The city of Milwaukee is looking to restore the MODJESKA THEATRE (Rapp & Rapp) and West Mitchell Street itself to its historic grandeur with a proposed $3.1 million tax incremental financing district. “It’s like a step forward into the past; Mitchell Street has a history of being a thriving commercial corridor,†said Joel Brennan, assistant executive director and secretary of Milwaukee’s redevelopment authority. The TIF district (PDF) would stretch from South Fifth to South 16th streets and cover all properties one block north and south of Mitchell Street. It would also include a commercial stretch of West Forest Home Avenue between South 13th and South 15th streets. The TIF money would be split in half into two separate funds â€" one for commercial projects and a second for infrastructure. A development fund totaling $1.5 million would give grants or loans to retail projects on Mitchell Street to help pay for work like restoring historic stone building facades. “Those are certainly the types of funds to help make projects pop in the corridor that otherwise might be financially unfeasible,†Brennan said. Brennan and the TIF plan pointed to three projects as likely recipients of that money â€"redeveloping the Goldmann’s department store, restoring the Modjeska Theater and fixing up the Walgreens building at 1101 W. Mitchell. Any funding for those projects would require separate redevelopment authority and Common Council approval after the TIF district is created.
The Modjeska Theater’s owners â€" Mitchell Street Development Opportunities Corp. and nonprofit Modjeska Theater Co. â€" are facing renovation costs ranging from $7.5 million to $8.9 million. The improvements would include restoring the building’s exterior masonry, new theater seating and sound systems, and upgrading its heating, cooling, plumbing, fire protection and electrical systems. The owners plan to continue to use the restored building for theater productions but also hope to attract meetings and conventions.
To create a TIF district, the city borrows money to pay for projects and then repays its debt using any increases in property taxes within the district. The city estimated the Mitchell Street TIF district would repay its $3.1 million in debt by 2025.
I saw “The Apartment” at the Nordic in August, 1960; the theatre was about half filled. There were many Art Moderne touches and blue-glass mirrors in the lobby. I spoke with the manager who said that a picture like “The Apartment” would have filled the theatre in the 1940s.
That happened two weeks before the Chicago Tribune announced the “New Blaine” Theatre would be built nearby, which of course turned out to be the Music Box. Who would have imagined that both theatres would still co-exist in the 21st Century, and under different names?
I revisited the GENOA yesterday and there has been progress. I took two exterior photos which are in the Racine Granada photo collection: www.groups.yahoo.com/group/RacineGranada along with those of other area theatres.
The GENOA now has a roofed superstructure over its original roof, which can be seen in one photo, which seems like massive overkill as the roof problem could have been solved with modern membrane roofing.
The glass doors and box office windows are obscured except for two ‘No Trespassing’ signs visible through the glass. (Which is interesting since actual trespassing is technically impossible as the GENOA touches the public sidewalks, unless you count the tiny threshold into the lobby or a human fly who might attempt to scale the exterior walls.)
The Cinemette is gutted to the wall studs and the wooden marquee (which has a corner chunk missing, probably from a long-ago semi) has been kept painted.
The GENOA is modest but it is attractive with its 1950s-look and Lannon stone trim and it’s my hope that the owner(s) will perpetuate its historical appearance.
The Avaloe’s manager or owner used to send out a special bus to pick up local kids (or anyone, really) in the neighborhoods and take them to matinees and back. Is that creative, or what?
The theatre’s actual name is the Genoa Theatre, and it’s located at 625 Walworth Street in downtown Genoa City near US Highway 12.
(Genoa City itself is referenced in the daytime TV drama “The Young and the Restless” as are other nearby communities because screenwriter Tom Racina, a native Kenoshan, is familiar with the area. The village is proud of the resultant publicity and there is a large sign on the edge of town acknowledging the honor.)
The GENOA opened on November 23, 1949 and is of concrete-block construction with a 1950s “jet-age” marquee. Built into the north wall of the structure is a counter-style diner (the “Cinemette”) with its own entrance. There is a full stage, and the GENOA often served as the village’s auditorium, hosting events such as area high school graduations and live theatrical performances.
The roomy auditorium seats 480 plus a few more in a second-floor ‘crying room’. The butterfly roof (not visible from the street) pitches down about four inches in its center with ‘swamp cooling’ – pipes spraying water across the roof in hot weather, an old concept that works rather well with proper roof maintainance in areas where water is cheap.
The original large screen remains, one of four left in the US; it appears to be aluminized in order to view 3D films a la today’s IMAX capabilities.
There are two Brenkert Enarc projectors, and there was a lathe in the basement where copper projection-arc rods were turned from raw stock. The GENOA was a second and third-run theatre throughout its life, finally closing in the early 1990s and darkened since.
