The 1912-1913 Cahn guide lists the Empire Theatre as a ground floor house with 392 seats on the main floor, 238 in the balcony, and 10 in boxes. The stage was 35 feet from footlights to back wall, and 44 feet between the side walls.
Here is an item from the September 21, 1923 issue of The Moving Picture World which might, or might not, be about the Avenue Theatre:
“PITTSBURGH, PA.— Majestic Theatre Corporation has plans by Rubin & Ve Shancey, Union Arcade, for one-story brick moving picture theatre to be erected on Fifth avenue, near Magee street, to cost $75,000.”
Whether or not this item was in fact about the Pearl/Avenue, the Avenue Theatre that had the fire in 1903 was a different house, and probably not on the same site. A November, 1903 fire at Harry Davis' Avenue Theatre in Pittsburgh is mentioned in the end notes of The Perils of Moviegoing in America: 1896-1950, by Gary D. Rhodes, as well as in Charles Musser’s The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907.
Other sources reveal that Davis operated his Avenue Theatre at least as early as 1896, and that it burned down in 1905, whereupon Davis and his partner John P. Harris opened the famous Nickelodeon. While Davis' Avenue Theatre was on Fifth Avenue, I’ve been unable to find an address for it, and it’s possible, maybe even likely, that it was not at 1108 Fifth.
Actually, the aerial photo currently displayed above does show the theater entrance at Roosevelt and Opal. This is an older photo, late 1940s, taken before Wilson Street was cut through. The theater was later expanded a bit, and its back rows extended up onto the Wilson Street property that is now occupied by the Hampton Inn. It looks like this drive-in opened as the Phillips 66, then was renamed the Plains Drive-In, probably not too long after. The entrance is still at Roosevelt and Opal in a 1969 aerial photo.
A comment by jwmovies on the Tri-City Drive-In page says that the Plains Drive-In was at 1415 W. Wilson St., and this is confirmed by NYozoner, who says the Plains was still listed in the 1969 theater catalog. It was the older Phillips 66 Drive-In that was at Roosevelt and Opal Street.
The May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald has this brief item:
“F. A. Lambert contemplates the erection of a new theatre in Princeton, Mo., to replace a structure recently destroyed by fire.”
This turned out not to be the last fire in the Lambert’s history. The August 17, 1965 issue of the Jefferson City Daily Capital News reported that Princeton’s only movie theater, the Lambert, had been destroyed by a fire following the previous Sunday’s matinée. The two-story brick building had recently been rewired, and it was thought a fault in the wiring had caused the blaze. The adjacent Farmers State Bank and Lowry-Miller Lumber Company buildings suffered only smoke damage.
The Lambert was not located on Washington Street but in the 700 block of W. Hickland Street. The Farmers State Bank building on the corner of Washington and Hickland is still there, now occupied by a branch of U.S. Bank, which has built an addition on the theater’s site. The lumber company building, which had also been rebuilt following the 1936 fire, is also still there, but blocked by a big truck in Google’s street view so I don’t know what is in it.
The Past Times in Princeton Missouri Facebook page has this photo showing the corner of the square with the Lambert Theatre down the block, sometime around 1950.
This item is from the April 6, 1940 issue of Boxoffice:
“‘66’ and Phillips Did Not Open Same Day
“Phillips, Tex. — It is pointed out that the Griffith ‘66’ Theatre and the Phillips, owned by Smith and Bearden, did not open on the same day, as was reported March 23. The source says the ‘66’ opened on Friday, March 8, and that the Phillips opened Sunday, March 10.”
The web site I cited in my first comment says that the rival Phillips Theatre closed following a fire in 1940. It doesn’t say that the house ever reopened, and notes that when it closed in 1949 the 66 Theatre was the only movie house in the town.
The town of Phillips is now a ghost town. After reaching a peak population of 4,250 in 1947 it gradually declined. A refinery explosion in 1980 led further declines, and the Phillips Petroleum company, the major employer, bought the land it ha leased for its facilities and the land the town’s businesses and homeowners had leased individually from the same lessors, and forced the population out.
