Was this cinema located at 58 Broad Street? If so, it is now a Mr. Mattress, having previously been an art gallery:
A second-generation business owner, Abe Feldmus decided to open his family’s third Mr. Mattress store at 58 Broad St. in Red Bank after moving to town four years ago.
“It’s a great destination town,” said Feldmus, who converted an art gallery space to a mattress showroom featuring Sealy and Stearns & Foster mattresses, beds, and futons, in sizes ranging from single to king. He pointed out the openings for a projector that are still visible in the walls of the store, which once was the location of Red Bank Cinema.
Per philadelphiabuildings.org, architect was Hoffman-Henon Co. They prepared plans on 3/17/1920 for the Stanley Co. of America for a new movie theater (not named) at Broad & Warren Streets.
Good article regarding the recent history of this theater:
08/22/2001
BOONTON’S DARRESS THEATRE
By BOB DECKER , Contributing Writer
Recorder Newspapers
From Harry Houdini to amateur boxing
BOONTON – For more than 21 years Tom Timbrook has been repairing, upgrading, renovating and generally making nice the Darress Theatre located on Main Street here in town.
At first, it was fixing the holes in the roof and upgrading the heating, plumbing, electrical, sprinkler and emergency light systems in the building … after, of course, he got rid of the toadstools growing in the seat cushions.
“It took us four months to open … and then we closed down and didn’t open for another eight months,” Timbrook recalled the other day while taking care of customers in the Boonton Photo shop, the camera store he also owns and moved into the lobby of the theatre in 1988 so he could save a little rent and also be close to the constant theater renovations taking place.
Summer Stock
“We did summer stock with a very good group that called itself ‘Goodtime Summer Theatre’ for the first two years,” Timbrook added. “Then we did opera with a company out of New York and then we started mixing in some movies – we got some stuff that was just coming out but we were never really considered a first-run theater.”
The building was erected in 1919 as a vaudeville theater and changed its name to “State Theater” in 1934 when it served as a movie theater. Timbrook changed the name back to “Darress Theatre” when he bought it in 1980 not only because he loved the theater, but because he “ … liked the the abience and the feel of the building.”
When the video craze hit in the mid to late ‘80s, Timbrook cut back on movies and concentrated more on live presentations – plays, musicals, dramatic readings, poetry readings.
“Video rentals hurt all the little theaters – some even went by the wayside,” Timbrook said. “We still ran some movies but tried to spice things up … like the time we tried ‘Date Night’ and let couples bring in their own wine.”
That was back in the time when the patched-up heating system still wasn’t good enough to endure the Morris County winters and Timbrook would shut down shortly after Thanksgiving and reopen in March of the following year.
“The heating is fine now,” Timbrook said. “In fact, I would have to say the theater is in good shape although we are constantly doing a lot of little things to improve and upgrade the facility.”
One upgrade is the cafe located inside the building, offering theater goers a chance to “… stay and discuss the performance or just relax over some wine and cheese,” according to Timbrook, who more often than not gets into these post-performance discussions. “When the show ends, it’s not as if you have to leave right away.”
All of the money that comes through the ticket windows goes right back into the theatre for its maintenance and to keep the best of the area’s alternative cinema and talent coming into the building.
“It’s a total investment on our part … I wish I could say we turn a profit but we don’t,” Timbrook said. “When we first bought into the theater, the building itself was in jeopardy … now, we’re on solid footing.”
The “we” includes Helene, Timbrook’s wife of more than 30 years who works in the graphic arts industry but gives Timbrook a hand when he needs it.
‘The Penthouse’
The Timbrooks live in Hackettstown but keep an apartment (“… the penthouse,” he calls it) at the theater that is used when performances run late and the cafe crowd may linger longer than usual.
The building that featured Abbott ‘n Costello, Harry Houdini and Burns and Allen in the days of vaudeville now presents children’s plays and musicals, performances by the Boonton Baroque Orchestra and movies such as “Atlantis” and “Shrek” as well as some new ventures he has planned for upcoming weeks.
Standup Comedy
Timbrook tried standup comedy for the first time this past Saturday and this Friday will present the 1928 silent film “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” with organ accompaniment by Ralph Ringstad.
