Roger6: I’m not connected with Cinema Treasures except as an active long-time user familiar with its workings, and I’ve been able to puzzle out some of the features of the new site.
The attribution on this page only means that the theater was added to the database by P Shaw. Your photo attribution is on a different page. Click on the “Photos” link above the picture, or on the photo itself, then click on the thumbnail on the page the link fetches, and that will take you to the page where the photo and the comments you uploaded are displayed (the link to your Flickr page isn’t working, though. I don’t think they’ve worked out all the bugs yet.)
To the right of that photo on its own page it does say that it was uploaded by Roger6. There’s also a box below the photo where viewers can leave comments on the photo itself. Your user name to the right of the photo on that page is also a link, and it will take you to a page where thumbnails of all the photos you upload will be on display.
If you need more detailed information, you’ll have to contact the site’s moderators. The contact email addresses are on a page linked from the “About” page, which in turn is linked in the banner at the top of every page.
mortalman: Most likely the building and the business were under separate ownership. Such arrangements are not rare. The Laskys owned the building, and the Krim brothers must have owned and operated the theater business for at lest part of its history, leasing the theater portion of the building from the Laskys.
Don: It’s pretty easy to embed links now, using markdown code. Put the text that will become the link between square brackets [thus], then copy and paste the url between parentheses (thus). You can leave spaces between words in the text as usual, but leave no other spaces. Below, I’ve put Tyler Theatre between square brackets and put the photo’s url at Flickr between parentheses. That’s all there is to it:
The Western Theatre is first listed in the Los Angeles City Directory in 1927, so that’s most likely the year it opened, unless it opened very late in 1926.
I probably updated Street View a little bit too far south. The theater was most likely just north of the park, where the parking lot is now. The park itself has been built in recent decades, as it doesn’t appear on any of the maps I own, the most recent of which dates from the 1960s.
The Home Theatre is listed at 3945 S. Western in the 1923 Los Angeles City Directory. In the 1926 directory, it’s at 3943 S. Western. No theater is listed for this side of this block of Western Avenue in the 1927 directory, but the new Western Theatre across the street is listed.
I’m sure the Home Theatre was in the building still standing at 3943-3945 S. Western Avenue. As the structure was built in 1914 and the Gay Theatre was listed at 3945 S. Western in 1915, the theater was probably the first occupant. The name was changed to Home Theatre by 1923, and it probably closed in 1926 or early 1927.
Apparently my number guess was a bit off. A timeline for the Towle Theatre that I stumbled on gives the address of the Orpheum (apparently from a 1926 directory) as 156 State Street.
This web page has three early photos of the Towle Opera House. From the exterior photo it can be seen that it occupied the lot now containing the Towle Theatre and the lot next door with the building currently housing the Hammond Innovation Center.
This page has a later photo, when the Opera House had become the DeLuxe Theatre, and the commercial space in front of it was occupied by Woolworth’s.
The Towle Opera House opened in 1903, and was called the Hammond Theatre in 1911, but had become the De Lux Theatre by 1912. The spelling was later changed to DeLuxe. I’ve been unable to discover if the building housing the modern Towle Theatre is the one built on the site in 1929-1930, or is of more recent construction.
A 2010 newspaper article said that the City of Hammond now owns the Calumet Theatre and intends to demolish it. The building’s cornerstone gives the construction date as 1930, and names the architect as Louis C. Hess. Local resident Debbie Thill petitioned the city to preserve the cornerstone to use as a headstone for Hess’s grave.
The article is here, for the time being. There are four photos and a three-minute video of Ms. Thill talking about Louis Hess.
Old Photos (see second photo on this page) show the Orpheum across the street from a rusticated stone building with the name “Long’s Hall” painted on the side. One web site (photos about halfway down this web page) mentions a dime store in that building having the address 247 E. State Street, so the Orpheum was probably at about 244, 246, or 248 E. State.
Also, this web page features Hammond author Jean Shepherd’s nostalgic article about the Orpheum Theatre, “Leopold Doppler And The Orpheum Gravy Boat Riot.”
Several vintage photos of the Orpheum are displayed on this web page.
Here is a pdf file of a 2002 newsletter from the Hammond Historical Society, featuring a brief article about the Orpheum. It gives the opening year as 1912, and says that the theater was designed by a local architectural firm with the unlikely name of Bump & Berry. Prior to the installation of the Kimball organ in 1922, the Orpheum sported a $10,000 Wurlitzer Hope-Jones instrument.