It’s impossible to be absolutely certain of the location of the theater by judging from historic aerial photos, but the town’s small commercial district appears to have been concentrated along a short stretch of Whitenburg Avenue. In a 1951 aerial shot the shadow of a building on the south side of Whitenburg just west of C Avenue has the shape of the theater building’s upper section as it appears in the vintage photo, so my guess would be that’s where it most likely was.
Thomas Kneass, who is buried in Chillicothe, adapted an old German melody to the 1840s poem “Ben Bolt” by Thomas Dunn English. The song was used in a play called “The Battle of Buena Vista” which was first staged during the war with Mexico.
The Townsend Block and Arbelia Opera House burned in November, 1914, according to this web page. The fire was also noted in the December 9 issue of Fire and Water Engineering. The timing of the event late in the year would account for the Arbelia having been listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which would have been published before the fire. It seems quite likely that the replacement theater was the house that later became the Courter. It also seems likely that the same house was the Star Theatre that John Courter took over in 1918.
A John Courter was mentioned as the new owner of the Star Theatre at Gallatin in the April 27, 1918 issue of Motography. No address is given. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists four theaters at Gallatin, but none are called the Star. They were the Arbelia Opera House, Chataqua Theatre, Duchess Theatre and Gem Theatre. The 1926 FDY lists only the Courter Theatre.
dansdriveintheater: kencmcintyre is no longer active on this site, but I found this 2008 article from The Atmore Advance saying that the Palms Drive-In was just across the state line in Florida. Cinema Treasures has it listed in Walnut Hill.
A November 9, 1967 article in the Quanah Tribune said that the Palace Theatre opened in 1916, and the building had been built expressly to serve as a movie house, though there was also a stage for vaudeville acts. The house became part of the Interstate circuit around 1939, and later became part of the Frontier Theaters chain. It had been independently operated for about two months before being destroyed by a fire on November 6, 1967.
Here is information about the East Auditorium Theatre from an August 3, 2018 article written by Larry Michaels of the East Toledo Historical Society:
“On Christmas Day of 1913, A.J. Smith and his son Martin opened the East Auditorium at 519 Main St. The following year, James Beidler became a partner, and soon ‘the people of East Toledo could enjoy the popular movies at a price that was reasonable.’ With the coming of the ‘talkies,’ it flourished, and continued to do a good business well into the 1950s. It later became a Pentecostal church and the building is now gone.”
J. A. Woolam was operating a theater in Walters as early as 1916, when a letter fromhim was published in the April 8 issue of The Moving Picture World. The letter doesn’t give the name of the theater. The only theater listed at Walters in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Gem.
J. A. Woolam and A. M. VanCleef of Walters purchased the Empress Theatre in Waurika, Oklahoma, in 1914, as noted in the May 22 issue of the Waurika News-Democrat. Both were experienced theater men, the item said, and VanCleef would be moving to Waurika to manage their new acquisition.
The web site of the Cotton County Museum, which is housed in the former Grand Theatre building, says that the Grand and Thompson were across the street from each other. The Grand was at 116 N. Broadway.
The former Grand Theatre building, at 116 N. Broadway, is now the home of the Cotton County Museum. Here is their web site which, unfortunately, has no photos and little other information about the town’s theaters except to say that the Thomson and the Grand were across the street from each other and that locals called the Grand the “little show” and the Thompson the “big show.”
Manta says that Sapphire Cineplex was established in 2007, but that is probably the year the business was incorporated, and the theater might or might not have been opened that year. The December 16, 2016 issue of Eastern Arizona Courier says that Robert E. Hollis had bought the Sapphire Cineplex from John and Marty Gray on December 4. Hollis’s sale of the Sapphire to Allen Theatres on December 1, 2017, is noted on the web site Gila Valley Central, so Hollis Cinemas only operated the house for a little over a year.
The 1908-1909 Cahn guide lists the 950-seat Passaic Opera House, managed by W. Whitehead, so I’d guess it’s the same theater as Whitehead’s Opera House. CinemaTour lists the house at 217 Washington Place. A 1910 city directory gives that address as the location of the Opera House Hotel, so the theater might have been entered through the hotel lobby. William Whitehead owned the hotel, and earlier had operated a theater called the Lyceum.
