Boxoffice of April 5, 1952, reported that the Crosstown Theatre had been designed by the architectural firm of Brueggeman, Swaim & Allen.
The front of the Crosstown, Boxoffice reported, “…employs approximately one mile of neon tubing in the installation, requiring 40 circuits and 143 transformers. The V-shaped signature tower with Crosstown in vertical letters is 72 feet high, and begins 20 feet above the ground.”
Boxoffice of April 15, 1950, says that the Kewaskum Theatre began operating on March 26 that year, but that the formal opening was delayed until April 9 due to the Lenten season. This item also confirms Urban Peacock as the sole architect of the theater.
The State was sold by the Minnesota Amusement Company, a Paramount affiliate, to comply with the terms of the Paramount consent decree. The February 18, 1950, issue of Boxoffice reported the sale, saying that the State had been MAC’s “C” house in Austin. The buyers were the Donovan Brothers.
According to a 1966 article from the Austin Daily Herald, quoted by ken mc in a comment of Dec 16, 2006, on the Paramount Theatre page, the State actually opened as the Lyric sometime around 1912, and operated until about 1962. It was converted into a Goodwill store in 1966.
The Kent Theatre was designed by architect Henry E. Greenspoon. The Kent and another of Greenspoon’s pre-war designs, the Villeray Theatre on Rue St. Denis, were pictured in an article by Helen Kent in Boxoffice, March 3, 1945.
The name of the architectural firm is currently misspelled above (and on the pages for the other two theaters designed by Ellerbe & Company.) It should be Ellerbe, ending with one e. The company was founded in 1909 by Franklin Ellerbe and, upon his death in 1921, was taken over by his son Thomas F. Ellerbe who, as lead architect, expanded the firm into the largest in Minnesota.
Thomas Ellerbe was an avid supporter of co-ops and eventually converted his firm into an employee-owned organization, which it remained until merging with Welton Becket and Associates (designers of Pacific’s Cinerama Dome in Hollywood) in 1987. The successor firm, Ellerbe-Becket, remains in operation today.
The Paramount Theatre at Austin was originally planned for the Finkelstein & Ruben circuit, which was taken over by Paramount before construction was completed, and the house opened as the Paramount under the Publix banner in September, 1929.
Movie Age of November 30, 1929 said that the Winona Theatre, extensively remodeled, had reopened and was the second theater in town to install sound. The item also made reference to “…the atmospheric State Theatre in Winona” where improvements to the projection booth costing $5,000 were underway. The State appears to have been the town’s “A” house.
A picture postcard dated 1908, showing the Winona Theatre when it was still the Winona Opera House, can be seen on this page (sixth card from the top.) The splendid Richardsonian Romanesque facade suggests that it was constructed in the 1880s or 1890s.
According to Movie Age of November 30, 1929, the new Publix house at Brainard was scheduled to open on December 15. It was, the magazine said, “…an atmospheric theatre with open sky and twinkling star effects.”
According to this web page, architect Henry Hohauser was a cousin of architect William Hohauser and had worked in his New York office before moving to Miami in 1932.
I don’t know why I said “all” the early Community houses might have been designed by Lamb, as I did know that Hohauser had designed the one in Hudson and had probably designed others. But Lamb definitely designed the Toms River Community Theatre opened a couple of months after the Saratoga Springs house.
The architect of the Florida Theatre was Roy A. Benjamin. The announcement that construction had begun appeared in Boxoffice, August 21, 1937. The house was being built for Sparks Theatres, already operating the 600-seat Ritz and the Hollywood Beach Theatre in Hollywood.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, the Star was the only theater in Goldendale in the 1940s (Boxoffice never mentions any others), so it must have been the as-yet unnamed house K.A. Spears was building there in 1937, announced in Boxoffice of August 21 that year. The new theater was to seat 450 and was expected to open in October. The architect was D.W. (Day Walter) Hilborn.
CinemaTour has three photos of the Tower Square Cinemas (the vertical sign seen in one photos just says Tower Cinema) at 50 N. Tower Square in Tulare. The photos are dated 1999. CinemaTour doesn’t give the number of screens, but Mike Rivest lists it as a triplex. I haven’t found it mentioned in Boxoffice Magazine.
A couple of web sites say that the former Tower Square Cinemas building was converted into an indoor paintball venue in 2008, but I can’t find a listing for it on the Internet. Maybe it didn’t last long.
