This item is from the January 1, 1938 issue of Motion Picture Herald:
“Roy E. Syfert operates the Ainsworth theatre at Ainsworth, Nebraska. He is also the undertaker for that community, and if you will go to his theatre he will undertake to show you a good picture and you will undertake to express your appreciation for the courtesy shown.”
The Lyric is listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. This web page has a scan of a December 14, 1967 newspaper article about the closing of the house, with two photos.
The Altoona Tribune of March 18, 1921, said that the rebuilt Capitol Theatre building was designed by the local architectural firm Hersh & Shollar.
It should be noted that Frank Austin Hersh and Frederick James Shollar formed and disbanded their partnership more than once. From 1904 to about 1916 the firm was called Shollar & Hersh, and after a hiatus of a couple of years, they re-formed the firm but called it Hersh & Shollar. Thus Altoona’s Olympic Theatre of 1914 was designed by Shollar & Hersh, but the 1921 rebuild of the Capitol was by Hersh & Shollar.
This item is from the March 4, 1939 issue of Motion Picture Herald:
“John Lee has started construction of a motion picture theatre at Ephrata, Wash., 20 miles from the site of the Grand Coulee Dam. The house, which is to cost $20,000, will accommodate 350. Mr. Lee has theatres at Soap Lake, Quincy and Neppel, Wash., and at present is operating a theatre in the Ephrata locality.”
The document (now gone from the Internet) cited in my previous comment said that the MarJo opened in 1940, so the project must have suffered some delays. Lee’s earlier theater at Ephrata, mentioned in the Herald item, is also noted in my previous comment.
By the way, the PDF I linked to has a nice interior photo of the Nifty’s auditorium. It’s quite a handsome room, with some nice detailing very characteristic of the 1910s. No reclining seats, though. Sorry, kids.
Waterville probably isn’t a ghost town, given that Trulia currently lists several houses for sale at prices from $235,000 (new construction) up to $686,000. The census bureau estimated the population as of 2016 at 1,181. The town’s web site is certainly very much alive.
Although most web sites say that the Nifty Theatre was built in 1918 and opened in 1919, I found a brief item in Motography of November 4, 1916, saying “[t]he Nifty Theater in Waterville is installing new equipment.” Indeed, the Nifty Theatre was listed at Waterville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
While it’s possible that the Nifty Theater of 1914 and 1916 was in a different location, it seems just as likely that the original theater could simply have been rebuilt in 1918. This PDF from the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, published in 2008, has information about many of the state’s historic theaters, and the section devoted to the Nifty says that “… according to the owner [the theater] was burned during construction. Portions of the stage framing and exterior walls are charred.” It seems entirely possible that the original Nifty suffered a fire in 1918 but its framing survived and the theater was rebuilt.
The official web site says the Roxy was built in 1935, and operated as a movie house until 1981. It was reopened for use as a live venue in the late 1980s, and since 2011 has been re-equipped to present movies again, as well as live events. The current seating capacity is 352.
This weblog post has a bit about Coulee City’s Lee Theatre. It was in a rebuilt building formerly called Gregg Hall (apparently a community center of some sort.) The entrance was on Third Street. Another page of the weblog has a note saying that that the Lee opened on June 13, 1947. The opening of the house was also noted in the July 5 issue of Boxoffice:
“COULEE CITY, WASH.— John Lee of Ephrata has put the Lee Theatre into operation here. The house was built out of the ruins of Gregg hall, which was gutted by fire several months ago. Kenneth Knight is managing.”
On the MarJo Theatre page I cited a PDF which has since vanished from the Internet. My comment of October 7, 2016 there says that the history of Ephrata’s theaters in the document said that the Lee Theatre opened in 1952. I don’t know why I didn’t cite it on this page then instead of waiting until now.
The August 21, 1919 issue of The Memphis Democrat (PDF here) has ads for both the Princess and a house called the Majestic Theatre (actually there are two ads for the Princess, and both theaters are mentioned several times in the text on the page.)
