, 1936.
The February 21 (not 25,) 1966, Boxoffice item about the Cinema 35 that I linked to in my previous comment has been moved to this link.
Google Maps is off base again. The pin icon on the map looks to be about half a mile west of the theater’s actual location. Street View is from the adjacent expressway, not from the street itself. After I updated it, I discovered that it is possible to get a view from Division Street itself, but only by moving the view eastward, then going off the expressway via an on-ramp just east of Willow Road, then doubling back along Division Street.
This web page from the Willard Library has photos of the Columbia Theatre before and after the 1939 Streamline Modern remodeling job, as well as photos of many other Evansville theaters. The thumbnails are in alphabetical order, so the Columbia photos are near the top of the page.
The web site Historic Evansville says that the New Majestic Theater was built in 1909 to replace an earlier Majestic Theater on the same site. The New Majestic opened in Christmas Day, 1909, and was demolished in 1974.
An item in the July 31, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Switlow Amusement Company of Louisville, Kentucky, had bought the New Majestic Theater in Evansville. The theater had apparently been operating as a legitimate house, as Switlow intended to convert the Majestic to a movie and vaudeville combination house. The architectural firm of Joseph & Joseph had been hired to design a $20,000 remodeling.
Coate and orange are right. I conflated the Cinema 70 with the Cooper 70 in my earlier comment. The Cooper 70 and Ute 70 are not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The 1952 Boxoffice Magazine page with the photo of the Esquire’s sign has been moved to this link. Here’s a shortcut to the rendering of the Melrose matt54 linked to.
The Esquire’s vertical sign is obviously not, as I had suspected it might be, a reworking of the Melrose sign. It’s much bigger, and is even in a different location on the facade than the Melrose sign was. Now that I’ve seen the Melrose as it was before the remodeling, with all its Art Deco detailing, I have to say I preferred it to the Esquire.
The 2002 article about the Capitol Theatre published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to which I linked a few years ago, has been relocated this link. It has two photos, neither of which can be enlarged, unfortunately.
Dismal news about the Capitol appeared in this newspaper article published on January 26, 2011. The company which bought the theater from the City of New London for one dollar in 2006 not only failed to carry out the promised renovations, but has lost the building due to non-payment of taxes. The Capitol has been sold at auction to a New York City developer whose intentions are unknown.
The biographical listing of architect John C. Monroe in the 1962 AIA Directory lists the Fairyland Drive-In, Kansas City, Mo., as one of his 1961 projects.
The drive-in was associated with an adjacent amusement park, Fairyland Park, which dated back to the 1920s. Here is a 1987 photo of the drive-in’s sign and attraction board, by Flickr user Darrell James.
One of the names in the “Firms” field above is currently misspelled. Architect Donald H. Moeller’s biographical listing in the 1962 AIA Directory says that the Hollywood Theatre remodeling was a 1956 project. The senior partner in the firm was named Cedric Start.
According to the biographical listing of Queens architect Leon A. Miller in the 1962 AIA Directory, he designed the Wantagh Theatre in 1960. He also designed the Glen Cove Theatre and Town Theatre in Glen Cove, NY.
The Town and the adjacent Glen Cove were both designed by Queens architect Leon A. Miller, according to his biographical listing in the 1962 AIA Directory. The Glen Cove was the earlier project, built in 1959. The Town was built in 1961.
The Glen Cove Theatre and Town Theatre were both designed by the same architect, Leon A. Miller. His listing in the 1962 AIA Directory mentions both theaters, saying that the Glen Cove was built in 1959 and the Town in 1961. Miller also designed the Wantagh Theatre at Wantagh, NY, a 1960 project.
The Hippodrome was mentioned several times, though not by name, in various issues of The American Contractor in early 1910. One item in the May 14 issue, announcing the completion of the plans by the architectural firm of Muhlenberg Bros., gives the address of the proposed theater as 751-57 Penn Street. The theater was being built for a Mr. Abe Zable. The seating capacity was given as 960, so the 1925 expansion must have been fairly large.
I’ve been unable to discover the architect of the State Theatre project, but the Muhlenberg firm was still listed in the AIA directory at least as recently as 1962, so they would have been around in 1925 and could have designed the expansion as well.
The marquee is still on the building, which is at the northeast corner of Main and Carroll Street. For some reason, Internet searches for Street View-identifiable businesses on Main Street all return addresses on Market Street. The street apparently has two names. I wonder if it’s been recently changed?
In 1988 or 1989 (or perhaps both,) the Trace Theatre served as the venue for an updated version of “Romeo and Juliet” mounted by the Cornerstone Theater Company, a group from Yale University that has staged productions in small towns in many parts of the United States. I’ve found references to other live theater events in Port Gibson from the 1980s into the 1990s, but haven’t been able to determine if any of these were also held at the Trace Theatre.
For a while, the Trace Theatre was also the site of a night club called Westside. The club’s neon sign, between the entrance doors, can be seen lit up in this photo at Flickr, uploaded November 9, 2010, though I doubt it was taken that day.
