State Theater
325 Bleecker Street,
Utica,
NY
13501
325 Bleecker Street,
Utica,
NY
13501
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Additional Info
Previous Names: Bender Theater, Park Theater
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The Bender Theater is listed in the American Motion Picture Directory 1914-1915 edition. It was equipped with an organ in September 1915. By late-1918 it had been renamed Park Theater. Listed as the State Theater in 1925.
The State Theater was a silent-era theater that closed around 1926.
Contributed by
Ken Roe, Lost Memory
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
This theater was named Bender first, then Park and closed as the State.
The Bender Theatre opened on Christmas Day, 1912, according to an item in an early 1913 issue of Variety. Originally operating as a stock house, the 1913-1914 edition of the Cahn guide lists it as playing vaudeville with movies.
Austin Bender, operator of the theater, was sued by the city for showing movies on Sunday. The documentation of the suit gives the address of the theater as 325 Bleecker Street. A newspaper article from the period says that the Bender Theatre was on Bleecker Street at the foot of Academy Street, and that’s just about where 325 is, so the address probably hasn’t changed since that time.
The new organ recently installed in the Bender Theater is mentioned in the September 11, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World: “At the Bender theater, Utica, N. Y., a new $10,000 symphony organ was heard for the first time last week. The organist is Paul Forrester, who also directs the orchestra.”
This house had become the Park Theatre by late 1918. This item from Moving Picture World of January 4, 1919 notes the house’s struggles to find a viable policy: “Park Will Revert to Dramatic Stock.
“The Park Theatre, Utica, unable to do business with pictures, will go into dramatic stock. The last time the theatre opened was on September 23 last, at which time three vaudeville acts, a feature picture, comedy and weekly were given. Following a three weeks' closing due to the epidemic the house reopened with a picture policy, and after a week went into a double feature policy. The Park is located in an out-of-the-theatre district, but is a beautiful house. Last year it was run in the same manner as the Strand, New York, with a big orchestra, best productions and concert singers.”