The State Theatre was altered in 1925, as noted in this item from the July 25 issue of Moving Picture World:
“The State Theatre, Salem, Ohio, is undergoing extensive alterations, including a new entrance on the main street. Manager C. V. Rakestraw says the original entrance on a side street was entirely inadequate.”
Virgil Rakestraw was also mentioned in the January 13, 1923 MPW which said that he had been threatened with arrest if he continued to keep the State in operation on Sundays. Rakestraw also operated the Grand Theatre in Salem.
It’s quite possible that De Rosa was the the architect and Pollard was simply acting as supervising architect. De Rosa was a very busy guy in those days and might have turned the project over to Pollard after it stalled, or the owner of the theater, Adolph Lewisohn, might have hired Pollard to get the project finished if he was dissatisfied with how De Rosa’s office was handling the construction phase.
The April 9, 1938 issue of Film Daily had a brief item saying “…at Perham, Minn., Roy Rasmussen is remodeling a 390 seat house….” Roy Rasmussen is mentioned frequently in trade journals, and was still operating the house as late as 1967. Rasmussen’s Comet was across the street from Perham’s earlier theater, the Lux, which continued in operation for some years after the Comet opened.
A Mr. Earl of Pana, Illinois, was preparing to open a moving picture theater at Lacon, according to the March 13, 1909 issue of Moving Picture World. A house in Lacon called the Gem Theatre was mentioned in the January 20, 1912 MPW. The January 2, 1915 MPW mentioned Mrs. Anna Rice, who had opened the Star Theatre in Lacon (no time frame given) and was now a partner in the new Lyric Theatre there. The Star was the only house listed for the town in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. By 1926, only the Lyric is listed in the Film Daily Yearbook.
That’s all I’ve been able to discover about Lacon’s early movie theaters. There was a 500-seat hall called the Rose (or Rose’s) Opera House, reportedly rebuilt in 1940 as the Shafer Theatre, but I’ve found no evidence that it ever operated as a movie theater in earlier years.
The September 9, 1922 issue of The American Contractor said that the theater being built at Elgin for Ralph Crocker was designed by architect Ralph E. (Elliot) Abell.
The “Indianapolis Items” column of Film Daily for December 17, 1935 said that “[t]he New Flora, Flora, Ind., will open on Christmas Day with ‘Millions In The Air.’” The name New Flora suggest that there was an earlier Flora Theatre in town, but I’ve not found any references to it. It might have been the same theater, just remodeled. The closest I can get to an address for the New Flora is the corner of E. Columbia Street and Division Street. The building has been demolished.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two movie houses at Flora, the Star Theatre, no location given, and the Tokio Theatre, which the Directory says was located on Main Street, but a local history page says was on Columbia Street. The local source appears to be correct.
I’m sure that this item from the July 3, 1935 issue of Film Daily is about the Roxy Theatre:
“Seattle — Le Vance Weskil, operator of the Rose Theater, Colfax, is to build a new 400-seat $35,000 house there. Bjarne H. Moe of Seattle is architect.”
The Roxy and Rose are both listed in the 1936 Film Daily Yearbook, so the Roxy was probably open by the beginning of that year. The building is very much in the style of Moe’s theater projects from the mid-1930s.
The Curran Opera House was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The August 29 issue of moving Picture World that year ran this item: “Thursdays will be Mary Pickford days at the Curran theater in Boulder, Colo.”
This house apparently opened as the New Empire Theatre, as that was how it was still styled in an item in the August 29, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World. At that time the house was showing feature films on Fridays and Mondays and four reels of movies from the General Film Company the rest of the week, with daily changes of program. The New Empire maintained a six-piece orchestra as well as a pipe organ.
The Rosebud Theatre opened on August 8, 1914, according to this item in the August 29 issue of Moving Picture World:“The Rosebud on Gratiot avenue, near Brush street, opened its doors as a picture house on August 8. It is under the same management as the Woodward Theater.”
The Empress Theatre was mentioned in the August 29, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World:
“The only five cent moving pictures in the downtown district of Detroit are the Bijou, Park, Garland, Casino, Princess and Monroe. None of them show features. The Empress on Woodward avenue, which up until recently was a five cent house, is now proving very successful with features, most of which are shown after being exhibited for a week at the Liberty”
The August 29, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World had this item about the opening of the Medbury Theatre: “The New Medbury Theater on Hastings street, near Medbury Theater [sic], was completed earlier than expected and was formally opened July 27. T. Gardner is manager. The theater seats 400.” Note: If there was an earlier Medbury Theatre, it was not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but I think it’s more likely that the MPW item simply contained a mistake, and it was meant to read “…near Medbury Avenue.”