Whitehead’s Opera House was dedicated on February 1, 1892, according the Theatrical Chronology in the 1893 edition of The New York Clipper Annual. The Passaic Opera House was destroyed by a fire on January 19, 1916, along with several other buildings, an event widely reported in newspapers a the time and noted in the January 26 issue of The Insurance Press.
The Warner is now the home of Blink Fitness, a gym. Most of the wall and ceiling decor in lobby and auditorium is intact, and even nicely restored. Some sort of piping has been suspended from the ceiling, which prevents a full view of it from any given spot on the ground floor, but there’s a good view of the ceiling from the former balcony. The locker rooms are in the former stage area.
The floors have been leveled, of course, including that of the balcony which is now two terraces. It looks like they were just built over, though, rather than ripped out. The mezzanine lounge has somewhat more alteration, but its ceiling is still partly visible. It looks like the projection booth is still there, too, but closed off.
I never went to this theater but if it was like the Warner Beverly it would have had an ornate lounge and rest rooms in the basement, but I can’t find any photos of them, so I don’t know what they are being used for (if they exist.) The terrazzo out front looks pretty good, as does the ornate soffit of the marquee. The box office is gone.
While this project probably increased to cost of any future plans to return the building to theatrical use, it could have been way worse. The building was not gutted, and most of the Art Deco detailing is intact. I don’t know how the gym management feels about people coming in just to look at it, but maybe somebody who can get to Huntington Park can talk to someone there about it. They obviously did put a lot of thought into their adaptive reuse, and I would think they might like to show it off a bit to members of the non-exercising general public.
It hasn’t reopened. While some neighborhoods above Paradise survived the fire, as well as scattered houses in the town itself, and some people have moved back in, the current population is insufficient to support a movie theater. A regional supermarket chain reopened its store that is not far from the theater on December 28, but I don’t know how much business they are doing. Extensive reconstruction, if it takes place, will have to wait until the removal of debris is done, and that won’t be compete until much later this year.
The Theatre Historical Society says that the Ritz Theatre had a 2 manual, 5 rank Wurlizter organ, opus 606, installed in November, 1922. The announcement of the theater’s impending construction had been made a year earlier, with plans being prepared by the firm of Margon & Glaser. The Ritz closed on December 3, 1950.
The Theatre Historical Society says that the Kingsbridge Theatre opened on January 26, 1922. The house had a 2 manual, 6 rank Wurlitzer organ, opus 472.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide lists the Empire Theatre as a ground floor house with 392 seats on the main floor, 238 in the balcony, and 10 in boxes. The stage was 35 feet from footlights to back wall, and 44 feet between the side walls.
Architect Ricardo A. Nicol.
Here is an item from the September 21, 1923 issue of The Moving Picture World which might, or might not, be about the Avenue Theatre:
Whether or not this item was in fact about the Pearl/Avenue, the Avenue Theatre that had the fire in 1903 was a different house, and probably not on the same site. A November, 1903 fire at Harry Davis' Avenue Theatre in Pittsburgh is mentioned in the end notes of The Perils of Moviegoing in America: 1896-1950, by Gary D. Rhodes, as well as in Charles Musser’s The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907.Other sources reveal that Davis operated his Avenue Theatre at least as early as 1896, and that it burned down in 1905, whereupon Davis and his partner John P. Harris opened the famous Nickelodeon. While Davis' Avenue Theatre was on Fifth Avenue, I’ve been unable to find an address for it, and it’s possible, maybe even likely, that it was not at 1108 Fifth.
A September 28, 2012 article in theMoberly Monitor-Index says that the Amy Lou Theatre building was demolished on September 29, 1962.
Actually, the aerial photo currently displayed above does show the theater entrance at Roosevelt and Opal. This is an older photo, late 1940s, taken before Wilson Street was cut through. The theater was later expanded a bit, and its back rows extended up onto the Wilson Street property that is now occupied by the Hampton Inn. It looks like this drive-in opened as the Phillips 66, then was renamed the Plains Drive-In, probably not too long after. The entrance is still at Roosevelt and Opal in a 1969 aerial photo.
