Pelican Theatre

50sSNIPES on September 29, 2021 at 10:12 am

Opened On January 17, 1929 with the following: Performances by the Mosconi Brothers including 15 assisting artists including Dorothy Van Alst and Berna Doyle, Elsie & Paulsen in “Flashes Of The North”, Roscoe Ates and Dorothy Darling in “Who? Me!”, Lester Crawford in “A Smile Or Two”, Helen Broderick in “The Trial Of Mary Dugan” (part of the “The Sad Case Of Mary Dugan” series, and the first attraction: Colleen Moore in “Synthetic Sin”.

The Pelican Was Also Equipped With An Orchestra And A Warlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Played By Rex Stratton Who Attended The University Of Oregon At Eugene Earlier Before His Carrier.

The Pelican is equipped with an 11 Sturtevant air conditioner with a capacity of 46,000 cubic feet of air, 8ft4in high, 7ft8in long, and 6ft3in wide. It casts from a 72in American Radiator company ventor which is a bank of pipes filled with steam. After heating, it passes through a Sturtevant Type H Air Washer. The main theatre building’s basement where the heating and washing coils are located through a concrete plentum, which is a passage chamber. The theater’s metal ducts carry the air to grill from the main floor and to a semi-mushroom system of 165 air inlets inside. All fans were driven by Fairbanks Morse ball-bearing motors, and individual steal radiators, a Number 2 durectly connected Sturlevant fan keeps the air fresh in restrooms and smoking rooms. There is a lot of other information about the air conditioners in this theater but I decided to cut it short a little.

The electric sign (done by the Electrical Products Corporation, owners of the original presents of Calude Neon)’s measurements were 15x46ft and was an estimate cost towards $6,000. In technicolor, it is neon gas, elusive and a misunderstood product of natures own atmosphere were used in three different colors: red, orange, and blue. The “Pelican” letters were 24in in height, done in red, and the “Poole’s” and “Theatre” were also worked out in red flexiume characters half-a-yard tall. The Pelican himself under whose broad wings the theatre sails is enhanced by orange neon, with the borders attractively complete the color scheme in blue neon.

Inside, there are 11,540ft of cable and rope used backstage which covers over 2 miles), and the stage floor is sanded and as highly finished of top grade maple wood and fir, built on concrete base. 1400yds of draperies were used throughout the house, and the motif is red in the auditorium. The balcony is 82ft across the facade and 54ft in depth. 13 rows of chairs and 4 rows of loges with a capacity of 626 in total as of its opening. Each row is separated platform long enough for complete comfort even though the theatre patron is a member of a “Long Fellow’s Club”. The asbestos curtains were weigh 1,200 pounds.

San Francisco native M. J. Reid, part of the architectural form of the Reid Brothers there, designed the Pelican, and is listed as one of the greatest architects in the USA, who started his Klamath Falls services for the building of the “New” Klamath Theatre in 1894.

A guy simply named as H. W. Poole, is the president and controlling stockholder of the Pelican. He has been in the theater business since 1919. He made it into Klamath Falls on December 23, 1910 while seeking a place to make his house. After getting into the business in 1919, he built and opened the Liberty Theatre. Later on October 1, 1920, he opened up the Chiloquin Theatre, and would later complete the Pine Tree Theatre on April 8, 1925. He struck his next project, and the answer is the Pelican.

50sSNIPES on September 30, 2021 at 8:08 am

Update: On February 28, 1961, the Pelican Theatre building came down, and was demolished with a major fallout to make way for a US Bank location and (not sure if this occurs but) an extended parking lot.