Zoom in all the way on the photo KenLayton linked to, and it looks like there might be a ghost sign on the theater’s side wall. On the other hand, it might just be years of accumulated dirt. I can’t make out any actual letters, but either way, the building was already pretty old in 1929. From the architectural style of the facade, I’d guess that it was built no later than the early 1920s, and more likely sometime in the 1910s, and perhaps even earlier.
If the building dates from as early as 1908, it might be the 400-seat Opera House at Montesano which was included on a list of theaters published in the September 5 issue of The Billboard that year. I haven’t found a theater at Montesano listed in any editions of Julius Cahn’s Theatrical Guide, though.
You could well be right about the connection between the names Alkrama and Kramer, David. A scan of the newspaper item I cited in the description of the theater is available online here. Part of the scan is too dark to read, but the readable part of the article does mention a Mr. Kramer being involved in the project, though it doesn’t make any explicit any connection between the names Kramer and Alkrama. Noting some of the guests at the opening, the article includes
“…little Vera Scott, who has the honor of suggesting the name Alkrama, and to whom is due the fact that Elizabeth City’s new theatre has a new name- one that will hardly be found in other city or town and yet that is as euphonious as the best sounding of the old favorites.”
A few lines farther on, the article says
“…Messrs. Kramer and Nutter deserved praise for the enterprise with which they had carried out their project and for the faith they had shown in Elizabeth City.”
The 1913-1914 edition of Julius Cahn’s theatrical guide lists the Alkrama Theatre, Kramer & Nutter, managers. The newspaper article doesn’t say how old little Vera Scott was in 1912, but she is undoubtedly long gone now, so the story of how she arrived at the name Alkrama may be lost to history, unless it’s preserved in some old publication as yet unavailable on the Internet.
The 1912 newspaper article says that the Alkrama replaced the older Gaiety as Elizabeth City’s leading theater. The Gaiety was listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as a 350-seat house that was at the time being used only for vaudeville and moving pictures. The manager of the Gaiety was John Nutter.
The New Nothing Cinema’s weblog hasn’t been updated since April, 2009.
There is also a Facebook page, but that was last updated on October 16, 2010, and that update is about an event taking place in New York City.
I did find one listing for a movie at the New Nothing Cinema, scheduled for April 20 this year, but I can’t find anything more recent. I don’t know if this means the place is no longer open, or is open only intermittently, or if they have just quit promoting it on the Internet.
Street View has been “updated” to the wrong location. If you pan left, the move back down Fulton Street a few mouse clicks south, you can see a parking lot in between the gas station on the corner and the large development to the north. That’s where the Village Theatre was located. Looking directly at the parking lot, zoom in and you can recognize the buildings to either side of the theater looking almost exactly as they appear in the 2004 photo cubey linked to in an earlier comment.
Here is a link to the Heywood-Wakefield ad with the photo of the Village Theatre’s auditorium, in Boxoffice of April 1, 1950.
The 1945 boxoffice article with the three small photos of the National Theatre, cited in one of my earlier comments, has been moved to this link. The photos of the National are at the lower right corner of the page.
There’s a discrepancy between the address of this theater and the description. The description places the National Theatre at the corner of Commerce Street and Santa Rosa Avenue, but that intersection marks the boundary between the 400 and 500 blocks of Commerce Street. But 819 Commerce is just east of Frio Street, four blocks west of Santa Rosa. Either the description is wrong or the address is wrong.
After looking at a 1955 aerial view of both intersections at Historic Aerials, I’m inclined to believe that it’s the address that is wrong. A building on the northeast corner of Commerce and Santa Rosa had a roof that could have covered a large auditorium, plus a decorative tower near the corner of the building on the Commerce Street side, which the theater had. The buildings at Commerce and Frio didn’t have these features.
A Roxy Theatre in Lewiston was mentioned in published sources as early as 1941. I’d assume it was this theater. I’ve also come across mention of a Rex Theatre in Lewiston operating in 1932. Possibly an aka for the Roxy? The signage would have been cheap to change.
The Masonic Temple Theatre is listed in the 1905-1906 edition of Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide. A Temple Theater Company is mentioned in sources published as early as 1915. It probably operated the house under a lease from the Masons.
