The Auditorium was one of seven theaters listed at Vinita in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. No address was given for it. An earlier Grand theatre was also listed, at 104 Illinois Avenue. I think Vinita changed its numbering system at some point, as the Directory lists a Vaudette theatre at 22 Wilson Street, and there appear to be no two-digit addresses in the town today. The earlier Grand was thus probably at modern 204 Illinois, or thereabout.
The only theater listed at Stillwell in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Motion, and no details were given for it. The Grand was the only house listed at Stillwell in the 1926 and 1929 FDY’s, but it was listed with only 175 seats. The last listing of the Grand in 1933 shows 250 seats, while the first listing of the Eagle in 1934 has only 230.
The 1926 FDY lists only a 350-seat house called the Crescent at Audubon. The earliest mention of the Crescent I’ve found is in the March 4, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review: “AUDUBON, IOWA.— Dan Nelson is now operating the Crsecent.”
Although the theater in Audubon is consistently listed by the FDY with 350 seats, the name Rose does not appear until the 1941 edition, so that renaming must have accompanied the rebuilding in 1940. But there were earlier renamings. In the 1932 edition it is listed as the Audubon Theatre, it went back to Crescent in 1933, and in 1934 through 1940 it was listed as the Broadway Theatre.
The only theater listed at Audubon in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Gem. The Gem, run by a Paul Hoover, was also listed in Polk’s 1912-1913 Iowa Gazetteer. An item in the October 10, 1912 Audubon Republican made reference to “…the Hall west of the Gem Theatre….” I see a hall on the Sanborn map, but can’t tell what direction it is from the theater nearby. Not much to go on, though if this was the only theater shown on the map then odds are pretty good it was the Gem.
By 1922, a trade journal mentions a house called the Crescent Theatre in Audubon, and it is listed with 350 seats, so unless the building was considerably expanded it was probably not the same theater.
If it was still around in 1914, this house might have been the Rex, the only theater listed at Perry without an address in the AMPD. The other two theaters listed, the Lyric and the Majestic, both had 2nd Street addresses.
The February 8, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World has this item: “Perry, Iowa, Jan. 23. — The Orpheum Moving Picture Theater is the name of a new amusement house that has been opened up in Perry by Dallas Center men. Worth Jenkins and Web Cramer are the proprietors. It is located in the Wimmer Building, west of the library.” I found one reference to the Wimmer Building being on 2nd Street, but the MPW item says it was west of the library, which would have given it a Willis Avenue address. Of course Mr. Wimmer might have had his name on more than one building at various times.
The McLuen Opera House is one of two theaters that the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists at Guthrie Center. The other was called the Motz Opera House. The McLuen (without the appellation Opera House or Theatre) is mentioned in Moving Picture World issues for July 7, 1917 and August 24, 1918. The former mentions Powd McLuen as manager of the house. A June, 1914 newspaper item mentions the McLuen Theatre, though, so the Theatre and Opera House appellations were probably used interchangeably for this theater.
The June 7, 1919 issue of Moving Picture World had this brief item: “Powd McLuen, of Guthrie Center, was a recent Des Moines visitor. He reported business as excellent in his town.” That’s the last mention of the name McLuen in connection with Guthrie Center I’ve found in the trade journals.
By 1926, the FDY listed two 450-seat theaters at Guthrie Center, but they were called the Garden and the Empress. The Garden was still in operation in the early 1950s. If the Garden was one of Guthrie Center’s early theaters under a new name, it would certainly have been the McLuen rather than the Motz, as the latter was an upstairs house opened in 1882. Early photos of the Motz can be seen on this web page. The Motz building was still standing and recognizable as of 2018. I’ve been unable to find photos of the McLuen or Garden.
According to an ad for American Bodiform Seating in Boxoffice of May 7, 1939, the Meloy Brothers' Park Theatre in Indianapolis was designed by architect Maurice E. Thornton.
