Finn’s Opera House was one of many buildings in Jewett City, and throughout New England, that were destroyed by the Hurricane of 1938. About three o'clock in the afternoon of September 21, the roof was ripped off, the balcony collapsed, and the brick back wall was blown in, covering the stage and the front of the seating area with rubble. Recognizable bits of the building were found up to a mile away in the aftermath of the storm.
The 1899-1900 Cahn guide lists Jewett City’s Finn Opera House as an upstairs theater with 700 seats, operated by J.H. Finn. Other sources indicate that the house remained in its original configuration throughout its history. A biographical sketch of James H. Finn published in 1905 said that he had completed the Finn Building, housing the Opera House, the Post Office, three stores, and office spaces, in 1898.
This web page has an article from the March 3, 2005 issue of the local Tribune newspaper with a brief history of the Geyer Performing Arts Center. It notes that from its renovation in the late 1980s until 2005 the house was known as the Showtime Theatre. It reopened under new management as the Geyer Performing Arts Center on March 5, 2005. The Strand had closed as a movie house in 1969.
Here is a bit of confusion provided by the January 12, 1918 issue of Exhibitors Herald:
“Tulsa, Okla.— W. M. Smith will remodel the present Empress Theatre for a moving picture house to be known as The Rialto. A contract has been let for the installation of a $14,000 pipe organ. Frank H. Cassil is manager.”
One explanation I can think of is that the first Rialto could have opened in 1918 and snatched the name before Smith could slap it on the remodeled Empress, so he settled for calling it the New Empress. But our page for the first Rialto doesn’t give its opening date, so I can’t prove that surmise.
The Empress is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, so it was most likely still exclusively a vaudeville house at that time. Does anyone know if it was a Sullivan & Considine operation? Empress was that circuit’s favorite theater name.
This might have been the house listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory as the Scottdale Theatre. The other two houses listed (Geyer’s Opera House and the Arcade Theatre) are accounted for.
This must have been the house called the Arcade Theatre. This web page says that “[t]he Arcade Theater (ca. 1908) no longer stands, having been demolished for the redevelopment project that created the small parklet and mall on the north side of Pittsburgh Street from Broadway Street to Spring Street.” The Arcade was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
If this building housed a theater as early as 1912, we have another candidate for the Isis, which was one of only three houses listed in Peru in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other two were the Palace and the Wallace, and we know neither of them was at this address. The name Roxy must have been adopted no earlier than the late 1920s, since the first Roxy was “Roxy” Rothafel’s eponymous house in New York City.
But here’s a bit of news about Peru’s Roxy in 1947, from the September 7 issue of Motion Picture Herald:
“Stage Homecoming Week For ‘Night and Day’
“Peru, Ind., the home town of Cole Porter, will stage a Peru Homecoming Week celebration for the local premiere at the Roxy. September 14, of Warner Brothers' ‘Night and Day,’ based on the life and compositions of Mr. Porter. All streets will be decorated with ‘Night and Day’ banners, and nearly every store and shop in the town agreed to tie in window displays.”
The Rexy Theatre was in operation by 1931, when the March 28 issue of the Follansbee Review reported that a labor meeting would be held at the Rexy that night. It was owned by the Floyd brothers, who also had the Strand Theatre.
Earlier, around 1916-1918, the Floyds ran a Follansbee house called the Family Theatre, which had opened in 1913 as the Star Theatre. There is a possibility, though it’s not a certainty, that the Family later became the Rexy or the Strand. A local source says that the Family Theatre building is now occupied by the American Legion Hall, which is at 998 Main Street.
The Strand at Follansbee was in operation by 1927, when the July 8 issue of Motion Picture news named it as one of several houses in the region that had become part of a new co-operateve called Affiliated Theater Utilities Inc.. Among the leaders of the organization were N.D. Dipson and Mike Manos, both of whom would later establish regional theater chains under their own names.
The July 9, 1937 Film Daily had news about the Strand:
“Steubenville, O.— The Strand Theater at nearby Follansbee, W. Va., has been renovated and new Lipman sound system has been installed, according to Joe Huszar, manager.”
The September 27 issue of the same journal had another mention of the Strand, and of two other Follansbee houses:
“Close Follansbee House
“Steubenville, O.— The Royal theater at nearby Follansbee, W. Va. has been acquired under lease by Glen Floyd and Joseph F. Huszar and has been shuttered. Patsy Petrelli was the former operator of the Royal. Floyd and Huszar operate the Roxy and Strand theaters at Follansbee and the Roxy at Monaca, Pa.”
Late 1913 is likely when George Pittenger began billing the Grand as a theater rather than an opera house and began showing movies regularly. The January 3, 1914 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “George Kleine’s ‘Quo Vadis’ was the attraction at the grand opening of the Pittenger Grand Theater, at Centralia.” The house was listed as the Grand Theater in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
Yes, it has to be the first Palace. I wonder if the Isis was the unidentified theater at 64 S. Broadway? It was almost across the street from this one.
