The August 11, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times said that H. N. Jorgensen had closed his East Grand Theatre in Dallas for a complete remodeling and an expansion that would almost double its seating capacity. Architect for the $25,000 project was W. Scott Dunne. Reopening was expected to take place about October 1.
An item in the April 13, 1929 issue of Motion Picture News said that “Dent Theatres, Inc., will start work on their new theatre, at Mexia, Tex., soon.” This could have been the National. It was not the Palace, as another item in the same issue of the magazine said that the Palace was then being remodeled.
Well, the second Elma Theatre was also destroyed by a fire, this one on March 16, 1948. The Fire which destroyed the Dawn Theatre in 1954 took place on March 4. The Alma Theatre Corporation rebuilt the Dawn with another Quonset structure, and rather daringly (or defiantly) named it the Flame Theatre. I’ve been unable to discover if the Flame was later destroyed by fire.
The Lyric Theatre was the only house listed at Brady in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but the theater had already been around for some time. A column headed “In Brady…42 Years Ago” in the July 16, 1954 Brady Standard included an item from the July 5, 1912 issue of the paper saying that an SRO crowd had attended the opening night of a week-long engagement of a stock company at the Lyric on July 3.
An ad for the Lyric in the January 1, 1924 Brady Standard showed daily changes of program (no Sunday shows) with a feature film and short subject, usually either a two-reel comedy or a Fox newsreel. There was one show a night at 7:30 pm, except Saturday when there were two shows, the first starting at 7:00 pm. Julius Levy was the proprietor and manager.
The 1940 Film Daily Yearbook lists two theaters at Brady, the 750-seat Brady and the 450-seat Palace.
CinemaTour lists the address of the Lyric as 118 S. Blackburn Street.
Downtown Brady had three movie houses in operation as late as 1954. The March 13 issue of Boxoffice reported that Kay Caywood, manager of all three houses, had changed their hours of operation. The Brady Theatre would now open at 1:00 pm daily except Saturday when it would open at 12:00 noon. The Texas Theatre and Palace Theatre would open at 5:30 pm Monday through Friday, 12:00 noon on Saturday, and 1:00 pm on Sunday.
The Palace might have closed in 1955, but the Texas and the Brady continued to operate for many years, so it isn’t true that the first movie shown in Brady since 1955 was at the re-opened Palace in 2014.
A new Elma Theatre was opened. A 200-seat house of that name is listed in the 1940 FDY. The Dawn Theatre, mentioned by CJ1949, was one of nine businesses in Elma destroyed by a fire in 1954. Boxoffice of March 13 said that the Dawn was a Quonset structure built in 1949, and only the front section and marquee were left standing after the fire.
The Rialto was opened in 1931. The May 5 issue of Motion Picture Times said that “Young and Baumgarten are building a handsome theatre structure in Refugio, Texas. Hall Industries will do the buying, it is said.”
On June 2, the same journal said “Carl Baumgarten opens the Rialto at Refugio, Texas, about July 1. Seats 452. Four programs will be used weekly. Henry Hall, of Beeville, is the buyer.”
The June 16 MPT continued with the news that “[c]omplete equipment, including chairs, Simplex projectors, Peerless lamps, Silversheet sound screen and Hertner generator has just been delivered to the new Rialto Theatre, Refugio, Texas.”
The Rialto’s predecessor was a house called the Majestic Theatre. The Majestic, opened in late 1916, was on a list of theaters that had been abandoned or dismantled during the previous year that was published in the January 1, 1932 Motion Picture Times.
The Majestic itself was preceded by another house, listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory as the Fidelity Theatre.
The 1927 obituary of Marshall Burns Lloyd says that the Lloyd Theatre opened in October, 1926.
The Lloyd was twinned in the 1980s, and managed to remain open until 1997. It was last operated by Rogers Cinemas. In 1998 it was converted into the Timeless Treasures Antique Mall. The antique mall retained the theater’s final marquee. Photos can be seen on this page at Water Winter Wonderland.
For a brief time in the 1930s, Lloyd’s Theatre was operated by Warner Bros., whose five year lease was noted in the August 15, 1933 edition of the Marinette Eagle-Star. Warner’s operation didn’t last the entire five years, though, as a headline in the May 31, 1934 Eagle said that the Braumart Theatre Corporation of Iron Mountain had taken over the house.
