Lehigh Theater
18 E. 4th Street,
Bethlehem,
PA
18015
18 E. 4th Street,
Bethlehem,
PA
18015
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The January 12, 1918 issue of Exhibitors Herald had this bit of information about the Lehigh Orpheum Theatre:
Architect Benjamin Rush Stevens practiced in Philadelphia from about 1903 to 1935.A combined theater program for the Lehigh Orpheum and Lorenz Theatres in Bethlehem. They were definitely owned by the same company, as they were showing the same films this week, just on different days.
An early photo of the Lehigh Orpheum Theatre can be seen on this web page.
The aka should definitely be Lehigh Orpheum and not Lehigh Emporium. I found a 1915 ad for the Lehigh Orpheum and the wording, aside from the wrong name, was identical to an ad quoted in Raniere and Samuels. I’ve found a reference to a Lehigh Orpheum Company that in operation as late as 1933.
South Bethlehem, by Kenneth F. Raniere, Karen M. Samuels, and the South Bethlehem Historical Society (Google Books preview), has a photo of the Lehigh Theatre. The caption says that the house opened as the Lehigh Emporium [sic] Theatre in the early 20th century, was renamed the State Theatre in the 1930s and the Lehigh Theatre in the 1960s. The building was demolished in 1976.
I found a reference in the December 20, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World to a Bethlehem house called the Lehigh Orpheum Theatre, and it has made me wonder if Lehigh “Emporium” Theatre was not an error, perhaps from a transcribed oral history. Emporium was not typically a theater name, but Orpheum certainly was. Raniere and Samuels' book is the only place I’ve found any reference to a Lehigh Emporium Theatre, while I’ve found multiple period references to a Lehigh Orpheum Theatre.