The Alpine theater was probably at 907 Front Street, though there’s a slight chance it was at 913. It was still open at least as late as 1972, but gone by the early 1980s. I can’t tell if the building at 907 is the same one the theater was in, though it might be, as beginning in the mid-1960s the town was extensively remodeled in a Bavarian style and virtually none of its old buildings are recognizable. If the Alpine was at 913 the building is definitely gone, though. There’s an undated photo (possibly 1940s-‘50s) I’ll upload, with the theater at far left.
The nomination form for the Downtown Bellingham Historic District says that the historic address of the Bell Theatre was 111 E. Holly Street. The Horseshoe Café now occupies both that building and the adjacent building at 113 E. Holly and uses the address 113.
The form also has information about the end of the Bell Theatre: “In November of 1921, the Bell Theater was closed for remodeling and announced it would open under a new name, ‘The Rialto.’ In 1922, the Rialto is listed at the address, Al Finkelstein manager (formerly of the Liberty). Harry Dawson applied for permits for exterior and interior repairs worth $1,000 on the ‘Bell Theater Building’ in August of 1922 and opened his café there.”
The naming of the Bell Theatre was the subject of a brief article in the Temple Daily Telegram of September 25, 1921. The new building was being erected on Main Street and would accommodate over 500 seats on main floor and balcony, as well as two storefronts. Owner W. F. Sonneman hoped to have the house opened by October 8, but said that a delay was possible. As it turned out, the house opened Saturday morning, October 15.
Also advertised in the Telegram during this period were houses called the Gem Theatre and the Crescent Theatre, both of which had been listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, along with a house called the Temple Theatre, which was gone by 1921.
Quimby’s acquisition of the Bell Theatre was noted in the April 1, 1910 issue of Motography. The item also said that the Bell had been the first theater in Bellingham to make movies a specialty of the house.
The caption of a photo of Kelso’s City Hall om the Arcadia Publishing Company’s book Kelso says that the Embassy Theatre on Allen Street was demolished in 1939 to make way for the new City Hall. If there was still an Embassy Theatre in operation after that it must have been a different theater using the same name. The book makes no other mentions of the Embassy.
Our photo of the Embassy shows a very old building, and I suspect that it was the house listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as the Kelso Theatre, a 777 seat, ground floor house with a 64 foot wide stage and 55 foot height to the rigging loft. The Embassy in the photo certainly looks to be the right size for that.
The September 28, 1907 issue of The Improvement Bulletin ran a notice datelined Kelso saying “[t]he Kelso Opera House Co. will receive bids until noon, Oct. 1st, for building a frame opera house. D. Nichols, architect, Vancouver.” (I’ve found a few other references to D Nichols in construction and architecture journals of the period, but I’ve been unable to find his first name.) The house wasn’t built until the next year, though, and the October 17, 1908 issue of The Billboard said that the Kelso Theatre would open about the middle of November.
This item from Motion Picture News of November 25, 1922 must be about the Liberty.
“Report Corrected
“In our issue of November 4, this department published an article to the effect that John Praggastis has let contract calling for the erection of a 650-seat theatre in Kelso, Wash., and that the house was to be equipped by B. F. Shearer, Inc. We have been advised that the latter part of this statement is incorrect in that the General Supply & Repair Company, Inc., of Portland, Ore., is to install Powers 6B projectors along with draperies, curtains, screens, interior decorations, etc.”
The PSTOS page for he Liberty says that a 2/4 Wurlitzer type B organ was shipped from the factory to the Liberty Theater in November, 1922. If the house was ready or its organ installation in November, it’s very likely that it opened before the end of 1922, though I haven’t found a date for the event.
PSTOS also says that the Liberty is the Kelso house that was also called the Paramount, so the line in the description about the Paramount/Kelso must be mistaken. So far I’ve been unable to discover when or for how long the house used the Paramount name.
The Liberty Theatre in Kelso is mentioned in the March 1, 1924 issue of Moving Picture World:
“Mr. Johnson, owner of the Liberty, Kelso, Wash., has built up an excellent patronage by adding a local touch to his programs in the shape of a ‘Kelso News Reel,’ photographed by his projectionist and embracing local events of all kinds.”