The December 19, 2002 Lake Geneva Regional News reported that the GENOA was purchased on November 22, 2002 by a partnership including former village resident Bob Maltz (then living in Wonder Lake, Illinois and a former elder at the Wonder Lake Bible Church) and Rev. Gary Steadman of Monroe, Wisconsin which planned to reopen the GENOA on its anniversary in 2003.
In 2001, a Tim Leonard had successfully petitioned the village board to rezone the GENOA to industrial use for some unspecified purpose, but on December 12, 2002 the village board unanimously voted to rezone the vacant theatre back to commercial use as per the new partnership’s request.
Maltz expressed nostalgia to the reporter over his youthful days at the GENOA, and said he was inspired by the dreams of his late sister Donna Sarna, who had talked about reopening the Genoa over the eight years since it closed. Maltz also stated inspiration from the then-concurrent film “The Majestic” in which a community pulls together to reopen a vacant downtown theatre.
However, Maltz did not indicate a desire for restoration at the GENOA – saying instead that plans included some unspecified change to the 1950s facade, converting the Cinemette to a video arcade (the “No-Tilt Zone”), triplexing the auditorium into three 100-seat screening rooms, creating two upstairs ‘party rooms’ from both the existing crying room and an adjacent storage area, and “maybe” keeping the stage intact for possible live theater performances. Steadman wasn’t quoted in the article but Maltz said he planned to maintain the former revival policy, with a twist: one was to institute ‘theme nights’ by, for example, playing two older car-chase films over a weekend with admission discounts to those who arrive in an older vehicle, and perhaps screening a weekly silent film matinee.
Maltz credited the village for its support and planned a mass-mailing to residents with updates on reopening plans, and a suggestion box outside the theatre.
Genoa City is one of the fastest-growing communities in one of the nation’s busiest and most upscale and attractive residential and tourist areas. Still, the GENOA remains dark in 2007, over four years after the high hopes expressed in that 2002 article. The clerk at one nearby antique-store owner I visited in 2004 said the partners had since gone in different directions.
Three boys were buried alive at the Bushwick Theatre construction site on the Monday afternoon of August 1, 1910. They were apparently on the Broadway side of the site digging tunnels in construction sand when three tons of unshored building materials came down on brothers Alfred, 9, and John Sohn, 6, and their cousin Harold Verhas, 9, all three of 823 Madison Street, one block away. Police and Fire units recovered their bodies at noon on August 2.
The triangular lot formerly held some rickety frame buildings that had been cleared for the theatre, and neighborhood children were accustomed to using the now-vacant lot as a ball field and playground, even after digging began for the foundation.
The contractors fenced off the site but neighborhood children continued to enter and explore.
The boys had lunch at home at noon on Monday and then left to play. When they hadn’t returned by evening, Mrs. Carrie Thompson, an aunt of the Verhas boy, went to report them missing at the Ralph Avenue Police Station.
On Tuesday morning, ten-year-old Alexander Sullivan said he and his fox terrier Spot went to the Bushwick construction site to play, but Spot began to sniff the sand, digging and whining, and trying to lead Alexander to the edge of the Broadway side of the lot. There Alexander saw a hand protruding from the sand and stone. He ran until he found a foot patrolman, Officer Charles Hoffman of the Ralph Avenue Station, who turned in an alarm and then went to the site to dig with his hands, finally carrying out one dead boy. Doctors at the Bushwick Hospital across the street affirmed he had been dead for many hours.
As the news spread, a large and noisy crowd gathered at the site and the Ralph Avenue Station sent out police reserves to keep order and to dig for the other boys. The two Sohn brothers were identified by their father and an aunt, but the Verhas boy was so disfigured by the crushing weight of rock and sand that identification took some time. Officials said it seemed the boys had been struggling to escape.
The cause of the tragedy was never ascertained but there was an unshored ten-to-twelve foot embankment of loose sand along the Broadway sidewalk, and the boys may have been tunneling there.
The feeling then was that the vibration of passing elevated trains may have been enough to trigger a collapse along ten to fifteen feet of sidewalk, made worse by large flagstones from that sidewalk falling into the trench as it caved in and the ten-foot-high fence along Broadway which blocked the view of any potential rescuers while the frequent noisy trains overhead may have drowned out any cries for help.
Jim Rankin’s online Memorial is now ready at www.findagrave.com . Enter “James Harry Rankin” into the three Name Search windows. Online visitors have the opportunity to post memorial comments and images.