A history of Mishawaka'a Tivoli Theatre has the line “Sound equipment first came to Mishawaka at the newer but smaller Northside Theater….” As the Tivoli was opened in 1925 and wired for sound in 1929, the “newer” Northside had to have been opened between those years. It also appears that Mishawaka Theatre was its opening name, as that is how it makes its first appearance in the FDY, in the 1930 edition. It might have been mis-listed in the 1929 FDY as the River Park Theatre, the name of a house that was actually in neighboring South Bend. In any case, the Mishawaka probably opened in either 1928 or 1929.
Here is an item about the Temple Theatre from the August 30, 1919 issue of Moving Picture World:
“THE Temple Theatre Building, at the corner of Main street and Lincoln highway, Mishawaka, Ind., has been purchased from the Mishawaka Lodge of Masons by L. J. Lambiotte, proprietor of the theatre. The consideration involved in the transaction has not been made public.
“Mr. Lambiotte has announced that he will remodel the structure throughout and will equip it with all modern appliances. The seating capacity of the house will be doubled by utilizing the room now occupied by the Western Union Telegraph Company. The theatre will be operated strictly as a photoplay house.”
The only theatre listed at Shelbyville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was the Crescent Opera House, which is likely another aka for this house.
This item from the December 6, 1913 issue of Improvement Bulletin seems a possible candidate to have been the house that later became the Ritz:
“Iowa, Oelwein—Plans have been prepared by J. T. Burkett, Waterloo, Iowa, for a moving picture theater for A. F. & F. C. Meves; 32x90, one story, frame, plastered; to be done by day work, overseen by the owners; steel sash, steam heat, piped for water, electric light, sheet metal cornice and ceiling, composition roof, common, patent and ornamental plaster, Beaver board, Lowe Bros. varnish, figured and art glass, leaded lights, birch finish, stucco exterior.”
I don’t know if addresses were shifted or the theater moved, but in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory the Photoplay theatre was listed at 280 Main Street. Two other houses were listed at Los Gatos: the Majestic Theatre, no location given, and the Thomas Theatre, on Main Street. No theaters were listed at Los Gatos in the 1926 or 1927 FDYs, but a house called the Strand appears in 1928, and in 1929 is listed with 400 seats.
A brief item from the Oelwein Daily Register of April 19, 2024 says that the Orpheum Theatre operated in Strawberry Point from 1896 to 1973. As the building at 114 Commercial Street was not a theater in 1902, the theater must have operated at a different location (unless the article was wrong about the opening year), and as the name Orpheum doesn’t appear in connection with Strawberry Point until 1932, it must have operated under different names as well. It must have been the Lyric, last listed in the FDY in 1931, and the only house listed at Strawberry Point in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The closing year of 1973 is certainly correct though, being well within living memory.
If the Opera House in the Odd Fellow’s building was the one listed in Polk’s Iowa Gazetteers for 1905-1906 and 1916-1917 as the Townsend Opera House then it was most likely not the Grand, which had a separate listing in the 1916-1917 edition. The Opera House was managed by E. W. Townsend, who was also president of the Citizen’s Bank, while the proprietor of the Grand was N. W. Sherman.
It’s (very slightly) possible that Sherman operated the Grand as a business in the Opera House under some sort of limited lease from Townsend, with the understanding that Townsend could boot Sherman’s movies out when the space was needed for some other event, but a photo of the Opera House interior can be seen on this Facebook page, and it not only had a flat floor, it also had columns in the center and would have made a wretched space for showing movies. I doubt it could have survived two years with any competition at all, and the Grand was listed in both 1914 and 1916.
It seems most likely that the Grand had its own place, probably a converted storefront like the theater at 119 S. Center Street, which could have been either the Grand or the Isis, with Gem or Lyric as a possible earlier aka if it was the Isis.
This place was /not/ the Hronek Opera House, the only theater listed at Pocahontas in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but it was just up the block. The Opera House, built in 1901 and seating 400, was upstairs in the building at the northwest corner of Main Street and 2nd Avenue NW. The entrance appears to have been near the back of the building on the 2nd Avenue side. I’ve not been able to find a name for this smaller rival at 211 Main. The earliest mention of Pocahontas I’ve found in the trade journals is from October, 1923, and it was about the first Rialto.