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two houses at Memphis, Texas: the Princess and the Opera House. I’m thinking it’s possible that the Opera House became the Majestic. Later either the Majestic or the Princess might have become a house called the Palace, and the other might have become the Gem
Issues of Exhibitors' Herald from early 1926 have capsule movie reviews from two Memphis exhibitors, W. H. Hall of the Gem Theatre and Mrs. Edgar Adams, of the Palace theatre. The Gem is also mentioned in the October 17, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News.
The 1926 FDY lists only the 500-seat Palace at Memphis, but the 1927 edition lists both the Palace and the 450-seat Gem. Those two continue to be listed through 1931. In 1932 the 450-seat Gem is gone and the 450-seat Ritz appears. The Palace and the Ritz both continue in the FDY listings through 1957, the last year the FDY listed all the theaters in the U.S. by town.
The Texas Theatre first appeared in the 1934 FDY, and was last listed in 1954. There is a possibility that the house on Main Street that we have listed as the Texas as actually the location of the Palace, but I’ve commented about that on the Texas Theatre page.
The Texas Theatre first appears in the FDY in 1934, and is last listed in 1954. It was outlasted by the Ritz Theatre, first listed in 1932, and the Palace Theatre, listed in 1926 but probably older. Both the Ritz and the Palace were still being listed in 1957, the last year the FDY listed all the theaters in the U.S. by town.
The fourth picture from the bottom of this web page is of the theater at 611 W. Main Street, but the caption says it is the Palace. The page was submitted by someone named Dorman Holub, apparently in 2009, and the Internet tells me that Dorman Holub is a resident of Graham, Texas, and an expert on regional history. Memphis is quite some distance from Graham (about 200 miles), but I suppose in Texas it might be considered almost local. Holub doesn’t cite a source for his claim that the theater at 611 Min was the Palace, but then I can’t find a source cited for Cinema Treasures' claim that it was the Texas either.
Information about the theaters in Memphis is sparse in the Internet, so I’m not expecting this conundrum to be cleared up soon, unless someone from the town who remembers the theater when it was open shows up here, or somebody finds a photo from when the theater signage was still on the building.
The Ritz was first listed in the FDY in 1932, with 450 seats. Because a house called the Gem Theatre, also with 450 seats, was last listed by the FDY in 1931, I thought perhaps that there was simply a name change, but if the earlier Sanborn maps show no theaters on Noel Street I guess couldn’t have been that.
All I’ve been able to discover about the Sunset Theatre is that it was open by December of 1937 (it was mentioned in the December 18 issue of The Fresno Bee) and that around the end of 1949 or beginning of 1950 it was taken over buy a guy named Giles “Tiny” Turner, who operated it at least through 1952.
This page about the Lyceum from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History doesn’t mention movies at the house. However, Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland does include the Lyceum, saying that it had a Biograph projector installed in late 1886, and in 1897 it was the Cleveland house that presented the movies of the Fitzsimmons-Corbett boxing match which attracted so much attention to film as a medium for displaying current events. But the Lyceum operated almost entirely as a live theater venue throughout its history.
Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland says that the Lyric Theatre closed in 1908 and reopened in 1909 as the Grand Theatre. The Grand closed in 1921, putting an end to the house as a movie theater, but the following year it reopened as a burlesque house called the New Empire Theatre, replacing the recently razed Empire Theatre on Huron Street. The theater went permanently dark in 1928.
Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland says that the Priscilla Theatre opened in 1910. Dutka also notes that, as the Empress Theatre, the house remained in operation less than a month after opening on Christmas Day, 1928.
According to Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland (and other sources), the Cinema/Lake/Esquire Theatre was at 1630 Euclid, across the street and a couple of doors east from the Palace Theatre. The Esquire closed on May 28, 1951.
But the Esquire’s conversion to a television studio in the 1950s did not mark the end of its career as a theater. In the late 1970s it was the home of the Center Repertory Theatre, a group which was a member of the LOTR (League of Resident Theatres.) Dutka says the television studio moved out in 1975 and the theater group occupied the house from 1978 into 1980, but a Facebook page for the theater group says it was there from 1974 into 1980.
This Facebook page has a lengthy reminiscence about the Center Repertory Theatre’s time in the house by one of its members, Tom Fulton. After the theater group folded the building sat empty and decaying for a number of years before being demolished in the mid-1980s for a parking lot.