Several theatre buffs attended Jim’s well-attended memorial service on January 12th; I saw Hugh Swofford, Gretch Staudinger, Sean Kasuboske and Joe Zollner, and there may have been others. There was a collection of Jim’s articles and writings in the sanctuary.
I’ve been researching this theatre, which just might have been Wisconsin’s finest legitimate playhouse and able to stand on its own as such worldwide.
The namestone above the curved entrance at State and Main Streets read “Bate”. John W. Bate had come to Racine in 1905 and was the general superintendent at the Mitchell-Lewis Motor Car Company. He was the builder and owner of the $150,000 theatre which was to be named for him and open on December 23, 1911 with a charity performance of “A Snug Little Kingdom”, starring a then-unknown Alfred Lunt. (Racine Journal-News, Oct. 11, 1911).
However, that didn’t happen, and the theatre opened instead as the Orpheum (“Racine’s Play House De Luxe”) on 11 AM on Monday, April 29, 1912, leased and operated by the Chicago-based Allardt Bros. Circuit and a Martin J. Gillen. A Mr. H.C. Andress was the first manager.
The Allardts were already operating the Orpheums in South Bend IN, Hammond, IN, and Ft. William, Ont. and the Broadway in Superior WI, the Grand in Joliet IL, the Majestic in Springfield IL and the Lyric in Danville IL.
(Interestingly, there was another Orpheum Theatre nearby on College Avenue, a movie house which became known as the Orpheum on College Avenue.)
The opening program featured the Orpheum Concert Orchestra conducted by Professor O. M. Cotton, Ted Bailey’s Posing Dogs, monologuist Bernardi “The King of Protean Artists”, farceurs Hermine Shone & Company, dancers Lydell & Butterworth, parodist Murray K. Hill, and some unspecified film program of first-run “superlative views”.
Tickets started at .10 for matinee balcony seats and topped out at .50 for box seats at night and on Sundays and holiday matinees. (Racine Journal-News, April 27, 1912.)
On July 1, 1920 the Orpheum was leased by the First National Theatre Company (based in the State-Lake Theatre, Chicago) and was redecorated and renamed the National, with W.E. Duncanson in charge. A new electric sign was mounted.
The announcement ran in the June 27, 1920 Racine Journal-News which had some stunning (and rare) interior photos of the theatre.
Opening day: January 11, 1936.
The premiere program: “A Tale of Two Cities”, with Ronald Colman in a dual role.
The Rivoli will reopen about January 1, 2007 under volunteer ownership and operation. Admission will be $3.00; $2.00 on Tuesdays.
The amateur theater group polled its membership on September 17th, 2006 to gather information as to its members' interests. They listed five main areas of interest in 33 responses ranked in order of importance from 1 to 5, 1 being the highest.
Topping the “importance” list with 32 of 33 votes was the theatre group itself (the Lakeside Players), ranking 1 to 3 in importance.
Next in importance to 29 of 33 members (2 to 3) was promoting the Rhode as an entertainment venue.
Further down in importance was the renovation and historic preservation of the Rhode, with only 21 of 33 members giving it a 2-to-3 importance ratio.
Promoting the Rhode for private rentals was of 3 to 5 importance.
And the adjacent Pollard Gallery was last in interest, with 30 of 33 members voting it 4 to 5 in importance.
A photo in the September 12th, 1987 Racine Journal Times shows the Capitol with the second, triangular Art Deco marquee and the original four-story vertical sign which was fully operational and in use until 1981. At the sign’s top was a capitol-like dome and twisted ropelike chasers down to the bottom, a real treat to see at night reminding all of the golden age of the great verticals.
The report said it was twinned in the fall of 1975 (270 seats/240 seats, each with a tiny screen) and was then sold to Milwaukee-based Marcus Corporation in 1981 for $50,000. Marcus, for reasons of its own, then renamed the Capitol the “Park I & II”, and that’s when the vertical ‘Capitol’ sign was removed.
Marcus closed the theatre on Labor Day, 1987, admitting to poor business.
For six years a second-run house, Marcus did experiment with some first-run fare there in its final summer.
The Main Street was built in 1911 for $60,000.
There is a rare 1958 (?) photo of the closed RKO Main Street Theatre in the July 6th, 1972 Racine Journal Times showing the smallish rounded marquee and the spectacular vertical sign which remained until demolition.
That sign towered seven stories above Main Street. In a large circle at the top were the letters ‘RKO’, where scintillating “lightning bolts” would shoot outward from it. The sign’s bottom edge was likewise shaped into jagged lightning-bolt edging outlined with bulbs, typical for RKO theatres but rare in the Midwest.
That sign at night had to have been stunning.