The original ground floor facade had five round arches, the central three slightly larger and surmounted by a classical balustrade. The exterior style, at least, is not Gothic, but Italianate Classical Revival.
The upper floors of this building still serve as the quarters of the Calam Temple of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. As the place was built for the Masons, I would imagine that a lodge hall is located on the third floor, suspended above the auditorium, but I’ve been unable to discover any details about the building. The configuration of the fire escapes and fenestration (some of it now sealed) suggests a large room on the third floor, though.
Here is a fresh link to the March 1, 1947, Boxoffice item with architect Jack Corgan’s rendering of the proposed Texan Theatre in Gonzales, which was opened as the Lynn Theatre.
There’s a source with information that calls into question the claim that this theater was originally called the Rosenberg. Page 89 of “Asbury Park’s Glory Days: The Story of an American Resort,” by Helen-Chantal Pike, says:
“But when the St. James opened, its most noteworthy feature was located on the marquee. The name that topped the sign was Reade, and thereafter the father and his only son would be known, respectively, as Walter Reade Sr. and Walter Reade Jr.”
Also of note is this item in The Moving Picture World of August 5, 1916:
“Rosenberg Interested in Theater.
“Asbury Park.-The St. James Theater Company, Inc., has been formed with Henry Rosenberg, Helen L. Bergen, and Henry Sincer as incorporators. The registered office is at 300 Cookman avenue, and the authorized capital is $100,000.”
I don’t see why the St. James Theater Company would open their new house as the Rosenberg Theatre when Walter Rosenberg had already adopted the surname Reade by the time it opened. Also, in the whole wide Internet, this page of Cinema Treasures is the only place where the name “Rosenberg Theatre” appears. I’m not sure that Cinema Treasures is the most reliable source of information. ;–)
What a difference there is between the December, 2010, photo Andy linked to and the way the building looked when the Google Street View camera truck passed by sometime before the restoration took place! In the current Street View, the ground floor was all glass shop windows of the sort built in the 1950s and 1960s, and the upper floors were concealed behind a false front.
The new ground floor, at least, has to be a reconstruction rather than a restoration, as there was nothing there to restore. I don’t know how much remained of the original facade on the upper floors behind that false front, but as the center section was recessed a bit, and might have been merely concealed rather than removed, perhaps that part of the current facade is at least partly a restoration of the original. The cornice and marquee are certainly reconstructions, though.
Bill: Originally, parts of the current Chandler Boulevard, Van Nuys Boulevard, and Sherman Way were all named Sherman Way. The interurban cars of the Pacific Electric Railway ran down the center of the street, which was named for land developer and Pacific Electric bigwig Moses Sherman, one of Henry Huntington’s business partners.
The original entrance of the Valentine Theatre on St. Clair Street still exists, though it now has only an awning instead of the marquee seen in the 1932 photo Chuck linked to earlier.
The Valentine was showing movies as early as 1908, when it was mentioned in an item in the July 25 issue of The Moving Picture World.
wcjfrisk’s comment reminded me of something I’d seen, so I hunted down the following piece from the July 14, 1919, issue of The Toledo Blade, as quoted in a 1919 book called “Motion Pictures as a Phase of Commercial Amusement in Toledo, Ohio,” by John Joseph Phelan:
:“SITE LEASED FOR $300,000 THEATRE HERE
“New York Interests Take Arcade Property for Motion Picture and Vaudeville Bills.
“The Sun & James Amusement Co., New York, has leased the property now occupied by the Arcade theatre, St. Clair and Jackson streets, and will construct a $300,000 theatre building.
“The deal was closed Monday, through Thomas Davies, of the Thomas Davies Realty Co. The building, it is expected, will seat 3,000. It probably will be used for both vaudeville and moving pictures.
“Ready January 1.
“The building will be 90 by 170 feet, brick and concrete.
“Work in tearing down the old Arcade theatre building already has been commenced and it is planned to have the new theatre ready for opening January 1.
“Mrs. Nettie Poe Ketcham, New York, owns the Arcade theatre building and property. The Sun & James Co. lease is for 99 years.
“Office Space Later.
