All the early reports about this theater in Boxoffice do indicate that it opened as a single-screen house, and a very large one at that. The announcement of the June 25, 1969, opening appeared in Boxoffice of June 30, and said that the Northwest Plaza Cinema had 1,700 seats. A slightly longer item in Boxoffice of July 14 included a small photo of the theater, though it looks like it was taken before the building was completed, as there’s no signage.
A brief notice in Boxoffice of November 18, 1974, said that GCC had closed the house for twinning, and the reopening was scheduled for December 20.
Boxoffice ran an article about this theater in its issue of July 19, 1965. The text is fairly detailed in its description of the house, but the four photos are not very helpful. The Cinema I and II was said to be the first two-screener in the St. Louis area. The theater was designed for GCC by St. Louis architect Syl G. Schmidt.
The rather busy facade of the Edwards Huntington Cinema was featured on the cover of Boxoffice of July 19, 1965. An interesting feature of Roland Pierson’s design is the convex section of the front carrying the signage, which mimics the proportions and curve of a CinemaScope movie screen; a clever example of architectural form suggesting, rather than following, function. Louis Sullivan must have turned over in his grave, but J. Walter Thompson would probably have been impressed.
The July 14, 1969, issue of Boxoffice ran a single-line item saying that the Strand in Lowell had been remodeled.
Boxoffice of March 3, 1975, reported that the Strand Theatre had been sold to a Cambridge developer named Raymond A. Carye. The developer’s plans were not firm, but rehabilitation of the Strand as a cinema-restaurant-cultural center was mentioned, as well as conversion of the building into offices.
Fred Hyde and Associates opened their Village Theatre on March 18, 1947, as reported in Boxoffice of April 5. An older theater in town, called the Coronado, was in operation at least as late as 1953.
The walk-in section of the Evans Drive-In had 65 seats, according to this article in Boxoffice of July 19, 1965. In 1965, the Evans installed a system allowing patrons to receive the movie’s sound track through their car or portable radios instead of wired speakers.
The sound system was provided by a Wheatland, Colorado-based company called Minicast Corp., and must have been one of the earlier instances of the use of low-power radio for sound at drive-ins. It used an AM frequency rather than the FM which later became common for this purpose. The article mentions that operator R.L. Stanger had designed the Evans Drive-In himself.
The caption of this small photo of the Gem in Boxoffice of April 5, 1947, calls it the Rosalind Theatre, though a December 7, 1946, item had said that Bill Wegman’s new theater would be called the Gem. Further puzzlement is offered in Boxoffice of May 26, 1951, which refers to a Roseland Theatre in Homedale. I’m not sure if either of these is an actual aka for the Gem.
The caption of the 1947 photo also refers to a “makeshift” theater Bill Wegman had previously operated in Homedale. The earlier theater was also called the Gem. Boxoffice of May 22, 1937, said “The Gem Theatre of Homedale, Idaho, is reported to have opened recently.”
The scheduled opening date for the State Theatre was September 12, 1939, according to Boxoffice of September 2. The State had 670 seats and had cost $65,000 to build. It was owned by Gene Custer and Floyd Price. The partners had opened the Lewis Theatre at Lewisburg, W.V., the previous week.
Boxoffice of December 17, 1938, said that E.R. Custer’s new theater at Charleston, on which construction was scheduled to begin soon, had been designed by F&Y Building Service, of Columbus, Ohio.
Gene Custer also operated the Custer Theatre in Charleston, which had opened in 1938.
The November 27, 1961, issue of Boxoffice said that the Lyceum had been closed permanently by order of the New Orleans Board of Buildings Standards and Appeal. The house had last been operated under a lease by J.G. Broggi. The item noted that the Lyceum had been built by the late Frank Heiderich, but didn’t mention when it had opened. The item did refer to the Lyceum as one of the oldest movie houses till operating in New Orleans at that time.
The earliest mention of Heiderich and the Lyceum I’ve found is in Boxoffice of June 19, 1937, which said that he had become a grandfather. I haven’t found an obituary for Frank Heiderich in Boxoffice, but the April 5, 1952, issue had a brief item about the death of Mrs. Heiderich which said that Mr. Heiderich was believed to have started his career in exhibition in 1907. The April 12, 1952, issue mysteriously changes the spelling of the name to Heidrich, and says that Frank Heidrich had owned the Lyceum for “…over 20 years.” Son Henry Heidrich would take over management of the theater, this item said.