The earliest mention of the Vogue I can find is from a January, 1918 issue of The Moving Picture Weekly, the exact date of which I’ve been unable to discover:
“The Vogue, a genuine Butterfly theatre, is a new venture launched by C. G. Vaughn in Kelso, Wash. Mr. Vaughn was formerly a travelling exhibitor on the road with feature productions. In the beginnings of his enterprise in Kelso, he is booking the most successful of the Red Feather films, to lead into his Butterfly service, particularly the popular Jack Mulhall features.”
Given the delays in publication typical of the trade journals in those days, it’s likely that the Vogue opened in late 1917, but surely in January 1918 at the latest.
The Vogue Theatre in Kelso was mentioned in the May 6, 1922 issue of Moving Picture World:
“J. H. Bomer, of the Vogue Theatre, Kelso, Wash., has disposed of his interests to Strange, Dunham and Greiner, who will incorporate under the name of Vogue.”
The Vogue was rebuilt in 1925 following a fire, as noted in this item from the July 11 MPW:
“The Vogue Theatre, Kelso, Wash., which was partially destroyed by fire some months ago, has been rebuilt and is about ready for its formal opening. B. F. Shearer, Inc., has completed installation of orange and black silk plush drapes which give a warm note of color to the house. A Raven Haftone screen was also placed by this firm.”
I’ve been unable to find either the Princess or the Liberty mentioned in the early trade journals, but by 1922 Garfield had a house called the Rose, mentioned in the August 12 issue of Universal Weekly. The Rose was mentioned again in the January 2, 1926 issue of Motion Picture News. It was then owned by F. C. Weskil, who operated the Liberty Theatre in Colfax and houses called the Rose in Colfax and Oakdale.
Many years later, the April 3, 1948 issue of Boxoffice mentions a house called the Family Theatre in Garfield.
The April 1, 1937 issue of Film Daily said that the Evergreen States circuit had acquired the Weir and D & R theaters in Aberdeen and the Seventh Avenue Theatre in Hoquiam.
The April 1, 1937 issue of Film Daily said that the Evergreen States circuit had acquired the D & R and Weir theaters in Aberdeen and the Seventh Avenue Theatre in Hoquiam.
The original Boz Theatre opened in 1909. This house, the New Boz, was built in 1910. W. Fred Bossner’s plans to build the new 600-seat theater were noted in the May 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon.
According to the Pacific Coast Architecture Database, the Grand Theatre was designed by Edwin W. Houghton. The Aberdeen Herald reported on the opening, which had taken place on Thursday, April 19, 1906, in its issue of Monday, April 23:
“An Immense Audience Greets Blanche Walsh Thursday Night. The new Grand theater was filled from orchestra pit to gallery Thursday night to witness the performance of ‘A Woman in the Case’ by Blanche Walsh company. The new theater proved to be all that was promised, and in its arrangement and appointments is not excelled in the Northwest. The decorations showed the artistic taste of the architect, as the conveniences did his knowledge of theater building. The safety of the audience is particularity well looked after in the matter of exits. Those are sufficient to empty the house in three minutes. All sections of the county were represented at the opening, quite a number being present from Hoquiam, Cosmopolis, Montesano and Elma, and all are loud in praise of a theater of which Aberdeen is justly proud. While Blanche Walsh and company, carried their parts splendidly, the play, which was of melodramatic order, was not as well received as would have been something higher in dramatic art.”
The January 3, 1932 issue of Film Daily said: “Geneva, O.— The Liberty is now called Shea’s.” I think Shea’s must have bought the Liberty, which dated back to at least 1918, and then built a new theater a couple of years later. In FDY’s through the late 1930s both Shea’s and the Liberty are listed, but the Liberty is always listed as closed.
A 1947 ad for a Stafford’s Jewelry and Music Store at 52 West Main Street carries the tag line “Three doors down from Shea’s Theatre.” 52 W. Main is a parking lot now, but what would be three doors up the block at 72 W. Main is a large, red brick building that looks like it could have been built in the 1930s. The front section is fairly low, but behind it is a taller, rectangular building that is just the right size and shape to be a theater auditorium. It now houses the Geneva Community Center. I suspect that this was Shea’s Geneva Theatre.
Orwell had a house called the Temple in 1932, when this item appeared in the January 8 issue of Film Daily: “Orwell, O. — The Temple, now operated by W. L. Chalmers, is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of each week.” Chalmers had recently bought the house from H. J. Walters. The theater had been around for quite a while by then, as it was advertised in the November 12, 1925 issue of the Orwell News-Letter (scan here.) The only theater listed at Orwell in the 1926 FDY was called the Opera House. This might have been an alternate name for the Temple.