“Gus Sun operates a theatre in Springfield, O., and W. M. James, a former Toledo man, owns the Broadway theatre in Columbus. Other theatrical men are said to be interested also.
“The new theatre auditorium will be built back from the street and it is planned later to build a large office building surrounding it and facing on St. Clair and Jackson streets.”
The same book includes the Arcade Theatre (listed as the Strand Arcade) at 438-40 St. Clair, and gives its seating capacity as 1,224. As the Rivoli has nearly twice the seating capacity, this had to have been a virtually new theater, even if part of the old Arcade was incorporated into the new construction.
The 1903 edition of the State of Ohio’s “Annual report of the Department of Inspection of Workshops, Factories and Public Buildings” has an entry for the Arcade Theatre. It a statement of changes the Department had ordered to be made to the building:
“No. 20—Empire Arcade—Mrs. Nettie Poe Ketcham (Toledo), November 19, 1902—Change exit doors on Jackson street so as to open outward; cut down third and seventh windows from stage on east side of auditorium and convert them into doorways, doors to be hung so as to open outward; provide six chemical fire extinguishers of four-gallon capacity each, two to be placed on stage, two in rear end of auditorium and two In gallery, of such style as approved by the National Board of Underwriters; repair fastening to gate in alleyway, between the Arcade and Empire Theaters, so that same can be opened easily. Complied; certificate Issued.”
An item about the Valentine Theatre in the July 25, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World also mentions both the Arcade Theatre and the Empire Theatre, saying that the Empire was across the street from the Valentine, and the Arcade was in the same block of St. Clair Street. It appears that the Arcade’s doors on Jackson Street were probably always exits, not an entrance, at least from 1902 on.
I was unable to find either the Rivoli or Palace mentioned by name in the list of C.Howard Crane’s theaters in “The Theater Designs of C. Howard Crane,” a thesis by Lisa Maria DiChiera, but the list includes the Empire Theatre in Toledo as project #345. The date is not given, but the Allen Theatre (later the Capitol) in London, Ontario, which opened in February, 1920, was listed as Project #343, so it fits the time frame of the Rivoli’s construction.
As both the Empire and the Arcade were owned by Nettie Poe Ketcham, it seems possible that the project of rebuilding the Arcade might be listed under the name of the same owner’s adjacent theater that was still in operation. The finely detailed Beaux Arts facade of the Rivoli is certainly characteristic of Crane’s work of the period. In fact, many of the details of the Rivoli’s facade are almost identical to details on the facade of Detroit’s Orchestra Hall, built about the same time. I’d say it’s very safe to assume that the Rivoli was indeed the work of C. Howard Crane.
The building in the photo Warren linked to on April 15, 2009, has finally been identified. In a comment on the Bon Ton Theatre page, Bob Wilson says that it was the old Armory building, at Broadway and Johnston Street. It was not a theater.
It turns out that the building next door north of the Vitaphone Theatre (the one with the sign reading Solomon’s Porch) was also once a theater. A list of historic buildings in downtown Wenatchee lists the structure at 17 S. Mission as the Mission Theatre, built in 1920.
The source of the list, a document prepared for the National Register of Historic Places, also gives a 1930 construction date for the Vitaphone Theatre. I still don’t think it looks like a building from as late as 1930. Maybe it wouldn’t look so old fashioned if it hadn’t been painted entirely grey.
A document prepared for the National Register of Historic Places has information about the Liberty Theatre, including the fact that it was designed by architect Edwin W. Houghton.
The Moving Picture World was typically riddled with misspellings, so I’m not surprised they got the name of the hotel wrong. It was probably the publication that got the theater’s name wrong, too.
Does anyone know how long the Columbus Theatre remained open?
Well, duh. It finally dawned on me that the building at 11 N. Wenatchee could not have been the Wenatchee Theatre, which was built in 1905.
Also, a list of historic buildings in downtown Wenatchee that I came across includes a Public Farmers Market building at 9 North Wenatchee Avenue. This has to be the same building with the antique mall that uses the address 11 N. Wenatchee. A marquee would not have been unusual on a building built as a public market.
