Since we have listings confirming that the Rialto/Lincoln Square Theatre was at 20 S. Illinois, and have never found a listing for the Tower at that address, it does seem possible that we’ve got the wrong address for it and that it was actually at 20 N. Illinois.
However, the block of Illinois Street between Court and Market shows up at Google maps as the 100 N. block, so I’m thinking that Downtown Theatre is more likely a missing aka for the house we have listed as the Ambassador Theatre at 113 N. Illinois. Our photos of the Ambassador show that it had an arched parapet, just like the Downtown, though it was much more elaborate in its early days. Our description has no information about the Ambassador after 1933, so a name change seems quite likely.
A Star Theatre is listed as one of four movie houses at Newton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but it is given the address of 7 E. Washington Street. This might have been an error, though, as a house called the Idle Hour was given the same address.
However that may be, the facade of the Star Theatre building is designed in the prairie style, which was quite popular in the region during the 1910s, so I suspect that the building was erected as a theater during that decade. The Star Theatre was mentioned in the August 7, 1918 issue of The Moving Picture World, and appears fairly often in various trade publications thereafter.
A History of the Jasper County Museum says that the library moved into the Star Theatre building in 1958, though it appears that it was not located in the theater section. In 1965 the theater portion of the building was converted into the museum. The article does not say when the theater stopped operating.
While it is nice that the building itself survives, at some point whoever runs the and museum chose to paint over that splendid tapestry brick facade, which in our post-museum conversion photo appears still to have been in excellent condition. It’s an inexplicable act of aesthetic vandalism, which I hope can be reversed someday.
The Big Sandy News of May 23, 1913 said that the new Imp Theatre in Pikeville had opened the previous night with a free show for the public. The policy of the house would be motion pictures with vaudeville.
It’s likely that the Imp Theatre was never rebuilt after it was leveled by a fire which was reported in the Louisville Courier-Journal of January 19, 1921. The article said that the theater was not insured. Other sources indicate that the owners of the Imp, the Saad Brothers, also owned the Royal Theatre in Pikeville.
A. M. Welliver and the Dreamland Show are also mentioned in an ad for the Universal Film company in the February 7, 1914 issue of The Moving Picture World.
Some of the Dempwolf company’s plans and drawings for the Jackson Theatre, dated 1917, can be found on this page of the York County History Center web site. It appears that no major alterations to the building took place in 1926 when it was renamed the Capitol Theatre by new owners Nathan and Louis Appell. The rebuilding of the house had taken place in 1917. The Theatorium had been showing movies at least as early as 1908, and as the Jackson, which was its name by 1909, the theater had always been a movie house, though it was a smaller and far less elaborate one prior to the 1917 project.
eBay had a vintage postcard of the Highland Park amusement park in York, with the Dreamland Theatre in the photo. It was postmarked in 1914, but the card might have already been several years old at that time. There is no Dreamland Theatre among the ten movie houses listed at York in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The Opera House in Versailles, Ohio, was mentioned in the August 17, 1918 issue of The Moving Picture World. The name did not appear in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which listed only two movie houses, called the Royal and the Gem, at Versailles.
A Gem Theatre was one of two movie houses listed at Versailles in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other was a house called the Royal Theatre.
In 1922, Versailles had a movie house called the Crystal, and in 1950 one called the Versailles. So far I’ve been unable to find out anything about either of them.
We have a name conflict. We list a Villa Theatre, 320 S. Halsted, opened around 1913-1914 as the Halsted Theatre. Comments on the Villa page also mention a Halsted or Halsted Street Theatre operating around 1916 at 6202 S. Halsted. Research is further complicated by the fact that in the 1980s-1990s there was a place called the Center on Halsted Theatre at 3656 N. Halsted.
The Laverne Theatre’s upcoming shows (all single features, with three changes a week) were also listed in the September 11, 1958 issue of The Leader-Tribune. The house might have closed, reopened, and closed again multiple times during its last years. This was a common occurrence for small town theaters in those days. It might also have closed annually for the summer, if the drive-in was under the same ownership.
