Though I can’t remember which towns they were in, I do recall a couple of small towns where school auditoriums were shared with movie theater operations. A small school district with limited revenues might be happy to collect some rent from a movie operator for a facility that would otherwise have sat empty most nights and weekends.
I’ve also come across a number of instances of the opposite situation, where a school that had no auditorium had an arrangement with a movie theater owner to use the theater for school functions. And a candy counter doesn’t need much space. One theater I used to attend, the Capri, in Alhambra, California, had its concession stand tucked into a semi-circular alcove that must have been no more than eight or nine feet across.
An item datelined Bicknell, Indiana, in the August 16, 1913 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[t]he new Colonial Theater on No. Main Street has just opened for business.”
The Strand Theatre in Hastings was mentioned in the October 14, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Hastings also had a house called the Regent Theatre during this period. The June 19, 1926 issue of the Herald mentioned the Strand and Family Theatres in Hastings. The only theater listed at Hastings in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Star, also located on W. State Street.
In 1925 a Mr. J. H. Kelly was operating a movie house called the Garden Theatre at Wakeeney, mentioned in the May 9 issue of The Moving Picture World. Then the April 14, 1945 issue of Boxoffice brought further news of a Mr. Kelly in Wakeeney, though his initials are different:
“C. B. Kelly, who entered the theatre business by buying one at Wakeeney, Kas., back in 1923, was on Filmrow this week, accompanied by W. K. Heyl, with whom he is associated in ownership of the Kaw at Junction City. Kelly built a theatre to replace the old Kelly when it burned in 1929, and now he is planning another new house to be built after the war. He will use the present building for a skating rink.”
I’ve been unable to find a followup article telling whether Kelly did or did not carry out his plans to replace his theater with a new one, so the house at 211 Main could date from around 1930, or from the post-war period.
The April 2, 1973 edition of the Kossuth County Advance had an article about the April 28, 1937 fire that destroyed the Call Opera House. It said that the operators of the opera house also operated a small movie house called the Iowa Theatre, located two doors north of the Call.
From the article’s description of the theater’s block of Thorington Street, the Opera House must have been the second building north of State Street, as the balcony of the theater had a fire exit door leading into the second floor of the Security State Bank building, which was on the corner of State Street. The bank is still there, but in a modern building, but the Opera house must have been on the site of what is now the bank’s parking lot. The Iowa Theatre might have been in the building now occupied by an optometrist’s office, Eyes on Thorington, at 112 N. Thorington. The address of the Opera House was probably 108 N. Thorington.
An item in the March 17, 2013 Victoria Times-Colonist says that the Dominion Theatre opened in May 1913. The archives of the City of Victoria indicate that an application by H. Bickerdike to connect a theatre at 814 Yates Street to the city sewer system is dated March 6, 1913.
The Dominion Theatre was designed by architect Edwin W. Houghton, per an item in the October, 1912 issue of The Pacific Coast Architect.
A movie called “The Third Degree” is advertised on the poster at the right of the theater entrance. The earliest movie of that name I’ve found was released in 1919.
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.
Though I can’t remember which towns they were in, I do recall a couple of small towns where school auditoriums were shared with movie theater operations. A small school district with limited revenues might be happy to collect some rent from a movie operator for a facility that would otherwise have sat empty most nights and weekends.
I’ve also come across a number of instances of the opposite situation, where a school that had no auditorium had an arrangement with a movie theater owner to use the theater for school functions. And a candy counter doesn’t need much space. One theater I used to attend, the Capri, in Alhambra, California, had its concession stand tucked into a semi-circular alcove that must have been no more than eight or nine feet across.
An item datelined Bicknell, Indiana, in the August 16, 1913 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[t]he new Colonial Theater on No. Main Street has just opened for business.”
The Strand Theatre in Hastings was mentioned in the October 14, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Hastings also had a house called the Regent Theatre during this period. The June 19, 1926 issue of the Herald mentioned the Strand and Family Theatres in Hastings. The only theater listed at Hastings in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Star, also located on W. State Street.
In 1925 a Mr. J. H. Kelly was operating a movie house called the Garden Theatre at Wakeeney, mentioned in the May 9 issue of The Moving Picture World. Then the April 14, 1945 issue of Boxoffice brought further news of a Mr. Kelly in Wakeeney, though his initials are different:
I’ve been unable to find a followup article telling whether Kelly did or did not carry out his plans to replace his theater with a new one, so the house at 211 Main could date from around 1930, or from the post-war period.The April 2, 1973 edition of the Kossuth County Advance had an article about the April 28, 1937 fire that destroyed the Call Opera House. It said that the operators of the opera house also operated a small movie house called the Iowa Theatre, located two doors north of the Call.
From the article’s description of the theater’s block of Thorington Street, the Opera House must have been the second building north of State Street, as the balcony of the theater had a fire exit door leading into the second floor of the Security State Bank building, which was on the corner of State Street. The bank is still there, but in a modern building, but the Opera house must have been on the site of what is now the bank’s parking lot. The Iowa Theatre might have been in the building now occupied by an optometrist’s office, Eyes on Thorington, at 112 N. Thorington. The address of the Opera House was probably 108 N. Thorington.
Boxoffice of February 28, 1948, said that Al Cox had installed a candy counter and fountain in the foyer of his Silver Theatre at Deepwater, Missouri.
Deepwater, by the way, was the birthplace of the noted opera singer Gladys Swarthout. Between 1936 and 1939 she also appeared in five movies.
An item in the March 17, 2013 Victoria Times-Colonist says that the Dominion Theatre opened in May 1913. The archives of the City of Victoria indicate that an application by H. Bickerdike to connect a theatre at 814 Yates Street to the city sewer system is dated March 6, 1913.
The Dominion Theatre was designed by architect Edwin W. Houghton, per an item in the October, 1912 issue of The Pacific Coast Architect.
A movie called “The Third Degree” is advertised on the poster at the right of the theater entrance. The earliest movie of that name I’ve found was released in 1919.
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”