Dutka notes that more recently the parking lot itself was obliterated for a southward extension of East 17th Street. Comparing current street view with vintage photos, it can be seen that the building once next door to the theater on the east is now occupied by the Bonfoey Gallery, and is now on the corner of the East 17th Street extension where the Esquire once stood.
Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland says that the Gaiety Theatre operated for thirteen years, from 1917 to 1930. It was never wired for sound. During the theater’s relatively brief life the management of the Gaiety carved out a niche for the house by becoming Cleveland’s principal venue for the many sensationalist movies, usually featuring sexual themes, which found a ready audience in the venturesome, pre-code 1920s.
Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland says that the Reel Theatre opened as a second run house charging five and ten cents for admission. Manager George W. Ryder billed the house as “the most beautiful small picture theatre in the world.”
The Reel Theatre featured a Fotoplayer to provide musical accompaniment to the silent movies. A demonstration of a Fotoplayer can be found on this page of the Silent Cinema Society’s web site.
The conversion of a number of old vaudeville houses to movies and the construction of several new and larger movie theaters in Cleveland soon outclassed the Reel Theatre, and it was dismantled in 1919.
The Cleveland Architects Database lists a 1907 project by architect James M. Bostick for a “[t]heatre, store and apartments for the Opera House Company” at Lorain, Ohio.
Alan F. Dutka’s 2016 book Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Clevelandprovides some updated information about the Prospect Theatre (Google Books preview.) Dutka says that the stock company remained in the Prospect only seventeen weeks after opening in April, 1904, before the Keith circuit took over the house.
After moving its two-a-day vaudeville to the Hippodrome in 1908, Keith ran the Prospect as a movie house, combination house, or (briefly) a live playhouse until closing in 1923. The building was still standing, though unrecognizable due to multiple remodeling jobs, into the early 21st century.
The Cleveland Landmarks Commission lists the Union Theatre at 10506 Union Avenue as a 1917 project designed by architect Ralph M(artin) Hulett (PDF here.) The document attributes two other Cleveland theaters to Hulett: the Reel Theatre, 2049 East 9th Street (1914) and the Gaiety Theatre, 1746 East 9th Street (1917.) Both have been demolished. He also designed two theaters in Akron, Ohio.
The Rex was one of two movie theaters listed at Albion in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other theater was called the Lyric.
This item is from the January 1, 1938 issue of Motion Picture Herald:
The Royal Theatre, Main and 2nd Streets, was the only theater listed at Ainsworth in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The Lyric is listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. This web page has a scan of a December 14, 1967 newspaper article about the closing of the house, with two photos.
The Altoona Tribune of March 18, 1921, said that the rebuilt Capitol Theatre building was designed by the local architectural firm Hersh & Shollar.
It should be noted that Frank Austin Hersh and Frederick James Shollar formed and disbanded their partnership more than once. From 1904 to about 1916 the firm was called Shollar & Hersh, and after a hiatus of a couple of years, they re-formed the firm but called it Hersh & Shollar. Thus Altoona’s Olympic Theatre of 1914 was designed by Shollar & Hersh, but the 1921 rebuild of the Capitol was by Hersh & Shollar.
This item is from the March 4, 1939 issue of Motion Picture Herald:
The document (now gone from the Internet) cited in my previous comment said that the MarJo opened in 1940, so the project must have suffered some delays. Lee’s earlier theater at Ephrata, mentioned in the Herald item, is also noted in my previous comment.By the way, the PDF I linked to has a nice interior photo of the Nifty’s auditorium. It’s quite a handsome room, with some nice detailing very characteristic of the 1910s. No reclining seats, though. Sorry, kids.
Waterville probably isn’t a ghost town, given that Trulia currently lists several houses for sale at prices from $235,000 (new construction) up to $686,000. The census bureau estimated the population as of 2016 at 1,181. The town’s web site is certainly very much alive.