The small accompanying article is captioned “What Might Have Been” (indeed) and praised the Main Street as “one of the best stage houses in the Midwest”. In 1941 it sold for $35,000, in 1945 for $65,000 and for $120,000 in 1948.
But ten years later the owner offered it to the City for $20,000 which was of course rejected and the Main Street was quickly demolished. The owner stopped paying taxes on the empty lot ten years later, the property is still vacant to this day, and retrospect today, a half-century later, shows that everyone lost.
For a recent exterior photograph of the Westgate Cinema (and other Racine theatres), see the Racine Granada Theatre site at www.groups.yahoo.com/group/RacineGranada .
The Racine Journal Times, which i the mid-1970s would editorialize loudly for its demolition (“Tear it down!”) told in an October 30, 1971 “Venetian To Close” article that the theatre was reopened in July of 1970 after a 16-month closure by a Donald Thomas and James Turner, operating as Venco, Inc., which had then announced plans for a “young adult recreation center” including the theatre as a “rock concert hall” and an “old town arcade”. None of that was realized and the Venetian reopened with local notoriety and some initial success as the venue for such well-publicized fare as “I Am Curious Yellow” and “Oh Calcutta”.
Soon the adult fad slowed and lesser-known “skin flicks” became the norm to decreasing numbers of attendees. During all of this, the City of Racine was unsuccessfully attempting all sorts of legal actions to shutter the Venetian or at least intimidate the operator(s) to change their policies. The City hardly needed to have bothered as routine police visits in the Fall of 1971 reported fewer than thirty attendees at screenings. The need to reorder coal was apparently the deciding factor in the decision to close.
The last film was apparently shown on the night of November 30, 1971. Apparently the Venetian opened one final time, on December 3rd, 1971 for a rock concert as Turner said there was still enough coal left to heat the theatre for one night and “After that I seriously doubt youll ever see the doors of the Venetian open again.”
(The newspaper also reported that Turner and Thomas, as Venco, owned title to the Venetian and that he doubted it would be saleable. Interestingly, Turner and Thomas were also operating the Parkway Theatre in Milwaukee as “Detco, Inc.” with a similar adult policy and said that continued operations there were also “questionable”.
The Geneva opened on June 6, 1928. I suspect that the automaker “William Alfred” referred to as an investor in the original article may actually be Walter H. Alford of Kenosha, the vice-president and controller of the Nash Motors Company.
Today the Geneva’s auditorium is still intact, with the multiscreening achieved in the balcony. The lobby features displays of historic Geneva Theatre articles and photographs.
I wanted to note a little-known fact about this theatre related to me by a long-ago member of the projectionists' union:
He said the original entrance was to be in the 5500 block of Main Street (now Sixth Avenue) but the City wouldn’t allow it so the current Market Street (now 56th Street) location was chosen instead.
It’s true that if you’ll look on the east side of Sixth Avenue, the upper brick and ornamental stone Spanish-deco facade is obviously a Rapp design intended to match the Saxe’s Gateway facade around the corner. But I don’t think the City ever stepped in; I think it’s more likely it was actually designed as a secondary lobby and that Saxe Amusements decided to omit that smaller west lobby from the final design at the last moment for economy purposes. It has always been commercial space (a 1928 photograph shows it as a vacant storefront) but it does line up perfectly with the blank west inner-lobby wall at the Gateway/Rhode.
I hope the mystery will someday be unraveled, but the next time you’re in downtown Kenosha, be sure to see the facade on this almost-lobby for the Saxe’s Gateway Theatre.
I was on a THS tour of the Vic one afternoon in 1977, and we were told that in the recent past the auditorium had actually been used for truck repairs with a hole cut into the structure to exhaust engine fumes. That was all repaired by what was then called an “inspired investor” and the Vic was reseated and reopened (under another name which escapes me now) for Indian film programs. (That scenario should bring some hope to theatre preservationists who face what may seem a daunting task.) The predominant wall color was then a deep blue with gold trim.
One other piece of Vic trivia: we were told on that THS tour that the Vic at one time had a library within its second-floor lobby.
I was in Shaker Heights one afternoon in July 1981 to see and ride the PCC streetcars and discovered the Vogue on the square. One of the staff graciously allowed me to enter and look around. It was in beautiful condition, and I’m sorry it closed five years later.
The blank La Brea marquee was briefly featured in a 1960s television documentary (maybe “Hollywood and the Stars”?) about the effects of television on movies.