But the Rialto was apparently not the 1913 project for J.E. Ferguson, either. The list of historic buildings comes from a document prepared for the National Register of Historic Places, and there is information about the Rialto in it. Unless the document is mistaken (I’ve known this to happen at times,) the Rialto was built in 1921 and was designed by Seattle architect Edwin W. Houghton.
It could have the future Rialto Theatre that was mentioned in the Building News section of the January 15, 1913, issue of American Architect and Architecture: “Announcement has been made that Sheriff J. E. Ferguson will erect a 2-story theater building on Wenatchee and Palouse Sts….”
If the 1913 project was the Rialto, then this earlier item from The Pacific Coast Architect of October, 1912, would also be about the Rialto: “Theater- Wenatchee. Architect J. A. Creutzer prepared plans for a two-story brick and concrete theater building for J. W. Ferguson, to cost $50,000.” (This item got Ferguson’s middle initial wrong. It was definitely E.)
However, in Don’s 1940 photo, the building on the near side of Palouse Street, next door to the six-story building on the corner, has what looks like a theater marquee. The marquee is still there now, and the building is being used as an antique mall. Could this building also have been a theater? The address is 11 N. Wenatchee. As this building is about as close to Palouse Street as the Rialto is, it’s possible that, if it was a theater, this was the 1913 theater project for J. E. Ferguson.
Among the early theaters in Wenatchee that are not yet listed at Cinema Treasures are the Wenatchee Theatre, opened 1905 and operating at least as late as 1925 (and owned by J. E. Ferguson,) and the Majestic Theatre, mentioned in a 1951 Boxoffice Magazine article as an early movie house in Wenatchee, but not mentioned anywhere else that I’ve been able to find. One or the other of them (or neither of them) might have been in the building at 11 N. Wenatchee.
In any case, there’s still information about theaters in Wenatchee that is missing from Cinema Treasures, and I’ve pretty much exhausted the resources available to me. Maybe someone else can make use of these fragments to track down more details.
The facade on this theater doesn’t belong to a building built in 1930. Both the shape of the parapet wall and the decorative trim that probably marks sealed-up fenestration indicate an earlier time of construction. The Vitaphone Theatre might have been converted from an existing store building in 1930, of course, but there are two other possibilities.
This could be either the former Wenatchee Theatre, built in 1905, or the former Majestic Theatre, no known dates of operation. The Wenatchee Theatre vanished from the listings before 1930. The Majestic was mentioned in a 1951 Boxoffice Magazine article as an early movie house in Wenatchee, but I’ve been unable to find out anything else about it. Somebody with access to local sources might be able to discover more.
If this was the only movie house that ever existed on this corner, then it had to have been the house that was the subject of the following item in the December 20, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“HOTEL CONVERTED INTO PICTURE HOUSE.
“The St. Brennen Hotel, located at 103rd Street and Columbus Avenue, New York City, has been converted into a picture house. The auditorium has a seating capacity of 400 persons; 300 of which seat on the parquette floor and the remaining 100 in the balcony. Boxes have been provided. The investment involved an expense of $4,000. The admission prices are 10 cents for the orchestra and balcony and 25 cents for the boxes. The name of the house is the Columbia and it was opened Saturday, November 29, by F. G. Cook, the manager. The theater was designed by architect Wm. H. Gompert, of New York City.”
If somebody can dig up a pre-1913 directory with an address for the St. Brennan Hotel, and that address matches the Arden Theatre’s address, then it will be confirmed that the house opened in 1913 as the Columbia Theatre. But the different seating capacities of the Columbia and the Arden, if both are accurate, suggest either an expansion at some point, or that they were two different theaters.
If the earlier Baldwin Theatre was on Grand, then the most likely explanation for the current address of this theater not being the 71 Merrick Road that Chuck found would be a renumbering sometime after 1933. The newspaper article quoted earlier said that the area around Merrick and Grand was the original center of the village’s business district. If growth later led to several small settlements expanding into one another, then a renumbering of the lots would be fairly likely to have happened.
The “Encyclopedia of New Jersey,” edited by Maxine N. Lurie and Marc Mappen, says that the Taylor Opera House was built in 1867, and had been designed by architect Henry E. Finch. Within twenty years of opening it was remodeled, the roof being raised to accommodate a second gallery.