Port Gibson has a community theater group, but their venue is called the Blue Barn Theatre, and I don’t think it’s the same building as the Trace Theatre.
The NRHP Nomination Form for the Star/Carbon Theatre building is available here in the pdf format, and here in Google Documents quick view form.
The Star Theatre was built in 1923-24 by the Georgedes brothers, and was designed in the Classical Revival style by Salt Lake City architect J. A. Headlund. The theater was leased to a series of operators, In 1964, members of the Georgedes family sold the building to Duane and LaVerne Steele, who converted the theater into retail space.
Wikipedia has this modern photo showing the building’s remarkably well-preserved front.
This web page has a very small interior photo of the Star Theatre’s auditorium, published in the local high school’s yearbook in 1924 (it’s the ninth photo down in the left column.)
Ludington Street has a lot of handsome old buildings. It’s too bad the Rudalt Theatre is no longer among them.
The City of Columbus web site gives the address of the Police Department as 159 S. Ludington Street. The theater’s entrance was closer to the corner, so it might have been at 161 S. Ludington. The style of the Public Safety Building is late Midcentury Modern, with no hint of ‘80s postmodernism about it. I’d guess it was most likely built in the 1960s or 1970s, so the theater was probably demolished during one of those decades.
I’ve been able to move some street views up to a mile or so (unfortunately, these moves always leave the pin icon on the map in the old location.) But I’ve noticed that there are places where Google’s street view camera just didn’t go, and some places where there is a disconnection from one block to another. A couple of times I’ve been able to “take an alternate route” around a disconnection, getting access to a particular block from the opposite direction.
These situations are especially common in small towns, where the camera truck didn’t travel every street, and in old cities with very irregular street layouts. If the views you’ve been trying to move have been in such locations, that might be the problem. I’ve had to update several small town theaters with views from an intersection down the street, simply because Google’s camera truck didn’t cover the block the theater is on. It’s usually not a very good view, but it’s better than none at all.
I think Ken must have adjusted and reset the view for the Liberty early this morning. It was farther away last night.
If you move the street view down Charlotte Street, just past the brick apartment house, you can see the side wall of the Liberty’s auditorium with the large plants growing from the roof. If I lived in that house next door, I’d be reluctant to use my side yard for fear that a big chunk of the wall of the theater would collapse onto it. I’m surprised that the local authorities haven’t condemned the auditorium and ordered its demolition.
This theater is currently classified as Gothic Revival in style, but the round arch, dentilated cornice, fanlights in the doors and all are Classical elements. Was the interior Gothic? Funk & Wilcox usually favored the Adamesque or Italian Renaissance styles for theater interiors during this period.
The Franklin Park’s facade is very similar to that of the Strand Theatre in Columbia Street, which was also designed by Funk & Wilcox, and has the same sort of “triumphal arch” entrance. In fact, of the five Funk & Wilcox houses for which Cinema Treasures has either photos or street views available, all have designs firmly rooted in Classicism.
A 1979 booklet called “Living in Dorchester” (available at this link from Archive.org) cites architectural historian Douglass Shand Tucci as saying that Funk & Wilcox’s design for the Strand Theatre featured an Adamesque interior and a Classical Revival facade.
I’m not sure why it’s not working for you, Ron. As long as the “Update” button hasn’t already been used, and thus removed, I’ve always been able to reset the street views to the correct location. It might be a browser issue. I’ve only ever reset views using Opera, so I don’t know whether or not there are other browsers that don’t work properly with the Update feature.
Architect Julian Millard (not Hillard) was apparently also the designer of the Capitol Theatre at Altoona, Pennsylvania.
The Capitol must have been the planned theater mentioned in the “Building News” section of the July 24, 1912, issue of The American Architect: “Altoona.-Architect Julian Millard is drawing plans for a theater to be erected for Gamble Bros, on the site of the property at the corner of Eleventh Ave. and Fourteenth St. Cost, $25,000.”
The NRHP has another typo in its information, pasted in lostmemory’s comment of July 31, 2005. The names of the architects were Osterman and Siebert, not Osreman and Siebert.
That the Liberty Theatre should have a somewhat Rhinelandish look is not surprising. Architect Henry Osterman was born near Essen, Germany, in 1862, and only arrived in the United States in 1889. He was a builder before setting himself up as an architect, and was largely self-taught. He practiced on his own until 1912, when he formed his partnership with Victor Siebert, then a recent graduate of the Boston School of Technology.
Osterman probably maintained considerable contact with Germany, to which his three brothers had all returned by 1896. He most likely read German publications and kept up with the stylistic trends of the old country.
I detect in the Liberty’s unusual design strong hints of the Jugendstil, the German form of Art Nouveau which flourished in the late 19th-early 20th century. We could do worse than to classify this theater as Art Nouveau. I think Tudor Revival is certainly less appropriate. The building doesn’t really have much of the Tudor about it.