The city of Culpeper required this infill project to resemble the surrounding vintage buildings of its historic downtown, thus the faux-Vicotrian detailing. The design was by Kansas City-based TK Architects.
A digital IMAX auditorium is being added to the 21st Street Warren Theatre. The 600-seat IMAX is expected to open by mid-December. The project will include remodeling and updating the theater’s existing 17 auditoriums as well.
A June 3 item on the Wichita Eagle web site includes three renderings of the project.
Three photos of the Regal Cinemas 16 at Indian Lake are displayed on the web site of the project’s designers, the Kansas City firm TK Architects (click on “Cinemas” then “Traditional”)
I’ve found four references on the Internet to a California architect with the surname Polley, but his middle initial was “A” in all cases. There could have been an R. W. Polley as well, but if there was I’ve been unable to find him mentioned on the Internet.
A document about the former Carnegie Library in Oxnard, Ventura County, says that the building’s basement was remodeled in 1949, with plans drawn by local architect R. A. Polley. Another document names R. A. Polley as architect for alterations to a commercial building in Oxnard in 1952.
The California Index contains a card referring to an item in Architect & Engineer of June, 1931, saying that Rudolph A. Polley, of Santa Barbara, had received a license to practice architecture in California.
A web page for the Elks Club of Santa Maria says that their former lodge hall (since demolished) erected in 1939 had been designed by L. N. Crawford and Rudolph Polley. The site of the hall now has a marker (pictured) which notes L. N. Crawford and R. A. Polley as architects of the vanished structure.
William Wolf was one of the architects who sometimes signed off on theater plans actually done by William B. David, who was not a licensed architect. The Analy might be one of those theaters (the Altos Theatre in Los Altos, opened the same year as the Analy, was definitely a David design with Wolf as architect of record.) I recall seeing the Analy mentioned in Boxoffice several times, but I don’t recall any details about it and can’t check them now as I no longer have access to the magazine’s archives.
The Analy was built for Dan Tocchini Sr., who was the operator of several Nothern California theaters, including Sebastopol’s El Rey. Tocchini’s theater circuit is still in operation as SR Entertainment, headquartered in the Northern California town of Santa Rosa, and headed by Daniel F. Tocchini. There is a brief history of the company on their web site.
A card in the L.A. Library’s California Index cites an item about a San Francisco house called the Nob Hill Theatre in Motion Picture Herald of November 17, 1934.
As it seems unlikely that Jack Tillmany’s 1944 opening date for this theater is incorrect, I would imagine that the item concerned an earlier theater of the same name. Has anybody got a San Francisco directory from the period they could check for an address? The earlier Nob Hill Theatre might be missing from Cinema Treasures, or it could be a missing aka for another theater in the neighborhood that’s already in the database.
The April 20, 1912, issue of the regional entertainment magazine The Rounder reported the grand opening of San Francisco’s Majestic Theatre.
The August, 1937, issue of the trade publication Architect & Engineer attributed the design of the remodeling of the Majestic Theatre to architect S. Charles Lee. The project is not mentioned in the online finding aid for the S. Charles Lee collection at UCLA, though. I know that a significant percentage of Lee’s papers were stolen from him. Those pertaining to the Tower project must have been among them.
Interesting that Eugene Mathewson was the architect the 1928 State/Towne Theatre. Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer of July 11, 1914, reported that Mathewson was the architect of the major remodeling that year of the Fresno Theatre, the State’s predecessor.
La Tosca was still in operation at least as late as the early 1970s. It was included in the Independent Theatres listings in the Los Angeles Times of February 10, 1971. I don’t know what kind of movies it was showing then, as its listing carried only the note “Call theatre for program.” I do recall the theater showing mostly German movies through the 1960s.
The La Tosca Theatre is also listed in the Los Angeles City Directory for 1973. Unfortunately I don’t have access to directories between 1973 and 1987, so I can’t find the year in which it vanished from the listings. It was not listed in 1987 though.
Also the page still needs the 1915 aka of Photoplay Theatre.
