Thanks for the info, MarkB. Please post anything you can find out about these neighborhood theaters in JP and surrounding areas. There is very little posted about them here in Cinema Treasures.
Construction work began yesterday, Nov. 20. Suffolk University hopes to have the building open in 2010. They call it “The Modern Theatre and Residence Hall”. The “dorm tower” will have 200 beds. There was a photo taken yesterday in front of the theater published in the Boston Herald today.
The Quincy Patriot Ledger of Nov. 18, 2008 has a photo and article about a box of old artifacts found in a church in Abington MA. In the photo, someone is holding up to the camera a copy of the Patriot Ledger from Sept. 25, 1956. About the only thing readable in the photo is the paper’s headline: “Rockland Theatre Gutted by Fire”. It seems likely that the theater in question is this one, the Strand in Rockland.
The July-Aug. 2008 issue of Rollsign Magazine (Boston Street Railway Assoc.) has a couple of Medford theater items. There is an old photo and an old colored postcard, both undated but appear to be circa-1900. There was an Opera House in Medford Center. It was located one building to the right of the Medford City Hall, which was at that time a building with a classical columned facade. The Opera House was 5 stories high and was a big brick Victorian heap. The other photo shows an open trolley on Playstead Road in West Medford. Looks like circa-1900. On the front of the car is a poster for the Boulevard Theatre in Medford. This means that around 1900 there were at least two theaters in Medford, the Opera House and the Boulevard.
The description above mentions the old Lyceum Theatre in Ithaca. The Lyceum is mentioned in the current newsletter of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra in Lewisburg PA. It says that the Lyceum in Ithaca opened in 1893, had 1200 seats and was a roadshow house. In 1915 it began to show movies (so it could have its own listing here in CT). It closed in 1927 and was converted to retail space and, years later, finally demolished. The Lyceum had a 12-piece pit orchestra led by one John Noble. When the theater closed, Noble managed to save its very extensive music library. When Noble died in the 1940s, the band director at Ithaca high school obtained the collection which he sold in the 1970s to one of his former students, Joe McConnell. Recently, Joe McConnell donated the collection of over 1,000 numbers, ranging from the 1870s to the 1920s, to the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. The PRO has started to catalog the Lyceum Theatre music collection, and has added a few of the numbers to its repetoire.
Lost’s photo dates to about 1911 or 12. Note just to the right of the Star/Rialto is the Austin & Stone’s Museum which has “Auction” signs on it. It was demolished and the Scollay Square Olympia Theatre was built on its site. I agree that the original addresses on Tremont Row and Scollay Square are obsolete today and would not “google”.
Starting when I was in middle school in the early 1950s I worked at Symphony Hall as an usher, ticket-taker, and occasionally as a relief stage doorkeeper. It was a perfectly safe area then, working between 6PM and 9 PM, sometimes to 11PM. Even the side streets were safe late at night. The fans who hung out at the stage door in back were very nice people. I often walked thru the Public Garden and Boston Common late at night in those days – no problems. I had never even heard of expressions such as “mugging” and “rip off”. It all started to go to hell after 1960. The timing may have been a coincidence but, rightly or wrongly, I blamed the social decay on the JFK-LBJ years. I would never walk around late at night in this area today.
It showed films from time to time, not on a regular basis, from the 1910s into the 1930s, maybe into the early 1940s. (see various comments above). It has always been primarily a live theater.
What has happened to all of our CT posters in eastern Massachusetts? This page was created weeks ago and so far there have been no posts to it. If Dan Petitpas had set up this page in, say, 2004 or 2005, there would have been a dozen posts here by now.
I know some people who attend the Metropolitan Opera Saturday matinee simulcasts from New York. They had been seeing them at the Regal Fenway in uptown Boston, but this season they have switched to this cinema, the Showcase Randolph. They say that the Showcase Randolph is a zillion times better than the Regal Fenway.
RE: the posting above of Nov. 2 – I have heard that Quincy Mayor Koch has been in favor of preserving the Wollaston Th. and doing something with it, but, as always, it is a question of $$$$$$$.