In addition to the Tulare, State, and Tower Square, Tulare had a theater called the El Rey operating from at least 1940 into the 1950s, and a small twin (2x180 seats) opened in the Town and Country Village shopping center in 1973. I found a single reference to a Lake Theatre in Tulare in a 1944 Boxoffice item, but that might have been a misplacing of a Lake Theatre somewhere else— perhaps the one in Corcoran.
There are also a few items about theaters in Tulare that appeared in Southwest Builder & Contractor as far back as 1912, and one of these was probably the first Tulare Theatre, but I don’t know which of them it was. Other projects the magazine announced might never have been built.
Tulare now has a multiplex called the Galaxy Tulare 10, opened in 2004.
I’m not doubting that the theater was multiplexed, just saying that I can’t find anything in Boxoffice about it. I had hoped to find an item that would reveal the year that it was done, and that might give the new seating capacity.
The Alliance was a 1937 rebuild of an older theater called the Imperial. Fox Intermountain had recently opened the rebuilt and renamed house, according to Boxoffice of November 20 that year. The Imperial had already been completely remodeled before, as reported in Movie Age of January 19, 1929.
Fox Intermountain was still operating the Alliance when the house was reseated in 1956, reducing capacity from 900 to 756, according to Boxoffice of June 2.
Updated and remodeled again in 1976, the Alliance was then being operated by Commonwealth Theatres, as reported in Boxoffice of October 11.
I’ve found nothing in Boxoffice about the multiplexing of this theater.
The Rig Drive-in was dismantled in 1962, according to Boxoffice Magazine of August 13 that year. The owner, Joe Stribling, cited a decline in business, as well as a lack of time to look after the theaters, for his decision to close the Rig Drive-In and Davenport’s only other theater, the Gem.
Was the Gay Theatre’s name changed to the Strand as early as 1917, or was there an earlier Strand Theatre in Knoxville? The July 7, 1917, issue of the trade journal The Music Trade Review said: “The Signal Amusement Co. of Chattanooga has opened the new Strand Theatre in Knoxville.”
The Music Trade Review of March 9, 1918, had this interesting information: “The Wm. L. Glockner Music Co., the local Wurlitzer representative, reports the placing recently of a Style H Wurlitzer Orchestra in the Hidalgo Motion Picture Theatre, on North Main Street.”
Here’s evidence of another movie house in San Pedro, from The Music Trade Review of April 14, 1917: “The Wm. L. Glockner Music Co. reports the sale of a Wurlitzer orchestra, Style Y-O, to the Empire Motion Picture Theatre, San Pedro, Cal.”
The Ideal Theatre was built for Consolidated Amusements Enterprises, one of the largest of the early movie theater circuits in the east. The trade journal The Music Trade Review of November 6, 1915, published an encomium penned by Consolidated’s head, Lawrence Bolognino, in praise of the instruments of the American Photo Player Co., which had been installed in a number of the circuit’s houses.
The Ideal was then under construction, and a $5,000 Fotoplayer had been ordered for it. Other theaters being operated by Consolidated (each with a Fotoplayer among its accouterments) included the Drury Lane Theatre, the Regent Theatre, the Seventy-Second Street Playhouse, and the Morningside Theatre.
The Winkler Drive-In was designed by architect Jack Corgan, according to Boxoffice of April 5, 1947. It was the ninth Texas drive-in in the Underwood and Ezell chain.
I finally stumbled across a Boxoffice item later than 1947 with information about the second Soledad Theatre. It’s in the August 5, 1950, issue in an article about the use of laminated wood in theater construction. The theater isn’t mentioned in the article itself, but two photos of it, inside and out, are used as illustrations.
No sooner is one mystery solved than another arises. It has taken me a few months to realize that there’s another mystery, though. Boxoffice of October 5, 1946, said: “The Soledad Theatre in Soledad burned to the ground recently. Owners are Gnesa and Franscioni.” But, in the absence of addresses, there’s no confirmation that the burned Soledad Theatre was the same one that was run by the Johnsons in the 1920s.
If the information in the October 6, 2005, comment by Tom DeLay above is correct, and the building the Johnsons' Soledad Theatre occupied is still standing, then the theater that burned to the ground in 1946 must have been a second Soledad Theatre, and the building on Kidder Street that was built to replace it would be the third house of the name.
Boxoffice of April 5, 1952, reported that the Crosstown Theatre had been designed by the architectural firm of Brueggeman, Swaim & Allen.