A number of published sources I’ve seen, including Douglas Gomery’s 1992 book “Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States” say that Henry Plitt sold his theater circuit to Cineplex Odeon in 1985, not 1987. Gomery says that Cineplex took over operation of the former Plitt houses in August, 1985.
The book also notes that Plitt bought ABC-Paramount’s Northern division theaters in 1974 and the circuit’s Southern division houses in 1978.
I have now come across multiple references to George Edwin Bergstrom having been one of the architects of Grauman’s Metropolitan Theatre. Both Soutnwest Builder & Contractor and the national trade publication Engineering and Contracting mention his involvement in the project. The latter publication’s issue of April 27, 1921, carries this item, which mentions Bergstrom supervising construction on the project in conjunction with engineer R.C. Mitchell.
Various items in Southwest Builder & Contractor indicate that William Lee Woollett designed the interiors of the Metropolitan Theatre, but that the lead architect on the project was Bergstrom. Woollett probably designed the details on the facade of the building as well, but I haven’t found any specific sources saying he did. Woollett was apparently the sole architect on the later project creating a Broadway entrance for the theater.
Leonard F. Starks was involved in the project that eventually became the Fox Senator Theatre at least three years before the house opened. When the project was announced in the June 29, 1921, issue of the trade publication Engineering and Contracting, it was to be called the Paramount Theatre, and Starks was already the lead architect. Though a native of California, Starks had been working for some time in New York City in the office of theater architect Thomas Lamb.
This thumbnail biography of Leonard Starks from the Historic Fresno web site doesn’t mention the Paramount specifically, but tells of the intention of the Famous Players corporation to build a chain of theaters on the west coast. The proposed Paramount was undoubtedly one of these. Famous Players had contracted with Lamb’s office for architectural services, and Starks was to return to California to oversee design and construction. When the plans for the chain fell through, Starks resigned from Lamb’s firm and set up his own practice in Sacramento.
Starks' partnership with E. C. Hemmings was formed in 1923, and Hemmings died the following year. The Senator Theatre might have been their only major project together.
The announcement of plans for the Huntington Theatre appeared in Southwest Builder & Contractor of July 7, 1920. The architect for the project was Edward J. Borgmeyer.
A 1931 remodeling of the Imperial for the United Artists chain was the work of the Los Angeles architectural firm of Walker & Eisen, with Clifford Balch, associated. The project was reported in the April 17 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor that year.
Two cards in the L.A. Library’s California Index cite articles that raise questions about the reported history of this theater. The 1913 Kinema might have been expanded, or replaced by a new building, in 1920.
A May 24, 1913, item in Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer says that San Francisco architect G.F. King had prepared plans for the $35,000 Kinema Theatre, to be built on J Street (since renamed Fulton Street) in Fresno.
A January 30, 1920 item in the successor publication, Southwest Builder & Contractor, said that Albert G. Lansburgh would prepeare plans for the $200,000 Kinema Theatre which was to be built at 1317-1321 J Street in Fresno.
I don’t know what the conflicting address is about (perhaps it was an error by the magazine), but a 1920 report of a Kinema being designed by Lansburgh, coupled with the low cost of the 1913 Kinema, suggests that either there were two theaters of this name in Fresno, or that Lansburgh’s design of 1920 was for a major expansion of the original 1913 theater. I’ve been unable to find any clarification of this mystery on the Internet. Fresno newspapers from 1920 might provide the answer, if somebody has access to them.
I should add that the theater in the 1930 photo linked in Brad Smith’s comment above does not look like anything that would have been built in 1913. The Spanish Colonial Revival style of the exterior was launched in California by the Panama-California Exposition, held in San Diego in 1915. By 1920, the date of the Lansburgh design for the Kinema, it was all the rage.
Motion Picture Herald of June 8, 1935, reported that Fox West Coast Theatres had reopened the New Rialto Theatre in San Francisco following extensive remodeling. Earlier that year, the March issue of Architect & Engineer had reported that the plans for the $40,000 remodeling project had been drawn by architect F. Frederic Amandes.
