Empire Theater
31 Main Street,
Newport,
NH
03773
31 Main Street,
Newport,
NH
03773
No one has favorited this theater yet
The Empire Theater was a tiny nickelodeon which opened in 1913. Despite its size, it managed to stay in business until closing sometime after 1920. It was converted into retail use decades ago. The front portico has been removed from the building.
Contributed by
Ken McIntyre
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater.
Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
Here is an undated photo:
http://tinyurl.com/ywtwp3
Address was 31 Main Street.
From the early 1900s a photo postcard view of the Empire in Newport.
An historic timeline of Newport (PDF here), based on items drawn from the local newspapers, says that the building that eventually became the Empire Theatre was built in 1842 as the County jail, but the NRHP registration form for the Downtown Newport Historic District says that the theater’s portion of the building was a later addition, probably from 1850. The timeline cites an April 17, 1913 article saying that “Dr. Cain is remodeling the old jail into a hall where it is intended to have moving pictures.” The timeline’s first use of the name Empire is from November 3, 1916 and refers to the theater’s temporary closure due to the influenza pandemic.
The timeline also notes that the owners of the Empire, Sam D. Lewis and Arthur C. Chadwick, bought the Coniston Theatre in September, 1920. It does not mention the Empire again until February, 1925, when the paper noted that the house was being remodeled for use as a public meeting and recreation hall. This use continued until the entire former jail complex was converted for use as a department store in 1946.
Empire was not one of the two theater names listed at Newport in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Those were the Newport Casino on Belknap Avenue and the Scenic Theatre, no location given. The timeline cites articles from September and October, 1912, saying that the town had rescinded a previous decision and voted to grant L. L. Ransom a license to show movies in a hall recently built for him on Belknap Avenue. That theater began operating in October, and was apparently the first in Newport. The October article refers to this house as a casino, but the name is not capitalized.
A February 12, 1916 Moving Picture World item datelined Newport, N. H. says that “[t]he armory building on Central street has been converted into a moving picture theater by H. Robinson.” The old armory (replaced by a new facility at another location in the 1930s) was destroyed by a fire in 1973, and a newspaper article from that year notes that it once housed a theater, but gives no name for it or any dates of operation. The article said that the armory house was the towns first theater, which might have been mistaken, though it is possible that it had operated as a live venue prior to 1916. The 1926 FDY lists a single 600-seat competitor to the 950-seat Coniston Theatre called the U-Kum, which might have been the armory house or the Casino under a new name. The timeline is silent on the U-Kum, and I can’t bring myself to blame it.
So the Empire was not Newport’s sole theater of the period, and unless it was missed altogether by the AMPD, Scenic Theatre was probably its opening name, and it opened in early 1913, as the town’s second movie house, and it closed sometime after 1920, when its operators bought the larger Coniston Theatre, but certainly by 1925.