Although most web sites say that the Nifty Theatre was built in 1918 and opened in 1919, I found a brief item inMotography of November 4, 1916, saying “[t]he Nifty Theater in Waterville is installing new equipment.” Indeed, the Nifty Theatre was listed at Waterville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
While it’s possible that the Nifty Theater of 1914 and 1916 was in a different location, it seems just as likely that the original theater could simply have been rebuilt in 1918. This PDF from the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, published in 2008, has information about many of the state’s historic theaters, and the section devoted to the Nifty says that “… according to the owner [the theater] was burned during construction. Portions of the stage framing and exterior walls are charred.” It seems entirely possible that the original Nifty suffered a fire in 1918 but its framing survived and the theater was rebuilt.
The official web site says the Roxy was built in 1935, and operated as a movie house until 1981. It was reopened for use as a live venue in the late 1980s, and since 2011 has been re-equipped to present movies again, as well as live events. The current seating capacity is 352.
This weblog post has a bit about Coulee City’s Lee Theatre. It was in a rebuilt building formerly called Gregg Hall (apparently a community center of some sort.) The entrance was on Third Street. Another page of the weblog has a note saying that that the Lee opened on June 13, 1947. The opening of the house was also noted in the July 5 issue of Boxoffice:
On the MarJo Theatre page I cited a PDF which has since vanished from the Internet. My comment of October 7, 2016 there says that the history of Ephrata’s theaters in the document said that the Lee Theatre opened in 1952. I don’t know why I didn’t cite it on this page then instead of waiting until now.
The August 21, 1919 issue of The Memphis Democrat (PDF here) has ads for both the Princess and a house called the Majestic Theatre (actually there are two ads for the Princess, and both theaters are mentioned several times in the text on the page.)
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two houses at Memphis, Texas: the Princess and the Opera House. I’m thinking it’s possible that the Opera House became the Majestic. Later either the Majestic or the Princess might have become a house called the Palace, and the other might have become the Gem
Issues of Exhibitors' Herald from early 1926 have capsule movie reviews from two Memphis exhibitors, W. H. Hall of the Gem Theatre and Mrs. Edgar Adams, of the Palace theatre. The Gem is also mentioned in the October 17, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News.
The 1926 FDY lists only the 500-seat Palace at Memphis, but the 1927 edition lists both the Palace and the 450-seat Gem. Those two continue to be listed through 1931. In 1932 the 450-seat Gem is gone and the 450-seat Ritz appears. The Palace and the Ritz both continue in the FDY listings through 1957, the last year the FDY listed all the theaters in the U.S. by town.
The Texas Theatre first appeared in the 1934 FDY, and was last listed in 1954. There is a possibility that the house on Main Street that we have listed as the Texas as actually the location of the Palace, but I’ve commented about that on the Texas Theatre page.
The Texas Theatre first appears in the FDY in 1934, and is last listed in 1954. It was outlasted by the Ritz Theatre, first listed in 1932, and the Palace Theatre, listed in 1926 but probably older. Both the Ritz and the Palace were still being listed in 1957, the last year the FDY listed all the theaters in the U.S. by town.
The fourth picture from the bottom of this web page is of the theater at 611 W. Main Street, but the caption says it is the Palace. The page was submitted by someone named Dorman Holub, apparently in 2009, and the Internet tells me that Dorman Holub is a resident of Graham, Texas, and an expert on regional history. Memphis is quite some distance from Graham (about 200 miles), but I suppose in Texas it might be considered almost local. Holub doesn’t cite a source for his claim that the theater at 611 Min was the Palace, but then I can’t find a source cited for Cinema Treasures' claim that it was the Texas either.
Information about the theaters in Memphis is sparse in the Internet, so I’m not expecting this conundrum to be cleared up soon, unless someone from the town who remembers the theater when it was open shows up here, or somebody finds a photo from when the theater signage was still on the building.
The Ritz was first listed in the FDY in 1932, with 450 seats. Because a house called the Gem Theatre, also with 450 seats, was last listed by the FDY in 1931, I thought perhaps that there was simply a name change, but if the earlier Sanborn maps show no theaters on Noel Street I guess couldn’t have been that.
All I’ve been able to discover about the Sunset Theatre is that it was open by December of 1937 (it was mentioned in the December 18 issue of The Fresno Bee) and that around the end of 1949 or beginning of 1950 it was taken over buy a guy named Giles “Tiny” Turner, who operated it at least through 1952.