The front of the Crosstown, Boxoffice reported, “…employs approximately one mile of neon tubing in the installation, requiring 40 circuits and 143 transformers. The V-shaped signature tower with Crosstown in vertical letters is 72 feet high, and begins 20 feet above the ground.”
Boxoffice of April 15, 1950, says that the Kewaskum Theatre began operating on March 26 that year, but that the formal opening was delayed until April 9 due to the Lenten season. This item also confirms Urban Peacock as the sole architect of the theater.
The State was sold by the Minnesota Amusement Company, a Paramount affiliate, to comply with the terms of the Paramount consent decree. The February 18, 1950, issue of Boxoffice reported the sale, saying that the State had been MAC’s “C” house in Austin. The buyers were the Donovan Brothers.
According to a 1966 article from the Austin Daily Herald, quoted by ken mc in a comment of Dec 16, 2006, on the Paramount Theatre page, the State actually opened as the Lyric sometime around 1912, and operated until about 1962. It was converted into a Goodwill store in 1966.
The Kent Theatre was designed by architect Henry E. Greenspoon. The Kent and another of Greenspoon’s pre-war designs, the Villeray Theatre on Rue St. Denis, were pictured in an article by Helen Kent in Boxoffice, March 3, 1945.
The name of the architectural firm is currently misspelled above (and on the pages for the other two theaters designed by Ellerbe & Company.) It should be Ellerbe, ending with one e. The company was founded in 1909 by Franklin Ellerbe and, upon his death in 1921, was taken over by his son Thomas F. Ellerbe who, as lead architect, expanded the firm into the largest in Minnesota.
Thomas Ellerbe was an avid supporter of co-ops and eventually converted his firm into an employee-owned organization, which it remained until merging with Welton Becket and Associates (designers of Pacific’s Cinerama Dome in Hollywood) in 1987. The successor firm, Ellerbe-Becket, remains in operation today.
The Paramount Theatre at Austin was originally planned for the Finkelstein & Ruben circuit, which was taken over by Paramount before construction was completed, and the house opened as the Paramount under the Publix banner in September, 1929.
Movie Age of November 30, 1929 said that the Winona Theatre, extensively remodeled, had reopened and was the second theater in town to install sound. The item also made reference to “…the atmospheric State Theatre in Winona” where improvements to the projection booth costing $5,000 were underway. The State appears to have been the town’s “A” house.
A picture postcard dated 1908, showing the Winona Theatre when it was still the Winona Opera House, can be seen on this page (sixth card from the top.) The splendid Richardsonian Romanesque facade suggests that it was constructed in the 1880s or 1890s.
According to Movie Age of November 30, 1929, the new Publix house at Brainard was scheduled to open on December 15. It was, the magazine said, “…an atmospheric theatre with open sky and twinkling star effects.”
Here.
According to this web page, architect Henry Hohauser was a cousin of architect William Hohauser and had worked in his New York office before moving to Miami in 1932.
A rendering of the Plaza Theatre, along with a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Gus Cianciolo and their two sons appeared in Boxoffice, April 5, 1952.
Oops. Sorry for the belated reply, Patsy, but I don’t get CT notifications anymore due to my e-mail provider blacklisting the domain.
The picture is online here.
I don’t know why I said “all” the early Community houses might have been designed by Lamb, as I did know that Hohauser had designed the one in Hudson and had probably designed others. But Lamb definitely designed the Toms River Community Theatre opened a couple of months after the Saratoga Springs house.
This theater was a Thomas Lamb design. There’s a picture of it in Boxoffice of August 21, 1937.
The architect of the Florida Theatre was Roy A. Benjamin. The announcement that construction had begun appeared in Boxoffice, August 21, 1937. The house was being built for Sparks Theatres, already operating the 600-seat Ritz and the Hollywood Beach Theatre in Hollywood.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, the Star was the only theater in Goldendale in the 1940s (Boxoffice never mentions any others), so it must have been the as-yet unnamed house K.A. Spears was building there in 1937, announced in Boxoffice of August 21 that year. The new theater was to seat 450 and was expected to open in October. The architect was D.W. (Day Walter) Hilborn.
CinemaTour has three photos of the Tower Square Cinemas (the vertical sign seen in one photos just says Tower Cinema) at 50 N. Tower Square in Tulare. The photos are dated 1999. CinemaTour doesn’t give the number of screens, but Mike Rivest lists it as a triplex. I haven’t found it mentioned in Boxoffice Magazine.
A couple of web sites say that the former Tower Square Cinemas building was converted into an indoor paintball venue in 2008, but I can’t find a listing for it on the Internet. Maybe it didn’t last long.