The earliest mention of the Rialto I’ve been able to find in the trade journals is from the October 6, 1923 issue of Exhibitors Herald. This was the first of more than a dozen capsule movie reviews submitted to that volume of the magazine by Rialto managers Pace & Bouma. Jack Bouma was around long enough to open the new Rialto in 1939, but I have no idea what became of Pace. Perhaps the Bouma was just too much for him.
Three movie houses, the Gem, the Grand, and the Lyric, are listed at Lake City in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. I’ve been unable to find Lake City mentioned in the movie theater trade journals before 1921, but two Lake City theaters are listed by name and manager (but not address) in Polk’s 1916-1917 Iowa Gazetteer. The Grand is one of them, and the other was called the Isis.
I’m not sure when itinerant movie exhibitors began touring Iowa, but in California they started as early as 1896. After the Orpheum circuit’s exhibition of films at the former Grand Opera House in Los Angeles that year, the whole show went on tour through the hinterlands of Southern California before settling into a semi-permanent home in the back room of Thomas Tally’s Edison Phonograph and Vitascope Parlors on Spring Street.
Carroll might have gotten a few such visits from movie exhibitors before 1907, but notifications in theatrical trade journals indicate that the Opera House was thriving with live performances into the early 1910s and was still advertising for them as late as 1921. Even its tenure as a movie house in the mid-1910s was probably only seasonal, though by that time they might have installed a permanent projection booth and probably had their own movie screen.
The March 8, 1924 issue of Moving Picture World reported that: “Mr. and Mrs. Ben Peters have leased their houses in Bunceton and Tipton. Mo., to O. L. Dowell, who has houses in Versailles and Eldon, Mo.” On March 22, the same journal noted that “W. C. Sears of Booneville. Mo., has purchased the theatres of Mrs. Brent Peters in Tipton and Bunceton, Mo.” The Tipton and Bunceton houses were both called the Princess.
The March 8, 1924 issue of Moving Picture World reported that: “Mr. and Mrs. Ben Peters have leased their houses in Bunceton and Tipton. Mo., to O. L. Dowell, who has houses in Versailles and Eldon, Mo.” On March 22, the same journal noted that “W. C. Sears of Booneville. Mo., has purchased the theatres of Mrs. Brent Peters in Tipton and Bunceton, Mo.” The Tipton and Bunceton houses were both called the Princess.
Although no theaters are listed at Bunceton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the “triumphal arch” style front of the Princess is characteristic of theater design in the late 1900s-early 1910s, and was probably ordered from one of the companies that made precast theater fronts during that period. I’d be very surprised if the Princess was built as late as the 1920s. I’d hazard a guess that it dated from before the U.S. entered WWI, at which time the foundries casting metal building fronts shifted to the production of war materiel.
Despite having been closed for much of the 1930s, it did open for at least one period during the middle of that decade, as noted in this item from the October 5, 1936 Motion Picture Daily: “Kansas City, Oct. 4.—J. J. Kametz has purchased the Princess at Bunceton, Mo., from C. A. Woolridge, who opened the theatre about six months ago. Kametz planned to open a house at Burlingame, Kan., several weeks ago, but the deal failed.”
The Bijou name is confirmed by this item from The Billboard of July 18, 1908: “Carroll- -Bijou, 320 North Main St.; Kreider & Rumford, mgrs.; S. C. 150; shows 3.” 320 was the theater’s address on the Sanborn map, and the building had clearly not yet been expanded to accommodate the later seating capacity of 300 in 1908. The item was in the Iowa section of the magazine’s “Nickelodeons” column.
The only other known name associated with Carroll that this house could have had is the Gem, but the only mention of that name I’ve found is the one in the AMPD, while we know that Star was still in use as late as 1916. I suspect the Gem was a short-lived storefront nickelodeon, or perhaps a briefly used aka for the Royal.
I cane across an item in a 1907 issue of The Billboard about a moving picture film bursting into flames at the end of a show in the Carroll Opera House. The building apparently suffered no serious damage, and the audience evacuated safely, but it cost the owner of the projector and films $150.00.