News from Billings in the The August 29, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World:
“Woods & Snidow have sold the Broadway theater at Billings, Mont., to E. C. O'Keefe, manager of the Luna theater in Billings, and V. D. Caldwell of the American Bank and Trust Company of that city. Formal opening under the new management was fixed for the last of August, many changes to be made in the house in the interval. After the reopening the theater will be known as the Regent and the policy will be the ultra-features at prices slightly higher than the average admission in Billings has been. O'Keefe will continue to manage the Luna.”
A history of Stanislaus County published in 1921 has two sections with information about the Modesto Theatre. The first is on the history of Modesto (Google Books scan) and the second is embedded in the biographical sketch of the theater’s builder, W. R. Mensinger (scroll down to the last paragraph on page 550.)
Both sections say that at the time Mr. Mansinger conceived building the theater, the location where it was built had been vacant, so the claim made by modern local sources such as this web page that the Modesto’s location had been the location of the original Star Theatre must be wrong. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists both the Modesto and the original Star, and they could hardly have occupied the same lot.
However, the Directory lists the Modesto at 917 10th Street, rather than 927, and the Star is listed without an address. As the Modesto was rebuilt on the same lot as the burned theater, either the town has shifted its lot numbers or the Directory made a mistake. I’ve wondered if maybe the Directory gave the address of the Star as the address of the Modesto? As the local sources say that the New Star at 928 10th was across the street from the original Star, it does seem plausible that the original Star was just down the block from the Modesto, and the local memory of the exact location has been lost over the years. But in any case, it’s clear that the Star and the Modesto could not have been on the same lot.
An article about the Star Theatre appears in the September 11, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World. The owner, W. B. Martin, had been an exhibitor since 1906, and had been in Modesto for about three years. He had been manager of the Modesto Theatre at the time it was destroyed by fire in December, 1913, and then leased another theater in Modesto for a year and a half before opening the New Star.
The house he leased must have been the original Star, but it could not have been across the street from the New Star, as that was the location of the Modesto Theatre. Both houses were listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Another period source indicates that the location of the Modesto was vacant land before that theater was built in 1913, so modern local sources saying that that was where the earlier Star was must be mistaken.
Is the rink on the 1910 map? If so, Baxter’s project must have fallen through, or his theater had a very short life and the building then went back to housing a roller rink.
The Crystal was apparently not the first movie theater to occupy these premises. The May, 1909 issue of The Nickelodeon ran this item: “Davenport, Iowa. — A new moving picture theater has been opened at 328 Harrison street.”
This item is from the May, 1909 issue of The Nickelodeon: “Bloomington, Ill. — The Colonial, a handsome new motion picture
theater, has been opened at 426 North Main street.”
I came across an item in The Nickelodeon of May, 1909, saying “Paul Baxter, of Morrison, has secured a lease on the Rollaway and will open a first-class moving picture show.” A bit more searching led to a book called History of Whiteside County, Ilinois which was published in 1908, which says that The Rollaway was a roller skating rink opened early that year and located on First Avenue. The rink itself was 46 feet wide and 95 feet deep, so could have accommodated a good-sized theater such as the Vaudette. It’s conceivable that Mr. Baxter’s plans had not yet come to fruition in November, 1910, and that the Vaudette was indeed located in the former Rollaway rink.
elmorovivo is correct about the Lyric Theatre, later the Esquire, being the 1922 house at 719 10th Street. It opened on June 27 that year in a building that had been converted from a garage. The Isis was a different house, opened as the Liberty Theatre sometime before 1912, at which time it was renamed the Isis. The name change was noted in the June 7, 1912 issue of The Modesto Bee.
That said, it’s possible that the Isis moved to a different location in 1914. The October 3, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World said “Dick Wilbur has opened the Isis theater, Modesto, Cal., the house being under the management of W. B. Harrison.” That’s the only mention of the Isis I’ve found in the trade journals, and I’ve not found the Liberty mentioned at all. As the item has minimal information, I don’t know if it was the old Liberty/Isis being reopened or a new Isis at a different location.