The Rialto was older than we thought. A directory from 1891 lists 1826 Hall Avenue as the location of the Stephenson Opera House. An item in the August 30, 1879 issue of the Marinette & Peshtigo Eagle said that the new opera house would be completed by October 1. It was certainly in operation by December 6, when the paper noted a packed house for an appearance by the popular vaudeville act the Clement Brothers. The same edition said that Susan B. Anthony was scheduled to give a lecture at the Stephenson Opera House.
The Opera House was built by Isaac Stephenson, a local lumber baron who was reportedly the richest man in Wisconsin, In the early 20th century served two terms in the U.S. Senate. In 1882 he built a second opera house in the neighboring town of Menominee, Michigan. Although enlarged in 1890, the Stephenson Opera House was unable to compete with Marinette’s new Turner Opera House opened in 1891, and in 1898 it was leased to the Marinette Elks Lodge for use as club rooms. Various events continued to be held there, but they were mostly of a local nature.
The next few years remain a blank for now, but the Cozy Theatre had been opened by 1912, when the April 4 issue of the Escanaba Daily Press reported that the Cozy Theatre on Hall Avenue in Marinette had been bought by a Mr. Sullivan, owner of the Royal Theatre at Escanaba.
A document from Spies Public Library of Menominee gives the address of the Fox Theatre as 1718 Wisconsin Street. Vine Street is little more than an alley that runs between Liberty Street and Wisconsin Street, south of Main Street and North of Stephenson Street. 1701 would be at the Wisconsin Street end of the block. I suspect that the address 1701 Vine was actually the stage door of the Fox, as the entrance was at the corner of Stephenson Street and Wisconsin Street.
A headline in the Marinette Eagle-Star of May 20, 1967 said “Fox Theater was formerly Marinette Opera House.” Marinette actually had two opera houses built in the 19th century: the Stephenson Opera House, on Hall Street at Stephenson, opened in 1879, and the Turner Opera House, opened in 1891 at the corner of Stephenson and Wisconsin Street. It was the Turner that became the Fox.
Various headlines in the Marinette Eagle sketch the building’s early history. The October 3, 1891 issue said that the new Turner Opera House would be dedicated on October 8. The October 31, 1898 issue said that the Turner Opera House had been sold to James Scott, who intended to improve it. That year’s Cahn guide listed the Turner Opera House at Marinette, but the 1899-1900 edition lists the Scott Opera House. James Scott died in 1908, and in 1911 the March 4 Eagle reported that the house had been sold. The 1912 Cahn guide listed the house as the Marinette Theatre. The April 4 edition of the Eagle that year said that the Marinette Theater would show “continuous motion pictures.”
Madagin and Louerman, owners of the Bijou Theatre, had taken control of the Marinette, and the February 26, 1914 Eagle reported that they had leased both houses to the Ascher Bros. circuit of Chicago. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory listed both the Bijou and Marinette, and the Marinette was listed in FDY’s through 1929. In 1930 the Marinette is gone from the FDY, replaced by the Fox.
The rebuilding as the Fox must have been extensive. The one photo we have of the Fox shows the entrance on the corner of the building, while historic photos of the Opera House show the entrance in the center of the building on the Stephenson Street side. The Turner/Scott/Marinette had been listed in Theatrical guides as an upstairs theater, but the Fox was a ground floor house. Unfortunately the Eagle headlines are silent on the subject of the conversion to a ground floor theater, so I don’t know if it was done by Fox or at some point when the house was under the Ascher Bros. control.
In any case, the Fox endured for almost four more decades. The November 13, 1959 edition of the Eagle included an illustrated supplement commemorating the Fox’s thirtieth anniversary. The theater was still operating in September, 1966, when the paper sponsored an event there, but the end came in 1967, when the headline in the September 6 issue of the Eagle read “Fox Theater Whose Roof Partly Caved In, June, Is Razed.”
Headlines in the Marinette Eagle-Star reveal two openings of the Rialto Theatre. The first published Friday, September 21, 1923 said “New Rialto Theater, Hall Ave., Will Open On Sunday-Improved & Beautified At Cost Of $25,000.”