On Saturday, Sept. 1, Timbrook will have a boxing show put on by the Rivera Boxing School, also located on Main Street in town.
“Heidi” will be presented three full weekends starting Friday, Oct. 5; a dramatic Dracula reading will take place on Saturday, Oct. 13, and run for two weekends; “Weird New Jersey” magazine will put on a slide show presentation on Saturday, Nov. 24, featuring all the “weird stuff” that goes on in the area.
“We usually get 500 to 600 people in the place when they are here,” Timbrook says of his 700-seat capacity theater. “They have some good stuff.
“Our contacts include many talented filmmakers, artists, writers, musicians and actors. Our goal is to provide a comfortable entertainment experience.”
The Select, 78 miles east of Dallas on Highway 80, has its own lush history. R.T. Hooks Sr. and wife Mattie founded the theater in 1920 and named it (nothing exciting here) after the Dallas distribution company that fed them their movies. Later, they moved to Lubbock, Texas, and turned over operations to a man who, according to local legend, proved not to be a very good manager.
So son R.T. Hooks Jr. bought the theater back and agreed to keep on a 16-year-old employee who had been working there since he was 12.
James Oscar Dear swept floors and poured Cokes and did just about everything to make the Select feel loved. When Hooks Jr. passed away in 1961, Dear and fellow employee Truman Thomas bought the Select from Hooks' widow and the Hooks estate. And the two men ran it as partners for 25 more years, until 1986, when they donated it to the Lake Country Playhouse. Four times a year, it stages live plays.
Now 89, Dear has played a key role in sustaining the Select, whose survival has been facilitated with more than $250,000 from the town’s Meredith Foundation, which, in 2001, financed the theater’s renovation, including $98,750 used for those 248 gorgeous new seats.
Celia Hansell, 44, is the daughter of parents who grew up near Mineola. She loves coming to the Select, as did her dad, who tells stories about riding into town in the back of a pickup truck to see Western serials for a nickel on Saturdays.
“It’s really neat when you think about how long people have been coming here,” says Hansell, sitting with her husband, Mark Hansell, 49, and their children, 6-year-old Luke and 5-year-old Lauren Grace. “I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, I hope it never dies.”
Source: Dallas Morning News, The (TX), Jul 07, 2005
Named after Dallas' Elm Street movie palace, the Wills Point Majestic opened in 1926, two years before the first “talkie.” In that time, it has had three owners, all named Karl Lybrand _ I, II and III.
The eldest began showing movies in the back of his tailor shop in 1907, in a makeshift theater called The Home. The Lybrands contend that theirs is the oldest continuously operating, family-owned theater in the United States.
Lybrand III, 61, has two daughters, who have shown little interest in running the faded theater, whose exterior bricks are the same rusty color as those on its bumpy surrounding streets.
“I plan on being here as long as I am physically able,” says Karl III, who knows his customers by name and who refuses to leave until the last underage patron finds a ride. Rather than leave a kid stranded, he occasionally drives them home.
His theater is like a comfortable old shoe, which got a minor makeover a few years back. Its 315 seats were reupholstered in 2003, and during the 1980s, Karl III went to “the platter system,” eliminating the need for the theater’s carbon-arc projectors, which pre-dated World War II. He also installed a new screen. The sound, however, still rattles through a Radio Shack amplifier.
“I don’t have reclining seats, or stadium seating or surround sound or any of the stuff you get at the AMC 30 in Mesquite _ where all of our teenagers go, which is why I don’t have a teenage crowd any more. What people tell me they love here is the nostalgia, and we’ve got plenty of that.”
Like everybody who grew up in Wills Point, 48 miles east of Dallas on Highway 80, assistant manager John Allen, 28, has seen movies here since he could talk. “It’s my entire childhood wrapped up in one building,” he says.
Source: Dallas Morning News, The (TX), Jul 07, 2005
Jun. 24—STATE COLLEGE — Renovation of the shuttered State Theatre will begin in late July or early August, project organizers announced Thursday, setting next summer as the theater’s opening season.
More than $3.55 million in construction will restore the 1938 movie house at 128 W. College Ave. as the nonprofit community-arts center first envisioned in 2001, organizer Mike Negra said. He said it’ll house 560 seats and could host more than 280 attractions a year.