An article in the Detroit Free Press of October 11, 1865, while the Croswell Opera House was under construction, said that the new house had been designed by Syracuse, New York architect Horatio Nelson White. Among White’s innovations at the Croswell, he employed a system of trusses, braces and iron ties to support the horseshoe-shaped gallery, eliminating the need for columns or heavy brackets on the main floor. This was of course lost when the auditorium was gutted for the 1921 reconstruction to the plans of John C. Brompton.
The Uneeda Theatre is still listed in the 1926 Film Daily Yearbook, along with a house called the Treo Theatre.
The State Theatre was altered in 1925, as noted in this item from the July 25 issue of Moving Picture World:
Virgil Rakestraw was also mentioned in the January 13, 1923 MPW which said that he had been threatened with arrest if he continued to keep the State in operation on Sundays. Rakestraw also operated the Grand Theatre in Salem.It’s quite possible that De Rosa was the the architect and Pollard was simply acting as supervising architect. De Rosa was a very busy guy in those days and might have turned the project over to Pollard after it stalled, or the owner of the theater, Adolph Lewisohn, might have hired Pollard to get the project finished if he was dissatisfied with how De Rosa’s office was handling the construction phase.
The façade of Crescent’s Roxy in Gallatin was virtually identical to that of their Roxy in Franklin, Kentucky, opened in 1938.
The official web site link we have is dead. Here is the new one.
The April 9, 1938 issue of Film Daily had a brief item saying “…at Perham, Minn., Roy Rasmussen is remodeling a 390 seat house….” Roy Rasmussen is mentioned frequently in trade journals, and was still operating the house as late as 1967. Rasmussen’s Comet was across the street from Perham’s earlier theater, the Lux, which continued in operation for some years after the Comet opened.
A Mr. Earl of Pana, Illinois, was preparing to open a moving picture theater at Lacon, according to the March 13, 1909 issue of Moving Picture World. A house in Lacon called the Gem Theatre was mentioned in the January 20, 1912 MPW. The January 2, 1915 MPW mentioned Mrs. Anna Rice, who had opened the Star Theatre in Lacon (no time frame given) and was now a partner in the new Lyric Theatre there. The Star was the only house listed for the town in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. By 1926, only the Lyric is listed in the Film Daily Yearbook.
That’s all I’ve been able to discover about Lacon’s early movie theaters. There was a 500-seat hall called the Rose (or Rose’s) Opera House, reportedly rebuilt in 1940 as the Shafer Theatre, but I’ve found no evidence that it ever operated as a movie theater in earlier years.
The September 9, 1922 issue of The American Contractor said that the theater being built at Elgin for Ralph Crocker was designed by architect Ralph E. (Elliot) Abell.
The “Indianapolis Items” column of Film Daily for December 17, 1935 said that “[t]he New Flora, Flora, Ind., will open on Christmas Day with ‘Millions In The Air.’” The name New Flora suggest that there was an earlier Flora Theatre in town, but I’ve not found any references to it. It might have been the same theater, just remodeled. The closest I can get to an address for the New Flora is the corner of E. Columbia Street and Division Street. The building has been demolished.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two movie houses at Flora, the Star Theatre, no location given, and the Tokio Theatre, which the Directory says was located on Main Street, but a local history page says was on Columbia Street. The local source appears to be correct.
I’m sure that this item from the July 3, 1935 issue of Film Daily is about the Roxy Theatre:
The Roxy and Rose are both listed in the 1936 Film Daily Yearbook, so the Roxy was probably open by the beginning of that year. The building is very much in the style of Moe’s theater projects from the mid-1930s.The Curran Opera House was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The August 29 issue of moving Picture World that year ran this item: “Thursdays will be Mary Pickford days at the Curran theater in Boulder, Colo.”
This house apparently opened as the New Empire Theatre, as that was how it was still styled in an item in the August 29, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World. At that time the house was showing feature films on Fridays and Mondays and four reels of movies from the General Film Company the rest of the week, with daily changes of program. The New Empire maintained a six-piece orchestra as well as a pipe organ.
The Rosebud Theatre opened on August 8, 1914, according to this item in the August 29 issue of Moving Picture World:“The Rosebud on Gratiot avenue, near Brush street, opened its doors as a picture house on August 8. It is under the same management as the Woodward Theater.”