The Orpheum operated for only forty years before closing. The building was demolished in 1952, according to this web page about downtown Hammond architecture.
This web page features several photos of the Paramount Theatre in Hammond and, for some reason, one photo of the Oakland, California, Paramount.
A legal case in the late 1980s revealed that the 99-year lease on the land the Paramount Theatre occupied began in 1929, so construction of the theater most likely also began that year.
Several vintage photos of the Parthenon Theatre can be seen on this web page. The text on the page is mostly quoted from Cinema Treasures, so there’s no new information available.
This web page has several photos of the State Theatre both before and after the bombing. Most of the text is quoted from Cinema Treasures and thus offers no new information, but there are scans of a couple of newspaper items about the bombing.
The September 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the new Capitol Theatre in Macon was scheduled to open on October 2. They missed the deadline, though, as the theater’s official web site says that it opened on November 10. Here’s the complete item from MPW:
“Macon, Ga.—R. H. DeBruler, formerly of Atlanta, will be manager of the Capitol, the new moving picture house at Macon, Ga., which is under construction, and will throw its doors open to the public on October 2.
“The house is owned by Troup Howard, R. C. Hazelhurst and Brown Wimberly, of Macon. When completed it will have cost about $60,000. It will seat 1,000 people and will have main floor and a balcony, and boxes on the side, with an orchestra of five. Only first run pictures will be shown.”
Thanks for fixing my mistake in updating Street View. So far, this is the only one I’ve updated to the wrong location, but it was still a dumb move.
I found a second mention of the Superba Theatre in The Moving Picture World, this from the issue of September 19, 1908:
“Augusta, Ga.-The Superba, which has been closed all Summer, will reopen on October 1st and the Airdome will close. Mr. Bandy is satisfied with the conditions and prospects.”
I’ve found a couple of references to Frank and Hubert Bandy, as operators of the Liberty Theatre in Savannah and the Lyric Theatre in Macon. Presumably the Mr. Bandy operating the Superba was one or the other of them.
Google Maps is placing this theater on West Walnut Street instead of East Walnut, even though the address listed above is correct. I’ve seen a couple of other pages where Google misplaces its pin icon by a considerable distance, despite the correct addresses being listed.
This map in the book “Entertainment in Augusta” locates the Star at 723 Broad Street, and shows a house called the Little Grand Theatre at 857 Broad Street.
The building at 723 Broad today (next door to the west of the News Building) looks fairly old (probably from the 1920s,) but doesn’t look like it was ever a theater, the entrance being too narrow. The building that probably includes the address 857 Broad (it must belong to one of the four storefronts in the building) does look as though it could have been a theater. Possibly the Star began operating at 723, and moved to 857 when its original building was replaced by the one that’s there now?
I can’t find the Little Grand Theatre mentioned anywhere other than the book, and there it’s only listed on the map, not mentioned in the text.
According to “Entertainment in Augusta,” the address of the Dreamland Theatre was 879 Broad Street. That address is currently listed on the Internet as the location of Wheels Corner Pub, a bicycle-themed bar. There’s a mural featuring bicycles on the 9th Street side of the building.
I think I just updated Street View for this theater to the wrong location. I was going by this street diagram in the book “Entertainment in Augusta,” and it looked like the Dreamland had been on the southwest corner of 9th and Broad. I’ve now realized that the diagram is inverted from the usual map position, so it has north at the bottom instead of the top. That means the Dreamland was actually on the northeast corner of 9th and Broad.
Kenneth Britten’s book, “Beaver Falls: Gem of Beaver County,” has several paragraphs about the Regent Theatre, which the author attended as a boy. There’s also a 1968 photo of the house, at the time it reopened as the Cinema (the Regent had closed as a movie house in 1957, but had reopened in 1963 for a run as a live theater.)
The book gives the date of the fire that gutted the building as March 2, 1980, so the 1985 photo at American Classic Images was taken some five years after the theater had closed for the last time.
With regard to my previous comment, the caption of the photo in the book I linked to (“Beaver Falls: Gem of Beaver County,” by Kenneth Britten,) has an error in it. It says that the Savoy was renamed the Rialto in 1928 and demolished in 1930, when in fact it was the Lyceum which was renamed the Rialto, and it was the Savoy that was demolished in 1930 (or later in that decade, according to this web page with an article written by Carole Williamson in the 1950s.)
Roger6: I’m not connected with Cinema Treasures except as an active long-time user familiar with its workings, and I’ve been able to puzzle out some of the features of the new site.
The attribution on this page only means that the theater was added to the database by P Shaw. Your photo attribution is on a different page. Click on the “Photos” link above the picture, or on the photo itself, then click on the thumbnail on the page the link fetches, and that will take you to the page where the photo and the comments you uploaded are displayed (the link to your Flickr page isn’t working, though. I don’t think they’ve worked out all the bugs yet.)
To the right of that photo on its own page it does say that it was uploaded by Roger6. There’s also a box below the photo where viewers can leave comments on the photo itself. Your user name to the right of the photo on that page is also a link, and it will take you to a page where thumbnails of all the photos you upload will be on display.
If you need more detailed information, you’ll have to contact the site’s moderators. The contact email addresses are on a page linked from the “About” page, which in turn is linked in the banner at the top of every page.
Also, this theater was demolished in 2009. Photos here.
mortalman: Most likely the building and the business were under separate ownership. Such arrangements are not rare. The Laskys owned the building, and the Krim brothers must have owned and operated the theater business for at lest part of its history, leasing the theater portion of the building from the Laskys.
Don: It’s pretty easy to embed links now, using markdown code. Put the text that will become the link between square brackets [thus], then copy and paste the url between parentheses (thus). You can leave spaces between words in the text as usual, but leave no other spaces. Below, I’ve put Tyler Theatre between square brackets and put the photo’s url at Flickr between parentheses. That’s all there is to it:
A view of the Tyler Theatre
The Western Theatre is first listed in the Los Angeles City Directory in 1927, so that’s most likely the year it opened, unless it opened very late in 1926.
I probably updated Street View a little bit too far south. The theater was most likely just north of the park, where the parking lot is now. The park itself has been built in recent decades, as it doesn’t appear on any of the maps I own, the most recent of which dates from the 1960s.
The Home Theatre is listed at 3945 S. Western in the 1923 Los Angeles City Directory. In the 1926 directory, it’s at 3943 S. Western. No theater is listed for this side of this block of Western Avenue in the 1927 directory, but the new Western Theatre across the street is listed.
I’m sure the Home Theatre was in the building still standing at 3943-3945 S. Western Avenue. As the structure was built in 1914 and the Gay Theatre was listed at 3945 S. Western in 1915, the theater was probably the first occupant. The name was changed to Home Theatre by 1923, and it probably closed in 1926 or early 1927.
Apparently my number guess was a bit off. A timeline for the Towle Theatre that I stumbled on gives the address of the Orpheum (apparently from a 1926 directory) as 156 State Street.
This web page has three early photos of the Towle Opera House. From the exterior photo it can be seen that it occupied the lot now containing the Towle Theatre and the lot next door with the building currently housing the Hammond Innovation Center.
This page has a later photo, when the Opera House had become the DeLuxe Theatre, and the commercial space in front of it was occupied by Woolworth’s.
The Towle Opera House opened in 1903, and was called the Hammond Theatre in 1911, but had become the De Lux Theatre by 1912. The spelling was later changed to DeLuxe. I’ve been unable to discover if the building housing the modern Towle Theatre is the one built on the site in 1929-1930, or is of more recent construction.
A 2010 newspaper article said that the City of Hammond now owns the Calumet Theatre and intends to demolish it. The building’s cornerstone gives the construction date as 1930, and names the architect as Louis C. Hess. Local resident Debbie Thill petitioned the city to preserve the cornerstone to use as a headstone for Hess’s grave.
The article is here, for the time being. There are four photos and a three-minute video of Ms. Thill talking about Louis Hess.
Old Photos (see second photo on this page) show the Orpheum across the street from a rusticated stone building with the name “Long’s Hall” painted on the side. One web site (photos about halfway down this web page) mentions a dime store in that building having the address 247 E. State Street, so the Orpheum was probably at about 244, 246, or 248 E. State.
Correction: This 1952 newspaper article says that the Orpheum opened on Christmas Day, 1911.
Also, this web page features Hammond author Jean Shepherd’s nostalgic article about the Orpheum Theatre, “Leopold Doppler And The Orpheum Gravy Boat Riot.”
Several vintage photos of the Orpheum are displayed on this web page.
Here is a pdf file of a 2002 newsletter from the Hammond Historical Society, featuring a brief article about the Orpheum. It gives the opening year as 1912, and says that the theater was designed by a local architectural firm with the unlikely name of Bump & Berry. Prior to the installation of the Kimball organ in 1922, the Orpheum sported a $10,000 Wurlitzer Hope-Jones instrument.
The Orpheum operated for only forty years before closing. The building was demolished in 1952, according to this web page about downtown Hammond architecture.
This web page features several photos of the Paramount Theatre in Hammond and, for some reason, one photo of the Oakland, California, Paramount.
A legal case in the late 1980s revealed that the 99-year lease on the land the Paramount Theatre occupied began in 1929, so construction of the theater most likely also began that year.
Several vintage photos of the Parthenon Theatre can be seen on this web page. The text on the page is mostly quoted from Cinema Treasures, so there’s no new information available.
This web page has several photos of the State Theatre both before and after the bombing. Most of the text is quoted from Cinema Treasures and thus offers no new information, but there are scans of a couple of newspaper items about the bombing.
The September 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the new Capitol Theatre in Macon was scheduled to open on October 2. They missed the deadline, though, as the theater’s official web site says that it opened on November 10. Here’s the complete item from MPW:
Thanks for fixing my mistake in updating Street View. So far, this is the only one I’ve updated to the wrong location, but it was still a dumb move.
I found a second mention of the Superba Theatre in The Moving Picture World, this from the issue of September 19, 1908:
I’ve found a couple of references to Frank and Hubert Bandy, as operators of the Liberty Theatre in Savannah and the Lyric Theatre in Macon. Presumably the Mr. Bandy operating the Superba was one or the other of them.Kewpie’s links worked for me. Here they are embedded in glorious HTML:
Opera House photo from 1971.
Opera House photo from 1906.
And here is the 1920 Tulsa City Directory (you’ll have to click the “pages 40 & 41” link in the frame on the left.)
Google Maps is placing this theater on West Walnut Street instead of East Walnut, even though the address listed above is correct. I’ve seen a couple of other pages where Google misplaces its pin icon by a considerable distance, despite the correct addresses being listed.
This map in the book “Entertainment in Augusta” locates the Star at 723 Broad Street, and shows a house called the Little Grand Theatre at 857 Broad Street.
The building at 723 Broad today (next door to the west of the News Building) looks fairly old (probably from the 1920s,) but doesn’t look like it was ever a theater, the entrance being too narrow. The building that probably includes the address 857 Broad (it must belong to one of the four storefronts in the building) does look as though it could have been a theater. Possibly the Star began operating at 723, and moved to 857 when its original building was replaced by the one that’s there now?
I can’t find the Little Grand Theatre mentioned anywhere other than the book, and there it’s only listed on the map, not mentioned in the text.
According to “Entertainment in Augusta,” the address of the Dreamland Theatre was 879 Broad Street. That address is currently listed on the Internet as the location of Wheels Corner Pub, a bicycle-themed bar. There’s a mural featuring bicycles on the 9th Street side of the building.
I think I just updated Street View for this theater to the wrong location. I was going by this street diagram in the book “Entertainment in Augusta,” and it looked like the Dreamland had been on the southwest corner of 9th and Broad. I’ve now realized that the diagram is inverted from the usual map position, so it has north at the bottom instead of the top. That means the Dreamland was actually on the northeast corner of 9th and Broad.
Kenneth Britten’s book, “Beaver Falls: Gem of Beaver County,” has several paragraphs about the Regent Theatre, which the author attended as a boy. There’s also a 1968 photo of the house, at the time it reopened as the Cinema (the Regent had closed as a movie house in 1957, but had reopened in 1963 for a run as a live theater.)
The book gives the date of the fire that gutted the building as March 2, 1980, so the 1985 photo at American Classic Images was taken some five years after the theater had closed for the last time.
Here is an updated link to the article by Helen Kent about the Comerford Theatre, in Boxoffice of August 19, 1939.
With regard to my previous comment, the caption of the photo in the book I linked to (“Beaver Falls: Gem of Beaver County,” by Kenneth Britten,) has an error in it. It says that the Savoy was renamed the Rialto in 1928 and demolished in 1930, when in fact it was the Lyceum which was renamed the Rialto, and it was the Savoy that was demolished in 1930 (or later in that decade, according to this web page with an article written by Carole Williamson in the 1950s.)