As the Bonebrake O.H. this theater is listed under Abilene in the 1897-98 edition of the Julius Cahn Official Theatrical Guide. The Manager was C.H. Patterson; the seating capacity was 600, and the theater was apparently on the second floor. Admissions prices vary. There were 5 in the house orchestra. There were 2 daily newspapers, the Relector and the Chronicle, and 2 weeklies. Hotels for show folk were the Pacific, Central, Continental and the McCollum. Railroads were the Santa Fe and the UP. Abilene’s 1897 population was 4,000.
danpetitpas in his posting above mentions that the amusement arcade in the Bijou Building next to the Paramount had an adult bookstore in the 1960s-70s. I believe that it was the first such store in downtown Boston, opening around 1962. It was in the right side of the arcade, at the front. It at first featured girlie magazines, pin-up calenders and main-stream books on sex. By the late 1960s, it had added erotic paperback storybooks, mostly reprints of British storybooks from the 1920s and 1930s. The first porno magazines came in around 1970. By that time, other stores had opened further south on Washington St., in the Combat Zone. When you went inside, you could hear the loud sounds of the pinball machines, which were mechanical and not like the later electronic games. The patrons were nearly all young males, with ducktail haircuts, tattoos, and leather jackets.
JustPlainBill is correct. There were some little porn “theaters” down in the “Zone” which were affiliated with porno bookstores and located in storefronts. One was the “State II” near the State Theatre entrance on Washington St. At the time, I didn’t consider them to be “real” movie theaters; and didn’t really pay much attention to them. Some of these may have had only “viewing booths” for 8mm film loops, and not had any seats, screen or projectors.
There was a fire in the Cameo Theatre building on Tuesday afternoon which forced the evacuation of the building. But apparently there was no damage to the Cameo itself.
Today’s Boston Herald has a color rendition of the Modern’s facade after the work is completed. The arch above the entrance will be opened up, as it was originally. There is no marquee over the entrance.( When it opened, the Modern did not have a marquee, that came later.) The text with the drawing says that Suffolk Construction Co. won a $29M contract from Suffolk University. They will “renovate the facade” and “build a 12-story, 200-student dormitory”. The “new building” will contain an 800 square foot art gallery and a 2400 square foot theater on the ground floor. Total, 3200 square feet which is probably about equal to the present theater’s area. The Modern at present is about 5 or 6 stories high, so the height will double in the new building. It does not state when construction is to start, or when it will be finished.
There was a MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for the Wareham Theatre but no one bothered to fill it out. It has an exterior photo taken in June 1950. This was 9 years after most of the photos in the other reports were taken. It was a free-standing building about 3 stories high located in a business district. It had a rain canopy over the sidewalk with the theatre name on it. High up on the facade there was a very small verticle sign. The facade has some modest decoration. I don’t know when the theater closed. (This info replaces postings here which have become deleted.)
Prov. says above that whoever designed the Strand in the Dorchester section of Boston also designed the Strand in Lowell. The Strand in Dorchester, which opened in 1918, was designed by the firm of Funk and Wilcox.
Today’s Boston Sunday Herald states that a Halloween “Boo Bash” will be held this afternoon at the Strand Theatre. The event is free. So many events at the Strand have free admission, which means no revenue coming in.
I like the way the video constantly cuts back and forth between the Coolidge Corner and the Wollaston, illustrating the contrast between one of the few old theaters which has managed to remain viable, and the great majority of old theaters which have ended up on history’s trash heap.
In the Patriot Ledger Archives column in the Quincy Patriot Ledger of Oct. 13, 2008, there is a news item dated Oct. 17, 1958 “Cigaret Butt Lands in Ventilator; Cuts Film Program Short”. Someone tossed a butt into a ventilator inside the Art Theatre in Quincy around 10PM the previous evening. This started a small fire and ended the movie which was Rock Hudson and Cyd Charisse in “Twilight of the Gods”. I’m nearly certain that smoking was not allowed in Quincy movie theaters in the 1950s.
The old Grand Opera House in Memphis, on the site of which the Orpheum was built, is listed in the 1897-98 edition of the Julius Cahn Official Theatrical Guide. It was under the management of Staub, Jefferson, Klaw and Erlanger. Admission prices ranged from 25 cents to $1. There were 747 orchestra seats, 582 balcony seats and 1000 gallery seats, total: 2,329. The proscenium opening was 38 feet wide X 42 feet high, and the stage was 65 feet deep. The theater was on the ground floor and there were 9 members of the house orchestra. There was also a New Lyceum Theatre in Memphis which had 2,010 seats. There were 4 newspapers, the Commercial, Scimitar, Times-Figaro and Herald, and 5 hotels for show folk, the Gayoso, Clarendon, Arlington, Fransioli, and Peabody. The 1897 population of Memphis is listed as 100,000.
In its newspaper and TV ads so far this season, the Opera House has consistently referred to itself as the “Boston Opera House”. The original Boston Opera House out on Huntington Avenue (between Symphony Hall and the MFA, 1909-1958) called itself “Boston Opera House” in its newspaper ads (and on the theater’s marquee) but it was just plain “Opera House” on many of its printed programs in the 1950s.
Thanks for the info, MarkB. Please post anything you can find out about these neighborhood theaters in JP and surrounding areas. There is very little posted about them here in Cinema Treasures.