I was noticing the pagoda-like boxoffice in that 1912 photo. It’s an interesting bit of Chinoiserie set amid the European classical details of the facade. It looks like there might have been some Art Nouveau stained glass in the arch, the doors, and the upper floor windows as well. I wonder if there are any surviving photos of the interior?
Boxoffice of September 30, 1974, had the sad news: “The historic State Theatre in Harrisburg, purchased last October by the Pennsylvania Rural Electric Ass'n, now has been razed. The 50-year-old house was demolished to make way for a new office center.”
Flickr user pscf11 says this photo depicts the Lyceum in Harrisburg. The evidence cited is that a bar called Carley’s is now located in a building next door to the site of the Lyceum, and that building is seen in the photo. I’ve looked at a photo of the exterior of Carley’s on the bar’s web site (photo 14 of their slide show), and I don’t see a strong resemblance. The building could have been altered, of course, but until other evidence surfaces, I remain sceptical about the claim that the Lyceum in the photo is the one in Harrisburg. The address of Carley’s however, is 204 Locust Street, which means that the address of the State probably was 208 Locust, or very near it.
The Lyceum at Harrisburg is listed in the 1904 edition of Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide, which gives that house a seating capacity of 1,732.
This theater started out as a twin. Boxoffice of June 25, 1973, said that construction was about to begin on a twin theater for Turner-Reynolds Theatres (formerly Turner-Farrar Theatres) just off the town square in Harrisburg. Each auditorium was to have 309 seats. The August 6 issue of Boxoffice said that an October opening was planned for the twin on South Main Street. I haven’t found any items about the actual opening or giving the original name of the theater.
I found a Lincoln Theatre in New Orleans mentioned in Boxoffice of July 4, 1966. No address was given so I don’t know if it was this Lincoln Theatre, but it could have been.
Also, Washington is currently misspelled in the address field above. Washingtin sounds like it would be the punch line in a joke about a Model T Ford.
According to Boxoffice of January 15, 1955, the Carl Floyd Theatres circuit had recently taken over operation of the Annex. Floyd took over the Winter Garden Theatre and the Starlite Drive-In at the same time.
The September 27, 1941, issue of Boxoffice said this: “The Jeff Theatre, operated by W. H. Castay, will be one year old September 29.”
“Bill” Castay (whose first name was actually Walter, not William) also operated the Arrow Theatre in New Orleans, and operated the Jeff Theatre at least as late as 1950. He was still operating the Arrow in 1959, but I haven’t found the Jeff mentioned later than 1952.
The only mention of a Paul Horton in connection with Overton I’ve been able to find in Boxoffice is in the brief September 5, 1953, item which said that the Redwood Drive-In had opened.
A January 14, 1956, Boxoffice item said that James Brakeall had bought the Overton Theatre from Bill Hall, who had “…operated the theatre for more than twelve years….”
The Criterion got a thoroughly modern look in a 1950s remodeling which Boxoffice featured in a multi-page article in its issue of August 7, 1954. There are several photos, but there is only one small “before” shot among them.
The credits section of the article attributes the design of the project to architect Dietz Lusk Jr., and though it doesn’t specify the firm of Boller & Lusk I think the partnership was still in existence in 1954.
Incidentally, the Boller Brothers Architectural Records in the Western Historical manuscript Collection attribute the original design of the Criterion to Robert Boller, not Carl. By the time the Criterion was built, Carl had already moved to California and Robert was handling the firm’s theater projects in the Midwest.
When in the planning stage, this house was to be called the Texan Theatre, and that was the name on the vertical sign in architect Jack Corgan’s rendering of the proposed house, displayed in the “Just Off the Boards” feature of Boxoffice Magazine, March 1, 1947. The theater was being built for Lynn Smith, local associate of H.J. Griffith’s Theatre Enterprises Inc., and he apparently got the house after himself instead of using the name Texan. Smith also operated the Crystal Theatre in Gonzales.
The Boxoffice item gives the seating capacity as 900, and I think that’s probably much closer to the mark than the 1,200 given in the article from the San Antonio Express-News. The satellite views (the best is at Historic Images- the views at Google and Bing are both too blurry) show that the building is not very large, so even the Boxoffice claim of 900 could have been a bit exaggerated, as is often the case.
Anyway, by calc’s count in the comment of last May 27, the current seating capacity would be 435, if you include the 12 wheelchair spaces.
