Oriental Theater

@ harveyC I was looking to see if there are any blueprints or architectural designs of the old theaters that are still in existences. I’d love to chat more about the buildings.

My grandparents owned and operated the Oriental and Family with other family members and a local investor named Cook who helped save the Oriental Theatre as it was built in the depression. My mother Selma Winograd Cohen and her two brothers Rabbi Leonard Winograd and Ken Winograd were born and raised in Rochester. I have many fond memories of movies, the ornaments, organ, coke machine, projection booth, palatial mens room downstairs and just walking around Hinds Street. I saw Elvis movie at the Oriental!
I visited Rochester last week and was shocked the boroughs plan for a public park on the site remains a false political promise. I knew nothing of the revitalization attempts. Maybe a pipe dream, but todays reality is tragic. I came and took a few bricks in 2001 to remind me of the grand lady. The vacant lot is ugly. Rochester’s Main Street is a near-ghost town. It’s like that great age of a bustling lil America has been allowed to cry of disease. It’s a shame.

Interesting to read about the Robins Theatre in Warren Ohio and their Robins Project.

Hello to all of you Rochester people…and those who remember the Oriental. Please look up the current Robbins Theatre renovation taking place in Warren, Ohio. It is a combination stage theatre and movie venue, as our Oriental had been.

My name is Mike Carver….and I was the last to attempt to save the Oriental in 2001. I and other interested parties had a plan to acquire and renovate the Oriental…..a group of individual artists from Rochester, Mike Nelson of the Rochester Theatre Group, and an architect consultant from the area who had been involved in historical renovations in the t. Louis downtown area.

We(the group and I) had actual architectural renderings and plans, including the actual drawings of which all the plaster of paris decor in the theatre had been made…….all this and a firm business plan……we presented at a Rochester Council Meeting in the Library. We were well on the way to a viable way to keep the Oriental alive. At that meeting, most of the council members and the Mayor listened as the designer made a presentation. Amazing enough, the most boisterous concern was that, assuming we were successful, we might create a PARKING problem in Rochester. Imagine…the concern that Rochester streets might once again be “crowded”….I guess they could not conceive of creating a parking authority…or some other way to actually make money.

Our plan was to have a perimeter of shops/offices on the upper balcony areas…..to help fund the operation. Mike Nelson had made contact with the Pgh. Dance Theatre group….who had discussed making it their “home venue”..if it was up to their standards. OUR plan was to have a variety of often ethnic based “nights” to draw people from our multi ethnicity Valley.

The Borough Manager, Ed Pirolli, myself, and a the leader of the downtown Rochester group, met and I was told by Ed…..(just wait until the Borough finally gets posession)…..which they did in August 2011.

On the same day we all were excited that Ross Gudiati from KDKA was to visit the site…..The Borough conveintly made crash arrangements to have Unis Demolition quickly show up and tear off the front of the structure……very simple…Ed lied to us and had NO INTENTION of allowing this wonderful structure to be saved. Statements had bee made about the soundness of the structure….yea right….the side walls had to be pulled down with bulldozers…..the wrecking ball wouldn’t touch them…….you….the public were lied to…again. And as you go by….where is the “upscale restaurant” we kept hearing about. AND…the property has considereble hazardous material issues buried beneath the dirt on Hinds Street….good luck to the sometime/maybe developer.

I moved on to another venture, which has been good to me……but I will always remember what we had in store for the Oriental……and what it would have been for Rochesters future.

Look at the Robbins(Warren, Ohio) renovation as it progresses…..see what your short minded politicians have cost Rochester.

Mike Carver

John: A very nice post about a theatre that should still be with the residents of Rochester. Thanks for the memories.

I am very glad to have found this website. I gathered some information and I am hoping to connect with my cousin that posted here . My great grand uncle was Michael. My mother was very close to him until he died. He always wore a big cowboy hat. I remember visiting his apartment and he had basically recreated his office there. I am hoping that I will connect with my cousin to see what happen to much of the stuff because I believe it should be preserved. Thanks again

My grandfather, Harry Headland, was chief projectionist when the Oriental opened on Labor Day weekend, 1931. First feature-film to be shown was a romantic comedy: Merely Mary Ann, starring Janet Gaynor & Charles Farrell.
Owners ran a contest for naming the theater, and the winning entry was submitted by a girl from Bridgewater.

I grew up in Rochester, PA and had the pleasure of seeing “The Sound Of Music” in the Oriental a few years before it closed. I became an architect and in the late 1980’s moved back to Rochester. In doing research on the Oriental (which helped inspire my choice of career), I tracked down Michael DeAngelis Architect firm in Rochester NY. I took a shot in the dark and called the office, hoping to talk to someone who once knew him and hopefully his early work. HE answered the phone. He was so sharp, and entertaining – clearly remembered every detail about the Oriental, the family that built it – plus he had some great stories. The phone call was not enough. I asked if I could visit and a few weeks later we spent the day together in his office in Rochester NY talking about the Oriental, his other theatres, his career, and the time he punched David L. Lawrence (later mayor of Pittsburgh and governor of PA) in the nose on the steps of the state capital! He told me he was a direct descendent of Michelangelo (he said he had proof from the Vatican!). He was a great story teller and self-promoter, but I believe him. He still worked, loved architecture, loved people, and loved cigars. He died at age 94 in 1999, about a year after our last correspondence. I had the honor of putting him in touch with Leonard and Ken Winograd of the family that built the Oriental in 1931 and the three reconnected and reminisced. By the way, he was 25 years old when he designed the Oriental.

Opened in 1930 and closed about 1973.

I have just reviewed the link posted on October 24, 2010 and can’t believe my eyes! This theatre was beautiful! The folks of Rochester PA have truly lost a DeAngelis masterpiece!

I’m certainly late here, but a gent that I had met back in the late ‘80s was in direct touch with Mr. DeAngelis at the time, whose wife had just died. Michael DeAngelis was in his upper 80s and said that he still had all of the blueprints for his theatres at his home. He was living in (I believe) Rochester, NY. I tried to get some local theatre/organ folks up there to look him up at the time but nothing came of it. That was probably near the end of the window of time that he could have been interviewed and given his treasures to posterity. I never heard anything else but seem to think that he passed away not too long after that. I have no idea if anyone ever got to him or saved his irreplaceable archive.

Does anyone else recall Ozzy Osbourne playing at this theater in the very early 80s, when he was just breaking from Black Sabbath? I know he wasnt a disco band, but neither was the event I was at way back then!

I lived right down Rt 65 while growing up. Everyone knew of the Oriental.

Playing Jan 8 1960 was “1001 ARABIAN KNIGHTS” and “FLYING FONTAINES"Coming was "BELOVED INFIDEL”.