The description should note that the second Monroe Theatre was renamed Avalon Theatre in January, 1931, per the newspaper clipping uploaded to the photo page by CT contributor Predator.
The February 28, 1917 issue of the Alexandria Times Tribune said that “…the new theatre in the Elks building will be thrown open to the public tomorrow afternoon….”
The September 5, 1918 issue of the same paper notes the sale of the Gossard Theatre to a Mr. William Lipps who, the article says “…was lessee of the Elks theatre before the fire destroyed the building several years ago.” The paper’s February 7, 1914 issue reported on the fire, and it’s clear that the Elks theater and the Opera House were one and the same.
What I haven’t been able to discover is when the Elks took control of the Opera House, nor have I found anything to confirm that the new Elks building of 1917 with the Gossard Theatre on the ground floor was indeed on the site of the Opera House, though it does seem likely that it would have been.
The October 5, 2013 issue of The Herald Bulletin of Anderson, Indiana, has an article about the region’s early opera houses which says that the Alexandria Opera House was completely destroyed by a fire on February 6, 1914. Unfortunately the article does not say whether or not a new theater was built on the Opera House site.
The article includes a photo of Harrison Street with the Opera House prominently displayed. The article says that silent moves were shown at the house, and it is also the only theater listed for Alexandria in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, so even if it didn’t become the Gossard Theatre the Alexandria Opera House deserves a Cinema Treasures page.
The Scammon Theatre is listed in the 1909-1910 Cahn guide as a ground floor house with 388 seats in the orchestra, 202 in the balcony, and a gallery seating 425. The stage was 34 feet from footlights to back wall and 53 feet between side walls, and the rigging loft was 48 feet above the stage floor. Quite a capacious theater for a town of 3000.
I am wondering if the Scammon Theatre could be this house mentioned in the September 10, 1921 issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Francis Hughes has purchased the Opera House at Scammon, Kas., from George Fichtner. Mr. Hughes will remodel and redecorate the theatre and open it as the Royal. Mr. Fichtner will go back to his Lyric Theatre, which he will remodel and reopen.”
Scammon’s decline must have been fairly rapid. The January 14, 1928 issue of Movie Age carried this advertisement in its “Theaters for Sale” column:
“BRICK BUILDING and equipment, population 1,700, seats over 600, the only show in town, a good Sunday town, will take one-half cash, balance to suit buyer. Write F. W. Hughes, Scammon, Kas.”
PG&E had power restored to most standing structures within just a few weeks of the fire. Other overhead utilities (telephone, cable) were also quickly restored. Water was a bit more of a problem as the system was already old and in need of constant repair, and many surviving pipes were contaminated by the fire. Most of the system serving structures that survived and new builds has now been restored, but some dead-end streets with no surviving structures or new builds remain to be repaired.
The town never had a sewer system, and was the largest community without one in the United States. A sewer system to serve primarily the main commercial corridors was in the preliminary planning stage at the time of the fire (and had been for years) and there are now plans to go through with that project if it can be financed. But rebuilding is proceeding very slowly, and as of April 6 this year only 81 houses had been rebuilt, though 883 additional permits had been issued. At the current pace it would probably take eight to ten years to replace the 8000 units lost in the fire, but I doubt that pace will continue. The burst was mostly the result of the fact that insurance companies will cover loss of use for only three years if you are rebuilding, and only two if you aren’t. A lot of the housing was not insured, and once everybody insured who intends to rebuild has done so the pace of rebuilding is bound to slow down.
The problem is that the town has lost its economic foundation, which was primarily pension and investment money. Over the decades a lot of retired people moved there because housing was cheap and the town was picturesque, and now both of those features are gone. It will be difficult to attract more retired people to replace those who are not returning, and with a smaller retired population there will be less economic activity to support working people. The hospital, for example, was the largest employer in the town, with over 1000 employees, but now that its patients are gone it is unneeded, and unlikely to fully reopen anytime soon. The school district was the next largest employer, but without the workers at the hospital and other businesses that lost their customers there are far fewer kids in town, and thus fewer teachers and other school personnel are needed.