Inside, Negra said, the new State Theatre will be comfortable, high-tech and subdued, with lighting and acoustics to accommodate cinema, live acting, concerts, lectures and other events.
“The theater has never been one with angels hanging from the ceiling,” said Negra, who leads the board of State Theatre Inc. “We want the wow factor to happen inside the audience chamber.”
Thursday’s announcement capped months of speculation and concern about the project, which lost its executive director in April. Renovation had been scheduled to begin in October 2004, but initial construction bids dealt the group a substantial setback, well exceeding the $3 million budget plan. The first bid was $5.5 million, Negra said.
“Did the concept of us not being able to make it ever enter my mind?” Negra said. “Probably about two seconds after I heard the $5.5 million number. Absolutely.”
Since then, State Theatre advocates have worked to trim construction costs — “to look for waste” — and keep the project viable, Negra said. They’ve rearranged some technical aspects of the design. For instance, they scrapped early plans for a walk-up ticket window, opting instead for a walk-in-only box office beside the theater’s front entrance.
The cost cuts and a recent spurt in fundraising pushed organizers to Thursday’s turning point, Negra said, when they could finally announce a firm timetable. They plan to sign a statement of intent today with Poole Anderson Construction, the project’s general contractor.
Poole Anderson and State Theatre Inc., a nonprofit organization, are expecting to formalize a contract in July, Negra said.
He said the project has received hundreds of private donations, ranging from $5 to $100,000, in addition to a state grant of $1.5 million. It still needs to raise slightly less than $2 million.
Bruce A. Lingenfelter, development chairman, said the group plans to take out a mortgage to cover the funding gap. But “we don’t expect to have the mortgage long,” he said.
Now that the project has gotten this far, Lingenfelter said, he expects fundraising will become easier. “Getting people to buy into the project” has been a hurdle, he said.
Once it opens, Negra said, the theater should be self-sufficient and could employ five or six full-time workers, plus part-timers and interns.
“It’s part of the quality of life, lifestyle, entertainment — creating this environment downtown to encourage people to live here,” said Teresa Sparacino, executive director of the Downtown Improvement District. She said businesses have already seen an economic uptick from the 150-seat Penn State Downtown Theatre, which opened in 2003.
“You can just imagine the impact the State Theatre is going to have,” Sparacino said
Please change status to OPNE!! This theater will reopen on August 7th. Nice 1940 photo of Spencer Tracy / Rita Johnson in the print version of the Star Ledger:
A once-grand theater answers a curtain call
Sunday, July 31, 2005
BY KEVIN C. DILWORTH
Star-Ledger Staff
It was a rain-swept night on May 16, 1940, but the bad weather did not stop hundreds of New Jerseyans from converging on East Orange’s Hollywood Theatre to see Oscar-winner Spencer Tracy, his box office co-star Rita Johnson, and other celebrities.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “Edison the Man,” a biographical film about famed investor Thomas Edison, lured moviegoers to the theater at 634 Central Ave., off South Harrison Street.
It was the film’s world premiere, and the red carpet was rolled out along the busy thoroughfare.
Newspaper ads billed the motion picture event as “the proudest day in the amusement history of New Jersey,” and noted how then-Gov. A. Harry Moore planned to meet and greet “the greatest galaxy of Hollywood personalities, ever, in the East,” at that 1,629-seat film palace.
That spectacular event took place at the height of the era when the silver screen was the most popular entertainment escape.
However, patron interest in movie houses such as the Hollywood Theatre, and many other similar places around the state and nation, began to wane in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, the theater closed.
Now the Hollywood Theatre is making a cinematic comeback.
A week from tomorrow, the new Hollywood Cinemas — following a more than $1.2 million building gutting, and an extensive top-to-bottom and wall-to-wall renovation job — is set to be reborn as a five-screen theater.
Hollywood Cinemas will join the now six-screen Maplewood Theatre building on Maplewood Avenue in Maplewood, as the only two structures — out of 13 original movie houses that existed in the Essex County suburbs of the Oranges, Maplewood and Livingston, during the early 1950s — to survive as movie houses.
New York City investor Edmondo Schwartz, whose father used to be part of a consortium that owned and operated a chain of RKO movie theaters including the Hollywood in the 1970s, said he believes his investment in the Hollywood, and in East Orange, is worthwhile.