As this house was still in operation in 1923 it is most likely the one that was called the Irving Theatre in 1921 and the Strand Theatre by 1926, when it was under the same management as the Royal. The Strand was listed in the 1926 and 1927 FDYs but gone in 1929. I don’t have access to the 1928 FDY, but the Strand might have closed when the Earle Theatre opened in 1927.
The Auditorium was one of seven theaters listed at Vinita in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. No address was given for it. An earlier Grand theatre was also listed, at 104 Illinois Avenue. I think Vinita changed its numbering system at some point, as the Directory lists a Vaudette theatre at 22 Wilson Street, and there appear to be no two-digit addresses in the town today. The earlier Grand was thus probably at modern 204 Illinois, or thereabout.
The only theater listed at Stillwell in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Motion, and no details were given for it. The Grand was the only house listed at Stillwell in the 1926 and 1929 FDY’s, but it was listed with only 175 seats. The last listing of the Grand in 1933 shows 250 seats, while the first listing of the Eagle in 1934 has only 230.
The 1926 FDY lists only a 350-seat house called the Crescent at Audubon. The earliest mention of the Crescent I’ve found is in the March 4, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review: “AUDUBON, IOWA.— Dan Nelson is now operating the Crsecent.”
Although the theater in Audubon is consistently listed by the FDY with 350 seats, the name Rose does not appear until the 1941 edition, so that renaming must have accompanied the rebuilding in 1940. But there were earlier renamings. In the 1932 edition it is listed as the Audubon Theatre, it went back to Crescent in 1933, and in 1934 through 1940 it was listed as the Broadway Theatre.
The only theater listed at Audubon in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Gem. The Gem, run by a Paul Hoover, was also listed in Polk’s 1912-1913 Iowa Gazetteer. An item in the October 10, 1912 Audubon Republican made reference to “…the Hall west of the Gem Theatre….” I see a hall on the Sanborn map, but can’t tell what direction it is from the theater nearby. Not much to go on, though if this was the only theater shown on the map then odds are pretty good it was the Gem.
By 1922, a trade journal mentions a house called the Crescent Theatre in Audubon, and it is listed with 350 seats, so unless the building was considerably expanded it was probably not the same theater.
Okay, this wasn’t the Rex. I just saw the entry for the Dallas Theatre, a later aka for the Rex. As Emily Litella used to say, never mind.
If it was still around in 1914, this house might have been the Rex, the only theater listed at Perry without an address in the AMPD. The other two theaters listed, the Lyric and the Majestic, both had 2nd Street addresses.
The February 8, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World has this item: “Perry, Iowa, Jan. 23. — The Orpheum Moving Picture Theater is the name of a new amusement house that has been opened up in Perry by Dallas Center men. Worth Jenkins and Web Cramer are the proprietors. It is located in the Wimmer Building, west of the library.” I found one reference to the Wimmer Building being on 2nd Street, but the MPW item says it was west of the library, which would have given it a Willis Avenue address. Of course Mr. Wimmer might have had his name on more than one building at various times.
1125 2nd Street is listed as the home of the Lyric Theatre in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Certainly the same space.
The McLuen Opera House is one of two theaters that the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists at Guthrie Center. The other was called the Motz Opera House. The McLuen (without the appellation Opera House or Theatre) is mentioned in Moving Picture World issues for July 7, 1917 and August 24, 1918. The former mentions Powd McLuen as manager of the house. A June, 1914 newspaper item mentions the McLuen Theatre, though, so the Theatre and Opera House appellations were probably used interchangeably for this theater.
The June 7, 1919 issue of Moving Picture World had this brief item: “Powd McLuen, of Guthrie Center, was a recent Des Moines visitor. He reported business as excellent in his town.” That’s the last mention of the name McLuen in connection with Guthrie Center I’ve found in the trade journals.