Amandes was the architect for at least four other theater projects. Those I’ve been able to attribute, all from 1936, were the Enean Theatre at Pittsubrg, California, and remodeling jobs for the Strand Theatre in Alameda, the Egyptian Theatre on San Francisco’s Market Street (listed at CT as the Guild Theatre), and the former T&D Theatre in Richmond, which became the Fox Theatre and then the United Artists Theatre.
A 1937 remodeling of the Milano Theatre was the work of architect A.A. Cantin, according to Architect & Engineer of April, 1937. The theater had suffered major damage in a fire, and the rebuilding was expected to cost $25,000. 1937 was the year the house reopened as the Palace, according to Jack Tillmany’s comment near the top of this page.
mdmjcc: I was viewing the older back issues of Boxoffice on the web site issuu.com, but the magazine has removed its archive from that free site (and all the links to it I’ve posted here have gone dead.)
They are in the process of posting the archive to the vault on their own site, where it will be available only to subscribers. I don’t know how long it will take them to get the entire archive posted. I’m not a subscriber myself (its beyond the means of my very limited budget), so I haven’t been keeping track of their progress.
vokoban: Owensmouth was the original name of the district that later became Canoga Park. There’s still an Owensmouth Avenue, running from Chatsworth in the north to Woodland Hills in the south and located between Canoga Avenue and Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
Post your comment above to the Canoga Theatre page. It opened as the Madrid in 1926, though the page is missing the aka. The Canoga has been demolished, but its location is now the site of a recently built live theater which is also called the Madrid.
A card in the L.A. library’s California Index cites a 1948/1949 theatre catalog naming the architect of the Capitola Theatre as Harold Onstead. I’ve been unable to find anything else about him on the Internet.
This page at the Empress Theatre’s official web site names the architect of the theater as William A. Jones.
The city of Culpeper required this infill project to resemble the surrounding vintage buildings of its historic downtown, thus the faux-Vicotrian detailing. The design was by Kansas City-based TK Architects.
A digital IMAX auditorium is being added to the 21st Street Warren Theatre. The 600-seat IMAX is expected to open by mid-December. The project will include remodeling and updating the theater’s existing 17 auditoriums as well.
A June 3 item on the Wichita Eagle web site includes three renderings of the project.
An August 20 Wichita Eagle item has photos depicting the progress of construction.
Three photos of the Regal Cinemas 16 at Indian Lake are displayed on the web site of the project’s designers, the Kansas City firm TK Architects (click on “Cinemas” then “Traditional”)
I’ve found four references on the Internet to a California architect with the surname Polley, but his middle initial was “A” in all cases. There could have been an R. W. Polley as well, but if there was I’ve been unable to find him mentioned on the Internet.
A document about the former Carnegie Library in Oxnard, Ventura County, says that the building’s basement was remodeled in 1949, with plans drawn by local architect R. A. Polley. Another document names R. A. Polley as architect for alterations to a commercial building in Oxnard in 1952.
The California Index contains a card referring to an item in Architect & Engineer of June, 1931, saying that Rudolph A. Polley, of Santa Barbara, had received a license to practice architecture in California.
A web page for the Elks Club of Santa Maria says that their former lodge hall (since demolished) erected in 1939 had been designed by L. N. Crawford and Rudolph Polley. The site of the hall now has a marker (pictured) which notes L. N. Crawford and R. A. Polley as architects of the vanished structure.
William Wolf was one of the architects who sometimes signed off on theater plans actually done by William B. David, who was not a licensed architect. The Analy might be one of those theaters (the Altos Theatre in Los Altos, opened the same year as the Analy, was definitely a David design with Wolf as architect of record.) I recall seeing the Analy mentioned in Boxoffice several times, but I don’t recall any details about it and can’t check them now as I no longer have access to the magazine’s archives.
The Analy was built for Dan Tocchini Sr., who was the operator of several Nothern California theaters, including Sebastopol’s El Rey. Tocchini’s theater circuit is still in operation as SR Entertainment, headquartered in the Northern California town of Santa Rosa, and headed by Daniel F. Tocchini. There is a brief history of the company on their web site.
