Wilson Theatre

wolfgirl500 on February 21, 2015 at 9:46 pm

Actially the Wilsonian Theatre was opened in 1914. The big question is, was the Wilsonian and the Wilson one in the same theater?

wolfgirl500 on March 1, 2015 at 8:20 am

On the theater page of the Vindicator for 1923, there is an ad for a Broadway Theater at the location of the Wilson. Now point of clarification, this section of Wilson Avenue was primarily residential according to Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, which leads me to wonder how the name change came about and when it was changed back to the Wilson Theater. I’ve put a copy of the ad in the photo section for this theater.

Joe Vogel on March 9, 2015 at 10:22 pm

A paragraph about the Wilson Avenue Theatre appears in the November 3, 1914, issue of Brick and Clay Record:

“Two Youngstown material concerns, the Youngstown Supply Company and the Youngstown Ice Company, furnished face and hollow-brick for the new Wilson Avenue theater, in that city, and participated in the advertising which marked the opening of the house. The theater is the largest and most up-to-date motion picture house in the city, and the Youngstown papers carried a double page advertisement announcing the opening and featuring the part the various contractors and material men had played in its construction. The two brick concerns had their share of the space, and benefited by the publicity which it afforded.”

Why an outfit called the Youngstown Ice Company was supplying brick I don’t know, but the name was not a typo. It was mentioned in other construction journals of the period. And yes, they also dealt in ice.

The mention of a double-page opening ad for the theater is tantalizing. It must have appeared prior to November 3, but there’s no indication how long before.

wolfgirl500 on March 10, 2015 at 5:33 am

Joe, the Youngstown Ice Company started out as an ice dealer, but later became a building supply company that was involved in supplying building material for many of our early buildings. Why they continued to call themself Youngstown Ice Company is anyone’s guess. In my library of historic Youngstown, I have a photo of this business but since it would be off topic here I won’t post it.

As to the Wilson ever being called the Wilson Avenue Theater, none of its newspaper ads had that name. Only the Wilsonian and Wilson Theatre applied.

Saddly, most of the local theaters did not do regular advertizing on a regular basis, and some didn’t run newspaper ads at all, so that we are left with little to go on concerning the early theaters.

I rely on our public library to get information about these early houses, and they do the best they can to help me, but with so little to go on, we’re at a real loss.

Youngstown before about 1935 had two daily newspapers, The Youngstown Vindicator and the Youngstown Telegram, but Google only digitized the Vindicator so we can’t have a second source to rely on when researching local theaters.

Joe Vogel on March 10, 2015 at 10:38 pm

Have you been able to find the double-page opening ad that the Brick and Clay Record article made reference to? Opening ads sometimes list the name of the architect of the theater.