A comment by jwmovies on the Tri-City Drive-In page says that the Plains Drive-In was at 1415 W. Wilson St., and this is confirmed by NYozoner, who says the Plains was still listed in the 1969 theater catalog. It was the older Phillips 66 Drive-In that was at Roosevelt and Opal Street.
Google street view labels it the 700 block of Hickland, but it must actually be the 600 block that he Lambert was in.
The May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald has this brief item:
This turned out not to be the last fire in the Lambert’s history. The August 17, 1965 issue of the Jefferson City Daily Capital News reported that Princeton’s only movie theater, the Lambert, had been destroyed by a fire following the previous Sunday’s matinée. The two-story brick building had recently been rewired, and it was thought a fault in the wiring had caused the blaze. The adjacent Farmers State Bank and Lowry-Miller Lumber Company buildings suffered only smoke damage.The Lambert was not located on Washington Street but in the 700 block of W. Hickland Street. The Farmers State Bank building on the corner of Washington and Hickland is still there, now occupied by a branch of U.S. Bank, which has built an addition on the theater’s site. The lumber company building, which had also been rebuilt following the 1936 fire, is also still there, but blocked by a big truck in Google’s street view so I don’t know what is in it.
The Past Times in Princeton Missouri Facebook page has this photo showing the corner of the square with the Lambert Theatre down the block, sometime around 1950.
This item is from the April 6, 1940 issue of Boxoffice:
The web site I cited in my first comment says that the rival Phillips Theatre closed following a fire in 1940. It doesn’t say that the house ever reopened, and notes that when it closed in 1949 the 66 Theatre was the only movie house in the town.The town of Phillips is now a ghost town. After reaching a peak population of 4,250 in 1947 it gradually declined. A refinery explosion in 1980 led further declines, and the Phillips Petroleum company, the major employer, bought the land it ha leased for its facilities and the land the town’s businesses and homeowners had leased individually from the same lessors, and forced the population out.
It’s impossible to be absolutely certain of the location of the theater by judging from historic aerial photos, but the town’s small commercial district appears to have been concentrated along a short stretch of Whitenburg Avenue. In a 1951 aerial shot the shadow of a building on the south side of Whitenburg just west of C Avenue has the shape of the theater building’s upper section as it appears in the vintage photo, so my guess would be that’s where it most likely was.
Thomas Kneass, who is buried in Chillicothe, adapted an old German melody to the 1840s poem “Ben Bolt” by Thomas Dunn English. The song was used in a play called “The Battle of Buena Vista” which was first staged during the war with Mexico.
The Townsend Block and Arbelia Opera House burned in November, 1914, according to this web page. The fire was also noted in the December 9 issue of Fire and Water Engineering. The timing of the event late in the year would account for the Arbelia having been listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which would have been published before the fire. It seems quite likely that the replacement theater was the house that later became the Courter. It also seems likely that the same house was the Star Theatre that John Courter took over in 1918.
A John Courter was mentioned as the new owner of the Star Theatre at Gallatin in the April 27, 1918 issue of Motography. No address is given. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists four theaters at Gallatin, but none are called the Star. They were the Arbelia Opera House, Chataqua Theatre, Duchess Theatre and Gem Theatre. The 1926 FDY lists only the Courter Theatre.
dansdriveintheater: kencmcintyre is no longer active on this site, but I found this 2008 article from The Atmore Advance saying that the Palms Drive-In was just across the state line in Florida. Cinema Treasures has it listed in Walnut Hill.
A November 9, 1967 article in the Quanah Tribune said that the Palace Theatre opened in 1916, and the building had been built expressly to serve as a movie house, though there was also a stage for vaudeville acts. The house became part of the Interstate circuit around 1939, and later became part of the Frontier Theaters chain. It had been independently operated for about two months before being destroyed by a fire on November 6, 1967.
Here is information about the East Auditorium Theatre from an August 3, 2018 article written by Larry Michaels of the East Toledo Historical Society:
Link.J. A. Woolam was operating a theater in Walters as early as 1916, when a letter fromhim was published in the April 8 issue of The Moving Picture World. The letter doesn’t give the name of the theater. The only theater listed at Walters in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Gem.