Quincy’s historic Town Hall was converted into a movie theater in 1936, according to an item in Motion Picture Herald of July 25 that year.
A card in the L.A. Library’s California Index cites an item about a San Francisco house called the Nob Hill Theatre in Motion Picture Herald of November 17, 1934.
As it seems unlikely that Jack Tillmany’s 1944 opening date for this theater is incorrect, I would imagine that the item concerned an earlier theater of the same name. Has anybody got a San Francisco directory from the period they could check for an address? The earlier Nob Hill Theatre might be missing from Cinema Treasures, or it could be a missing aka for another theater in the neighborhood that’s already in the database.
The April 20, 1912, issue of the regional entertainment magazine The Rounder reported the grand opening of San Francisco’s Majestic Theatre.
The August, 1937, issue of the trade publication Architect & Engineer attributed the design of the remodeling of the Majestic Theatre to architect S. Charles Lee. The project is not mentioned in the online finding aid for the S. Charles Lee collection at UCLA, though. I know that a significant percentage of Lee’s papers were stolen from him. Those pertaining to the Tower project must have been among them.
Interesting that Eugene Mathewson was the architect the 1928 State/Towne Theatre. Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer of July 11, 1914, reported that Mathewson was the architect of the major remodeling that year of the Fresno Theatre, the State’s predecessor.
La Tosca was still in operation at least as late as the early 1970s. It was included in the Independent Theatres listings in the Los Angeles Times of February 10, 1971. I don’t know what kind of movies it was showing then, as its listing carried only the note “Call theatre for program.” I do recall the theater showing mostly German movies through the 1960s.
The La Tosca Theatre is also listed in the Los Angeles City Directory for 1973. Unfortunately I don’t have access to directories between 1973 and 1987, so I can’t find the year in which it vanished from the listings. It was not listed in 1987 though.
Also the page still needs the 1915 aka of Photoplay Theatre.
A number of published sources I’ve seen, including Douglas Gomery’s 1992 book “Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States” say that Henry Plitt sold his theater circuit to Cineplex Odeon in 1985, not 1987. Gomery says that Cineplex took over operation of the former Plitt houses in August, 1985.
The book also notes that Plitt bought ABC-Paramount’s Northern division theaters in 1974 and the circuit’s Southern division houses in 1978.
I have now come across multiple references to George Edwin Bergstrom having been one of the architects of Grauman’s Metropolitan Theatre. Both Soutnwest Builder & Contractor and the national trade publication Engineering and Contracting mention his involvement in the project. The latter publication’s issue of April 27, 1921, carries this item, which mentions Bergstrom supervising construction on the project in conjunction with engineer R.C. Mitchell.
Various items in Southwest Builder & Contractor indicate that William Lee Woollett designed the interiors of the Metropolitan Theatre, but that the lead architect on the project was Bergstrom. Woollett probably designed the details on the facade of the building as well, but I haven’t found any specific sources saying he did. Woollett was apparently the sole architect on the later project creating a Broadway entrance for the theater.
Leonard F. Starks was involved in the project that eventually became the Fox Senator Theatre at least three years before the house opened. When the project was announced in the June 29, 1921, issue of the trade publication Engineering and Contracting, it was to be called the Paramount Theatre, and Starks was already the lead architect. Though a native of California, Starks had been working for some time in New York City in the office of theater architect Thomas Lamb.
This thumbnail biography of Leonard Starks from the Historic Fresno web site doesn’t mention the Paramount specifically, but tells of the intention of the Famous Players corporation to build a chain of theaters on the west coast. The proposed Paramount was undoubtedly one of these. Famous Players had contracted with Lamb’s office for architectural services, and Starks was to return to California to oversee design and construction. When the plans for the chain fell through, Starks resigned from Lamb’s firm and set up his own practice in Sacramento.
Starks' partnership with E. C. Hemmings was formed in 1923, and Hemmings died the following year. The Senator Theatre might have been their only major project together.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of May 27, 1921, said that the plans for this theater were being prepared by Walnut Park architect A.H. McCulloh.