Another headline from November 5, 1927 simply says “Grand Opening Of The Rialto Theater.” Possibly the house had been closed for a while, or maybe there was a new owner. The article itself is not available, so the exact date of this 1927 opening is as yet unrevealed.
A headline in the Marinette Star November 22, 1929 reads “Fox Theater Opens Tomorrow At 6 PM–Built In Spanish Renaissance Style–Replica Of Place” (the paper itself is not available online, only the headlines.)
The Phelps Theatre was mentioned in the December 30, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World. The new manager was James W. Carrol, formerly of the General Film Company, Boston.
An April, 1919 ad for the Phelps Theatre can be seen on this page.
A listing in the 1920 New England Business Directory puts the Phelps Theatre at 128 Main Street, but I fear that the address is obsolete. The Directory lists the Blanchard Theatre at 91 Main Street, and the modern address of the storefront Blanchard’s entrance was in is most likely 293 Main Street. All we can glean from the obsolete directory address is that the Phelps was on the opposite side of Main Street from Blanchard’s, and several doors up (or down, depending on whether or not the old numbers ascended and descended the same direction the modern numbers do) the way.
An item datelined Southbridge in the “Picture Theaters Projected” column of Moving Picture World, July 24, 1915, said that “A. Boyer has been awarded the contract to erect a three-story theater building, 110 by 52 feet, for T. F. Murphy.” It’s possible that this was the project that became the Phelps.
The Mary E. Wells High School publication Crimson and Gray, December, 1918, carried an ad from the Blanchard Brothers' company, featuring Blanchard’s Theatre, the Hippodrome, and the Plaza Theatre. The Plaza’s motto was “Shows that delight–up one flight” so I’d suppose it was an upstairs theater, though there’s no clue to its location. It boasted “Big shows–worth more–every Saturday evening–5 cents.”
1826 Hall Street is the address listed for a Marinette movie house called the Cozy Theatre in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Here is an item about the Cozy from the September 8, 1923 issue of Moving Picture World:
“The Cozy Theatre at Marinette, Wisc, will be reopened early in September and may be renamed. During the summer a new canopy has been erected, the interior redecorated, new seats installed, an addition in the rear erected, adding to the capacity of the house, and new pipe organ installed that cost $10,000. The house will be one of the niftiest in the State when all the improvements are completed.”
The Directory lists seven movie theaters at Marinette, but the Cozy is the only one for which the address is given. It looks like they did rename it, and the Cozy became the Rialto in 1923.
The Moving Picture World ran two items about theaters under construction in Marinette in 1916. The June 17, 1916 issue of MPW said that the new theater being built at Main Street and Pierce Avenue in Marinette would have 700 seats, and gave the size as 60x120. The Strand was on Main Street at the north end of Pierce Avenue, so this project was in the right location and about the right size for the Strand.
The other notice, appearing in the June 10 issue, gave the location only as Main Street, gave the dimensions of the building as 90x120, but again gave a seating capacity of 700. It also said that the new house had been leased to Ascher Bros. It’s possible that there was only one construction project and the magazine garbled the details from one item to the other, but either way the location of Main and Pierce in the June 17 item suggests that the Strand might have been built in 1916.
Three was a new operator for the Empress Theatre in 1923, noted in this item from the September 8 issue of Moving Picture World:
“The Empress Theatre at 6230 South Halsted street has been leased by the Acme Amusement Company, who will open early in September with mixed bills. The house seats 540 and is in the heart of Englewood district.”
I’m not sure what “mixed bills” means– perhaps movies with a few vaudeville acts. But I don’t know why the magazine gave such a low seating capacity for this fairly large house.
The Princess Theatre was mentioned in the March 29, 1924 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Owners Pinkelman and Cory also operated the Gem and Savoy theaters and had a new, 500-seat house under construction, which must have been the Washington Square Theatre.
This item from March 29, 1924 issue of Exhibitors Herald mentions the Savoy and Gem as well as the Princess:
“Messrs. Pinckelman [sic] and Cory, who operate the Savoy, Gem and Princess theatres, Quincy, Ill., have another house under construction at Quincy. It will seat 500 and they expect to open in June. Rube Levine is the architect.”
Pinkelman and Cory opened the new Washington Square Theatre later that year. But the item indicates that the Gem operated far beyond 1912.