The city of Milwaukee is looking to restore the MODJESKA THEATRE (Rapp & Rapp) and West Mitchell Street itself to its historic grandeur with a proposed $3.1 million tax incremental financing district. “It’s like a step forward into the past; Mitchell Street has a history of being a thriving commercial corridor,†said Joel Brennan, assistant executive director and secretary of Milwaukee’s redevelopment authority. The TIF district (PDF) would stretch from South Fifth to South 16th streets and cover all properties one block north and south of Mitchell Street. It would also include a commercial stretch of West Forest Home Avenue between South 13th and South 15th streets. The TIF money would be split in half into two separate funds â€" one for commercial projects and a second for infrastructure. A development fund totaling $1.5 million would give grants or loans to retail projects on Mitchell Street to help pay for work like restoring historic stone building facades. “Those are certainly the types of funds to help make projects pop in the corridor that otherwise might be financially unfeasible,†Brennan said. Brennan and the TIF plan pointed to three projects as likely recipients of that money â€"redeveloping the Goldmann’s department store, restoring the Modjeska Theater and fixing up the Walgreens building at 1101 W. Mitchell. Any funding for those projects would require separate redevelopment authority and Common Council approval after the TIF district is created.
The Modjeska Theater’s owners â€" Mitchell Street Development Opportunities Corp. and nonprofit Modjeska Theater Co. â€" are facing renovation costs ranging from $7.5 million to $8.9 million. The improvements would include restoring the building’s exterior masonry, new theater seating and sound systems, and upgrading its heating, cooling, plumbing, fire protection and electrical systems. The owners plan to continue to use the restored building for theater productions but also hope to attract meetings and conventions.
To create a TIF district, the city borrows money to pay for projects and then repays its debt using any increases in property taxes within the district. The city estimated the Mitchell Street TIF district would repay its $3.1 million in debt by 2025.
I saw “The Apartment” at the Nordic in August, 1960; the theatre was about half filled. There were many Art Moderne touches and blue-glass mirrors in the lobby. I spoke with the manager who said that a picture like “The Apartment” would have filled the theatre in the 1940s.
That happened two weeks before the Chicago Tribune announced the “New Blaine” Theatre would be built nearby, which of course turned out to be the Music Box. Who would have imagined that both theatres would still co-exist in the 21st Century, and under different names?
I revisited the GENOA yesterday and there has been progress. I took two exterior photos which are in the Racine Granada photo collection: www.groups.yahoo.com/group/RacineGranada along with those of other area theatres.
The GENOA now has a roofed superstructure over its original roof, which can be seen in one photo, which seems like massive overkill as the roof problem could have been solved with modern membrane roofing.
The glass doors and box office windows are obscured except for two ‘No Trespassing’ signs visible through the glass. (Which is interesting since actual trespassing is technically impossible as the GENOA touches the public sidewalks, unless you count the tiny threshold into the lobby or a human fly who might attempt to scale the exterior walls.)
The Cinemette is gutted to the wall studs and the wooden marquee (which has a corner chunk missing, probably from a long-ago semi) has been kept painted.
The GENOA is modest but it is attractive with its 1950s-look and Lannon stone trim and it’s my hope that the owner(s) will perpetuate its historical appearance.
The Avaloe’s manager or owner used to send out a special bus to pick up local kids (or anyone, really) in the neighborhoods and take them to matinees and back. Is that creative, or what?
The Ross Theatre seats over 1,300 and also hosts a number of live events.
Here is the Ross Theatre’s website, which includes three photos: View link
The theatre’s actual name is the Genoa Theatre, and it’s located at 625 Walworth Street in downtown Genoa City near US Highway 12.
(Genoa City itself is referenced in the daytime TV drama “The Young and the Restless” as are other nearby communities because screenwriter Tom Racina, a native Kenoshan, is familiar with the area. The village is proud of the resultant publicity and there is a large sign on the edge of town acknowledging the honor.)
The GENOA opened on November 23, 1949 and is of concrete-block construction with a 1950s “jet-age” marquee. Built into the north wall of the structure is a counter-style diner (the “Cinemette”) with its own entrance. There is a full stage, and the GENOA often served as the village’s auditorium, hosting events such as area high school graduations and live theatrical performances.
The roomy auditorium seats 480 plus a few more in a second-floor ‘crying room’. The butterfly roof (not visible from the street) pitches down about four inches in its center with ‘swamp cooling’ – pipes spraying water across the roof in hot weather, an old concept that works rather well with proper roof maintainance in areas where water is cheap.
The original large screen remains, one of four left in the US; it appears to be aluminized in order to view 3D films a la today’s IMAX capabilities.
There are two Brenkert Enarc projectors, and there was a lathe in the basement where copper projection-arc rods were turned from raw stock. The GENOA was a second and third-run theatre throughout its life, finally closing in the early 1990s and darkened since.
The December 19, 2002 Lake Geneva Regional News reported that the GENOA was purchased on November 22, 2002 by a partnership including former village resident Bob Maltz (then living in Wonder Lake, Illinois and a former elder at the Wonder Lake Bible Church) and Rev. Gary Steadman of Monroe, Wisconsin which planned to reopen the GENOA on its anniversary in 2003.
In 2001, a Tim Leonard had successfully petitioned the village board to rezone the GENOA to industrial use for some unspecified purpose, but on December 12, 2002 the village board unanimously voted to rezone the vacant theatre back to commercial use as per the new partnership’s request.
Maltz expressed nostalgia to the reporter over his youthful days at the GENOA, and said he was inspired by the dreams of his late sister Donna Sarna, who had talked about reopening the Genoa over the eight years since it closed. Maltz also stated inspiration from the then-concurrent film “The Majestic” in which a community pulls together to reopen a vacant downtown theatre.
However, Maltz did not indicate a desire for restoration at the GENOA – saying instead that plans included some unspecified change to the 1950s facade, converting the Cinemette to a video arcade (the “No-Tilt Zone”), triplexing the auditorium into three 100-seat screening rooms, creating two upstairs ‘party rooms’ from both the existing crying room and an adjacent storage area, and “maybe” keeping the stage intact for possible live theater performances. Steadman wasn’t quoted in the article but Maltz said he planned to maintain the former revival policy, with a twist: one was to institute ‘theme nights’ by, for example, playing two older car-chase films over a weekend with admission discounts to those who arrive in an older vehicle, and perhaps screening a weekly silent film matinee.
Maltz credited the village for its support and planned a mass-mailing to residents with updates on reopening plans, and a suggestion box outside the theatre.
Genoa City is one of the fastest-growing communities in one of the nation’s busiest and most upscale and attractive residential and tourist areas. Still, the GENOA remains dark in 2007, over four years after the high hopes expressed in that 2002 article. The clerk at one nearby antique-store owner I visited in 2004 said the partners had since gone in different directions.
The tragedy was reported in the August 3, 1910 New York Times.
Three boys were buried alive at the Bushwick Theatre construction site on the Monday afternoon of August 1, 1910. They were apparently on the Broadway side of the site digging tunnels in construction sand when three tons of unshored building materials came down on brothers Alfred, 9, and John Sohn, 6, and their cousin Harold Verhas, 9, all three of 823 Madison Street, one block away. Police and Fire units recovered their bodies at noon on August 2.
The triangular lot formerly held some rickety frame buildings that had been cleared for the theatre, and neighborhood children were accustomed to using the now-vacant lot as a ball field and playground, even after digging began for the foundation.
The contractors fenced off the site but neighborhood children continued to enter and explore.
The boys had lunch at home at noon on Monday and then left to play. When they hadn’t returned by evening, Mrs. Carrie Thompson, an aunt of the Verhas boy, went to report them missing at the Ralph Avenue Police Station.
On Tuesday morning, ten-year-old Alexander Sullivan said he and his fox terrier Spot went to the Bushwick construction site to play, but Spot began to sniff the sand, digging and whining, and trying to lead Alexander to the edge of the Broadway side of the lot. There Alexander saw a hand protruding from the sand and stone. He ran until he found a foot patrolman, Officer Charles Hoffman of the Ralph Avenue Station, who turned in an alarm and then went to the site to dig with his hands, finally carrying out one dead boy. Doctors at the Bushwick Hospital across the street affirmed he had been dead for many hours.
As the news spread, a large and noisy crowd gathered at the site and the Ralph Avenue Station sent out police reserves to keep order and to dig for the other boys. The two Sohn brothers were identified by their father and an aunt, but the Verhas boy was so disfigured by the crushing weight of rock and sand that identification took some time. Officials said it seemed the boys had been struggling to escape.
The cause of the tragedy was never ascertained but there was an unshored ten-to-twelve foot embankment of loose sand along the Broadway sidewalk, and the boys may have been tunneling there.
The feeling then was that the vibration of passing elevated trains may have been enough to trigger a collapse along ten to fifteen feet of sidewalk, made worse by large flagstones from that sidewalk falling into the trench as it caved in and the ten-foot-high fence along Broadway which blocked the view of any potential rescuers while the frequent noisy trains overhead may have drowned out any cries for help.
Jim Rankin’s online Memorial is now ready at www.findagrave.com . Enter “James Harry Rankin” into the three Name Search windows. Online visitors have the opportunity to post memorial comments and images.
Several theatre buffs attended Jim’s well-attended memorial service on January 12th; I saw Hugh Swofford, Gretch Staudinger, Sean Kasuboske and Joe Zollner, and there may have been others. There was a collection of Jim’s articles and writings in the sanctuary.
I’ve been researching this theatre, which just might have been Wisconsin’s finest legitimate playhouse and able to stand on its own as such worldwide.
The namestone above the curved entrance at State and Main Streets read “Bate”. John W. Bate had come to Racine in 1905 and was the general superintendent at the Mitchell-Lewis Motor Car Company. He was the builder and owner of the $150,000 theatre which was to be named for him and open on December 23, 1911 with a charity performance of “A Snug Little Kingdom”, starring a then-unknown Alfred Lunt. (Racine Journal-News, Oct. 11, 1911).
However, that didn’t happen, and the theatre opened instead as the Orpheum (“Racine’s Play House De Luxe”) on 11 AM on Monday, April 29, 1912, leased and operated by the Chicago-based Allardt Bros. Circuit and a Martin J. Gillen. A Mr. H.C. Andress was the first manager.
The Allardts were already operating the Orpheums in South Bend IN, Hammond, IN, and Ft. William, Ont. and the Broadway in Superior WI, the Grand in Joliet IL, the Majestic in Springfield IL and the Lyric in Danville IL.
(Interestingly, there was another Orpheum Theatre nearby on College Avenue, a movie house which became known as the Orpheum on College Avenue.)
The opening program featured the Orpheum Concert Orchestra conducted by Professor O. M. Cotton, Ted Bailey’s Posing Dogs, monologuist Bernardi “The King of Protean Artists”, farceurs Hermine Shone & Company, dancers Lydell & Butterworth, parodist Murray K. Hill, and some unspecified film program of first-run “superlative views”.
Tickets started at .10 for matinee balcony seats and topped out at .50 for box seats at night and on Sundays and holiday matinees. (Racine Journal-News, April 27, 1912.)
On July 1, 1920 the Orpheum was leased by the First National Theatre Company (based in the State-Lake Theatre, Chicago) and was redecorated and renamed the National, with W.E. Duncanson in charge. A new electric sign was mounted.
The announcement ran in the June 27, 1920 Racine Journal-News which had some stunning (and rare) interior photos of the theatre.
Opening day: January 11, 1936.
The premiere program: “A Tale of Two Cities”, with Ronald Colman in a dual role.
The Rivoli will reopen about January 1, 2007 under volunteer ownership and operation. Admission will be $3.00; $2.00 on Tuesdays.
The amateur theater group polled its membership on September 17th, 2006 to gather information as to its members' interests. They listed five main areas of interest in 33 responses ranked in order of importance from 1 to 5, 1 being the highest.
Topping the “importance” list with 32 of 33 votes was the theatre group itself (the Lakeside Players), ranking 1 to 3 in importance.
Next in importance to 29 of 33 members (2 to 3) was promoting the Rhode as an entertainment venue.
Further down in importance was the renovation and historic preservation of the Rhode, with only 21 of 33 members giving it a 2-to-3 importance ratio.
Promoting the Rhode for private rentals was of 3 to 5 importance.
And the adjacent Pollard Gallery was last in interest, with 30 of 33 members voting it 4 to 5 in importance.
A photo in the September 12th, 1987 Racine Journal Times shows the Capitol with the second, triangular Art Deco marquee and the original four-story vertical sign which was fully operational and in use until 1981. At the sign’s top was a capitol-like dome and twisted ropelike chasers down to the bottom, a real treat to see at night reminding all of the golden age of the great verticals.
The report said it was twinned in the fall of 1975 (270 seats/240 seats, each with a tiny screen) and was then sold to Milwaukee-based Marcus Corporation in 1981 for $50,000. Marcus, for reasons of its own, then renamed the Capitol the “Park I & II”, and that’s when the vertical ‘Capitol’ sign was removed.
Marcus closed the theatre on Labor Day, 1987, admitting to poor business.
For six years a second-run house, Marcus did experiment with some first-run fare there in its final summer.
The Main Street was built in 1911 for $60,000.
There is a rare 1958 (?) photo of the closed RKO Main Street Theatre in the July 6th, 1972 Racine Journal Times showing the smallish rounded marquee and the spectacular vertical sign which remained until demolition.
That sign towered seven stories above Main Street. In a large circle at the top were the letters ‘RKO’, where scintillating “lightning bolts” would shoot outward from it. The sign’s bottom edge was likewise shaped into jagged lightning-bolt edging outlined with bulbs, typical for RKO theatres but rare in the Midwest.
That sign at night had to have been stunning.
The small accompanying article is captioned “What Might Have Been” (indeed) and praised the Main Street as “one of the best stage houses in the Midwest”. In 1941 it sold for $35,000, in 1945 for $65,000 and for $120,000 in 1948.
But ten years later the owner offered it to the City for $20,000 which was of course rejected and the Main Street was quickly demolished. The owner stopped paying taxes on the empty lot ten years later, the property is still vacant to this day, and retrospect today, a half-century later, shows that everyone lost.
For photos, see www.groups.yahoo.com/group/RacineGranada
For a recent exterior photograph of the Westgate Cinema (and other Racine theatres), see the Racine Granada Theatre site at www.groups.yahoo.com/group/RacineGranada .
The bowling establishment that operated within the former Rex Theatre until the end was the J & W Lanes.
The correct address of the Rex was 211 South Main Street.
The City list the address as 5031 S. Halsted and there is a 2000 photo available on the Cook County Assessor’s website.
Here’s more on the demise of the Venetian.
The Racine Journal Times, which i the mid-1970s would editorialize loudly for its demolition (“Tear it down!”) told in an October 30, 1971 “Venetian To Close” article that the theatre was reopened in July of 1970 after a 16-month closure by a Donald Thomas and James Turner, operating as Venco, Inc., which had then announced plans for a “young adult recreation center” including the theatre as a “rock concert hall” and an “old town arcade”. None of that was realized and the Venetian reopened with local notoriety and some initial success as the venue for such well-publicized fare as “I Am Curious Yellow” and “Oh Calcutta”.
Soon the adult fad slowed and lesser-known “skin flicks” became the norm to decreasing numbers of attendees. During all of this, the City of Racine was unsuccessfully attempting all sorts of legal actions to shutter the Venetian or at least intimidate the operator(s) to change their policies. The City hardly needed to have bothered as routine police visits in the Fall of 1971 reported fewer than thirty attendees at screenings. The need to reorder coal was apparently the deciding factor in the decision to close.
The last film was apparently shown on the night of November 30, 1971. Apparently the Venetian opened one final time, on December 3rd, 1971 for a rock concert as Turner said there was still enough coal left to heat the theatre for one night and “After that I seriously doubt youll ever see the doors of the Venetian open again.”
(The newspaper also reported that Turner and Thomas, as Venco, owned title to the Venetian and that he doubted it would be saleable. Interestingly, Turner and Thomas were also operating the Parkway Theatre in Milwaukee as “Detco, Inc.” with a similar adult policy and said that continued operations there were also “questionable”.
The Geneva opened on June 6, 1928. I suspect that the automaker “William Alfred” referred to as an investor in the original article may actually be Walter H. Alford of Kenosha, the vice-president and controller of the Nash Motors Company.
Today the Geneva’s auditorium is still intact, with the multiscreening achieved in the balcony. The lobby features displays of historic Geneva Theatre articles and photographs.
I wanted to note a little-known fact about this theatre related to me by a long-ago member of the projectionists' union:
He said the original entrance was to be in the 5500 block of Main Street (now Sixth Avenue) but the City wouldn’t allow it so the current Market Street (now 56th Street) location was chosen instead.
It’s true that if you’ll look on the east side of Sixth Avenue, the upper brick and ornamental stone Spanish-deco facade is obviously a Rapp design intended to match the Saxe’s Gateway facade around the corner. But I don’t think the City ever stepped in; I think it’s more likely it was actually designed as a secondary lobby and that Saxe Amusements decided to omit that smaller west lobby from the final design at the last moment for economy purposes. It has always been commercial space (a 1928 photograph shows it as a vacant storefront) but it does line up perfectly with the blank west inner-lobby wall at the Gateway/Rhode.
I hope the mystery will someday be unraveled, but the next time you’re in downtown Kenosha, be sure to see the facade on this almost-lobby for the Saxe’s Gateway Theatre.
I was on a THS tour of the Vic one afternoon in 1977, and we were told that in the recent past the auditorium had actually been used for truck repairs with a hole cut into the structure to exhaust engine fumes. That was all repaired by what was then called an “inspired investor” and the Vic was reseated and reopened (under another name which escapes me now) for Indian film programs. (That scenario should bring some hope to theatre preservationists who face what may seem a daunting task.) The predominant wall color was then a deep blue with gold trim.
One other piece of Vic trivia: we were told on that THS tour that the Vic at one time had a library within its second-floor lobby.
I was in Shaker Heights one afternoon in July 1981 to see and ride the PCC streetcars and discovered the Vogue on the square. One of the staff graciously allowed me to enter and look around. It was in beautiful condition, and I’m sorry it closed five years later.
The blank La Brea marquee was briefly featured in a 1960s television documentary (maybe “Hollywood and the Stars”?) about the effects of television on movies.