To some extent the town was also a bedroom community for commuters from Chico and Oroville, but those commuters were attracted for the same reason the retirees had been— picturesqueness, relatively inexpensive housing, and a decent amount of goods and services available locally thanks to the spending of all those retired people, plus the economic multiplier effects of the employees of those goods and service suppliers themselves. So the place isn’t even as attractive as a bedroom community as it once was. The likely result of all this is that it will not be fully rebuilt anytime soon, unless somebody there can come up with a replacement for all that retirement income that was its economic foundation, and that too seems very unlikely. The owners of this theater would have been better off if the place had burned, assuming they were insured. They could have used their capital to build a theater somewhere else. Now they are probably stuck with a white elephant that might not be economically viable for a decade or more, and might never become viable again.
The November 30, 1912 issue of The Moving Picture News says that Mr. J. H. Hallberg had sold a Simplex moving picture machine to the Criterion Theatre, Rutherford, New Jersey. According to the book Rutherford: A Brief History, by William Neumann, the Criterion opened on January 27, 1912, and was destroyed by a fire in 1943.
Robert L. George and Mitchell T. Kinder’s book Cleveland says that the Princess Theatre opened on September 3, 1927. The Martin closed on October 14, 1972.
The November, 1922 issue of trade union journal American Federationist lists the Star Theatre as one of four Kokomo movie houses whose managers had signed agreements with musicians and projectionists. The Victory, Pictureland and Strand were also operating with union contracts, while workers at the Isis, Grand and Colonial were on strike.
The November, 1922 issue of the trade union journal American Federationist listed the Grand as one of three Kokomo houses at which projectionists and musicians were on strike. The others were the Isis and the Colonial. Managers had signed agreements with union members at the Victory, Pictureland, Star, and Strand.
Ned Booher’s Kokomo: A Pictorial History says that Pictureland was destroyed by fire in December, 1923. The building might have survived, but the theater apparently never reopened.
Since we have listings confirming that the Rialto/Lincoln Square Theatre was at 20 S. Illinois, and have never found a listing for the Tower at that address, it does seem possible that we’ve got the wrong address for it and that it was actually at 20 N. Illinois.
However, the block of Illinois Street between Court and Market shows up at Google maps as the 100 N. block, so I’m thinking that Downtown Theatre is more likely a missing aka for the house we have listed as the Ambassador Theatre at 113 N. Illinois. Our photos of the Ambassador show that it had an arched parapet, just like the Downtown, though it was much more elaborate in its early days. Our description has no information about the Ambassador after 1933, so a name change seems quite likely.
A Star Theatre is listed as one of four movie houses at Newton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but it is given the address of 7 E. Washington Street. This might have been an error, though, as a house called the Idle Hour was given the same address.
However that may be, the facade of the Star Theatre building is designed in the prairie style, which was quite popular in the region during the 1910s, so I suspect that the building was erected as a theater during that decade. The Star Theatre was mentioned in the August 7, 1918 issue of The Moving Picture World, and appears fairly often in various trade publications thereafter.
A History of the Jasper County Museum says that the library moved into the Star Theatre building in 1958, though it appears that it was not located in the theater section. In 1965 the theater portion of the building was converted into the museum. The article does not say when the theater stopped operating.
While it is nice that the building itself survives, at some point whoever runs the and museum chose to paint over that splendid tapestry brick facade, which in our post-museum conversion photo appears still to have been in excellent condition. It’s an inexplicable act of aesthetic vandalism, which I hope can be reversed someday.
The Big Sandy News of May 23, 1913 said that the new Imp Theatre in Pikeville had opened the previous night with a free show for the public. The policy of the house would be motion pictures with vaudeville.
It’s likely that the Imp Theatre was never rebuilt after it was leveled by a fire which was reported in the Louisville Courier-Journal of January 19, 1921. The article said that the theater was not insured. Other sources indicate that the owners of the Imp, the Saad Brothers, also owned the Royal Theatre in Pikeville.