By 1926, the FDY listed two 450-seat theaters at Guthrie Center, but they were called the Garden and the Empress. The Garden was still in operation in the early 1950s. If the Garden was one of Guthrie Center’s early theaters under a new name, it would certainly have been the McLuen rather than the Motz, as the latter was an upstairs house opened in 1882. Early photos of the Motz can be seen on this web page. The Motz building was still standing and recognizable as of 2018. I’ve been unable to find photos of the McLuen or Garden.
According to an ad for American Bodiform Seating in Boxoffice of May 7, 1939, the Meloy Brothers' Park Theatre in Indianapolis was designed by architect Maurice E. Thornton.
A history of Mishawaka'a Tivoli Theatre has the line “Sound equipment first came to Mishawaka at the newer but smaller Northside Theater….” As the Tivoli was opened in 1925 and wired for sound in 1929, the “newer” Northside had to have been opened between those years. It also appears that Mishawaka Theatre was its opening name, as that is how it makes its first appearance in the FDY, in the 1930 edition. It might have been mis-listed in the 1929 FDY as the River Park Theatre, the name of a house that was actually in neighboring South Bend. In any case, the Mishawaka probably opened in either 1928 or 1929.
Here is an item about the Temple Theatre from the August 30, 1919 issue of Moving Picture World:
The only theatre listed at Shelbyville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was the Crescent Opera House, which is likely another aka for this house.
This item from the December 6, 1913 issue of Improvement Bulletin seems a possible candidate to have been the house that later became the Ritz:
I don’t know if addresses were shifted or the theater moved, but in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory the Photoplay theatre was listed at 280 Main Street. Two other houses were listed at Los Gatos: the Majestic Theatre, no location given, and the Thomas Theatre, on Main Street. No theaters were listed at Los Gatos in the 1926 or 1927 FDYs, but a house called the Strand appears in 1928, and in 1929 is listed with 400 seats.
A brief item from the Oelwein Daily Register of April 19, 2024 says that the Orpheum Theatre operated in Strawberry Point from 1896 to 1973. As the building at 114 Commercial Street was not a theater in 1902, the theater must have operated at a different location (unless the article was wrong about the opening year), and as the name Orpheum doesn’t appear in connection with Strawberry Point until 1932, it must have operated under different names as well. It must have been the Lyric, last listed in the FDY in 1931, and the only house listed at Strawberry Point in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The closing year of 1973 is certainly correct though, being well within living memory.
If the Opera House in the Odd Fellow’s building was the one listed in Polk’s Iowa Gazetteers for 1905-1906 and 1916-1917 as the Townsend Opera House then it was most likely not the Grand, which had a separate listing in the 1916-1917 edition. The Opera House was managed by E. W. Townsend, who was also president of the Citizen’s Bank, while the proprietor of the Grand was N. W. Sherman.
It’s (very slightly) possible that Sherman operated the Grand as a business in the Opera House under some sort of limited lease from Townsend, with the understanding that Townsend could boot Sherman’s movies out when the space was needed for some other event, but a photo of the Opera House interior can be seen on this Facebook page, and it not only had a flat floor, it also had columns in the center and would have made a wretched space for showing movies. I doubt it could have survived two years with any competition at all, and the Grand was listed in both 1914 and 1916.
It seems most likely that the Grand had its own place, probably a converted storefront like the theater at 119 S. Center Street, which could have been either the Grand or the Isis, with Gem or Lyric as a possible earlier aka if it was the Isis.
This place was /not/ the Hronek Opera House, the only theater listed at Pocahontas in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but it was just up the block. The Opera House, built in 1901 and seating 400, was upstairs in the building at the northwest corner of Main Street and 2nd Avenue NW. The entrance appears to have been near the back of the building on the 2nd Avenue side. I’ve not been able to find a name for this smaller rival at 211 Main. The earliest mention of Pocahontas I’ve found in the trade journals is from October, 1923, and it was about the first Rialto.
The earliest mention of the Rialto I’ve been able to find in the trade journals is from the October 6, 1923 issue of Exhibitors Herald. This was the first of more than a dozen capsule movie reviews submitted to that volume of the magazine by Rialto managers Pace & Bouma. Jack Bouma was around long enough to open the new Rialto in 1939, but I have no idea what became of Pace. Perhaps the Bouma was just too much for him.