In addition to the Tulare, State, and Tower Square, Tulare had a theater called the El Rey operating from at least 1940 into the 1950s, and a small twin (2x180 seats) opened in the Town and Country Village shopping center in 1973. I found a single reference to a Lake Theatre in Tulare in a 1944 Boxoffice item, but that might have been a misplacing of a Lake Theatre somewhere else— perhaps the one in Corcoran.
There are also a few items about theaters in Tulare that appeared in Southwest Builder & Contractor as far back as 1912, and one of these was probably the first Tulare Theatre, but I don’t know which of them it was. Other projects the magazine announced might never have been built.
Tulare now has a multiplex called the Galaxy Tulare 10, opened in 2004.
I’m not doubting that the theater was multiplexed, just saying that I can’t find anything in Boxoffice about it. I had hoped to find an item that would reveal the year that it was done, and that might give the new seating capacity.
The Alliance was a 1937 rebuild of an older theater called the Imperial. Fox Intermountain had recently opened the rebuilt and renamed house, according to Boxoffice of November 20 that year. The Imperial had already been completely remodeled before, as reported in Movie Age of January 19, 1929.
Fox Intermountain was still operating the Alliance when the house was reseated in 1956, reducing capacity from 900 to 756, according to Boxoffice of June 2.
Updated and remodeled again in 1976, the Alliance was then being operated by Commonwealth Theatres, as reported in Boxoffice of October 11.
I’ve found nothing in Boxoffice about the multiplexing of this theater.
The Rig Drive-in was dismantled in 1962, according to Boxoffice Magazine of August 13 that year. The owner, Joe Stribling, cited a decline in business, as well as a lack of time to look after the theaters, for his decision to close the Rig Drive-In and Davenport’s only other theater, the Gem.
Was the Gay Theatre’s name changed to the Strand as early as 1917, or was there an earlier Strand Theatre in Knoxville? The July 7, 1917, issue of the trade journal The Music Trade Review said: “The Signal Amusement Co. of Chattanooga has opened the new Strand Theatre in Knoxville.”
The Music Trade Review of March 9, 1918, had this interesting information: “The Wm. L. Glockner Music Co., the local Wurlitzer representative, reports the placing recently of a Style H Wurlitzer Orchestra in the Hidalgo Motion Picture Theatre, on North Main Street.”
I wonder if this was the same Glockner who operated Glockner’s Automatic Theatre?
Here’s evidence of another movie house in San Pedro, from The Music Trade Review of April 14, 1917: “The Wm. L. Glockner Music Co. reports the sale of a Wurlitzer orchestra, Style Y-O, to the Empire Motion Picture Theatre, San Pedro, Cal.”
The Ideal Theatre was built for Consolidated Amusements Enterprises, one of the largest of the early movie theater circuits in the east. The trade journal The Music Trade Review of November 6, 1915, published an encomium penned by Consolidated’s head, Lawrence Bolognino, in praise of the instruments of the American Photo Player Co., which had been installed in a number of the circuit’s houses.
The Ideal was then under construction, and a $5,000 Fotoplayer had been ordered for it. Other theaters being operated by Consolidated (each with a Fotoplayer among its accouterments) included the Drury Lane Theatre, the Regent Theatre, the Seventy-Second Street Playhouse, and the Morningside Theatre.
The Winkler Drive-In was designed by architect Jack Corgan, according to Boxoffice of April 5, 1947. It was the ninth Texas drive-in in the Underwood and Ezell chain.
I finally stumbled across a Boxoffice item later than 1947 with information about the second Soledad Theatre. It’s in the August 5, 1950, issue in an article about the use of laminated wood in theater construction. The theater isn’t mentioned in the article itself, but two photos of it, inside and out, are used as illustrations.
See bottom of right-hand page here.
No sooner is one mystery solved than another arises. It has taken me a few months to realize that there’s another mystery, though. Boxoffice of October 5, 1946, said: “The Soledad Theatre in Soledad burned to the ground recently. Owners are Gnesa and Franscioni.” But, in the absence of addresses, there’s no confirmation that the burned Soledad Theatre was the same one that was run by the Johnsons in the 1920s.
If the information in the October 6, 2005, comment by Tom DeLay above is correct, and the building the Johnsons' Soledad Theatre occupied is still standing, then the theater that burned to the ground in 1946 must have been a second Soledad Theatre, and the building on Kidder Street that was built to replace it would be the third house of the name.