“The (area’s) population was really the bottom line,” Schwartz said the other day. “It’s so under-served with theaters. We saw it was the time, especially when we realized that 250,000 people live within three miles of East Orange. It’s tremendous.”
The two closest multiplex theaters are in West Orange and Newark.
Work crews gutted the Hollywood, replacing the theater’s hole-riddled roof, and removed all the old dingy seats, water-damaged plaster, the original stage and dressing rooms.
No remnants of the former theater’s interior remain, other than the original brick walls that are hidden behind draperies and other wall coverings.
“It probably would have been easier to knock down the building and start new, with the amount of steel (4,500 tons) we put into this building, but it came out beautiful, especially the oversized (movie) screens,” Schwartz said.
The five cinemas will seat a total of 944 people, including 27 seats set aside for the handicapped.
Four of the theaters feature stadium seating, with 23-inch-wide chairs, and one theater, in the spot where the Hollywood’s original stage and dressing rooms used to be, is a traditional theater with seating to match.
In preparation for the movie house’s grand reopening, all the sidewalks outside are scheduled to be replaced this week with a sort of Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The excitement, surrounding the Hollywood’s comeback, has been building since renovation began there a year ago.
“We’ve been waiting for this,” said Tristen Wright, 18, a Newfield Street resident who serves as a volunteer on Mayor Robert Bowser’s Youth Council advisory board. “My friends and I like the idea of being able to go to the movies right here in East Orange, as opposed to traveling to Essex Green (in West Orange) or to Newark.”
Hudson Avenue resident David Taylor, 19, agreed, joking that he has lost more than a few dates because female companions have tired of waiting up to 30 minutes to catch a bus to another city just to see a movie.
Young people are not the only ones who are excited about the theater’s rebirth. Older people are hyped up, too.
The area surrounding the Hollywood is packed with high-rise apartment buildings. The reopening of the Hollywood “is a good thing,” said Maudie Nelson, of Oakwood Avenue, who volunteers in Orange City Hall’s Office of Older Adults.
“Anything is an improvement. A lot of people like going to the movies, but we have (had) to travel all the way to Essex Green or downtown Newark on Bergen Street,” Nelson said. “In my building alone, there are 236 apartment units.”
Nelson, who turned 89 on July 12, said she just hopes municipal officials remember senior citizens especially need delayed street lights, at Central Avenue and South Harrison Street in East Orange, and at Central and Oakwood avenues in Orange, as well as pedestrian crossing lanes.
East Orange resident Michael Thompson, 22, of North Clinton Street said his main concern is how safe patrons will be inside the Hollywood Cinemas.
Schwartz said that in response to public safety concerns, closed circuit television cameras are being installed, “and we’re going to have a (city) police presence there.”
Last-minute construction work in and outside the restored movie house, Schwartz said, includes putting the final touches on a more than 43-foot-long concession stand inside the theater’s new lobby, laying down thick navy-blue carpeting with celestial designs, removing all the construction debris from the building’s west side, and creating an on-site 40-space paved parking lot there.
Looks like a duplicate of the Dome Theater (#12834).
This site lists the opening date as 1945 and has a slightly different address. Also contains a small postcard:
View link
Elvis must have played here during the theater’s final days in 1956:
http://www.elvisconcerts.com/liv1956.htm
Some caution with this data: How can a man (even if he is Elvis) play 4 shows in 1 day??
This is the address that I found:
“the Lyric, located at 326 East Main South (now 212 Southeast 1st Street)”
extracted from http://heritage.acld.lib.fl.us/1051-1100/1091.html
1910 postcard midway down this link:
http://www.mathesonmuseum.org/library.html
Robert R:
Was this cinema located at 58 Broad Street? If so, it is now a Mr. Mattress, having previously been an art gallery:
A second-generation business owner, Abe Feldmus decided to open his family’s third Mr. Mattress store at 58 Broad St. in Red Bank after moving to town four years ago.
“It’s a great destination town,” said Feldmus, who converted an art gallery space to a mattress showroom featuring Sealy and Stearns & Foster mattresses, beds, and futons, in sizes ranging from single to king. He pointed out the openings for a projector that are still visible in the walls of the store, which once was the location of Red Bank Cinema.
extracted from View link
Per philadelphiabuildings.org, architect was Hoffman-Henon Co. They prepared plans on 3/17/1920 for the Stanley Co. of America for a new movie theater (not named) at Broad & Warren Streets.
