Strand Theatre

Michael DeAngelis designed my hometown theatre, the art deco Grand Theatre in Westfield NY. It was demolished after 40 years due to it closing and subsequent neglect. It had a curved marquee. My husband and I are hoping to have a Remembering the Grand this Fall with collected menorabilia donated by locals as there was an auction prior to demolition. The letter R was located right in the town so it will be the lighted featured piece. I found 500 tickets on eBay so a ticket will be given to attendees upon entering the exhibit. If you live in Western NYS, and are interested, my email is

I hope you can arrange to get those 2 pieces of artwork from the Strand done by your grandfather. How did you learn who had them?

This reopened on December 24th, 1950 and its last ad in The Item appeared in 1983. Grand opening ad posted from 1950.

The Strand doubled in size installing the Moller organ and had its Spanish architectural style when it closed and re-launched November 12, 1928.

A message to orgnyst6226. I owned and ran the Strand for a while in the 70s. If you ever decide to sell that console please let me know.

I’m uploading a picture of the Moller Organ Console which I own and rebuilt that was originally installed in this theatre. Moller OPUS 5214 installed 1928. I’m from PA living in South Florida and found this console in 2003 in Gas City Indiana. Started rebuilding it almost as soon as I got home (PA at that time). Humidity destroyed the keyboards as they were all warped and it had an extremely thick layer of stain on the wood. I later learned that seeing natural wood grain was not in vogue back in the 20’s. At any rate, I spend weeks sanding it down and found beautiful tiger oak wood grain underneath all that stain. I completely gutted the console and due to it’s rather large size cut 6" off each side of the console. I don’t know what happened to the original pipes from the organ (7 ranks I think) but I had intended on connecting it to my 18 rank Moller I had installed at home at that time. Shortly after rebuilding the console I moved to Fla. and had no room for my pipe organ any longer. I donated the pipes to a church and connected the 3 manual Moller using the Hauptwerk virtual pipe organ system. At any rate, wanted to post a few pictures of the console as it is today and document it’s new home for this website.

I was referring to the “before” picture. Those poster cases and fixtures are similar to the ones that were installed by Lempert’s crews in all of the Comerford theaters during that period.

The Lobby was part of an early 1950’s renovation by New York theatre architect Michael DeAngelis. The theatre was owned then by United Paramount which was after it was owned by Comerford. It was open in 1910 as the People’s Theatre.

When I saw the photo with the great marquee it made me smile then I read….“I am not certain of the date it closed, but I believe that like the rest of Market Street, it fell victim to nearby malls. The once thriving Market Street is now a shadow of its former self. The building is now used as an electrical supply warehouse.”

Mr. J. M. Blanchard was mentioned as the operator of the People’s Theatre in a couple of 1913 issues of The Moving Picture World. In the November 1 issue, he was cited as being displeased that a cinematic version of “Quo Vadis?” was not being made available to movie theaters. The producers were attempting to attract an audience that didn’t usually attend movies, and they advertised that their production had never been shown in a movie house, but only in regular theaters.

The regular theater that showed the movie in Sunbury was probably the Chestnut Street Opera House, the only such theater listed at Sunbury in Julius Cahn’s guides during the period. Despite its name, the opera house played vaudeville for much of its history, and might have shown movies as part of the programs. If so, it should be added to Cinema Treasures.

Boxoffice Magazine has moved its archive from Issuu.com to its own web site, in a section called The Vault. The article about Harry Zimmerman is now at this link.

I’ve come across a couple of references to a movie house in Sunbury called the People’s Theatre, which was in operation by 1913. No address is available, but I’m wondering if it might have been an early aka for the Strand or the Rialto.

In the vintage photo of the Strand at Strandsunbury (the one taken when the street was flooded) the entrance building, at least, was of a style that could have dated from the early 20th century. The theater could have been built behind it at a later date, of course, and the lobby run through an existing building.

Is the marquee still there? Probably not!

The story is a well known fact with people familliar with the Warner in Pittsburgh, Pa. The one projectionist named Whitey had died in the upstairs booth..For years after that you would feel icy cold air and get a blast of fresh cigar smoke.. He had smoked cigars all his life… One day his long time friend came by to visit me,, When allm of a sudden the air got cold and you could smell a strong odor of cigar smoke..I was rewinding a 40 minute reel of film and Whitey’s friend said WHITEY if that’s you turn off the rewinder… You could see the switch go into the off possition and his friend who was very old and took forever to get up there made it down to the lobby and out the front doors in seconds…He himself died 2 weeks later…