An item datelined Trenton in the February, 1918, issue of construction trade journal The Bridgemen’s Magazine might be about a remodeling of the Taylor Opera House. It says: “Taylor Opera House, South Broad street, having plans prepared by W. A. Klemann, architect, First National Bank Bldg., for theater. About $100,000.”
Then the March 9, 1918, issue of trade journal Domestic Engineering said that construction bids were being requested for a “…$100,000 theater, Trenton, N. J., Taylor Opera House….”
It’s possible, though, that the project was not a rebuilding of the Taylor, but the construction of some other theater. An item in the August 14, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World mentions the Trenton Theater Building Company, owners of the Taylor Opera House and Trent Theater in Trenton. As the company already owned two theaters, it’s not impossible that they were adding an entirely new third house to their holdings.
Back on September 26, 2007, lostmemory said: “Was there another Baldwin Theater? A Midmer-Losh theater organ was installed in a Baldwin Theater in Baldwin, N.Y. in 1925.”
Chuck: Is it possible that the address you provided for this theater in the first comment was actually the address for the earlier Baldwin Theatre? It’s clear from more recent comments that the 1933 Baldwin Theatre is now the Baldwin Medical Plaza, and the Internet brings up addresses of of 865-869 Merrick Road for that building.
I’m thinking that either your source for the address was a pre-1933 publication, and actually belonged to the earlier Baldwin Theatre, or Baldwin has renumbered the lots on Merrick Road sometime since 1933. In either case, the current correct address of the former Baldwin Theatre is that of the Medical Plaza.
Zoom in all the way on the photo KenLayton linked to, and it looks like there might be a ghost sign on the theater’s side wall. On the other hand, it might just be years of accumulated dirt. I can’t make out any actual letters, but either way, the building was already pretty old in 1929. From the architectural style of the facade, I’d guess that it was built no later than the early 1920s, and more likely sometime in the 1910s, and perhaps even earlier.
If the building dates from as early as 1908, it might be the 400-seat Opera House at Montesano which was included on a list of theaters published in the September 5 issue of The Billboard that year. I haven’t found a theater at Montesano listed in any editions of Julius Cahn’s Theatrical Guide, though.
You could well be right about the connection between the names Alkrama and Kramer, David. A scan of the newspaper item I cited in the description of the theater is available online here. Part of the scan is too dark to read, but the readable part of the article does mention a Mr. Kramer being involved in the project, though it doesn’t make any explicit any connection between the names Kramer and Alkrama. Noting some of the guests at the opening, the article includes
A few lines farther on, the article saysThe 1913-1914 edition of Julius Cahn’s theatrical guide lists the Alkrama Theatre, Kramer & Nutter, managers. The newspaper article doesn’t say how old little Vera Scott was in 1912, but she is undoubtedly long gone now, so the story of how she arrived at the name Alkrama may be lost to history, unless it’s preserved in some old publication as yet unavailable on the Internet.The 1912 newspaper article says that the Alkrama replaced the older Gaiety as Elizabeth City’s leading theater. The Gaiety was listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as a 350-seat house that was at the time being used only for vaudeville and moving pictures. The manager of the Gaiety was John Nutter.
The New Nothing Cinema’s weblog hasn’t been updated since April, 2009.
There is also a Facebook page, but that was last updated on October 16, 2010, and that update is about an event taking place in New York City.
I did find one listing for a movie at the New Nothing Cinema, scheduled for April 20 this year, but I can’t find anything more recent. I don’t know if this means the place is no longer open, or is open only intermittently, or if they have just quit promoting it on the Internet.
Street View has been “updated” to the wrong location. If you pan left, the move back down Fulton Street a few mouse clicks south, you can see a parking lot in between the gas station on the corner and the large development to the north. That’s where the Village Theatre was located. Looking directly at the parking lot, zoom in and you can recognize the buildings to either side of the theater looking almost exactly as they appear in the 2004 photo cubey linked to in an earlier comment.
Here is a link to the Heywood-Wakefield ad with the photo of the Village Theatre’s auditorium, in Boxoffice of April 1, 1950.
The 1945 boxoffice article with the three small photos of the National Theatre, cited in one of my earlier comments, has been moved to this link. The photos of the National are at the lower right corner of the page.