Boxoffice of October 2, 1948, gave the opening date of the Lynn Theatre as September 29.
Twinkletoes: After you enlarge the pages by clicking on the magazine, then click on the + sign in the bar that will appear at the top of the page, and that will enlarge them. Whether you’re using regular page view or Issuu’s full-screen feature, you must click on the magazine before the bar will appear. Right and left arrows at the sides of the page will turn the pages of the magazine. The Langley article is three Boxoffice pages long.
If the site isn’t working well for you, it might be your web browser. I find that Issuu gets a bit odd when I use Opera, but it works fine with Firefox. I’ve never tried it with Internet Explorer.
1955 must have been the year the name was changed. Boxoffice of March 19 that year said that CinemaScope had been installed at the Cameo in Columbus, making it the last theater in the J. Real Neth circuit to be modernized.
Multiple references in Boxoffice to the 1937 project as the New American Theatre suggest that there was a previous American Theatre in Mount Carmel, but I’ve not found any specific references to the earlier theater of that name, nor anything revealing whether the 1937 project was a rebuild of the earlier American or was entirely new construction either on the same site or at a different location. After 1939, the new house is always referred to simply as the American Theatre.
I haven’t found any references to the Palace Theatre in Boxoffice at all. The American and the Uptown are the only Mount Carmel theaters it mentions until the Carmel Drive-In shows up in 1950. The Palace might not have operated past the silent era.
Various issues of Boxoffice through the year 1939 reported on the progress of Frank Barnes' new theater at Carmi. I haven’t found the opening date, but the sound system had been installed by November 11, 1939, so the house must have been completed later that year or very early in 1940. The architect for the project was Oliver W. Stiegemeyer.
Boxoffice of November 4, 1939, said that Albert Critchlow’s new theater at Roxana was being designed by St. Louis architect Oliver W. Stiegemeyer.
A 1949 Boxoffice item about the post-tornado repairs to the house said that, prior to opening the Roxana, Mr. and Mrs. Critchlow had operated the Temple Theatre in Alton, Illinois.
All the early reports about this theater in Boxoffice do indicate that it opened as a single-screen house, and a very large one at that. The announcement of the June 25, 1969, opening appeared in Boxoffice of June 30, and said that the Northwest Plaza Cinema had 1,700 seats. A slightly longer item in Boxoffice of July 14 included a small photo of the theater, though it looks like it was taken before the building was completed, as there’s no signage.
A brief notice in Boxoffice of November 18, 1974, said that GCC had closed the house for twinning, and the reopening was scheduled for December 20.
Boxoffice ran an article about this theater in its issue of July 19, 1965. The text is fairly detailed in its description of the house, but the four photos are not very helpful. The Cinema I and II was said to be the first two-screener in the St. Louis area. The theater was designed for GCC by St. Louis architect Syl G. Schmidt.
The rather busy facade of the Edwards Huntington Cinema was featured on the cover of Boxoffice of July 19, 1965. An interesting feature of Roland Pierson’s design is the convex section of the front carrying the signage, which mimics the proportions and curve of a CinemaScope movie screen; a clever example of architectural form suggesting, rather than following, function. Louis Sullivan must have turned over in his grave, but J. Walter Thompson would probably have been impressed.
The July 14, 1969, issue of Boxoffice ran a single-line item saying that the Strand in Lowell had been remodeled.
Boxoffice of March 3, 1975, reported that the Strand Theatre had been sold to a Cambridge developer named Raymond A. Carye. The developer’s plans were not firm, but rehabilitation of the Strand as a cinema-restaurant-cultural center was mentioned, as well as conversion of the building into offices.
Fred Hyde and Associates opened their Village Theatre on March 18, 1947, as reported in Boxoffice of April 5. An older theater in town, called the Coronado, was in operation at least as late as 1953.
The walk-in section of the Evans Drive-In had 65 seats, according to this article in Boxoffice of July 19, 1965. In 1965, the Evans installed a system allowing patrons to receive the movie’s sound track through their car or portable radios instead of wired speakers.
The sound system was provided by a Wheatland, Colorado-based company called Minicast Corp., and must have been one of the earlier instances of the use of low-power radio for sound at drive-ins. It used an AM frequency rather than the FM which later became common for this purpose. The article mentions that operator R.L. Stanger had designed the Evans Drive-In himself.
A few interior photos of the Bradlick Theatre in Boxoffice, July 19, 1965. Captions say the house had 900 seats.