Carl Reardon, Cleveland area distributor for Universal Pictures, was deposed for the U.S. Senate’s investigation of movie industry trade practices in 1956. As part of his deposition he noted that Lee Hendershott, then the owner of the Temple Theatre, had gotten a flat-fee service from Universal starting in February, 1956, paying $30 for each feature, with the exception of a few special movies that would still be rented on a percentage basis.
The Temple Theatre building is currently occupied by an antique shop.
1,022 was the reported seating capacity of the Leaf Theatre when it opened in 1949. The FDY probably accidentally switched the capacities of the two theaters. Such mistakes were not uncommon in the Yearbooks.
Motion Picture Herald of September 18, 1948 had this news:
“The new Rosalia Theatre, Rosalia, Wash., has opened. H. H. Wheeldon is the owner of the house, which replaces the theatre destroyed by fire several months ago. Mr. Wheeldon also operates five other houses in eastern Washington and Idaho.”
This probably accounts for the drop in seating capacity between the early 1940s and 1950. Although the item calls the house the Rosalia, I’m sure it was the Family. A 1951 Boxoffice item about Mr. Wheeldon said that he had leased his Family Theatres in two other towns to another operator. I suspect that all six of his theaters were called the Family.
The theater might have been at 606 S. Whitman Avenue (formerly Main Street.) Virtually all of Rosalia’s business are on Whitman Avenue, and this undated photo shows a theater, identifiable by the movie posters leaning against the front, at that location. Rosalia had a movie house at least as early as 1914, listed in the American Motion Picture Directory that year as the Lyric, on Main Street. The theater in the photo might have been the Lyric, and the Rose and later theaters might have been at different locations, but it’s possible that Rosalia’s theater was always at that location, even after the 1948 fire. Even if it was in a different building, it was almost certainly located on Whitman Avenue.
The Bungalow Theatre was at 223 N. Main Street. A historic building survey says that the Bungalow opened in 1911, but that the building had previously been occupied by a movie house called the Dime Theatre. The building currently on the site is believed to have been built in 1921, but it might have been only a major reconstruction and enlargement of the old building.
I found the Bungalow mentioned in the September, 1911 issue of Motography (also mentioning the Orpheum) and in the January 22, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World, which said that Robert Clendinning was remodeling the house and planned to reopen it with Mutual pictures.
The oddest thing is that the historic building survey says that the Sanborn insurance map shows a movie theater at this address as late as 1939. I’ll look into this surprising news when I have more energy. It’s getting very late now.
The Colfax Gazette of August 8, 1908 mentioned “The New Ridgeway Theatre Company.” A page about Spokane architect George Herbert Keith attributes the design of the Ridgway Theatre to him, listing it as a 1908 project. As the theater company apparently wasn’t formed until August, it might be that the Ridgeway didn’t open until 1909. The Ridgeway was one of three theaters listed at Colfax in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, along with the Bungalow and the Pastime.
A walking tour of downtown Colfax says that the Rose Theatre opened in 1916. 1920 was the year of its remodeling by architect Gustav Pehrson. The Rose Theatre is mentioned in both the May 11 and the June 29, 1918 issue of Motography.
The Liberty Theatre had a temporary precursor, noted in the March 10, 1923 issue of Moving Picture World:
“On Saturday, February 17, Jensen & Von Herberg opened the Liberty Theatre in Astoria, Oregon. The house is said to be temporary, to be replaced later by a large, high-class theatre. The present structure seats 800.”
The Alpine theater was probably at 907 Front Street, though there’s a slight chance it was at 913. It was still open at least as late as 1972, but gone by the early 1980s. I can’t tell if the building at 907 is the same one the theater was in, though it might be, as beginning in the mid-1960s the town was extensively remodeled in a Bavarian style and virtually none of its old buildings are recognizable. If the Alpine was at 913 the building is definitely gone, though. There’s an undated photo (possibly 1940s-‘50s) I’ll upload, with the theater at far left.
This 2007 article from the Bellingham Business Journal has a history of the Avalon Theatre and a couple of photos I haven’t seen before.
The nomination form for the Downtown Bellingham Historic District says that the historic address of the Bell Theatre was 111 E. Holly Street. The Horseshoe Café now occupies both that building and the adjacent building at 113 E. Holly and uses the address 113.