There’s a discrepancy between the address of this theater and the description. The description places the National Theatre at the corner of Commerce Street and Santa Rosa Avenue, but that intersection marks the boundary between the 400 and 500 blocks of Commerce Street. But 819 Commerce is just east of Frio Street, four blocks west of Santa Rosa. Either the description is wrong or the address is wrong.
After looking at a 1955 aerial view of both intersections at Historic Aerials, I’m inclined to believe that it’s the address that is wrong. A building on the northeast corner of Commerce and Santa Rosa had a roof that could have covered a large auditorium, plus a decorative tower near the corner of the building on the Commerce Street side, which the theater had. The buildings at Commerce and Frio didn’t have these features.
A Roxy Theatre in Lewiston was mentioned in published sources as early as 1941. I’d assume it was this theater. I’ve also come across mention of a Rex Theatre in Lewiston operating in 1932. Possibly an aka for the Roxy? The signage would have been cheap to change.
The Masonic Temple Theatre is listed in the 1905-1906 edition of Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide. A Temple Theater Company is mentioned in sources published as early as 1915. It probably operated the house under a lease from the Masons.
The original ground floor facade had five round arches, the central three slightly larger and surmounted by a classical balustrade. The exterior style, at least, is not Gothic, but Italianate Classical Revival.
The upper floors of this building still serve as the quarters of the Calam Temple of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. As the place was built for the Masons, I would imagine that a lodge hall is located on the third floor, suspended above the auditorium, but I’ve been unable to discover any details about the building. The configuration of the fire escapes and fenestration (some of it now sealed) suggests a large room on the third floor, though.
Here is a fresh link to the March 1, 1947, Boxoffice item with architect Jack Corgan’s rendering of the proposed Texan Theatre in Gonzales, which was opened as the Lynn Theatre.
There’s a source with information that calls into question the claim that this theater was originally called the Rosenberg. Page 89 of “Asbury Park’s Glory Days: The Story of an American Resort,” by Helen-Chantal Pike, says:
Also of note is this item in The Moving Picture World of August 5, 1916:I don’t see why the St. James Theater Company would open their new house as the Rosenberg Theatre when Walter Rosenberg had already adopted the surname Reade by the time it opened. Also, in the whole wide Internet, this page of Cinema Treasures is the only place where the name “Rosenberg Theatre” appears. I’m not sure that Cinema Treasures is the most reliable source of information. ;–)What a difference there is between the December, 2010, photo Andy linked to and the way the building looked when the Google Street View camera truck passed by sometime before the restoration took place! In the current Street View, the ground floor was all glass shop windows of the sort built in the 1950s and 1960s, and the upper floors were concealed behind a false front.
The new ground floor, at least, has to be a reconstruction rather than a restoration, as there was nothing there to restore. I don’t know how much remained of the original facade on the upper floors behind that false front, but as the center section was recessed a bit, and might have been merely concealed rather than removed, perhaps that part of the current facade is at least partly a restoration of the original. The cornice and marquee are certainly reconstructions, though.
Bill: Originally, parts of the current Chandler Boulevard, Van Nuys Boulevard, and Sherman Way were all named Sherman Way. The interurban cars of the Pacific Electric Railway ran down the center of the street, which was named for land developer and Pacific Electric bigwig Moses Sherman, one of Henry Huntington’s business partners.
Here’s a web page about street names in the Valley.
The original entrance of the Valentine Theatre on St. Clair Street still exists, though it now has only an awning instead of the marquee seen in the 1932 photo Chuck linked to earlier.
The Valentine was showing movies as early as 1908, when it was mentioned in an item in the July 25 issue of The Moving Picture World.
wcjfrisk’s comment reminded me of something I’d seen, so I hunted down the following piece from the July 14, 1919, issue of The Toledo Blade, as quoted in a 1919 book called “Motion Pictures as a Phase of Commercial Amusement in Toledo, Ohio,” by John Joseph Phelan:
The same book includes the Arcade Theatre (listed as the Strand Arcade) at 438-40 St. Clair, and gives its seating capacity as 1,224. As the Rivoli has nearly twice the seating capacity, this had to have been a virtually new theater, even if part of the old Arcade was incorporated into the new construction.The 1903 edition of the State of Ohio’s “Annual report of the Department of Inspection of Workshops, Factories and Public Buildings” has an entry for the Arcade Theatre. It a statement of changes the Department had ordered to be made to the building:
An item about the Valentine Theatre in the July 25, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World also mentions both the Arcade Theatre and the Empire Theatre, saying that the Empire was across the street from the Valentine, and the Arcade was in the same block of St. Clair Street. It appears that the Arcade’s doors on Jackson Street were probably always exits, not an entrance, at least from 1902 on.