The St. Clair Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. Having opened on November 24, 1923, the house would have been about twelve years old when the new screen was installed.
Although it is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the Woodlawn must date from not long after that time. An advertisement for it in the April 16, 1919 issue of the Evansville Press boasts of its “…years of success as a neighborhood theater.” Also, none of the theater building was incorporated into the modern church building. According to the Evansville History web site, the house was closed in 1957 and demolished in 1963.
The Woodlawn Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses for which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The Olympic Theatre at Lebanon was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. The name change to Lido Theatre Must have taken place after that date.
The Palace Theatre in Beech Grove was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The first Diana Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The only movie theaters listed at Tipton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory were the Habit Theatre and the Lyric Theatre, so the Grand must not have been in operation yet, making it most likely that it opened sometime later in 1914 or sometime in 1915.
The Tivoli Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. The Dubois County Herald of February 26, 2014 said that the Tivoli’s closure in 1970 was due to a fire that killed Joseph Gutzweiler’s daughter, Margaret Ann. The Gutzweiler family continued to operate Jasper’s other movie house, the Astra Theatre.
The State Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. With a new screen, it might have been either a new theater or an older house, perhaps of a different name, being renovated. The State is mentioned a few times in trade journals in the 1940s and 1950s, but the only earlier theater name I’ve found for Crothersville was all the way back in 1918, when the July 11 Film Daily mentioned the New Grand Theatre. Crothersville does not appear in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
This house must have been the second Palace Theatre in Peru. Indiana Album has a photo dated c.1905 showing a Palace Theatre with a note on the back saying it was the second door north of 2nd Street on the west side of Broadway.
An item pertaining to the later Palace appears in The Moving Picture World of September 11, 1915, saying that about $1,000 was being expended on improvements to the house. Then the October 2 issue of MPW had this item:
“Jimmy Chandler, manager of the Palace, Peru, Ind., has asked an ‘unofficial board’ of censors to sit on ‘Midnight at Maxims’. The rector of St. Charles Church, Peru, said it was not fit for public consumption and Jimmy has named the rector on the board.”
Zooming in on Google street view of the Wayne Theatre it looks like the address is 30 N. Main Street. The theater has no web site, but there is a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated since 2019. Prior to that, there were some years with several events at the house, most of them live performances. The theater is sponsored by the Monticello Banking Company, whose offices occupy about half of the block the theater is on. The bank uses the address 50 N. Main.
Many capsule movie reviews by A. E. Christian, then proprietor of the Wayne Theatre, were published in Motion Picture Herald in the period 1935-1937.
The Amusu was mentioned in the May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald. Its proprietor, B. V. McDougald, was mentioned in the March 2, 1935 issue of the same publication, as an exhibitor at Monticello, so presumably the same theater.
Yelp reports this place is closed, and I see that the web site link no longer works, so it’s probably not a temporary, pandemic-related closure.
Finn’s Opera House was one of many buildings in Jewett City, and throughout New England, that were destroyed by the Hurricane of 1938. About three o'clock in the afternoon of September 21, the roof was ripped off, the balcony collapsed, and the brick back wall was blown in, covering the stage and the front of the seating area with rubble. Recognizable bits of the building were found up to a mile away in the aftermath of the storm.
The 1899-1900 Cahn guide lists Jewett City’s Finn Opera House as an upstairs theater with 700 seats, operated by J.H. Finn. Other sources indicate that the house remained in its original configuration throughout its history. A biographical sketch of James H. Finn published in 1905 said that he had completed the Finn Building, housing the Opera House, the Post Office, three stores, and office spaces, in 1898.
Also: Official web site.
Oh, and the article says that the seating capacity as of 2005 was 350, which it probably still is.
This web page has an article from the March 3, 2005 issue of the local Tribune newspaper with a brief history of the Geyer Performing Arts Center. It notes that from its renovation in the late 1980s until 2005 the house was known as the Showtime Theatre. It reopened under new management as the Geyer Performing Arts Center on March 5, 2005. The Strand had closed as a movie house in 1969.
Here is a bit of confusion provided by the January 12, 1918 issue of Exhibitors Herald:
One explanation I can think of is that the first Rialto could have opened in 1918 and snatched the name before Smith could slap it on the remodeled Empress, so he settled for calling it the New Empress. But our page for the first Rialto doesn’t give its opening date, so I can’t prove that surmise.The Empress is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, so it was most likely still exclusively a vaudeville house at that time. Does anyone know if it was a Sullivan & Considine operation? Empress was that circuit’s favorite theater name.