J. A. Woolam and A. M. VanCleef of Walters purchased the Empress Theatre in Waurika, Oklahoma, in 1914, as noted in the May 22 issue of the Waurika News-Democrat. Both were experienced theater men, the item said, and VanCleef would be moving to Waurika to manage their new acquisition.
The web site of the Cotton County Museum, which is housed in the former Grand Theatre building, says that the Grand and Thompson were across the street from each other. The Grand was at 116 N. Broadway.
The former Grand Theatre building, at 116 N. Broadway, is now the home of the Cotton County Museum. Here is their web site which, unfortunately, has no photos and little other information about the town’s theaters except to say that the Thomson and the Grand were across the street from each other and that locals called the Grand the “little show” and the Thompson the “big show.”
Manta says that Sapphire Cineplex was established in 2007, but that is probably the year the business was incorporated, and the theater might or might not have been opened that year. The December 16, 2016 issue of Eastern Arizona Courier says that Robert E. Hollis had bought the Sapphire Cineplex from John and Marty Gray on December 4. Hollis’s sale of the Sapphire to Allen Theatres on December 1, 2017, is noted on the web site Gila Valley Central, so Hollis Cinemas only operated the house for a little over a year.
The 1908-1909 Cahn guide lists the 950-seat Passaic Opera House, managed by W. Whitehead, so I’d guess it’s the same theater as Whitehead’s Opera House. CinemaTour lists the house at 217 Washington Place. A 1910 city directory gives that address as the location of the Opera House Hotel, so the theater might have been entered through the hotel lobby. William Whitehead owned the hotel, and earlier had operated a theater called the Lyceum.
Whitehead’s Opera House was dedicated on February 1, 1892, according the Theatrical Chronology in the 1893 edition of The New York Clipper Annual. The Passaic Opera House was destroyed by a fire on January 19, 1916, along with several other buildings, an event widely reported in newspapers a the time and noted in the January 26 issue of The Insurance Press.
The Warner is now the home of Blink Fitness, a gym. Most of the wall and ceiling decor in lobby and auditorium is intact, and even nicely restored. Some sort of piping has been suspended from the ceiling, which prevents a full view of it from any given spot on the ground floor, but there’s a good view of the ceiling from the former balcony. The locker rooms are in the former stage area.
The floors have been leveled, of course, including that of the balcony which is now two terraces. It looks like they were just built over, though, rather than ripped out. The mezzanine lounge has somewhat more alteration, but its ceiling is still partly visible. It looks like the projection booth is still there, too, but closed off.
I never went to this theater but if it was like the Warner Beverly it would have had an ornate lounge and rest rooms in the basement, but I can’t find any photos of them, so I don’t know what they are being used for (if they exist.) The terrazzo out front looks pretty good, as does the ornate soffit of the marquee. The box office is gone.
While this project probably increased to cost of any future plans to return the building to theatrical use, it could have been way worse. The building was not gutted, and most of the Art Deco detailing is intact. I don’t know how the gym management feels about people coming in just to look at it, but maybe somebody who can get to Huntington Park can talk to someone there about it. They obviously did put a lot of thought into their adaptive reuse, and I would think they might like to show it off a bit to members of the non-exercising general public.
Google has lots of interior photos (you can move around in them just like in stret views.)
The New Beverly Cinema reopened on December 1, 2018.
It hasn’t reopened. While some neighborhoods above Paradise survived the fire, as well as scattered houses in the town itself, and some people have moved back in, the current population is insufficient to support a movie theater. A regional supermarket chain reopened its store that is not far from the theater on December 28, but I don’t know how much business they are doing. Extensive reconstruction, if it takes place, will have to wait until the removal of debris is done, and that won’t be compete until much later this year.
The Theatre Historical Society says that the Ritz Theatre had a 2 manual, 5 rank Wurlizter organ, opus 606, installed in November, 1922. The announcement of the theater’s impending construction had been made a year earlier, with plans being prepared by the firm of Margon & Glaser. The Ritz closed on December 3, 1950.
The Theatre Historical Society confirms Irving Margon as the architect of the Hub/Rex Theatre, and says that the building was demolished in 1976.
The Theatre Historical Society says that the Kingsbridge Theatre opened on January 26, 1922. The house had a 2 manual, 6 rank Wurlitzer organ, opus 472.