I was unable to find either the Rivoli or Palace mentioned by name in the list of C.Howard Crane’s theaters in “The Theater Designs of C. Howard Crane,” a thesis by Lisa Maria DiChiera, but the list includes the Empire Theatre in Toledo as project #345. The date is not given, but the Allen Theatre (later the Capitol) in London, Ontario, which opened in February, 1920, was listed as Project #343, so it fits the time frame of the Rivoli’s construction.
As both the Empire and the Arcade were owned by Nettie Poe Ketcham, it seems possible that the project of rebuilding the Arcade might be listed under the name of the same owner’s adjacent theater that was still in operation. The finely detailed Beaux Arts facade of the Rivoli is certainly characteristic of Crane’s work of the period. In fact, many of the details of the Rivoli’s facade are almost identical to details on the facade of Detroit’s Orchestra Hall, built about the same time. I’d say it’s very safe to assume that the Rivoli was indeed the work of C. Howard Crane.
The building in the photo Warren linked to on April 15, 2009, has finally been identified. In a comment on the Bon Ton Theatre page, Bob Wilson says that it was the old Armory building, at Broadway and Johnston Street. It was not a theater.
It turns out that the building next door north of the Vitaphone Theatre (the one with the sign reading Solomon’s Porch) was also once a theater. A list of historic buildings in downtown Wenatchee lists the structure at 17 S. Mission as the Mission Theatre, built in 1920.
The source of the list, a document prepared for the National Register of Historic Places, also gives a 1930 construction date for the Vitaphone Theatre. I still don’t think it looks like a building from as late as 1930. Maybe it wouldn’t look so old fashioned if it hadn’t been painted entirely grey.
A document prepared for the National Register of Historic Places has information about the Liberty Theatre, including the fact that it was designed by architect Edwin W. Houghton.
The Moving Picture World was typically riddled with misspellings, so I’m not surprised they got the name of the hotel wrong. It was probably the publication that got the theater’s name wrong, too.
Does anyone know how long the Columbus Theatre remained open?
Well, duh. It finally dawned on me that the building at 11 N. Wenatchee could not have been the Wenatchee Theatre, which was built in 1905.
Also, a list of historic buildings in downtown Wenatchee that I came across includes a Public Farmers Market building at 9 North Wenatchee Avenue. This has to be the same building with the antique mall that uses the address 11 N. Wenatchee. A marquee would not have been unusual on a building built as a public market.
But the Rialto was apparently not the 1913 project for J.E. Ferguson, either. The list of historic buildings comes from a document prepared for the National Register of Historic Places, and there is information about the Rialto in it. Unless the document is mistaken (I’ve known this to happen at times,) the Rialto was built in 1921 and was designed by Seattle architect Edwin W. Houghton.
It could have the future Rialto Theatre that was mentioned in the Building News section of the January 15, 1913, issue of American Architect and Architecture: “Announcement has been made that Sheriff J. E. Ferguson will erect a 2-story theater building on Wenatchee and Palouse Sts….”
If the 1913 project was the Rialto, then this earlier item from The Pacific Coast Architect of October, 1912, would also be about the Rialto: “Theater- Wenatchee. Architect J. A. Creutzer prepared plans for a two-story brick and concrete theater building for J. W. Ferguson, to cost $50,000.” (This item got Ferguson’s middle initial wrong. It was definitely E.)
However, in Don’s 1940 photo, the building on the near side of Palouse Street, next door to the six-story building on the corner, has what looks like a theater marquee. The marquee is still there now, and the building is being used as an antique mall. Could this building also have been a theater? The address is 11 N. Wenatchee. As this building is about as close to Palouse Street as the Rialto is, it’s possible that, if it was a theater, this was the 1913 theater project for J. E. Ferguson.