This page about the Lyceum from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History doesn’t mention movies at the house. However, Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland does include the Lyceum, saying that it had a Biograph projector installed in late 1886, and in 1897 it was the Cleveland house that presented the movies of the Fitzsimmons-Corbett boxing match which attracted so much attention to film as a medium for displaying current events. But the Lyceum operated almost entirely as a live theater venue throughout its history.
Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland says that the Lyric Theatre closed in 1908 and reopened in 1909 as the Grand Theatre. The Grand closed in 1921, putting an end to the house as a movie theater, but the following year it reopened as a burlesque house called the New Empire Theatre, replacing the recently razed Empire Theatre on Huron Street. The theater went permanently dark in 1928.
Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland says that the Priscilla Theatre opened in 1910. Dutka also notes that, as the Empress Theatre, the house remained in operation less than a month after opening on Christmas Day, 1928.
According to Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland (and other sources), the Cinema/Lake/Esquire Theatre was at 1630 Euclid, across the street and a couple of doors east from the Palace Theatre. The Esquire closed on May 28, 1951.
But the Esquire’s conversion to a television studio in the 1950s did not mark the end of its career as a theater. In the late 1970s it was the home of the Center Repertory Theatre, a group which was a member of the LOTR (League of Resident Theatres.) Dutka says the television studio moved out in 1975 and the theater group occupied the house from 1978 into 1980, but a Facebook page for the theater group says it was there from 1974 into 1980.
This Facebook page has a lengthy reminiscence about the Center Repertory Theatre’s time in the house by one of its members, Tom Fulton. After the theater group folded the building sat empty and decaying for a number of years before being demolished in the mid-1980s for a parking lot.
Dutka notes that more recently the parking lot itself was obliterated for a southward extension of East 17th Street. Comparing current street view with vintage photos, it can be seen that the building once next door to the theater on the east is now occupied by the Bonfoey Gallery, and is now on the corner of the East 17th Street extension where the Esquire once stood.
Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland says that the Gaiety Theatre operated for thirteen years, from 1917 to 1930. It was never wired for sound. During the theater’s relatively brief life the management of the Gaiety carved out a niche for the house by becoming Cleveland’s principal venue for the many sensationalist movies, usually featuring sexual themes, which found a ready audience in the venturesome, pre-code 1920s.
Alan F. Dutka’s Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland says that the Reel Theatre opened as a second run house charging five and ten cents for admission. Manager George W. Ryder billed the house as “the most beautiful small picture theatre in the world.”
The Reel Theatre featured a Fotoplayer to provide musical accompaniment to the silent movies. A demonstration of a Fotoplayer can be found on this page of the Silent Cinema Society’s web site.
The conversion of a number of old vaudeville houses to movies and the construction of several new and larger movie theaters in Cleveland soon outclassed the Reel Theatre, and it was dismantled in 1919.
The Cleveland Architects Database identifies James W. Chrisford as the designer of the Lincoln Theatre. It opened in 1924.
The Cleveland Architects Database lists a 1907 project by architect James M. Bostick for a “[t]heatre, store and apartments for the Opera House Company” at Lorain, Ohio.
Alan F. Dutka’s 2016 book Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Clevelandprovides some updated information about the Prospect Theatre (Google Books preview.) Dutka says that the stock company remained in the Prospect only seventeen weeks after opening in April, 1904, before the Keith circuit took over the house.
After moving its two-a-day vaudeville to the Hippodrome in 1908, Keith ran the Prospect as a movie house, combination house, or (briefly) a live playhouse until closing in 1923. The building was still standing, though unrecognizable due to multiple remodeling jobs, into the early 21st century.
The Cleveland Landmarks Commission lists the Union Theatre at 10506 Union Avenue as a 1917 project designed by architect Ralph M(artin) Hulett (PDF here.) The document attributes two other Cleveland theaters to Hulett: the Reel Theatre, 2049 East 9th Street (1914) and the Gaiety Theatre, 1746 East 9th Street (1917.) Both have been demolished. He also designed two theaters in Akron, Ohio.