The January 12, 1918 issue of Exhibitors Herald had this bit of information about the Lehigh Orpheum Theatre:
Architect Benjamin Rush Stevens practiced in Philadelphia from about 1903 to 1935.This might have been the house listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory as the Scottdale Theatre. The other two houses listed (Geyer’s Opera House and the Arcade Theatre) are accounted for.
This must have been the house called the Arcade Theatre. This web page says that “[t]he Arcade Theater (ca. 1908) no longer stands, having been demolished for the redevelopment project that created the small parklet and mall on the north side of Pittsburgh Street from Broadway Street to Spring Street.” The Arcade was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
If this building housed a theater as early as 1912, we have another candidate for the Isis, which was one of only three houses listed in Peru in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other two were the Palace and the Wallace, and we know neither of them was at this address. The name Roxy must have been adopted no earlier than the late 1920s, since the first Roxy was “Roxy” Rothafel’s eponymous house in New York City.
But here’s a bit of news about Peru’s Roxy in 1947, from the September 7 issue of Motion Picture Herald:
The Rexy Theatre was in operation by 1931, when the March 28 issue of the Follansbee Review reported that a labor meeting would be held at the Rexy that night. It was owned by the Floyd brothers, who also had the Strand Theatre.
Earlier, around 1916-1918, the Floyds ran a Follansbee house called the Family Theatre, which had opened in 1913 as the Star Theatre. There is a possibility, though it’s not a certainty, that the Family later became the Rexy or the Strand. A local source says that the Family Theatre building is now occupied by the American Legion Hall, which is at 998 Main Street.
The Strand at Follansbee was in operation by 1927, when the July 8 issue of Motion Picture news named it as one of several houses in the region that had become part of a new co-operateve called Affiliated Theater Utilities Inc.. Among the leaders of the organization were N.D. Dipson and Mike Manos, both of whom would later establish regional theater chains under their own names.
The July 9, 1937 Film Daily had news about the Strand:
The September 27 issue of the same journal had another mention of the Strand, and of two other Follansbee houses:Late 1913 is likely when George Pittenger began billing the Grand as a theater rather than an opera house and began showing movies regularly. The January 3, 1914 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “George Kleine’s ‘Quo Vadis’ was the attraction at the grand opening of the Pittenger Grand Theater, at Centralia.” The house was listed as the Grand Theater in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
Yes, it has to be the first Palace. I wonder if the Isis was the unidentified theater at 64 S. Broadway? It was almost across the street from this one.
The St. Clair Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. Having opened on November 24, 1923, the house would have been about twelve years old when the new screen was installed.
Although it is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the Woodlawn must date from not long after that time. An advertisement for it in the April 16, 1919 issue of the Evansville Press boasts of its “…years of success as a neighborhood theater.” Also, none of the theater building was incorporated into the modern church building. According to the Evansville History web site, the house was closed in 1957 and demolished in 1963.
The Woodlawn Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses for which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The Olympic Theatre at Lebanon was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. The name change to Lido Theatre Must have taken place after that date.
The Palace Theatre in Beech Grove was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The first Diana Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The only movie theaters listed at Tipton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory were the Habit Theatre and the Lyric Theatre, so the Grand must not have been in operation yet, making it most likely that it opened sometime later in 1914 or sometime in 1915.
The Tivoli Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. The Dubois County Herald of February 26, 2014 said that the Tivoli’s closure in 1970 was due to a fire that killed Joseph Gutzweiler’s daughter, Margaret Ann. The Gutzweiler family continued to operate Jasper’s other movie house, the Astra Theatre.
The State Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. With a new screen, it might have been either a new theater or an older house, perhaps of a different name, being renovated. The State is mentioned a few times in trade journals in the 1940s and 1950s, but the only earlier theater name I’ve found for Crothersville was all the way back in 1918, when the July 11 Film Daily mentioned the New Grand Theatre. Crothersville does not appear in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
This house must have been the second Palace Theatre in Peru. Indiana Album has a photo dated c.1905 showing a Palace Theatre with a note on the back saying it was the second door north of 2nd Street on the west side of Broadway.
An item pertaining to the later Palace appears in The Moving Picture World of September 11, 1915, saying that about $1,000 was being expended on improvements to the house. Then the October 2 issue of MPW had this item:
The Isis was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
Zooming in on Google street view of the Wayne Theatre it looks like the address is 30 N. Main Street. The theater has no web site, but there is a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated since 2019. Prior to that, there were some years with several events at the house, most of them live performances. The theater is sponsored by the Monticello Banking Company, whose offices occupy about half of the block the theater is on. The bank uses the address 50 N. Main.
Many capsule movie reviews by A. E. Christian, then proprietor of the Wayne Theatre, were published in Motion Picture Herald in the period 1935-1937.
The Amusu was mentioned in the May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald. Its proprietor, B. V. McDougald, was mentioned in the March 2, 1935 issue of the same publication, as an exhibitor at Monticello, so presumably the same theater.