The Empress Theatre was mentioned in the August 29, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World:
The August 29, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World had this item about the opening of the Medbury Theatre: “The New Medbury Theater on Hastings street, near Medbury Theater [sic], was completed earlier than expected and was formally opened July 27. T. Gardner is manager. The theater seats 400.” Note: If there was an earlier Medbury Theatre, it was not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but I think it’s more likely that the MPW item simply contained a mistake, and it was meant to read “…near Medbury Avenue.”
News from Billings in the The August 29, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World:
A history of Stanislaus County published in 1921 has two sections with information about the Modesto Theatre. The first is on the history of Modesto (Google Books scan) and the second is embedded in the biographical sketch of the theater’s builder, W. R. Mensinger (scroll down to the last paragraph on page 550.)
Both sections say that at the time Mr. Mansinger conceived building the theater, the location where it was built had been vacant, so the claim made by modern local sources such as this web page that the Modesto’s location had been the location of the original Star Theatre must be wrong. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists both the Modesto and the original Star, and they could hardly have occupied the same lot.
However, the Directory lists the Modesto at 917 10th Street, rather than 927, and the Star is listed without an address. As the Modesto was rebuilt on the same lot as the burned theater, either the town has shifted its lot numbers or the Directory made a mistake. I’ve wondered if maybe the Directory gave the address of the Star as the address of the Modesto? As the local sources say that the New Star at 928 10th was across the street from the original Star, it does seem plausible that the original Star was just down the block from the Modesto, and the local memory of the exact location has been lost over the years. But in any case, it’s clear that the Star and the Modesto could not have been on the same lot.
An article about the Star Theatre appears in the September 11, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World. The owner, W. B. Martin, had been an exhibitor since 1906, and had been in Modesto for about three years. He had been manager of the Modesto Theatre at the time it was destroyed by fire in December, 1913, and then leased another theater in Modesto for a year and a half before opening the New Star.
The house he leased must have been the original Star, but it could not have been across the street from the New Star, as that was the location of the Modesto Theatre. Both houses were listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Another period source indicates that the location of the Modesto was vacant land before that theater was built in 1913, so modern local sources saying that that was where the earlier Star was must be mistaken.
Is the rink on the 1910 map? If so, Baxter’s project must have fallen through, or his theater had a very short life and the building then went back to housing a roller rink.
The Crystal was apparently not the first movie theater to occupy these premises. The May, 1909 issue of The Nickelodeon ran this item: “Davenport, Iowa. — A new moving picture theater has been opened at 328 Harrison street.”
This item is from the May, 1909 issue of The Nickelodeon: “Bloomington, Ill. — The Colonial, a handsome new motion picture theater, has been opened at 426 North Main street.”
The recent opening of the first Bijou Theatre at Monmouth was noted in the May, 1909 issue of The Nickelodeon.
I came across an item in The Nickelodeon of May, 1909, saying “Paul Baxter, of Morrison, has secured a lease on the Rollaway and will open a first-class moving picture show.” A bit more searching led to a book called History of Whiteside County, Ilinois which was published in 1908, which says that The Rollaway was a roller skating rink opened early that year and located on First Avenue. The rink itself was 46 feet wide and 95 feet deep, so could have accommodated a good-sized theater such as the Vaudette. It’s conceivable that Mr. Baxter’s plans had not yet come to fruition in November, 1910, and that the Vaudette was indeed located in the former Rollaway rink.
elmorovivo is correct about the Lyric Theatre, later the Esquire, being the 1922 house at 719 10th Street. It opened on June 27 that year in a building that had been converted from a garage. The Isis was a different house, opened as the Liberty Theatre sometime before 1912, at which time it was renamed the Isis. The name change was noted in the June 7, 1912 issue of The Modesto Bee.
That said, it’s possible that the Isis moved to a different location in 1914. The October 3, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World said “Dick Wilbur has opened the Isis theater, Modesto, Cal., the house being under the management of W. B. Harrison.” That’s the only mention of the Isis I’ve found in the trade journals, and I’ve not found the Liberty mentioned at all. As the item has minimal information, I don’t know if it was the old Liberty/Isis being reopened or a new Isis at a different location.
An article in the Detroit Free Press of October 11, 1865, while the Croswell Opera House was under construction, said that the new house had been designed by Syracuse, New York architect Horatio Nelson White. Among White’s innovations at the Croswell, he employed a system of trusses, braces and iron ties to support the horseshoe-shaped gallery, eliminating the need for columns or heavy brackets on the main floor. This was of course lost when the auditorium was gutted for the 1921 reconstruction to the plans of John C. Brompton.