A. M. Welliver and the Dreamland Show are also mentioned in an ad for the Universal Film company in the February 7, 1914 issue of The Moving Picture World.
Some of the Dempwolf company’s plans and drawings for the Jackson Theatre, dated 1917, can be found on this page of the York County History Center web site. It appears that no major alterations to the building took place in 1926 when it was renamed the Capitol Theatre by new owners Nathan and Louis Appell. The rebuilding of the house had taken place in 1917. The Theatorium had been showing movies at least as early as 1908, and as the Jackson, which was its name by 1909, the theater had always been a movie house, though it was a smaller and far less elaborate one prior to the 1917 project.
The Jackson Theatre was one of the ten movie houses listed at York in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The Hippodrome Theatre was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. There were ten movie theaters listed for York.
eBay had a vintage postcard of the Highland Park amusement park in York, with the Dreamland Theatre in the photo. It was postmarked in 1914, but the card might have already been several years old at that time. There is no Dreamland Theatre among the ten movie houses listed at York in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
In Google street view it looks like the Grand’s building has been demolished.
The Opera House in Versailles, Ohio, was mentioned in the August 17, 1918 issue of The Moving Picture World. The name did not appear in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which listed only two movie houses, called the Royal and the Gem, at Versailles.
A Gem Theatre was one of two movie houses listed at Versailles in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other was a house called the Royal Theatre.
In 1922, Versailles had a movie house called the Crystal, and in 1950 one called the Versailles. So far I’ve been unable to find out anything about either of them.
We have a name conflict. We list a Villa Theatre, 320 S. Halsted, opened around 1913-1914 as the Halsted Theatre. Comments on the Villa page also mention a Halsted or Halsted Street Theatre operating around 1916 at 6202 S. Halsted. Research is further complicated by the fact that in the 1980s-1990s there was a place called the Center on Halsted Theatre at 3656 N. Halsted.
The Laverne Theatre’s upcoming shows (all single features, with three changes a week) were also listed in the September 11, 1958 issue of The Leader-Tribune. The house might have closed, reopened, and closed again multiple times during its last years. This was a common occurrence for small town theaters in those days. It might also have closed annually for the summer, if the drive-in was under the same ownership.
The description should note that the second Monroe Theatre was renamed Avalon Theatre in January, 1931, per the newspaper clipping uploaded to the photo page by CT contributor Predator.
The February 28, 1917 issue of the Alexandria Times Tribune said that “…the new theatre in the Elks building will be thrown open to the public tomorrow afternoon….”
The September 5, 1918 issue of the same paper notes the sale of the Gossard Theatre to a Mr. William Lipps who, the article says “…was lessee of the Elks theatre before the fire destroyed the building several years ago.” The paper’s February 7, 1914 issue reported on the fire, and it’s clear that the Elks theater and the Opera House were one and the same.
What I haven’t been able to discover is when the Elks took control of the Opera House, nor have I found anything to confirm that the new Elks building of 1917 with the Gossard Theatre on the ground floor was indeed on the site of the Opera House, though it does seem likely that it would have been.
The October 5, 2013 issue of The Herald Bulletin of Anderson, Indiana, has an article about the region’s early opera houses which says that the Alexandria Opera House was completely destroyed by a fire on February 6, 1914. Unfortunately the article does not say whether or not a new theater was built on the Opera House site.
The article includes a photo of Harrison Street with the Opera House prominently displayed. The article says that silent moves were shown at the house, and it is also the only theater listed for Alexandria in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, so even if it didn’t become the Gossard Theatre the Alexandria Opera House deserves a Cinema Treasures page.
This is interesting. David and Noelle Soren’s list of known Boller Bros. theaters has this: “Scammon (Opera House) Theatre – 1906”
The Scammon Theatre is listed in the 1909-1910 Cahn guide as a ground floor house with 388 seats in the orchestra, 202 in the balcony, and a gallery seating 425. The stage was 34 feet from footlights to back wall and 53 feet between side walls, and the rigging loft was 48 feet above the stage floor. Quite a capacious theater for a town of 3000.