Construction work began yesterday, Nov. 20. Suffolk University hopes to have the building open in 2010. They call it “The Modern Theatre and Residence Hall”. The “dorm tower” will have 200 beds. There was a photo taken yesterday in front of the theater published in the Boston Herald today.
The Quincy Patriot Ledger of Nov. 18, 2008 has a photo and article about a box of old artifacts found in a church in Abington MA. In the photo, someone is holding up to the camera a copy of the Patriot Ledger from Sept. 25, 1956. About the only thing readable in the photo is the paper’s headline: “Rockland Theatre Gutted by Fire”. It seems likely that the theater in question is this one, the Strand in Rockland.
Yes, I heard a few weeks ago that there was a potential buyer, but I have no details.
The July-Aug. 2008 issue of Rollsign Magazine (Boston Street Railway Assoc.) has a couple of Medford theater items. There is an old photo and an old colored postcard, both undated but appear to be circa-1900. There was an Opera House in Medford Center. It was located one building to the right of the Medford City Hall, which was at that time a building with a classical columned facade. The Opera House was 5 stories high and was a big brick Victorian heap. The other photo shows an open trolley on Playstead Road in West Medford. Looks like circa-1900. On the front of the car is a poster for the Boulevard Theatre in Medford. This means that around 1900 there were at least two theaters in Medford, the Opera House and the Boulevard.
The description above mentions the old Lyceum Theatre in Ithaca. The Lyceum is mentioned in the current newsletter of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra in Lewisburg PA. It says that the Lyceum in Ithaca opened in 1893, had 1200 seats and was a roadshow house. In 1915 it began to show movies (so it could have its own listing here in CT). It closed in 1927 and was converted to retail space and, years later, finally demolished. The Lyceum had a 12-piece pit orchestra led by one John Noble. When the theater closed, Noble managed to save its very extensive music library. When Noble died in the 1940s, the band director at Ithaca high school obtained the collection which he sold in the 1970s to one of his former students, Joe McConnell. Recently, Joe McConnell donated the collection of over 1,000 numbers, ranging from the 1870s to the 1920s, to the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. The PRO has started to catalog the Lyceum Theatre music collection, and has added a few of the numbers to its repetoire.
Lost’s photo dates to about 1911 or 12. Note just to the right of the Star/Rialto is the Austin & Stone’s Museum which has “Auction” signs on it. It was demolished and the Scollay Square Olympia Theatre was built on its site. I agree that the original addresses on Tremont Row and Scollay Square are obsolete today and would not “google”.
Starting when I was in middle school in the early 1950s I worked at Symphony Hall as an usher, ticket-taker, and occasionally as a relief stage doorkeeper. It was a perfectly safe area then, working between 6PM and 9 PM, sometimes to 11PM. Even the side streets were safe late at night. The fans who hung out at the stage door in back were very nice people. I often walked thru the Public Garden and Boston Common late at night in those days – no problems. I had never even heard of expressions such as “mugging” and “rip off”. It all started to go to hell after 1960. The timing may have been a coincidence but, rightly or wrongly, I blamed the social decay on the JFK-LBJ years. I would never walk around late at night in this area today.
It showed films from time to time, not on a regular basis, from the 1910s into the 1930s, maybe into the early 1940s. (see various comments above). It has always been primarily a live theater.
What has happened to all of our CT posters in eastern Massachusetts? This page was created weeks ago and so far there have been no posts to it. If Dan Petitpas had set up this page in, say, 2004 or 2005, there would have been a dozen posts here by now.
I know some people who attend the Metropolitan Opera Saturday matinee simulcasts from New York. They had been seeing them at the Regal Fenway in uptown Boston, but this season they have switched to this cinema, the Showcase Randolph. They say that the Showcase Randolph is a zillion times better than the Regal Fenway.
RE: the posting above of Nov. 2 – I have heard that Quincy Mayor Koch has been in favor of preserving the Wollaston Th. and doing something with it, but, as always, it is a question of $$$$$$$.
As the Bonebrake O.H. this theater is listed under Abilene in the 1897-98 edition of the Julius Cahn Official Theatrical Guide. The Manager was C.H. Patterson; the seating capacity was 600, and the theater was apparently on the second floor. Admissions prices vary. There were 5 in the house orchestra. There were 2 daily newspapers, the Relector and the Chronicle, and 2 weeklies. Hotels for show folk were the Pacific, Central, Continental and the McCollum. Railroads were the Santa Fe and the UP. Abilene’s 1897 population was 4,000.
danpetitpas in his posting above mentions that the amusement arcade in the Bijou Building next to the Paramount had an adult bookstore in the 1960s-70s. I believe that it was the first such store in downtown Boston, opening around 1962. It was in the right side of the arcade, at the front. It at first featured girlie magazines, pin-up calenders and main-stream books on sex. By the late 1960s, it had added erotic paperback storybooks, mostly reprints of British storybooks from the 1920s and 1930s. The first porno magazines came in around 1970. By that time, other stores had opened further south on Washington St., in the Combat Zone. When you went inside, you could hear the loud sounds of the pinball machines, which were mechanical and not like the later electronic games. The patrons were nearly all young males, with ducktail haircuts, tattoos, and leather jackets.