I’m glad I wasn’t a kid named Brad growing up in Annandale when this theater was operating. The mockery they must have endured!
The caption of this small photo of the Gem in Boxoffice of April 5, 1947, calls it the Rosalind Theatre, though a December 7, 1946, item had said that Bill Wegman’s new theater would be called the Gem. Further puzzlement is offered in Boxoffice of May 26, 1951, which refers to a Roseland Theatre in Homedale. I’m not sure if either of these is an actual aka for the Gem.
The caption of the 1947 photo also refers to a “makeshift” theater Bill Wegman had previously operated in Homedale. The earlier theater was also called the Gem. Boxoffice of May 22, 1937, said “The Gem Theatre of Homedale, Idaho, is reported to have opened recently.”
The scheduled opening date for the State Theatre was September 12, 1939, according to Boxoffice of September 2. The State had 670 seats and had cost $65,000 to build. It was owned by Gene Custer and Floyd Price. The partners had opened the Lewis Theatre at Lewisburg, W.V., the previous week.
Boxoffice of December 17, 1938, said that E.R. Custer’s new theater at Charleston, on which construction was scheduled to begin soon, had been designed by F&Y Building Service, of Columbus, Ohio.
Gene Custer also operated the Custer Theatre in Charleston, which had opened in 1938.
The November 27, 1961, issue of Boxoffice said that the Lyceum had been closed permanently by order of the New Orleans Board of Buildings Standards and Appeal. The house had last been operated under a lease by J.G. Broggi. The item noted that the Lyceum had been built by the late Frank Heiderich, but didn’t mention when it had opened. The item did refer to the Lyceum as one of the oldest movie houses till operating in New Orleans at that time.
The earliest mention of Heiderich and the Lyceum I’ve found is in Boxoffice of June 19, 1937, which said that he had become a grandfather. I haven’t found an obituary for Frank Heiderich in Boxoffice, but the April 5, 1952, issue had a brief item about the death of Mrs. Heiderich which said that Mr. Heiderich was believed to have started his career in exhibition in 1907. The April 12, 1952, issue mysteriously changes the spelling of the name to Heidrich, and says that Frank Heidrich had owned the Lyceum for “…over 20 years.” Son Henry Heidrich would take over management of the theater, this item said.
I was noticing the pagoda-like boxoffice in that 1912 photo. It’s an interesting bit of Chinoiserie set amid the European classical details of the facade. It looks like there might have been some Art Nouveau stained glass in the arch, the doors, and the upper floor windows as well. I wonder if there are any surviving photos of the interior?
Boxoffice of September 30, 1974, had the sad news: “The historic State Theatre in Harrisburg, purchased last October by the Pennsylvania Rural Electric Ass'n, now has been razed. The 50-year-old house was demolished to make way for a new office center.”
Flickr user pscf11 says this photo depicts the Lyceum in Harrisburg. The evidence cited is that a bar called Carley’s is now located in a building next door to the site of the Lyceum, and that building is seen in the photo. I’ve looked at a photo of the exterior of Carley’s on the bar’s web site (photo 14 of their slide show), and I don’t see a strong resemblance. The building could have been altered, of course, but until other evidence surfaces, I remain sceptical about the claim that the Lyceum in the photo is the one in Harrisburg. The address of Carley’s however, is 204 Locust Street, which means that the address of the State probably was 208 Locust, or very near it.
The Lyceum at Harrisburg is listed in the 1904 edition of Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide, which gives that house a seating capacity of 1,732.
This theater started out as a twin. Boxoffice of June 25, 1973, said that construction was about to begin on a twin theater for Turner-Reynolds Theatres (formerly Turner-Farrar Theatres) just off the town square in Harrisburg. Each auditorium was to have 309 seats. The August 6 issue of Boxoffice said that an October opening was planned for the twin on South Main Street. I haven’t found any items about the actual opening or giving the original name of the theater.
I found a Lincoln Theatre in New Orleans mentioned in Boxoffice of July 4, 1966. No address was given so I don’t know if it was this Lincoln Theatre, but it could have been.
Also, Washington is currently misspelled in the address field above. Washingtin sounds like it would be the punch line in a joke about a Model T Ford.
According to Boxoffice of January 15, 1955, the Carl Floyd Theatres circuit had recently taken over operation of the Annex. Floyd took over the Winter Garden Theatre and the Starlite Drive-In at the same time.