I am wondering if the Scammon Theatre could be this house mentioned in the September 10, 1921 issue of The Moving Picture World:
Scammon’s decline must have been fairly rapid. The January 14, 1928 issue of Movie Age carried this advertisement in its “Theaters for Sale” column:PG&E had power restored to most standing structures within just a few weeks of the fire. Other overhead utilities (telephone, cable) were also quickly restored. Water was a bit more of a problem as the system was already old and in need of constant repair, and many surviving pipes were contaminated by the fire. Most of the system serving structures that survived and new builds has now been restored, but some dead-end streets with no surviving structures or new builds remain to be repaired.
The town never had a sewer system, and was the largest community without one in the United States. A sewer system to serve primarily the main commercial corridors was in the preliminary planning stage at the time of the fire (and had been for years) and there are now plans to go through with that project if it can be financed. But rebuilding is proceeding very slowly, and as of April 6 this year only 81 houses had been rebuilt, though 883 additional permits had been issued. At the current pace it would probably take eight to ten years to replace the 8000 units lost in the fire, but I doubt that pace will continue. The burst was mostly the result of the fact that insurance companies will cover loss of use for only three years if you are rebuilding, and only two if you aren’t. A lot of the housing was not insured, and once everybody insured who intends to rebuild has done so the pace of rebuilding is bound to slow down.
The problem is that the town has lost its economic foundation, which was primarily pension and investment money. Over the decades a lot of retired people moved there because housing was cheap and the town was picturesque, and now both of those features are gone. It will be difficult to attract more retired people to replace those who are not returning, and with a smaller retired population there will be less economic activity to support working people. The hospital, for example, was the largest employer in the town, with over 1000 employees, but now that its patients are gone it is unneeded, and unlikely to fully reopen anytime soon. The school district was the next largest employer, but without the workers at the hospital and other businesses that lost their customers there are far fewer kids in town, and thus fewer teachers and other school personnel are needed.
To some extent the town was also a bedroom community for commuters from Chico and Oroville, but those commuters were attracted for the same reason the retirees had been— picturesqueness, relatively inexpensive housing, and a decent amount of goods and services available locally thanks to the spending of all those retired people, plus the economic multiplier effects of the employees of those goods and service suppliers themselves. So the place isn’t even as attractive as a bedroom community as it once was. The likely result of all this is that it will not be fully rebuilt anytime soon, unless somebody there can come up with a replacement for all that retirement income that was its economic foundation, and that too seems very unlikely. The owners of this theater would have been better off if the place had burned, assuming they were insured. They could have used their capital to build a theater somewhere else. Now they are probably stuck with a white elephant that might not be economically viable for a decade or more, and might never become viable again.
The November 30, 1912 issue of The Moving Picture News says that Mr. J. H. Hallberg had sold a Simplex moving picture machine to the Criterion Theatre, Rutherford, New Jersey. According to the book Rutherford: A Brief History, by William Neumann, the Criterion opened on January 27, 1912, and was destroyed by a fire in 1943.
Robert L. George and Mitchell T. Kinder’s book Cleveland says that the Princess Theatre opened on September 3, 1927. The Martin closed on October 14, 1972.
The November, 1922 issue of trade union journal American Federationist lists the Star Theatre as one of four Kokomo movie houses whose managers had signed agreements with musicians and projectionists. The Victory, Pictureland and Strand were also operating with union contracts, while workers at the Isis, Grand and Colonial were on strike.
The November, 1922 issue of the trade union journal American Federationist listed the Grand as one of three Kokomo houses at which projectionists and musicians were on strike. The others were the Isis and the Colonial. Managers had signed agreements with union members at the Victory, Pictureland, Star, and Strand.
Ned Booher’s Kokomo: A Pictorial History says that Pictureland was destroyed by fire in December, 1923. The building might have survived, but the theater apparently never reopened.
The 1912-1913 Kokomo city directory lists the “Lyric Theatre, W O Tarkington mngr, 103 E Sycamore.”