JustPlainBill is correct. There were some little porn “theaters” down in the “Zone” which were affiliated with porno bookstores and located in storefronts. One was the “State II” near the State Theatre entrance on Washington St. At the time, I didn’t consider them to be “real” movie theaters; and didn’t really pay much attention to them. Some of these may have had only “viewing booths” for 8mm film loops, and not had any seats, screen or projectors.
There was a fire in the Cameo Theatre building on Tuesday afternoon which forced the evacuation of the building. But apparently there was no damage to the Cameo itself.
Today’s Boston Herald has a color rendition of the Modern’s facade after the work is completed. The arch above the entrance will be opened up, as it was originally. There is no marquee over the entrance.( When it opened, the Modern did not have a marquee, that came later.) The text with the drawing says that Suffolk Construction Co. won a $29M contract from Suffolk University. They will “renovate the facade” and “build a 12-story, 200-student dormitory”. The “new building” will contain an 800 square foot art gallery and a 2400 square foot theater on the ground floor. Total, 3200 square feet which is probably about equal to the present theater’s area. The Modern at present is about 5 or 6 stories high, so the height will double in the new building. It does not state when construction is to start, or when it will be finished.
There was a MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for the Wareham Theatre but no one bothered to fill it out. It has an exterior photo taken in June 1950. This was 9 years after most of the photos in the other reports were taken. It was a free-standing building about 3 stories high located in a business district. It had a rain canopy over the sidewalk with the theatre name on it. High up on the facade there was a very small verticle sign. The facade has some modest decoration. I don’t know when the theater closed. (This info replaces postings here which have become deleted.)
Prov. says above that whoever designed the Strand in the Dorchester section of Boston also designed the Strand in Lowell. The Strand in Dorchester, which opened in 1918, was designed by the firm of Funk and Wilcox.
Today’s Boston Sunday Herald states that a Halloween “Boo Bash” will be held this afternoon at the Strand Theatre. The event is free. So many events at the Strand have free admission, which means no revenue coming in.
I like the way the video constantly cuts back and forth between the Coolidge Corner and the Wollaston, illustrating the contrast between one of the few old theaters which has managed to remain viable, and the great majority of old theaters which have ended up on history’s trash heap.
In the Patriot Ledger Archives column in the Quincy Patriot Ledger of Oct. 13, 2008, there is a news item dated Oct. 17, 1958 “Cigaret Butt Lands in Ventilator; Cuts Film Program Short”. Someone tossed a butt into a ventilator inside the Art Theatre in Quincy around 10PM the previous evening. This started a small fire and ended the movie which was Rock Hudson and Cyd Charisse in “Twilight of the Gods”. I’m nearly certain that smoking was not allowed in Quincy movie theaters in the 1950s.
The old Grand Opera House in Memphis, on the site of which the Orpheum was built, is listed in the 1897-98 edition of the Julius Cahn Official Theatrical Guide. It was under the management of Staub, Jefferson, Klaw and Erlanger. Admission prices ranged from 25 cents to $1. There were 747 orchestra seats, 582 balcony seats and 1000 gallery seats, total: 2,329. The proscenium opening was 38 feet wide X 42 feet high, and the stage was 65 feet deep. The theater was on the ground floor and there were 9 members of the house orchestra. There was also a New Lyceum Theatre in Memphis which had 2,010 seats. There were 4 newspapers, the Commercial, Scimitar, Times-Figaro and Herald, and 5 hotels for show folk, the Gayoso, Clarendon, Arlington, Fransioli, and Peabody. The 1897 population of Memphis is listed as 100,000.
For the Halloween season 2008 the Orpheum has fitted itself out as a “haunted theater” which patrons can roam through, including the backstage area.
In its newspaper and TV ads so far this season, the Opera House has consistently referred to itself as the “Boston Opera House”. The original Boston Opera House out on Huntington Avenue (between Symphony Hall and the MFA, 1909-1958) called itself “Boston Opera House” in its newspaper ads (and on the theater’s marquee) but it was just plain “Opera House” on many of its printed programs in the 1950s.