The form also has information about the end of the Bell Theatre: “In November of 1921, the Bell Theater was closed for remodeling and announced it would open under a new name, ‘The Rialto.’ In 1922, the Rialto is listed at the address, Al Finkelstein manager (formerly of the Liberty). Harry Dawson applied for permits for exterior and interior repairs worth $1,000 on the ‘Bell Theater Building’ in August of 1922 and opened his café there.”
The naming of the Bell Theatre was the subject of a brief article in the Temple Daily Telegram of September 25, 1921. The new building was being erected on Main Street and would accommodate over 500 seats on main floor and balcony, as well as two storefronts. Owner W. F. Sonneman hoped to have the house opened by October 8, but said that a delay was possible. As it turned out, the house opened Saturday morning, October 15.
Also advertised in the Telegram during this period were houses called the Gem Theatre and the Crescent Theatre, both of which had been listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, along with a house called the Temple Theatre, which was gone by 1921.
The caption of a photo of Kelso’s City Hall om the Arcadia Publishing Company’s book Kelso says that the Embassy Theatre on Allen Street was demolished in 1939 to make way for the new City Hall. If there was still an Embassy Theatre in operation after that it must have been a different theater using the same name. The book makes no other mentions of the Embassy.
Our photo of the Embassy shows a very old building, and I suspect that it was the house listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as the Kelso Theatre, a 777 seat, ground floor house with a 64 foot wide stage and 55 foot height to the rigging loft. The Embassy in the photo certainly looks to be the right size for that.
The September 28, 1907 issue of The Improvement Bulletin ran a notice datelined Kelso saying “[t]he Kelso Opera House Co. will receive bids until noon, Oct. 1st, for building a frame opera house. D. Nichols, architect, Vancouver.” (I’ve found a few other references to D Nichols in construction and architecture journals of the period, but I’ve been unable to find his first name.) The house wasn’t built until the next year, though, and the October 17, 1908 issue of The Billboard said that the Kelso Theatre would open about the middle of November.
This item from Motion Picture News of November 25, 1922 must be about the Liberty.
The PSTOS page for he Liberty says that a 2/4 Wurlitzer type B organ was shipped from the factory to the Liberty Theater in November, 1922. If the house was ready or its organ installation in November, it’s very likely that it opened before the end of 1922, though I haven’t found a date for the event.PSTOS also says that the Liberty is the Kelso house that was also called the Paramount, so the line in the description about the Paramount/Kelso must be mistaken. So far I’ve been unable to discover when or for how long the house used the Paramount name.
The Liberty Theatre in Kelso is mentioned in the March 1, 1924 issue of Moving Picture World:
The earliest mention of the Vogue I can find is from a January, 1918 issue of The Moving Picture Weekly, the exact date of which I’ve been unable to discover:
Given the delays in publication typical of the trade journals in those days, it’s likely that the Vogue opened in late 1917, but surely in January 1918 at the latest.The Vogue Theatre in Kelso was mentioned in the May 6, 1922 issue of Moving Picture World:
The Vogue was rebuilt in 1925 following a fire, as noted in this item from the July 11 MPW:I’ve been unable to find either the Princess or the Liberty mentioned in the early trade journals, but by 1922 Garfield had a house called the Rose, mentioned in the August 12 issue of Universal Weekly. The Rose was mentioned again in the January 2, 1926 issue of Motion Picture News. It was then owned by F. C. Weskil, who operated the Liberty Theatre in Colfax and houses called the Rose in Colfax and Oakdale.
Many years later, the April 3, 1948 issue of Boxoffice mentions a house called the Family Theatre in Garfield.
The April 1, 1937 issue of Film Daily said that the Evergreen States circuit had acquired the Weir and D & R theaters in Aberdeen and the Seventh Avenue Theatre in Hoquiam.
The April 1, 1937 issue of Film Daily said that the Evergreen States circuit had acquired the D & R and Weir theaters in Aberdeen and the Seventh Avenue Theatre in Hoquiam.
The original Boz Theatre opened in 1909. This house, the New Boz, was built in 1910. W. Fred Bossner’s plans to build the new 600-seat theater were noted in the May 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon.
The “New Theaters” column of the May 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon mentioned the Casino Theatre, which was then very near completion.
The New Bijou Theatre advertised its opening that night in the April 29, 1908 issue of the Aberdeen Herald. The admission price was ten cents.