The announcement of plans for the Huntington Theatre appeared in Southwest Builder & Contractor of July 7, 1920. The architect for the project was Edward J. Borgmeyer.
A 1931 remodeling of the Imperial for the United Artists chain was the work of the Los Angeles architectural firm of Walker & Eisen, with Clifford Balch, associated. The project was reported in the April 17 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor that year.
Two cards in the L.A. Library’s California Index cite articles that raise questions about the reported history of this theater. The 1913 Kinema might have been expanded, or replaced by a new building, in 1920.
A May 24, 1913, item in Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer says that San Francisco architect G.F. King had prepared plans for the $35,000 Kinema Theatre, to be built on J Street (since renamed Fulton Street) in Fresno.
A January 30, 1920 item in the successor publication, Southwest Builder & Contractor, said that Albert G. Lansburgh would prepeare plans for the $200,000 Kinema Theatre which was to be built at 1317-1321 J Street in Fresno.
I don’t know what the conflicting address is about (perhaps it was an error by the magazine), but a 1920 report of a Kinema being designed by Lansburgh, coupled with the low cost of the 1913 Kinema, suggests that either there were two theaters of this name in Fresno, or that Lansburgh’s design of 1920 was for a major expansion of the original 1913 theater. I’ve been unable to find any clarification of this mystery on the Internet. Fresno newspapers from 1920 might provide the answer, if somebody has access to them.
I should add that the theater in the 1930 photo linked in Brad Smith’s comment above does not look like anything that would have been built in 1913. The Spanish Colonial Revival style of the exterior was launched in California by the Panama-California Exposition, held in San Diego in 1915. By 1920, the date of the Lansburgh design for the Kinema, it was all the rage.
My source for the name of the architect of the 1936 remodeling of this theater misspelled his surname. It should be F. Frederic Amandes.
Motion Picture Herald of June 8, 1935, reported that Fox West Coast Theatres had reopened the New Rialto Theatre in San Francisco following extensive remodeling. Earlier that year, the March issue of Architect & Engineer had reported that the plans for the $40,000 remodeling project had been drawn by architect F. Frederic Amandes.
Amandes was the architect for at least four other theater projects. Those I’ve been able to attribute, all from 1936, were the Enean Theatre at Pittsubrg, California, and remodeling jobs for the Strand Theatre in Alameda, the Egyptian Theatre on San Francisco’s Market Street (listed at CT as the Guild Theatre), and the former T&D Theatre in Richmond, which became the Fox Theatre and then the United Artists Theatre.
A 1937 remodeling of the Milano Theatre was the work of architect A.A. Cantin, according to Architect & Engineer of April, 1937. The theater had suffered major damage in a fire, and the rebuilding was expected to cost $25,000. 1937 was the year the house reopened as the Palace, according to Jack Tillmany’s comment near the top of this page.
mdmjcc: I was viewing the older back issues of Boxoffice on the web site issuu.com, but the magazine has removed its archive from that free site (and all the links to it I’ve posted here have gone dead.)
They are in the process of posting the archive to the vault on their own site, where it will be available only to subscribers. I don’t know how long it will take them to get the entire archive posted. I’m not a subscriber myself (its beyond the means of my very limited budget), so I haven’t been keeping track of their progress.
vokoban: As the New Arlington wasn’t built until 1923, the 1914 reference must be to the first Arlington/Maynard.
vokoban: Owensmouth was the original name of the district that later became Canoga Park. There’s still an Owensmouth Avenue, running from Chatsworth in the north to Woodland Hills in the south and located between Canoga Avenue and Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
Post your comment above to the Canoga Theatre page. It opened as the Madrid in 1926, though the page is missing the aka. The Canoga has been demolished, but its location is now the site of a recently built live theater which is also called the Madrid.
A card in the L.A. library’s California Index cites a 1948/1949 theatre catalog naming the architect of the Capitola Theatre as Harold Onstead. I’ve been unable to find anything else about him on the Internet.