Three movie houses, the Gem, the Grand, and the Lyric, are listed at Lake City in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. I’ve been unable to find Lake City mentioned in the movie theater trade journals before 1921, but two Lake City theaters are listed by name and manager (but not address) in Polk’s 1916-1917 Iowa Gazetteer. The Grand is one of them, and the other was called the Isis.
I’m not sure when itinerant movie exhibitors began touring Iowa, but in California they started as early as 1896. After the Orpheum circuit’s exhibition of films at the former Grand Opera House in Los Angeles that year, the whole show went on tour through the hinterlands of Southern California before settling into a semi-permanent home in the back room of Thomas Tally’s Edison Phonograph and Vitascope Parlors on Spring Street.
Carroll might have gotten a few such visits from movie exhibitors before 1907, but notifications in theatrical trade journals indicate that the Opera House was thriving with live performances into the early 1910s and was still advertising for them as late as 1921. Even its tenure as a movie house in the mid-1910s was probably only seasonal, though by that time they might have installed a permanent projection booth and probably had their own movie screen.
The March 8, 1924 issue of Moving Picture World reported that: “Mr. and Mrs. Ben Peters have leased their houses in Bunceton and Tipton. Mo., to O. L. Dowell, who has houses in Versailles and Eldon, Mo.” On March 22, the same journal noted that “W. C. Sears of Booneville. Mo., has purchased the theatres of Mrs. Brent Peters in Tipton and Bunceton, Mo.” The Tipton and Bunceton houses were both called the Princess.
The March 8, 1924 issue of Moving Picture World reported that: “Mr. and Mrs. Ben Peters have leased their houses in Bunceton and Tipton. Mo., to O. L. Dowell, who has houses in Versailles and Eldon, Mo.” On March 22, the same journal noted that “W. C. Sears of Booneville. Mo., has purchased the theatres of Mrs. Brent Peters in Tipton and Bunceton, Mo.” The Tipton and Bunceton houses were both called the Princess.
Although no theaters are listed at Bunceton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the “triumphal arch” style front of the Princess is characteristic of theater design in the late 1900s-early 1910s, and was probably ordered from one of the companies that made precast theater fronts during that period. I’d be very surprised if the Princess was built as late as the 1920s. I’d hazard a guess that it dated from before the U.S. entered WWI, at which time the foundries casting metal building fronts shifted to the production of war materiel.
Despite having been closed for much of the 1930s, it did open for at least one period during the middle of that decade, as noted in this item from the October 5, 1936 Motion Picture Daily: “Kansas City, Oct. 4.—J. J. Kametz has purchased the Princess at Bunceton, Mo., from C. A. Woolridge, who opened the theatre about six months ago. Kametz planned to open a house at Burlingame, Kan., several weeks ago, but the deal failed.”
The Bijou name is confirmed by this item from The Billboard of July 18, 1908: “Carroll- -Bijou, 320 North Main St.; Kreider & Rumford, mgrs.; S. C. 150; shows 3.” 320 was the theater’s address on the Sanborn map, and the building had clearly not yet been expanded to accommodate the later seating capacity of 300 in 1908. The item was in the Iowa section of the magazine’s “Nickelodeons” column.
The only other known name associated with Carroll that this house could have had is the Gem, but the only mention of that name I’ve found is the one in the AMPD, while we know that Star was still in use as late as 1916. I suspect the Gem was a short-lived storefront nickelodeon, or perhaps a briefly used aka for the Royal.
I cane across an item in a 1907 issue of The Billboard about a moving picture film bursting into flames at the end of a show in the Carroll Opera House. The building apparently suffered no serious damage, and the audience evacuated safely, but it cost the owner of the projector and films $150.00.
As this house was still in operation in 1923 it is most likely the one that was called the Irving Theatre in 1921 and the Strand Theatre by 1926, when it was under the same management as the Royal. The Strand was listed in the 1926 and 1927 FDYs but gone in 1929. I don’t have access to the 1928 FDY, but the Strand might have closed when the Earle Theatre opened in 1927.