According to the Pacific Coast Architecture Database, the Grand Theatre was designed by Edwin W. Houghton. The Aberdeen Herald reported on the opening, which had taken place on Thursday, April 19, 1906, in its issue of Monday, April 23:
The January 3, 1932 issue of Film Daily said: “Geneva, O.— The Liberty is now called Shea’s.” I think Shea’s must have bought the Liberty, which dated back to at least 1918, and then built a new theater a couple of years later. In FDY’s through the late 1930s both Shea’s and the Liberty are listed, but the Liberty is always listed as closed.
A 1947 ad for a Stafford’s Jewelry and Music Store at 52 West Main Street carries the tag line “Three doors down from Shea’s Theatre.” 52 W. Main is a parking lot now, but what would be three doors up the block at 72 W. Main is a large, red brick building that looks like it could have been built in the 1930s. The front section is fairly low, but behind it is a taller, rectangular building that is just the right size and shape to be a theater auditorium. It now houses the Geneva Community Center. I suspect that this was Shea’s Geneva Theatre.
Google street view
Orwell had a house called the Temple in 1932, when this item appeared in the January 8 issue of Film Daily: “Orwell, O. — The Temple, now operated by W. L. Chalmers, is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of each week.” Chalmers had recently bought the house from H. J. Walters. The theater had been around for quite a while by then, as it was advertised in the November 12, 1925 issue of the Orwell News-Letter (scan here.) The only theater listed at Orwell in the 1926 FDY was called the Opera House. This might have been an alternate name for the Temple.
Carl Reardon, Cleveland area distributor for Universal Pictures, was deposed for the U.S. Senate’s investigation of movie industry trade practices in 1956. As part of his deposition he noted that Lee Hendershott, then the owner of the Temple Theatre, had gotten a flat-fee service from Universal starting in February, 1956, paying $30 for each feature, with the exception of a few special movies that would still be rented on a percentage basis.
The Temple Theatre building is currently occupied by an antique shop.
1,022 was the reported seating capacity of the Leaf Theatre when it opened in 1949. The FDY probably accidentally switched the capacities of the two theaters. Such mistakes were not uncommon in the Yearbooks.
Motion Picture Herald of September 18, 1948 had this news:
This probably accounts for the drop in seating capacity between the early 1940s and 1950. Although the item calls the house the Rosalia, I’m sure it was the Family. A 1951 Boxoffice item about Mr. Wheeldon said that he had leased his Family Theatres in two other towns to another operator. I suspect that all six of his theaters were called the Family.The theater might have been at 606 S. Whitman Avenue (formerly Main Street.) Virtually all of Rosalia’s business are on Whitman Avenue, and this undated photo shows a theater, identifiable by the movie posters leaning against the front, at that location. Rosalia had a movie house at least as early as 1914, listed in the American Motion Picture Directory that year as the Lyric, on Main Street. The theater in the photo might have been the Lyric, and the Rose and later theaters might have been at different locations, but it’s possible that Rosalia’s theater was always at that location, even after the 1948 fire. Even if it was in a different building, it was almost certainly located on Whitman Avenue.
The Bungalow Theatre was at 223 N. Main Street. A historic building survey says that the Bungalow opened in 1911, but that the building had previously been occupied by a movie house called the Dime Theatre. The building currently on the site is believed to have been built in 1921, but it might have been only a major reconstruction and enlargement of the old building.
I found the Bungalow mentioned in the September, 1911 issue of Motography (also mentioning the Orpheum) and in the January 22, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World, which said that Robert Clendinning was remodeling the house and planned to reopen it with Mutual pictures.
The oddest thing is that the historic building survey says that the Sanborn insurance map shows a movie theater at this address as late as 1939. I’ll look into this surprising news when I have more energy. It’s getting very late now.
The Colfax Gazette of August 8, 1908 mentioned “The New Ridgeway Theatre Company.” A page about Spokane architect George Herbert Keith attributes the design of the Ridgway Theatre to him, listing it as a 1908 project. As the theater company apparently wasn’t formed until August, it might be that the Ridgeway didn’t open until 1909. The Ridgeway was one of three theaters listed at Colfax in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, along with the Bungalow and the Pastime.
A walking tour of downtown Colfax says that the Rose Theatre opened in 1916. 1920 was the year of its remodeling by architect Gustav Pehrson. The Rose Theatre is mentioned in both the May 11 and the June 29, 1918 issue of Motography.
The Liberty Theatre had a temporary precursor, noted in the March 10, 1923 issue of Moving Picture World: