The owners-operators of the PRINCESS and CHIEF were Paul and Yvonne B. Touney. They were also in the fountain-pen business. Mr. Touney passed in 1963 and Mrs. Touney died on September 20, 2000 at age 95.
The Star Auto Theatre closed on Saturday, September 18, 1999 after the final double feature (including “The Sixth Sense”) which drew 776 patrons. The reason for its sale was that the property was sold for $450,000 to a company called Star-Wauseon, according to then-assistant manager Ryan Wyse. Ten years later no development has taken place; the screenhouse still stands in good condition with letterboard intact but minus its two neon stars. Inside, the field is overgrown and the projection/concession building and speaker stanchions are gone.
From 1998: “Our Creature Feature this week is a double feature about skunks. And what better place than a drive-in movie theater to begin. The Star Auto Theater in Wauseon, Ohio is under siege by skunks drawn by French fries and snacks. The upshot, literally, is not conducive to amorous behavior by movie-goers in the back seat. "They let go their foul-smelling liquid and the smell drifts through the whole place,” said theater owner Robert Wyse."
Monday, July 6th, 2009: A theater inside Regency Cinema faced a scene of destruction: crumbled bricks, crumpled metal and twisted fiberglass.
The movie screen had been torn down, the seats were empty and the ruins were real â€" the handiwork of a yellow Caterpillar 235C there on Monday to begin demolishing the theater at 5230 Durand Ave., which closed in mid-April. Azarian Wrecking was in charge of the demolition, expected to last two weeks.
Randy Jansen, 44, looked on with a camera around his neck. “If I’d have known the seats were in there I’d have said ‘I’ll buy a row,’†said Jansen, there to take pictures for his wife Melissa, who worked at the theater for 15 years.
Workers from Azarian Wrecking used a backhoe to tear down the former Regency Mall Cinema building on the Monday morning. of July 6, 2009. The theater, at 5230 Durand Avenue in Racine, Wisconsin, was Racine’s last operating movie theatre, and closed in April 2009 when Marcus Theaters Corp. decided not to renew the lease.
Jansen arrived at around 8:45 a.m., and planned to watch until he had to leave for work at around 3:30 p.m. Three other spectators joined Jansen in an otherwise empty parking lot Monday morning.
Jansen’s pictures will add to the couple’s Regency collection from over the years, including from when his wife’s then-young daughter ripped tickets for a bring-your-child-to-work day. He took pictures on the cinema’s last day of operation, too, in mid-April.
That was when the building lease for Marcus Theatres Corp. ran out. Carlo Petrick, communications manager at Marcus, said the building was “antiquated†and “no longer suitable for use as a movie theater.†Regency had been converted to a budget theater in 2006.
Demolishing the building prevents Marcus competitors from taking over the lease, Regency Mall General Manager Curt Pruitt said. It was easier to raze it than to turn it into a different kind of facility, he added.
“It would be so costly, we might as well start with all-new construction and technology,†Pruitt said.
Mall management and the City of Racine are still figuring out what to do next with the land. They have some prospects but no strict game plan, Pruitt said.
At about 9:45 a.m., the “C†and “I†in “CINEMA†had been knocked down from the building’s left side, facing the parking lot. With the upwards swoop of the Caterpillar’s fingers against the beige brick wall, the “N†partially fell, too, contorting into an upside-down heap of metal and wood hanging from the wall.
By 3:15 p.m., the whole sign had been knocked away, along with a large chunk of the building’s left side. Melissa Jansen, off from work, stood in front of the boarded-up front door as Randy took pictures.
“This was my first job,†said Melissa, 40, who was assistant manager there. “When I pulled in the parking lot, my heart just started racing,†as she remembered years of Halloween parties and dressing up for big premieres such as “Grease†and “Batmanâ€.
Bob Tapp, 51, pulled up to the parking lot and joined her. He worked there for 20 years, and he agreed with Petrick’s description of the building as “uniqueâ€. “Most of it was over 20 years old,†he said. “They didn’t enjoy coming here to fix stuff.â€
As Tapp and Melissa Jansen spoke, Randy drove off for work, with a souvenir brick in the back of his pickup truck.
The state Assembly budget’s $500,000 boost for Oshkosh’s Grand Opera House renovation will not mean a thing if the city cannot free up the money to cover its portion of the project.
“When you’re balancing out whether to pay for a historic building or neighborhood needs, the choice becomes clear,†said Oshkosh Alderman Bob Poeschl.
The Assembly’s version of the budget commits state bonding for the project if the city, which owns the opera house, can come up with a plan to cover the difference. But there is no cost estimate for the project.
The city shut down the opera house in March after an engineer discovered two trusses in the 126-year-old building’s roof needed immediate repairs.
The repair work is out for bid, and city leaders will get a better idea of the cost when bids are submitted next month.
“I’d love for it to be $1, but I don’t think that will be the case,†said state Rep. Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, who added the $500,000 in bonding to the state’s capital budget. “This is going to be a significant project. It could mean 85 to 100 jobs.â€
But if the city’s share of the money is too much for taxpayers, the project likely will be delayed.
If that happens, Hintz said, the state money could disappear. Because the state is offering bonding, any failure on the city’s part to cover the remaining costs means the state will not pay.
Several GOP lawmakers during budget deliberations used the project as a prime example of unnecessary spending when the state is trying to climb out of a multibillion-dollar budget hole.
“If the community wants to have it, then the community can figure out a way to pay for it,†said state Rep. John Townsend, R-Fond du Lac.
But Poeschl said the project is almost certainly out of the question without state support.
If the opera house’s doors remain closed, the region loses one of its best tourist attractions and economic drivers, said Joseph Ferlo, executive director of The Oshkosh Opera House Foundation Inc.
“People hear ‘opera house’ and think one thing, but this is a regional arts and education center,†he said. “We attract national touring acts. I think the project stands up to the scrutiny.â€
If the money remains in the budget, the state Building Commission still would have to sign off on the project before authorizing the bonding. But Hintz said he realizes the greater challenge might be at the local level.
City Manager Mark Rohloff, who is figuring out city finances and possible capital campaigns for the project, was unavailable for comment before deadline Wednesday.
The opera house is a national historic building worth maintaining, Poeschl said. But all Wisconsin cities are struggling to prioritize services.
“If the work doesn’t get done, it only gets easier to keep postponing it and saying, ‘We’ll do it when we have the money,’†he said. “But we have very little information right now, and this is already a very, very challenging time for taxpayers.â€
The grand lobby of the Vancouver ORPHEUM is featured prominently and repeatedly in ‘Caprica’ (2009), the pilot film for the forthcoming television series of the same name which is the prequel to the famed ‘Battlestar Galactica’ saga. In the ‘Caprica’ DVD’s bonus-scene link, additional production scenes at the ORPHEUM are available including a brief glimpse of the auditorium.
The Grand Opera House in Oshkosh is among the beneficiaries of spending items quietly inserted into the Wisconsin state budget.
Democrats who control the Legislature’s budget committee approved millions of dollars of spending despite the state’s $6.6 billion budget shortfall. The earmarks need approval from the full Legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle to become law.
Critics attacked the items, many of which were introduced hours before they were approved early Friday, as wasteful pork-barrel spending. The Republican Party of Wisconsin mocked funding for the opera house, among others.
But Democrats and those receiving the money defended the projects as necessary and helpful to local communities.
They include $500,000 to help renovate the Grand Opera House in Oshkosh, which has been closed since February because of structural problems that make it unsafe.
Joseph Ferlo, executive director of a foundation that runs the opera, said the building is the state’s oldest operating theater and must be preserved to help Oshkosh’s economy, the arts and tourism. The funding will help with an estimated $1.5 million renovation to reopen the theater next year.
“I understand why earmarks like this would come under scrutiny,” he said. “But under that scrutiny, saving a structure of this significance is a reasonable use of discretionary funds.”
The Orpheum Theatre opened March 14, 1922 and was designed by the Milwaukee firm of Martin Tullgren & Sons. (Tullgren designed more National Register of Historic Places buildings in Wisconsin than anyone except for Frank Lloyd Wright.) Tullgren was also an investor in the Orpheum Theatre Company. The interior style is French Provincial.
The theatre was briefly named the Lake Theatre in the 1930s. It closed in about 1977, and by 1992 the entire four-story Orpheum Building had become vacant. The city issued raze-or-repair orders in 1992. Preservationists rallied, the demolition was placed on hold, and the city agreed to lend the demolition cost ($260,000) interest-free for ten years to a bonafide developer. The offer was accepted in 1994 and the Orpheum was twinned and reopened as a second-run house in December 1994. By 1996 the balcony was also twinned. By 2000 the theatre had closed and the building was resold. In 2009 the Orpheum Building is busy again with upscale street-level shops and renewed hopes to reopen the theatre eventually.
The Orpheum Building is seen the 1999 Ernest Borgnine-Eileen Brennan film “The Last Great Ride”.
On Sunday, September 29, 1929 the Music Box Theatre was robbed of about $1,000 at gunpoint. A few hours later a robber burst into the McVicker’s Theatre manager’s office on the mezzanine floor where the assistant manager, Bernard Cobb, had just gotten about $4,500 in box-office receipts from a cashier. The robber herded the employees at gunpoint into an adjoining office overlooking the corridor and locked the door from the outside, then moved toward the exit. Meanwhile Cobb had grabbed a handgun from a desk drawer and stuck the barrel through a wall peephole, firing two bullets into the robber’s head, dropping him dead on the floor of the corridor. The day before, two other Chicago theatres had been robbed of about $200 in that fashion.
The Mineral Point Opera House Rehabilitation Project is seeking bids by April 7 on one complete contract for the work.
The owner of record is Lauren Powers, Mineral Point.
The Architect will be Strang Inc. of Madison, Wisconsin.
In general, the project consists of rehabilitation work on the existing theater to include some exterior restoration and repair. The approximate area of work is 7,470 square feet on two floors and a mezzanine.
Recent performers at the state’s oldest operating theater came a little too close to bringing down the house.
The city of Oshkosh shut down the Grand Opera House on March 6, after an engineer discovered two trusses in the 125-year-old building’s roof needed immediate repairs. The decision left the organization that leases the theater from the city scrambling to clear out the performance space to make room for construction work.
The decision might have saved the Victorian theater from a major accident, said Joseph Ferlo, executive director of The Oshkosh Opera House Foundation Inc.
“It was a question of safety,” he said. “Obviously, we didn’t want to take any chances.”
The deteriorating trusses are part of the theater’s original woodwork, said Jon Urben, Oshkosh director of general services. A crew from C.R. Meyer and Sons Co., Oshkosh, is reinforcing the trusses with steel rods, he said, and the work is expected to be complete by the end of March.
There’s no total yet on how much the work will cost, Urben said. All repair costs will come out of the theater’s budget, he said.
The Grand Opera House will pay for renting space in other theaters and for other performance-related costs, Ferlo said. Structurally, the challenge is fixing the roof without disturbing the refurbished interior, he said. The theater was renovated in 1986.
The Grand Opera House had to move 22 scheduled performances to make room for the work crew, Ferlo said. A performance of “Men on Ice” on March 6 was relocated to a theater across town less than six hours before the curtain was raised.
“It was like a battleground,” Ferlo said. “I just sent people out and trusted they’d do their job.”
Tom Karrels, an engineer and owner of T.R. Karrels and Associates SC, Oshkosh, discovered the roof’s troubles during a structural analysis needed to install a sprinkler system, Urben said. The sprinklers were needed to secure a state variance to let the theater expand into a building next door, he said.
The variance request revealed the serious roof problem.
“It’s the silver lining to this thing,” Urben said.
The theater’s scramble in recent weeks tested the old theater adage: “The show must go on,” Ferlo said.
“It was never more true than last Friday night,” he said. “But we never considered canceling. People wait a long time for these shows to come to Oshkosh.”
Thank you for that valuable Rapp & Rapp information and the other research, Paul; unfortunately there’s no way I know of to edit additional data into the header above once the page is constructed.
(Racine Journal-News, September 15, 1915) Arrested In Illinois: Harry G. Smith, Jr., who cut a wide swath in Kenosha some months ago as manager of the Orpheum theatre on East Market street and who left the city without any previous announcement and left a number of worthless checks behind him, has been arrested at Moline, Ill., on charges of grand larceny. The former Kenosha theatre manager surrendered himself to the police at Moline Friday and it is declared that he gave up when he found that the Moline officials were tightening a web of guilt about him. He is charged with stealing an automobile valued at three thousand dollars from T. F. Wharton. one of the officials of the Deere Harvesting company at Moline. The automobile was stolen on the night of Saturday, May 22. The machine was recovered at Farmington, Ill., some days late- and efforts had been made to repaint to prevent its being identified. Smith gave bonds of $1,500 following his arrest and he was held to the September grand jury.
Appleton Post Crescent, October 21, 1925: CHIEF HURT IN KENOSHA
$60,000 THEATRE BLAZE
Kenosha â€"</P)â€" Fire which broke out in the boiler room of the Burke
Theatre early Wednesday caused damages amounting to about $60,000. The building was completely gutted. In addition to the theatre a dozen offices above it were burned by the blaze. Chief John Schwartz was injured while fighting the fire when he fell down a rear stairway obscured by thick smoke.
Racine Journal, May 14, 1914: “When amusement loving people visit the old Racine theatre this evening, to be known in the future as the New Rex, they will hardly recognize the place. A transformation scene has taken place — a beautiful new front has been built; the lobby made modern; interior redecorated; stage improved; seats covered with white cloth. In fact it is practically a new theatre. May Robson in the James Forbes comedy, “The Clever Woman,” opens the house, and after that it becomes a picture house exclusively.
“The Clever Woman” is a three act comedy of contemporary life written for Miss Robson by Mr. Forbes. Miss Robson has made folk laugh throughout the length and breadth of the land, if reports speak true. She is running to form in the part which Mr. Forbes has given her. It is described as 150 minutes of laughter and if anyone can get that amount of laughter into an evening’s entertainment it is surely May Robson. Miss Robson will be supported by a competent company of players each of whom contributes to the pleasure of the entertainment. From a scenic standpoint every attention has been given to the details."
A Nick Coston was the first manager at the Mid-City Outdoor Theatre in Kenosha WI, which opened in 1948 and which was operated by Standard Theatres of Milwaukee WI.
Correction: Mr. Paul Ray Touney was born on August 8, 1898 and passed away in September of 1964, coincidentally with the closing of the PRINCESS.
The owners-operators of the PRINCESS and CHIEF were Paul and Yvonne B. Touney. They were also in the fountain-pen business. Mr. Touney passed in 1963 and Mrs. Touney died on September 20, 2000 at age 95.
The Star Auto Theatre closed on Saturday, September 18, 1999 after the final double feature (including “The Sixth Sense”) which drew 776 patrons. The reason for its sale was that the property was sold for $450,000 to a company called Star-Wauseon, according to then-assistant manager Ryan Wyse. Ten years later no development has taken place; the screenhouse still stands in good condition with letterboard intact but minus its two neon stars. Inside, the field is overgrown and the projection/concession building and speaker stanchions are gone.
From 1998: “Our Creature Feature this week is a double feature about skunks. And what better place than a drive-in movie theater to begin. The Star Auto Theater in Wauseon, Ohio is under siege by skunks drawn by French fries and snacks. The upshot, literally, is not conducive to amorous behavior by movie-goers in the back seat. "They let go their foul-smelling liquid and the smell drifts through the whole place,” said theater owner Robert Wyse."
Monday, July 6th, 2009: A theater inside Regency Cinema faced a scene of destruction: crumbled bricks, crumpled metal and twisted fiberglass.
The movie screen had been torn down, the seats were empty and the ruins were real â€" the handiwork of a yellow Caterpillar 235C there on Monday to begin demolishing the theater at 5230 Durand Ave., which closed in mid-April. Azarian Wrecking was in charge of the demolition, expected to last two weeks.
Randy Jansen, 44, looked on with a camera around his neck. “If I’d have known the seats were in there I’d have said ‘I’ll buy a row,’†said Jansen, there to take pictures for his wife Melissa, who worked at the theater for 15 years.
Workers from Azarian Wrecking used a backhoe to tear down the former Regency Mall Cinema building on the Monday morning. of July 6, 2009. The theater, at 5230 Durand Avenue in Racine, Wisconsin, was Racine’s last operating movie theatre, and closed in April 2009 when Marcus Theaters Corp. decided not to renew the lease.
Jansen arrived at around 8:45 a.m., and planned to watch until he had to leave for work at around 3:30 p.m. Three other spectators joined Jansen in an otherwise empty parking lot Monday morning.
Jansen’s pictures will add to the couple’s Regency collection from over the years, including from when his wife’s then-young daughter ripped tickets for a bring-your-child-to-work day. He took pictures on the cinema’s last day of operation, too, in mid-April.
That was when the building lease for Marcus Theatres Corp. ran out. Carlo Petrick, communications manager at Marcus, said the building was “antiquated†and “no longer suitable for use as a movie theater.†Regency had been converted to a budget theater in 2006.
Demolishing the building prevents Marcus competitors from taking over the lease, Regency Mall General Manager Curt Pruitt said. It was easier to raze it than to turn it into a different kind of facility, he added.
“It would be so costly, we might as well start with all-new construction and technology,†Pruitt said.
Mall management and the City of Racine are still figuring out what to do next with the land. They have some prospects but no strict game plan, Pruitt said.
At about 9:45 a.m., the “C†and “I†in “CINEMA†had been knocked down from the building’s left side, facing the parking lot. With the upwards swoop of the Caterpillar’s fingers against the beige brick wall, the “N†partially fell, too, contorting into an upside-down heap of metal and wood hanging from the wall.
By 3:15 p.m., the whole sign had been knocked away, along with a large chunk of the building’s left side. Melissa Jansen, off from work, stood in front of the boarded-up front door as Randy took pictures.
“This was my first job,†said Melissa, 40, who was assistant manager there. “When I pulled in the parking lot, my heart just started racing,†as she remembered years of Halloween parties and dressing up for big premieres such as “Grease†and “Batmanâ€.
Bob Tapp, 51, pulled up to the parking lot and joined her. He worked there for 20 years, and he agreed with Petrick’s description of the building as “uniqueâ€. “Most of it was over 20 years old,†he said. “They didn’t enjoy coming here to fix stuff.â€
As Tapp and Melissa Jansen spoke, Randy drove off for work, with a souvenir brick in the back of his pickup truck.
The state Assembly budget’s $500,000 boost for Oshkosh’s Grand Opera House renovation will not mean a thing if the city cannot free up the money to cover its portion of the project.
“When you’re balancing out whether to pay for a historic building or neighborhood needs, the choice becomes clear,†said Oshkosh Alderman Bob Poeschl.
The Assembly’s version of the budget commits state bonding for the project if the city, which owns the opera house, can come up with a plan to cover the difference. But there is no cost estimate for the project.
The city shut down the opera house in March after an engineer discovered two trusses in the 126-year-old building’s roof needed immediate repairs.
The repair work is out for bid, and city leaders will get a better idea of the cost when bids are submitted next month.
“I’d love for it to be $1, but I don’t think that will be the case,†said state Rep. Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, who added the $500,000 in bonding to the state’s capital budget. “This is going to be a significant project. It could mean 85 to 100 jobs.â€
But if the city’s share of the money is too much for taxpayers, the project likely will be delayed.
If that happens, Hintz said, the state money could disappear. Because the state is offering bonding, any failure on the city’s part to cover the remaining costs means the state will not pay.
Several GOP lawmakers during budget deliberations used the project as a prime example of unnecessary spending when the state is trying to climb out of a multibillion-dollar budget hole.
“If the community wants to have it, then the community can figure out a way to pay for it,†said state Rep. John Townsend, R-Fond du Lac.
But Poeschl said the project is almost certainly out of the question without state support.
If the opera house’s doors remain closed, the region loses one of its best tourist attractions and economic drivers, said Joseph Ferlo, executive director of The Oshkosh Opera House Foundation Inc.
“People hear ‘opera house’ and think one thing, but this is a regional arts and education center,†he said. “We attract national touring acts. I think the project stands up to the scrutiny.â€
If the money remains in the budget, the state Building Commission still would have to sign off on the project before authorizing the bonding. But Hintz said he realizes the greater challenge might be at the local level.
City Manager Mark Rohloff, who is figuring out city finances and possible capital campaigns for the project, was unavailable for comment before deadline Wednesday.
The opera house is a national historic building worth maintaining, Poeschl said. But all Wisconsin cities are struggling to prioritize services.
“If the work doesn’t get done, it only gets easier to keep postponing it and saying, ‘We’ll do it when we have the money,’†he said. “But we have very little information right now, and this is already a very, very challenging time for taxpayers.â€
The grand lobby of the Vancouver ORPHEUM is featured prominently and repeatedly in ‘Caprica’ (2009), the pilot film for the forthcoming television series of the same name which is the prequel to the famed ‘Battlestar Galactica’ saga. In the ‘Caprica’ DVD’s bonus-scene link, additional production scenes at the ORPHEUM are available including a brief glimpse of the auditorium.
The building’s facade was white glazed brick until rather recently when it was redone in standard face brick.
I saw it open in 1961, showing “World Without End”. The added-later polychrome facade was attractive. The lot is still vacant today.
I remember seeing this already-closed theatre in 1958 with its original facade still intact.
In the early 1960s the building in this then-vital area was called Strachota’s Regent Lanes. I had wondered then if it was once a theatre.
The Grand Opera House in Oshkosh is among the beneficiaries of spending items quietly inserted into the Wisconsin state budget.
Democrats who control the Legislature’s budget committee approved millions of dollars of spending despite the state’s $6.6 billion budget shortfall. The earmarks need approval from the full Legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle to become law.
Critics attacked the items, many of which were introduced hours before they were approved early Friday, as wasteful pork-barrel spending. The Republican Party of Wisconsin mocked funding for the opera house, among others.
But Democrats and those receiving the money defended the projects as necessary and helpful to local communities.
They include $500,000 to help renovate the Grand Opera House in Oshkosh, which has been closed since February because of structural problems that make it unsafe.
Joseph Ferlo, executive director of a foundation that runs the opera, said the building is the state’s oldest operating theater and must be preserved to help Oshkosh’s economy, the arts and tourism. The funding will help with an estimated $1.5 million renovation to reopen the theater next year.
“I understand why earmarks like this would come under scrutiny,” he said. “But under that scrutiny, saving a structure of this significance is a reasonable use of discretionary funds.”
I passed the Bijou one evening in late August of 1959 and it was open but looking very tired with numerous bulbs out in the marquee.
The Orpheum Theatre opened March 14, 1922 and was designed by the Milwaukee firm of Martin Tullgren & Sons. (Tullgren designed more National Register of Historic Places buildings in Wisconsin than anyone except for Frank Lloyd Wright.) Tullgren was also an investor in the Orpheum Theatre Company. The interior style is French Provincial.
The theatre was briefly named the Lake Theatre in the 1930s. It closed in about 1977, and by 1992 the entire four-story Orpheum Building had become vacant. The city issued raze-or-repair orders in 1992. Preservationists rallied, the demolition was placed on hold, and the city agreed to lend the demolition cost ($260,000) interest-free for ten years to a bonafide developer. The offer was accepted in 1994 and the Orpheum was twinned and reopened as a second-run house in December 1994. By 1996 the balcony was also twinned. By 2000 the theatre had closed and the building was resold. In 2009 the Orpheum Building is busy again with upscale street-level shops and renewed hopes to reopen the theatre eventually.
The Orpheum Building is seen the 1999 Ernest Borgnine-Eileen Brennan film “The Last Great Ride”.
On Sunday, September 29, 1929 the Music Box Theatre was robbed of about $1,000 at gunpoint. A few hours later a robber burst into the McVicker’s Theatre manager’s office on the mezzanine floor where the assistant manager, Bernard Cobb, had just gotten about $4,500 in box-office receipts from a cashier. The robber herded the employees at gunpoint into an adjoining office overlooking the corridor and locked the door from the outside, then moved toward the exit. Meanwhile Cobb had grabbed a handgun from a desk drawer and stuck the barrel through a wall peephole, firing two bullets into the robber’s head, dropping him dead on the floor of the corridor. The day before, two other Chicago theatres had been robbed of about $200 in that fashion.
The Mineral Point Opera House Rehabilitation Project is seeking bids by April 7 on one complete contract for the work.
The owner of record is Lauren Powers, Mineral Point.
The Architect will be Strang Inc. of Madison, Wisconsin.
In general, the project consists of rehabilitation work on the existing theater to include some exterior restoration and repair. The approximate area of work is 7,470 square feet on two floors and a mezzanine.
From the Daily Reporter:
Recent performers at the state’s oldest operating theater came a little too close to bringing down the house.
The city of Oshkosh shut down the Grand Opera House on March 6, after an engineer discovered two trusses in the 125-year-old building’s roof needed immediate repairs. The decision left the organization that leases the theater from the city scrambling to clear out the performance space to make room for construction work.
The decision might have saved the Victorian theater from a major accident, said Joseph Ferlo, executive director of The Oshkosh Opera House Foundation Inc.
“It was a question of safety,” he said. “Obviously, we didn’t want to take any chances.”