Good article regarding the recent history of this theater:
08/22/2001
BOONTON’S DARRESS THEATRE
By BOB DECKER , Contributing Writer
Recorder Newspapers
From Harry Houdini to amateur boxing
BOONTON – For more than 21 years Tom Timbrook has been repairing, upgrading, renovating and generally making nice the Darress Theatre located on Main Street here in town.
At first, it was fixing the holes in the roof and upgrading the heating, plumbing, electrical, sprinkler and emergency light systems in the building … after, of course, he got rid of the toadstools growing in the seat cushions.
“It took us four months to open … and then we closed down and didn’t open for another eight months,” Timbrook recalled the other day while taking care of customers in the Boonton Photo shop, the camera store he also owns and moved into the lobby of the theatre in 1988 so he could save a little rent and also be close to the constant theater renovations taking place.
Summer Stock
“We did summer stock with a very good group that called itself ‘Goodtime Summer Theatre’ for the first two years,” Timbrook added. “Then we did opera with a company out of New York and then we started mixing in some movies – we got some stuff that was just coming out but we were never really considered a first-run theater.”
The building was erected in 1919 as a vaudeville theater and changed its name to “State Theater” in 1934 when it served as a movie theater. Timbrook changed the name back to “Darress Theatre” when he bought it in 1980 not only because he loved the theater, but because he “ … liked the the abience and the feel of the building.”
When the video craze hit in the mid to late ‘80s, Timbrook cut back on movies and concentrated more on live presentations – plays, musicals, dramatic readings, poetry readings.
“Video rentals hurt all the little theaters – some even went by the wayside,” Timbrook said. “We still ran some movies but tried to spice things up … like the time we tried ‘Date Night’ and let couples bring in their own wine.”
That was back in the time when the patched-up heating system still wasn’t good enough to endure the Morris County winters and Timbrook would shut down shortly after Thanksgiving and reopen in March of the following year.
“The heating is fine now,” Timbrook said. “In fact, I would have to say the theater is in good shape although we are constantly doing a lot of little things to improve and upgrade the facility.”
One upgrade is the cafe located inside the building, offering theater goers a chance to “… stay and discuss the performance or just relax over some wine and cheese,” according to Timbrook, who more often than not gets into these post-performance discussions. “When the show ends, it’s not as if you have to leave right away.”
All of the money that comes through the ticket windows goes right back into the theatre for its maintenance and to keep the best of the area’s alternative cinema and talent coming into the building.
“It’s a total investment on our part … I wish I could say we turn a profit but we don’t,” Timbrook said. “When we first bought into the theater, the building itself was in jeopardy … now, we’re on solid footing.”
The “we” includes Helene, Timbrook’s wife of more than 30 years who works in the graphic arts industry but gives Timbrook a hand when he needs it.
‘The Penthouse’
The Timbrooks live in Hackettstown but keep an apartment (“… the penthouse,” he calls it) at the theater that is used when performances run late and the cafe crowd may linger longer than usual.
The building that featured Abbott ‘n Costello, Harry Houdini and Burns and Allen in the days of vaudeville now presents children’s plays and musicals, performances by the Boonton Baroque Orchestra and movies such as “Atlantis” and “Shrek” as well as some new ventures he has planned for upcoming weeks.
Standup Comedy
Timbrook tried standup comedy for the first time this past Saturday and this Friday will present the 1928 silent film “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” with organ accompaniment by Ralph Ringstad.
On Saturday, Sept. 1, Timbrook will have a boxing show put on by the Rivera Boxing School, also located on Main Street in town.
“Heidi” will be presented three full weekends starting Friday, Oct. 5; a dramatic Dracula reading will take place on Saturday, Oct. 13, and run for two weekends; “Weird New Jersey” magazine will put on a slide show presentation on Saturday, Nov. 24, featuring all the “weird stuff” that goes on in the area.
“We usually get 500 to 600 people in the place when they are here,” Timbrook says of his 700-seat capacity theater. “They have some good stuff.