Among the early theaters in Wenatchee that are not yet listed at Cinema Treasures are the Wenatchee Theatre, opened 1905 and operating at least as late as 1925 (and owned by J. E. Ferguson,) and the Majestic Theatre, mentioned in a 1951 Boxoffice Magazine article as an early movie house in Wenatchee, but not mentioned anywhere else that I’ve been able to find. One or the other of them (or neither of them) might have been in the building at 11 N. Wenatchee.
In any case, there’s still information about theaters in Wenatchee that is missing from Cinema Treasures, and I’ve pretty much exhausted the resources available to me. Maybe someone else can make use of these fragments to track down more details.
The facade on this theater doesn’t belong to a building built in 1930. Both the shape of the parapet wall and the decorative trim that probably marks sealed-up fenestration indicate an earlier time of construction. The Vitaphone Theatre might have been converted from an existing store building in 1930, of course, but there are two other possibilities.
This could be either the former Wenatchee Theatre, built in 1905, or the former Majestic Theatre, no known dates of operation. The Wenatchee Theatre vanished from the listings before 1930. The Majestic was mentioned in a 1951 Boxoffice Magazine article as an early movie house in Wenatchee, but I’ve been unable to find out anything else about it. Somebody with access to local sources might be able to discover more.
The Columbus (or Columbia) had to have have been across the street from the Arden’s site, then.
And one or the other of the publications must have gotten the name wrong, unless it was changed between 1913 and 1914.
If this was the only movie house that ever existed on this corner, then it had to have been the house that was the subject of the following item in the December 20, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
If somebody can dig up a pre-1913 directory with an address for the St. Brennan Hotel, and that address matches the Arden Theatre’s address, then it will be confirmed that the house opened in 1913 as the Columbia Theatre. But the different seating capacities of the Columbia and the Arden, if both are accurate, suggest either an expansion at some point, or that they were two different theaters.If the earlier Baldwin Theatre was on Grand, then the most likely explanation for the current address of this theater not being the 71 Merrick Road that Chuck found would be a renumbering sometime after 1933. The newspaper article quoted earlier said that the area around Merrick and Grand was the original center of the village’s business district. If growth later led to several small settlements expanding into one another, then a renumbering of the lots would be fairly likely to have happened.
The “Encyclopedia of New Jersey,” edited by Maxine N. Lurie and Marc Mappen, says that the Taylor Opera House was built in 1867, and had been designed by architect Henry E. Finch. Within twenty years of opening it was remodeled, the roof being raised to accommodate a second gallery.
An item datelined Trenton in the February, 1918, issue of construction trade journal The Bridgemen’s Magazine might be about a remodeling of the Taylor Opera House. It says: “Taylor Opera House, South Broad street, having plans prepared by W. A. Klemann, architect, First National Bank Bldg., for theater. About $100,000.”
Then the March 9, 1918, issue of trade journal Domestic Engineering said that construction bids were being requested for a “…$100,000 theater, Trenton, N. J., Taylor Opera House….”
It’s possible, though, that the project was not a rebuilding of the Taylor, but the construction of some other theater. An item in the August 14, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World mentions the Trenton Theater Building Company, owners of the Taylor Opera House and Trent Theater in Trenton. As the company already owned two theaters, it’s not impossible that they were adding an entirely new third house to their holdings.
Back on September 26, 2007, lostmemory said: “Was there another Baldwin Theater? A Midmer-Losh theater organ was installed in a Baldwin Theater in Baldwin, N.Y. in 1925.”
Chuck: Is it possible that the address you provided for this theater in the first comment was actually the address for the earlier Baldwin Theatre? It’s clear from more recent comments that the 1933 Baldwin Theatre is now the Baldwin Medical Plaza, and the Internet brings up addresses of of 865-869 Merrick Road for that building.
I’m thinking that either your source for the address was a pre-1933 publication, and actually belonged to the earlier Baldwin Theatre, or Baldwin has renumbered the lots on Merrick Road sometime since 1933. In either case, the current correct address of the former Baldwin Theatre is that of the Medical Plaza.