We also don’t yet have a listing for the Savoy Theatre at 522 Hampshire. The Gem and Savoy were still listed in the 1926 FDY, but not later.
Blanchard’s Theatre and the Strand were two different houses, and the Strand’s predecessor, the Hippodrome, was not a theater but a multi-use public hall. Blanchard’s Theatre was a 1,100 seat house built behind the 1860 Edwards Block and opened on November 28, 1911. Its entrance was on Main Street, and can be seen in the 1927 post-fire photo on the photo page. Like the later Strand, Blanchard’s was designed by architect Louis Destremps, and though built primarily for stage productions it was equipped to show movies from the time of its opening.
The Blanchard Brothers built the Hippodrome on a large lot behind the Blanchard Theatre in 1916, and for about a decade it was used as a dance hall, skating rink, and exhibition space. In late 1925 the Blanchards decided to convert the Hippodrome building into a regular theater, and it opened as the Strand on January 14, 1926. A long entrance hall led from the entrance on Elm Street to the auditorium, which seated nearly 2,000. A commodious stage with a proscenium forty feet wide was provided for vaudeville and other theatrical productions.
The Blanchard brothers operated the Strand until their retirement, after which it became part of the Interstate Theatres chain (the one based in New England, not to be confused with the Interstate Theatres chain based in Texas.) The last show at the Strand was on February 28, 1965. Historic aerial views show that the theater’s entrance building had been demolished by 1966, but the auditorium building was still standing as late as 1977. By 1992 it too was gone, replaced by a parking lot.
Blanchard’s Theatre operated at least until the fire of January 13th, 1927. I don’t know if it reopened after that, but the building was rebuilt and the likely address of the theater, 293 Main Street, is today the home of a Spanish language Evangelical church, but it’s impossible to tell from the street views whether the church is in the old auditorium or merely in the storefronts where (and adjacent to) the theater’s entrance was.
The vanished Strand Theatre is still recalled in Southbridge’s street nomenclature. The alley that runs between the rebuilt Blanchard building and the site of the Strand appears on maps as Strand Place.
This web page has a description of the Strand from a Southbridge Evening News article published at the time if its opening. This page has a few photos and some ads and flyers published by the theater in its heyday.
The August 11, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times said that H. N. Jorgensen had closed his East Grand Theatre in Dallas for a complete remodeling and an expansion that would almost double its seating capacity. Architect for the $25,000 project was W. Scott Dunne. Reopening was expected to take place about October 1.
The March 25, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that Long’s Pasadena Theatre had been shuttered and the building would be remodeled for use as a store.
An item in the April 13, 1929 issue of Motion Picture News said that “Dent Theatres, Inc., will start work on their new theatre, at Mexia, Tex., soon.” This could have been the National. It was not the Palace, as another item in the same issue of the magazine said that the Palace was then being remodeled.
The April 13, 1929 issue of Motion Picture News said that the Palace Theatre in Mexia, Texas, was being remodeled.
Well, the second Elma Theatre was also destroyed by a fire, this one on March 16, 1948. The Fire which destroyed the Dawn Theatre in 1954 took place on March 4. The Alma Theatre Corporation rebuilt the Dawn with another Quonset structure, and rather daringly (or defiantly) named it the Flame Theatre. I’ve been unable to discover if the Flame was later destroyed by fire.
The Lyric Theatre was the only house listed at Brady in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but the theater had already been around for some time. A column headed “In Brady…42 Years Ago” in the July 16, 1954 Brady Standard included an item from the July 5, 1912 issue of the paper saying that an SRO crowd had attended the opening night of a week-long engagement of a stock company at the Lyric on July 3.
An ad for the Lyric in the January 1, 1924 Brady Standard showed daily changes of program (no Sunday shows) with a feature film and short subject, usually either a two-reel comedy or a Fox newsreel. There was one show a night at 7:30 pm, except Saturday when there were two shows, the first starting at 7:00 pm. Julius Levy was the proprietor and manager.
The 1940 Film Daily Yearbook lists two theaters at Brady, the 750-seat Brady and the 450-seat Palace.
CinemaTour lists the address of the Lyric as 118 S. Blackburn Street.
Downtown Brady had three movie houses in operation as late as 1954. The March 13 issue of Boxoffice reported that Kay Caywood, manager of all three houses, had changed their hours of operation. The Brady Theatre would now open at 1:00 pm daily except Saturday when it would open at 12:00 noon. The Texas Theatre and Palace Theatre would open at 5:30 pm Monday through Friday, 12:00 noon on Saturday, and 1:00 pm on Sunday.
The Palace might have closed in 1955, but the Texas and the Brady continued to operate for many years, so it isn’t true that the first movie shown in Brady since 1955 was at the re-opened Palace in 2014.
A new Elma Theatre was opened. A 200-seat house of that name is listed in the 1940 FDY. The Dawn Theatre, mentioned by CJ1949, was one of nine businesses in Elma destroyed by a fire in 1954. Boxoffice of March 13 said that the Dawn was a Quonset structure built in 1949, and only the front section and marquee were left standing after the fire.
The Rialto was opened in 1931. The May 5 issue of Motion Picture Times said that “Young and Baumgarten are building a handsome theatre structure in Refugio, Texas. Hall Industries will do the buying, it is said.”
On June 2, the same journal said “Carl Baumgarten opens the Rialto at Refugio, Texas, about July 1. Seats 452. Four programs will be used weekly. Henry Hall, of Beeville, is the buyer.”
The June 16 MPT continued with the news that “[c]omplete equipment, including chairs, Simplex projectors, Peerless lamps, Silversheet sound screen and Hertner generator has just been delivered to the new Rialto Theatre, Refugio, Texas.”
The Rialto’s predecessor was a house called the Majestic Theatre. The Majestic, opened in late 1916, was on a list of theaters that had been abandoned or dismantled during the previous year that was published in the January 1, 1932 Motion Picture Times.
The Majestic itself was preceded by another house, listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory as the Fidelity Theatre.
The 1927 obituary of Marshall Burns Lloyd says that the Lloyd Theatre opened in October, 1926.
The Lloyd was twinned in the 1980s, and managed to remain open until 1997. It was last operated by Rogers Cinemas. In 1998 it was converted into the Timeless Treasures Antique Mall. The antique mall retained the theater’s final marquee. Photos can be seen on this page at Water Winter Wonderland.
For a brief time in the 1930s, Lloyd’s Theatre was operated by Warner Bros., whose five year lease was noted in the August 15, 1933 edition of the Marinette Eagle-Star. Warner’s operation didn’t last the entire five years, though, as a headline in the May 31, 1934 Eagle said that the Braumart Theatre Corporation of Iron Mountain had taken over the house.
The Rialto was older than we thought. A directory from 1891 lists 1826 Hall Avenue as the location of the Stephenson Opera House. An item in the August 30, 1879 issue of the Marinette & Peshtigo Eagle said that the new opera house would be completed by October 1. It was certainly in operation by December 6, when the paper noted a packed house for an appearance by the popular vaudeville act the Clement Brothers. The same edition said that Susan B. Anthony was scheduled to give a lecture at the Stephenson Opera House.
The Opera House was built by Isaac Stephenson, a local lumber baron who was reportedly the richest man in Wisconsin, In the early 20th century served two terms in the U.S. Senate. In 1882 he built a second opera house in the neighboring town of Menominee, Michigan. Although enlarged in 1890, the Stephenson Opera House was unable to compete with Marinette’s new Turner Opera House opened in 1891, and in 1898 it was leased to the Marinette Elks Lodge for use as club rooms. Various events continued to be held there, but they were mostly of a local nature.
The next few years remain a blank for now, but the Cozy Theatre had been opened by 1912, when the April 4 issue of the Escanaba Daily Press reported that the Cozy Theatre on Hall Avenue in Marinette had been bought by a Mr. Sullivan, owner of the Royal Theatre at Escanaba.
A document from Spies Public Library of Menominee gives the address of the Fox Theatre as 1718 Wisconsin Street. Vine Street is little more than an alley that runs between Liberty Street and Wisconsin Street, south of Main Street and North of Stephenson Street. 1701 would be at the Wisconsin Street end of the block. I suspect that the address 1701 Vine was actually the stage door of the Fox, as the entrance was at the corner of Stephenson Street and Wisconsin Street.
A headline in the Marinette Eagle-Star of May 20, 1967 said “Fox Theater was formerly Marinette Opera House.” Marinette actually had two opera houses built in the 19th century: the Stephenson Opera House, on Hall Street at Stephenson, opened in 1879, and the Turner Opera House, opened in 1891 at the corner of Stephenson and Wisconsin Street. It was the Turner that became the Fox.
Various headlines in the Marinette Eagle sketch the building’s early history. The October 3, 1891 issue said that the new Turner Opera House would be dedicated on October 8. The October 31, 1898 issue said that the Turner Opera House had been sold to James Scott, who intended to improve it. That year’s Cahn guide listed the Turner Opera House at Marinette, but the 1899-1900 edition lists the Scott Opera House. James Scott died in 1908, and in 1911 the March 4 Eagle reported that the house had been sold. The 1912 Cahn guide listed the house as the Marinette Theatre. The April 4 edition of the Eagle that year said that the Marinette Theater would show “continuous motion pictures.”
Madagin and Louerman, owners of the Bijou Theatre, had taken control of the Marinette, and the February 26, 1914 Eagle reported that they had leased both houses to the Ascher Bros. circuit of Chicago. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory listed both the Bijou and Marinette, and the Marinette was listed in FDY’s through 1929. In 1930 the Marinette is gone from the FDY, replaced by the Fox.
The rebuilding as the Fox must have been extensive. The one photo we have of the Fox shows the entrance on the corner of the building, while historic photos of the Opera House show the entrance in the center of the building on the Stephenson Street side. The Turner/Scott/Marinette had been listed in Theatrical guides as an upstairs theater, but the Fox was a ground floor house. Unfortunately the Eagle headlines are silent on the subject of the conversion to a ground floor theater, so I don’t know if it was done by Fox or at some point when the house was under the Ascher Bros. control.
In any case, the Fox endured for almost four more decades. The November 13, 1959 edition of the Eagle included an illustrated supplement commemorating the Fox’s thirtieth anniversary. The theater was still operating in September, 1966, when the paper sponsored an event there, but the end came in 1967, when the headline in the September 6 issue of the Eagle read “Fox Theater Whose Roof Partly Caved In, June, Is Razed.”
Headlines in the Marinette Eagle-Star reveal two openings of the Rialto Theatre. The first published Friday, September 21, 1923 said “New Rialto Theater, Hall Ave., Will Open On Sunday-Improved & Beautified At Cost Of $25,000.”
Another headline from November 5, 1927 simply says “Grand Opening Of The Rialto Theater.” Possibly the house had been closed for a while, or maybe there was a new owner. The article itself is not available, so the exact date of this 1927 opening is as yet unrevealed.
A headline in the Marinette Eagle of Friday, September 21, 1917 said “Strand Theater Opens Saturday.”
A headline in the Marinette Star November 22, 1929 reads “Fox Theater Opens Tomorrow At 6 PM–Built In Spanish Renaissance Style–Replica Of Place” (the paper itself is not available online, only the headlines.)
The Phelps Theatre was mentioned in the December 30, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World. The new manager was James W. Carrol, formerly of the General Film Company, Boston.
An April, 1919 ad for the Phelps Theatre can be seen on this page.
A listing in the 1920 New England Business Directory puts the Phelps Theatre at 128 Main Street, but I fear that the address is obsolete. The Directory lists the Blanchard Theatre at 91 Main Street, and the modern address of the storefront Blanchard’s entrance was in is most likely 293 Main Street. All we can glean from the obsolete directory address is that the Phelps was on the opposite side of Main Street from Blanchard’s, and several doors up (or down, depending on whether or not the old numbers ascended and descended the same direction the modern numbers do) the way.
An item datelined Southbridge in the “Picture Theaters Projected” column of Moving Picture World, July 24, 1915, said that “A. Boyer has been awarded the contract to erect a three-story theater building, 110 by 52 feet, for T. F. Murphy.” It’s possible that this was the project that became the Phelps.
The Mary E. Wells High School publication Crimson and Gray, December, 1918, carried an ad from the Blanchard Brothers' company, featuring Blanchard’s Theatre, the Hippodrome, and the Plaza Theatre. The Plaza’s motto was “Shows that delight–up one flight” so I’d suppose it was an upstairs theater, though there’s no clue to its location. It boasted “Big shows–worth more–every Saturday evening–5 cents.”
Typo in the heading: Should be Vine Street, not Vince Street.
1826 Hall Street is the address listed for a Marinette movie house called the Cozy Theatre in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Here is an item about the Cozy from the September 8, 1923 issue of Moving Picture World:
The Directory lists seven movie theaters at Marinette, but the Cozy is the only one for which the address is given. It looks like they did rename it, and the Cozy became the Rialto in 1923.The Moving Picture World ran two items about theaters under construction in Marinette in 1916. The June 17, 1916 issue of MPW said that the new theater being built at Main Street and Pierce Avenue in Marinette would have 700 seats, and gave the size as 60x120. The Strand was on Main Street at the north end of Pierce Avenue, so this project was in the right location and about the right size for the Strand.
The other notice, appearing in the June 10 issue, gave the location only as Main Street, gave the dimensions of the building as 90x120, but again gave a seating capacity of 700. It also said that the new house had been leased to Ascher Bros. It’s possible that there was only one construction project and the magazine garbled the details from one item to the other, but either way the location of Main and Pierce in the June 17 item suggests that the Strand might have been built in 1916.
Three was a new operator for the Empress Theatre in 1923, noted in this item from the September 8 issue of Moving Picture World:
I’m not sure what “mixed bills” means– perhaps movies with a few vaudeville acts. But I don’t know why the magazine gave such a low seating capacity for this fairly large house.The Princess Theatre was mentioned in the March 29, 1924 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Owners Pinkelman and Cory also operated the Gem and Savoy theaters and had a new, 500-seat house under construction, which must have been the Washington Square Theatre.
This item from March 29, 1924 issue of Exhibitors Herald mentions the Savoy and Gem as well as the Princess:
Pinkelman and Cory opened the new Washington Square Theatre later that year. But the item indicates that the Gem operated far beyond 1912.We also don’t yet have a listing for the Savoy Theatre at 522 Hampshire. The Gem and Savoy were still listed in the 1926 FDY, but not later.
Blanchard’s Theatre and the Strand were two different houses, and the Strand’s predecessor, the Hippodrome, was not a theater but a multi-use public hall. Blanchard’s Theatre was a 1,100 seat house built behind the 1860 Edwards Block and opened on November 28, 1911. Its entrance was on Main Street, and can be seen in the 1927 post-fire photo on the photo page. Like the later Strand, Blanchard’s was designed by architect Louis Destremps, and though built primarily for stage productions it was equipped to show movies from the time of its opening.
The Blanchard Brothers built the Hippodrome on a large lot behind the Blanchard Theatre in 1916, and for about a decade it was used as a dance hall, skating rink, and exhibition space. In late 1925 the Blanchards decided to convert the Hippodrome building into a regular theater, and it opened as the Strand on January 14, 1926. A long entrance hall led from the entrance on Elm Street to the auditorium, which seated nearly 2,000. A commodious stage with a proscenium forty feet wide was provided for vaudeville and other theatrical productions.
The Blanchard brothers operated the Strand until their retirement, after which it became part of the Interstate Theatres chain (the one based in New England, not to be confused with the Interstate Theatres chain based in Texas.) The last show at the Strand was on February 28, 1965. Historic aerial views show that the theater’s entrance building had been demolished by 1966, but the auditorium building was still standing as late as 1977. By 1992 it too was gone, replaced by a parking lot.
Blanchard’s Theatre operated at least until the fire of January 13th, 1927. I don’t know if it reopened after that, but the building was rebuilt and the likely address of the theater, 293 Main Street, is today the home of a Spanish language Evangelical church, but it’s impossible to tell from the street views whether the church is in the old auditorium or merely in the storefronts where (and adjacent to) the theater’s entrance was.
The vanished Strand Theatre is still recalled in Southbridge’s street nomenclature. The alley that runs between the rebuilt Blanchard building and the site of the Strand appears on maps as Strand Place.
This web page has a description of the Strand from a Southbridge Evening News article published at the time if its opening. This page has a few photos and some ads and flyers published by the theater in its heyday.
Texarkana, Arkansas, actually. I lost focus while writing the caption.