“Our contacts include many talented filmmakers, artists, writers, musicians and actors. Our goal is to provide a comfortable entertainment experience.”
…with no toadstools in the next seat.
Listed in the 1951 Film Daily Yearbook at 11 N. Main Street, 08232, with 418 seats.
Listed in the 1951 Film Daily Yearbook at 12 S. Main Street, 08232, with 888 seats.
The Select, 78 miles east of Dallas on Highway 80, has its own lush history. R.T. Hooks Sr. and wife Mattie founded the theater in 1920 and named it (nothing exciting here) after the Dallas distribution company that fed them their movies. Later, they moved to Lubbock, Texas, and turned over operations to a man who, according to local legend, proved not to be a very good manager.
So son R.T. Hooks Jr. bought the theater back and agreed to keep on a 16-year-old employee who had been working there since he was 12.
James Oscar Dear swept floors and poured Cokes and did just about everything to make the Select feel loved. When Hooks Jr. passed away in 1961, Dear and fellow employee Truman Thomas bought the Select from Hooks' widow and the Hooks estate. And the two men ran it as partners for 25 more years, until 1986, when they donated it to the Lake Country Playhouse. Four times a year, it stages live plays.
Now 89, Dear has played a key role in sustaining the Select, whose survival has been facilitated with more than $250,000 from the town’s Meredith Foundation, which, in 2001, financed the theater’s renovation, including $98,750 used for those 248 gorgeous new seats.
Celia Hansell, 44, is the daughter of parents who grew up near Mineola. She loves coming to the Select, as did her dad, who tells stories about riding into town in the back of a pickup truck to see Western serials for a nickel on Saturdays.
“It’s really neat when you think about how long people have been coming here,” says Hansell, sitting with her husband, Mark Hansell, 49, and their children, 6-year-old Luke and 5-year-old Lauren Grace. “I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, I hope it never dies.”
Source: Dallas Morning News, The (TX), Jul 07, 2005
Named after Dallas' Elm Street movie palace, the Wills Point Majestic opened in 1926, two years before the first “talkie.” In that time, it has had three owners, all named Karl Lybrand _ I, II and III.
The eldest began showing movies in the back of his tailor shop in 1907, in a makeshift theater called The Home. The Lybrands contend that theirs is the oldest continuously operating, family-owned theater in the United States.
Lybrand III, 61, has two daughters, who have shown little interest in running the faded theater, whose exterior bricks are the same rusty color as those on its bumpy surrounding streets.
“I plan on being here as long as I am physically able,” says Karl III, who knows his customers by name and who refuses to leave until the last underage patron finds a ride. Rather than leave a kid stranded, he occasionally drives them home.
His theater is like a comfortable old shoe, which got a minor makeover a few years back. Its 315 seats were reupholstered in 2003, and during the 1980s, Karl III went to “the platter system,” eliminating the need for the theater’s carbon-arc projectors, which pre-dated World War II. He also installed a new screen. The sound, however, still rattles through a Radio Shack amplifier.
“I don’t have reclining seats, or stadium seating or surround sound or any of the stuff you get at the AMC 30 in Mesquite _ where all of our teenagers go, which is why I don’t have a teenage crowd any more. What people tell me they love here is the nostalgia, and we’ve got plenty of that.”
Like everybody who grew up in Wills Point, 48 miles east of Dallas on Highway 80, assistant manager John Allen, 28, has seen movies here since he could talk. “It’s my entire childhood wrapped up in one building,” he says.
Source: Dallas Morning News, The (TX), Jul 07, 2005
Centre Daily Times (State College, PA) 2005
Jun. 24—STATE COLLEGE — Renovation of the shuttered State Theatre will begin in late July or early August, project organizers announced Thursday, setting next summer as the theater’s opening season.
More than $3.55 million in construction will restore the 1938 movie house at 128 W. College Ave. as the nonprofit community-arts center first envisioned in 2001, organizer Mike Negra said. He said it’ll house 560 seats and could host more than 280 attractions a year.
Inside, Negra said, the new State Theatre will be comfortable, high-tech and subdued, with lighting and acoustics to accommodate cinema, live acting, concerts, lectures and other events.
“The theater has never been one with angels hanging from the ceiling,” said Negra, who leads the board of State Theatre Inc. “We want the wow factor to happen inside the audience chamber.”