The deteriorating trusses are part of the theater’s original woodwork, said Jon Urben, Oshkosh director of general services. A crew from C.R. Meyer and Sons Co., Oshkosh, is reinforcing the trusses with steel rods, he said, and the work is expected to be complete by the end of March.
There’s no total yet on how much the work will cost, Urben said. All repair costs will come out of the theater’s budget, he said.
The Grand Opera House will pay for renting space in other theaters and for other performance-related costs, Ferlo said. Structurally, the challenge is fixing the roof without disturbing the refurbished interior, he said. The theater was renovated in 1986.
The Grand Opera House had to move 22 scheduled performances to make room for the work crew, Ferlo said. A performance of “Men on Ice” on March 6 was relocated to a theater across town less than six hours before the curtain was raised.
“It was like a battleground,” Ferlo said. “I just sent people out and trusted they’d do their job.”
Tom Karrels, an engineer and owner of T.R. Karrels and Associates SC, Oshkosh, discovered the roof’s troubles during a structural analysis needed to install a sprinkler system, Urben said. The sprinklers were needed to secure a state variance to let the theater expand into a building next door, he said.
The variance request revealed the serious roof problem.
“It’s the silver lining to this thing,” Urben said.
The theater’s scramble in recent weeks tested the old theater adage: “The show must go on,” Ferlo said.
“It was never more true than last Friday night,” he said. “But we never considered canceling. People wait a long time for these shows to come to Oshkosh.”
I learned through scanning BOXOFFICE that the Lee Theatre closed permanently on September 4, 1951.
Thank you for that valuable Rapp & Rapp information and the other research, Paul; unfortunately there’s no way I know of to edit additional data into the header above once the page is constructed.
(Racine Journal-News, September 15, 1915) Arrested In Illinois: Harry G. Smith, Jr., who cut a wide swath in Kenosha some months ago as manager of the Orpheum theatre on East Market street and who left the city without any previous announcement and left a number of worthless checks behind him, has been arrested at Moline, Ill., on charges of grand larceny. The former Kenosha theatre manager surrendered himself to the police at Moline Friday and it is declared that he gave up when he found that the Moline officials were tightening a web of guilt about him. He is charged with stealing an automobile valued at three thousand dollars from T. F. Wharton. one of the officials of the Deere Harvesting company at Moline. The automobile was stolen on the night of Saturday, May 22. The machine was recovered at Farmington, Ill., some days late- and efforts had been made to repaint to prevent its being identified. Smith gave bonds of $1,500 following his arrest and he was held to the September grand jury.
Appleton Post Crescent, October 21, 1925: CHIEF HURT IN KENOSHA
$60,000 THEATRE BLAZE
Kenosha â€"</P)â€" Fire which broke out in the boiler room of the Burke
Theatre early Wednesday caused damages amounting to about $60,000. The building was completely gutted. In addition to the theatre a dozen offices above it were burned by the blaze. Chief John Schwartz was injured while fighting the fire when he fell down a rear stairway obscured by thick smoke.
Racine Journal, May 14, 1914: “When amusement loving people visit the old Racine theatre this evening, to be known in the future as the New Rex, they will hardly recognize the place. A transformation scene has taken place — a beautiful new front has been built; the lobby made modern; interior redecorated; stage improved; seats covered with white cloth. In fact it is practically a new theatre. May Robson in the James Forbes comedy, “The Clever Woman,” opens the house, and after that it becomes a picture house exclusively.
“The Clever Woman” is a three act comedy of contemporary life written for Miss Robson by Mr. Forbes. Miss Robson has made folk laugh throughout the length and breadth of the land, if reports speak true. She is running to form in the part which Mr. Forbes has given her. It is described as 150 minutes of laughter and if anyone can get that amount of laughter into an evening’s entertainment it is surely May Robson. Miss Robson will be supported by a competent company of players each of whom contributes to the pleasure of the entertainment. From a scenic standpoint every attention has been given to the details."
A Nick Coston was the first manager at the Mid-City Outdoor Theatre in Kenosha WI, which opened in 1948 and which was operated by Standard Theatres of Milwaukee WI.
Here’s Jim Rankin’s memorial page at Findagrave; memorial comments are welcome. Thanks.
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Here’s Jim Rankin’s memorial page at Findagrave. Visitors may leave memorial comments. Thanks.
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