The September 27, 1941, issue of Boxoffice said this: “The Jeff Theatre, operated by W. H. Castay, will be one year old September 29.”
“Bill” Castay (whose first name was actually Walter, not William) also operated the Arrow Theatre in New Orleans, and operated the Jeff Theatre at least as late as 1950. He was still operating the Arrow in 1959, but I haven’t found the Jeff mentioned later than 1952.
The only mention of a Paul Horton in connection with Overton I’ve been able to find in Boxoffice is in the brief September 5, 1953, item which said that the Redwood Drive-In had opened.
A January 14, 1956, Boxoffice item said that James Brakeall had bought the Overton Theatre from Bill Hall, who had “…operated the theatre for more than twelve years….”
The Criterion got a thoroughly modern look in a 1950s remodeling which Boxoffice featured in a multi-page article in its issue of August 7, 1954. There are several photos, but there is only one small “before” shot among them.
The credits section of the article attributes the design of the project to architect Dietz Lusk Jr., and though it doesn’t specify the firm of Boller & Lusk I think the partnership was still in existence in 1954.
Incidentally, the Boller Brothers Architectural Records in the Western Historical manuscript Collection attribute the original design of the Criterion to Robert Boller, not Carl. By the time the Criterion was built, Carl had already moved to California and Robert was handling the firm’s theater projects in the Midwest.
When in the planning stage, this house was to be called the Texan Theatre, and that was the name on the vertical sign in architect Jack Corgan’s rendering of the proposed house, displayed in the “Just Off the Boards” feature of Boxoffice Magazine, March 1, 1947. The theater was being built for Lynn Smith, local associate of H.J. Griffith’s Theatre Enterprises Inc., and he apparently got the house after himself instead of using the name Texan. Smith also operated the Crystal Theatre in Gonzales.
The Boxoffice item gives the seating capacity as 900, and I think that’s probably much closer to the mark than the 1,200 given in the article from the San Antonio Express-News. The satellite views (the best is at Historic Images- the views at Google and Bing are both too blurry) show that the building is not very large, so even the Boxoffice claim of 900 could have been a bit exaggerated, as is often the case.
Anyway, by calc’s count in the comment of last May 27, the current seating capacity would be 435, if you include the 12 wheelchair spaces.
Boxoffice of October 2, 1948, gave the opening date of the Lynn Theatre as September 29.
Twinkletoes: After you enlarge the pages by clicking on the magazine, then click on the + sign in the bar that will appear at the top of the page, and that will enlarge them. Whether you’re using regular page view or Issuu’s full-screen feature, you must click on the magazine before the bar will appear. Right and left arrows at the sides of the page will turn the pages of the magazine. The Langley article is three Boxoffice pages long.
If the site isn’t working well for you, it might be your web browser. I find that Issuu gets a bit odd when I use Opera, but it works fine with Firefox. I’ve never tried it with Internet Explorer.
1955 must have been the year the name was changed. Boxoffice of March 19 that year said that CinemaScope had been installed at the Cameo in Columbus, making it the last theater in the J. Real Neth circuit to be modernized.
Here is a photo of the interior of the Vernon Theatre from the magazine Popular Mechanics, June, 1926.
Multiple references in Boxoffice to the 1937 project as the New American Theatre suggest that there was a previous American Theatre in Mount Carmel, but I’ve not found any specific references to the earlier theater of that name, nor anything revealing whether the 1937 project was a rebuild of the earlier American or was entirely new construction either on the same site or at a different location. After 1939, the new house is always referred to simply as the American Theatre.
I haven’t found any references to the Palace Theatre in Boxoffice at all. The American and the Uptown are the only Mount Carmel theaters it mentions until the Carmel Drive-In shows up in 1950. The Palace might not have operated past the silent era.
Various issues of Boxoffice through the year 1939 reported on the progress of Frank Barnes' new theater at Carmi. I haven’t found the opening date, but the sound system had been installed by November 11, 1939, so the house must have been completed later that year or very early in 1940. The architect for the project was Oliver W. Stiegemeyer.
Boxoffice of November 4, 1939, said that Albert Critchlow’s new theater at Roxana was being designed by St. Louis architect Oliver W. Stiegemeyer.
A 1949 Boxoffice item about the post-tornado repairs to the house said that, prior to opening the Roxana, Mr. and Mrs. Critchlow had operated the Temple Theatre in Alton, Illinois.