Thursday’s announcement capped months of speculation and concern about the project, which lost its executive director in April. Renovation had been scheduled to begin in October 2004, but initial construction bids dealt the group a substantial setback, well exceeding the $3 million budget plan. The first bid was $5.5 million, Negra said.
“Did the concept of us not being able to make it ever enter my mind?” Negra said. “Probably about two seconds after I heard the $5.5 million number. Absolutely.”
Since then, State Theatre advocates have worked to trim construction costs — “to look for waste” — and keep the project viable, Negra said. They’ve rearranged some technical aspects of the design. For instance, they scrapped early plans for a walk-up ticket window, opting instead for a walk-in-only box office beside the theater’s front entrance.
The cost cuts and a recent spurt in fundraising pushed organizers to Thursday’s turning point, Negra said, when they could finally announce a firm timetable. They plan to sign a statement of intent today with Poole Anderson Construction, the project’s general contractor.
Poole Anderson and State Theatre Inc., a nonprofit organization, are expecting to formalize a contract in July, Negra said.
He said the project has received hundreds of private donations, ranging from $5 to $100,000, in addition to a state grant of $1.5 million. It still needs to raise slightly less than $2 million.
Bruce A. Lingenfelter, development chairman, said the group plans to take out a mortgage to cover the funding gap. But “we don’t expect to have the mortgage long,” he said.
Now that the project has gotten this far, Lingenfelter said, he expects fundraising will become easier. “Getting people to buy into the project” has been a hurdle, he said.
Once it opens, Negra said, the theater should be self-sufficient and could employ five or six full-time workers, plus part-timers and interns.
“It’s part of the quality of life, lifestyle, entertainment — creating this environment downtown to encourage people to live here,” said Teresa Sparacino, executive director of the Downtown Improvement District. She said businesses have already seen an economic uptick from the 150-seat Penn State Downtown Theatre, which opened in 2003.
“You can just imagine the impact the State Theatre is going to have,” Sparacino said
This theater goes back to the 1920s:
http://www.yourantiques.com/213.html
In 1931, it hosted the world premiere of Oscar Hammerstein’s “East Wind”.
Direct link for the 10/17/04 post:
http://www.tourauburnny.com/schine.html
Looks like it may have been called Walling Hall and goes back to at least 1878 (Fred Aistaire couldn’t have danced in too many spots in this town!):
http://www.keyportonline.com/History/History.html
Strange no mention of the Strand in its history. Perhaps the original post of this theater is in error.
Photos & history:
View link
Small exterior photo at this link:
http://www.njskylands.com/clmusic3.htm
Justin: Can you clarify your last sentence? I personally like when movies start at the time advertised!
View link
Be sure to click on the link to the Bergen Record article about the 75th anniversary.
View link
Recent photo on this site.
OPEN. got so excited that I can’t spell anymore
Please change status to OPNE!! This theater will reopen on August 7th. Nice 1940 photo of Spencer Tracy / Rita Johnson in the print version of the Star Ledger:
A once-grand theater answers a curtain call
Sunday, July 31, 2005
BY KEVIN C. DILWORTH
Star-Ledger Staff
It was a rain-swept night on May 16, 1940, but the bad weather did not stop hundreds of New Jerseyans from converging on East Orange’s Hollywood Theatre to see Oscar-winner Spencer Tracy, his box office co-star Rita Johnson, and other celebrities.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “Edison the Man,” a biographical film about famed investor Thomas Edison, lured moviegoers to the theater at 634 Central Ave., off South Harrison Street.
It was the film’s world premiere, and the red carpet was rolled out along the busy thoroughfare.
Newspaper ads billed the motion picture event as “the proudest day in the amusement history of New Jersey,” and noted how then-Gov. A. Harry Moore planned to meet and greet “the greatest galaxy of Hollywood personalities, ever, in the East,” at that 1,629-seat film palace.
That spectacular event took place at the height of the era when the silver screen was the most popular entertainment escape.
However, patron interest in movie houses such as the Hollywood Theatre, and many other similar places around the state and nation, began to wane in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, the theater closed.
Now the Hollywood Theatre is making a cinematic comeback.
