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KiMo Theater Seeks Boller Brothers Photo
posted by
KiMo
on
June 2, 2004 at 6:18 am
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — We’re looking for a photo of Carl Boller of the Boller Brothers architectural firm for our archives. He was the primary architect of the KiMo Theater, here in Albuquerque.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Comments (4)
Have you tried the Theater Historical Society of America http://www.historictheaters.org They have an extensive archives of theater related documents and photographs. The University of Missouri has a collection of the Boller Brothers architectural drawings. Maybe they have a photo. Good luck.
You might check out View link
Jeff—
I am sure they have been moved after all these years, but there used to be a lot of old photos in the offices the movie theatre chain occupied in the KiMo. Also look (if its is still there) in the basement of the old Sunshine Building on Central between 1st and 2nd streets. Lino Cosimati, an old time theatre manager, used to scrounge a lot of “stuff” and put in the basement of the Sunshine theatre. I don’t recall the first picture shown at the KiMo, but if you could research that and see if any of the studios have a photo archive, just a thought. Good Luck. An old Hiland manager here.
A simple search on Google using ‘boller brothers’ as the search term brought up a number of sites such as:
http://www.umkc.edu/whmckc/Collections/IKC065.HTM
View link
http://www.musicfortsmith.org/bollertable.html
No doubt any of the 3,500 some sites may well be able to direct you to the photos you seek, if indeed, any were preserved. You might also do well to trace the descendants of the brothers via their death notices and often relatives will still have photo albums. It is a long search in this case, but a local genealogist should be able to help you. And by all means, do contact the Theatre Historical Soc. as mentioned in a previous post; they have many thousands of documents or can direct you to other sources such as the Hoblitzelle Theatre Collections in Texas. You will want to search for things outside of actual glossy photos too; often the only preserved photos occur in the Inaugural (opening-day) programmes of theatres they built, or sometimes in newspaper stories about them and their theatres, as well as in industry magazines such as EXHIBITORS' HERALD, etc. Most of these are not indexed, but you could pay someone to page through the bound volumes or microfilmed copies at a library (ask local library to order the microfilms on Inter-library loan). Do not give up early; prominent men, especially architects, were often photographed; it is even possible that the American Institute of Architects (www.aia.org) will have a photo in their archive, or in trade magazines such as ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. Historical societies and local history divisions of libraries in Kansas City and surrounding areas may well have records of them. Best Wishes, Jim Rankin, member Theatre Historical Soc. since 1976.