A week from tomorrow, the new Hollywood Cinemas — following a more than $1.2 million building gutting, and an extensive top-to-bottom and wall-to-wall renovation job — is set to be reborn as a five-screen theater.
Hollywood Cinemas will join the now six-screen Maplewood Theatre building on Maplewood Avenue in Maplewood, as the only two structures — out of 13 original movie houses that existed in the Essex County suburbs of the Oranges, Maplewood and Livingston, during the early 1950s — to survive as movie houses.
New York City investor Edmondo Schwartz, whose father used to be part of a consortium that owned and operated a chain of RKO movie theaters including the Hollywood in the 1970s, said he believes his investment in the Hollywood, and in East Orange, is worthwhile.
“The (area’s) population was really the bottom line,” Schwartz said the other day. “It’s so under-served with theaters. We saw it was the time, especially when we realized that 250,000 people live within three miles of East Orange. It’s tremendous.”
The two closest multiplex theaters are in West Orange and Newark.
Work crews gutted the Hollywood, replacing the theater’s hole-riddled roof, and removed all the old dingy seats, water-damaged plaster, the original stage and dressing rooms.
No remnants of the former theater’s interior remain, other than the original brick walls that are hidden behind draperies and other wall coverings.
“It probably would have been easier to knock down the building and start new, with the amount of steel (4,500 tons) we put into this building, but it came out beautiful, especially the oversized (movie) screens,” Schwartz said.
The five cinemas will seat a total of 944 people, including 27 seats set aside for the handicapped.
Four of the theaters feature stadium seating, with 23-inch-wide chairs, and one theater, in the spot where the Hollywood’s original stage and dressing rooms used to be, is a traditional theater with seating to match.
In preparation for the movie house’s grand reopening, all the sidewalks outside are scheduled to be replaced this week with a sort of Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The excitement, surrounding the Hollywood’s comeback, has been building since renovation began there a year ago.
“We’ve been waiting for this,” said Tristen Wright, 18, a Newfield Street resident who serves as a volunteer on Mayor Robert Bowser’s Youth Council advisory board. “My friends and I like the idea of being able to go to the movies right here in East Orange, as opposed to traveling to Essex Green (in West Orange) or to Newark.”
Hudson Avenue resident David Taylor, 19, agreed, joking that he has lost more than a few dates because female companions have tired of waiting up to 30 minutes to catch a bus to another city just to see a movie.
Young people are not the only ones who are excited about the theater’s rebirth. Older people are hyped up, too.
The area surrounding the Hollywood is packed with high-rise apartment buildings. The reopening of the Hollywood “is a good thing,” said Maudie Nelson, of Oakwood Avenue, who volunteers in Orange City Hall’s Office of Older Adults.
“Anything is an improvement. A lot of people like going to the movies, but we have (had) to travel all the way to Essex Green or downtown Newark on Bergen Street,” Nelson said. “In my building alone, there are 236 apartment units.”
Nelson, who turned 89 on July 12, said she just hopes municipal officials remember senior citizens especially need delayed street lights, at Central Avenue and South Harrison Street in East Orange, and at Central and Oakwood avenues in Orange, as well as pedestrian crossing lanes.
East Orange resident Michael Thompson, 22, of North Clinton Street said his main concern is how safe patrons will be inside the Hollywood Cinemas.
Schwartz said that in response to public safety concerns, closed circuit television cameras are being installed, “and we’re going to have a (city) police presence there.”
Last-minute construction work in and outside the restored movie house, Schwartz said, includes putting the final touches on a more than 43-foot-long concession stand inside the theater’s new lobby, laying down thick navy-blue carpeting with celestial designs, removing all the construction debris from the building’s west side, and creating an on-site 40-space paved parking lot there.
Patsy:
Did you make your trip yet? Can you get inside? I am going to this area in August and the theaters in Ithaca/Geneva/Auburn are on my itinerary.
On page 97 of “This Fabulous Century 1950-1960” (Time Life Books, 1970) there is a photo of the Marine marquee.
Wording on the marquee:
FREE TO PUBLIC
KEFAUVER T V
SENATE CRIME HEARINGS
Caption: A New York moive theater drops its regular Hollywood fare to pick up television’s political spectacular, the Kefauver hearings.
Sounds all too familiar: Oliver North, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson …