The building with the large cross above the entrance in Google street view was the location of the Oldham 8 Theatres. For the time being, the old theater facade can still be seen if you move street view left along First Street and then down Parker Drive.
Here is a quote from this article in the April 14, 2014 issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal:
“Before Oldham 8, there was Griffith Theater — named after D.W. Griffith — a cinema that opened in the 1930s on Main Street in La Grange. It burned down in the 1950s, said Nancy Stearns Theiss, executive director of the Oldham County Historical Society. It was never rebuilt.”
The fire actually took place on January 17, 1960, and a photo of the event was published in the following day’s edition of The Courier-Journal. Ms. Theiss' statement that the theater “burned down” was only a slight exaggeration. An article from 1960 says that the back wall and roof of the theater caved in, but it is clear that most of the facade survived.
Comparing the newspaper photo with Google’s current street view, it can be determined that the Griffith Theatre was at 123 E. Main Street, in a building now occupied by a dress shop called the Couture Closet. Some details of the building facade survived the fire, though a distinctive parapet was removed. Architectural details of the adjacent buildings are also recognizable.
The Griffith Theatre should not be confused with the D.W. Griffith Theatre, opened in 2017 in the local Peyton Samuel Head Family Museum, which shows movies related in some way to Oldham County, including movies directed by Griffith, twice a month. Silent era Director David Wark Griffith was a native of Oldham County.
The Griffith was not the first movie house in La Grange. A house called the Grand Theatre was mentioned in the September 7, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World.
Originally called the Princess Theatre, it was most likely opened in 1915 or 1916, as it was not listed in the 1914-15 edition of American Motion Picture Directory, which was published in early 1915, but was being mentioned in trade journals in 1916.
The El Rey, dark for some time, is reopening tomorrow night, Saturday, February 10, 2018, with live performances. Here is their web site. Proceeds from this event will go to continuing renovations of the house.
Sunday night the theater will present the 1938 film Robin Hood, much of which was filmed in Chico’s Bidwell Park.
The 808 seats we currently have listed for this house belonged to the Texas Theatre that burned in 1962. The Palace Theatre was listed in FDY with 525 seats from its first appearance in 1928 until the 1955 edition when it dropped to 519.
Prior to 1928 Ballinger had a house called the Maeroy Theatre, also with 525 seats, so I suspect its disappearance from the listings after 1927 and the appearance of the Palace in 1928 indicates a name change sometime before the 1928 FDY went to press. The Maeroy was mentioned in the January 13, 1923, issue of The Moving Picture World as having installed a new Wurlitzer organ, so it was in operation under that name at least that early.
The names I’ve found for theaters in Ballinger prior to 1923 are the Queen, the Cosy (which was on 7th Street), the White City Airdome, and the Princess, which was operated in 1916 by a Roy Reeder. A web page that has now gone missing said that today’s Texas Theatre (the former Palace) “… originated [as] Roy Reeder’s Princess Theater.” Unfortunately the snippet Google has saved from the missing page doesn’t provide any other details.
Though destroyed in 1946, the Ritz appears in the 1948 Film Daily Yearbook in the “Negro Theaters” listings. Most likely FDY simply hadn’t kept its records up-to-date, which was not unusual.
The Queen was one of three movie houses in Ballinger that was mentioned in an item in the July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Theaters Consolidate at Ballinger.
“Ballinger, Tex. — Two picture houses in Ballinger have been consolidated recently and now operate under one management. Roy Reeder, who operated the Princess theater and the White City airdome, and D. Cohen, who managed the Queen theater.”
The Queen was also one of two houses listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, though no address was given (the other house was the Cosy, 127 Seventh Street.) The Queen was listed in issues of Film Daily Yearbook in the later 1920s, but always with 400 seats.
The Queen was still listed in the FDY from 1937 through 1943, but with only 300 seats, and always listed as closed. It vanished from the listings in 1944. I suspect that the Queen was closed when the first Texas Theatre opened in 1936, and never reopened. The streamline modern facade on the building now probably dates from the building’s conversion to retail use sometime in the 1940s.
The ground floor retail shop (a shoe store in current Google street view) and the martial arts studio upstairs are still located in the Ironbound Theatre’s entrance building fronting on Ferry Street. The bakery, parking garage (and perhaps some other uses unidentified by any signage) occupy various parts of the former auditorium along Jackson Street.
The side wall Ironbound Theatre’s large former auditorium can be seen in street view from Jackson Street. It has been subdivided into a number of spaces, one of which is a garage for a bank and another the Maranatha Bakery.
In satellite view the structure appears to be about 80x100 feet, which indicates that it is probably the theater project of that size at Jackson and Ferry streets that was noted in the March 12, 1921, issue of The American Contractor. Newark Architect John B. Acocella was preparing the plans.
The building in which Smalley’s Theatre was located was built in 1885 as Klinkhart Hall, with retail space and the local post office on the ground floor and an opera house upstairs. Today it is under restoration as Klinkhart Hall Arts Center, and is located at 191 Main Street. A movie theater was first established on the ground floor in 1925. The auditorium, though in rough shape, still has its seats in place today. There is a photo at the link.
William Smalley called this house the Cameo Theatre or Smalley’s Cameo Theatre until sometime in 1933. The October 18, 1939, issue of the St. Johnsville Enterprise and News says that the former Rex reopened as the Cameo on October 15, 1924.
The earliest ad calling it simply Smalley’s Theatre that I’ve seen in the Enterprise and News is in the November 22, 1933 edition, though it might have been renamed anytime after the previous ad I’ve seen for Smalley’s Cameo, which appeared in February.
The Rex Theatre was in operation by 1917, the year the October 24 issue of the Enterprise said that the price of an adult admission was being raised to fifteen cents. Smalley’s Theatre was extensively rebuilt in 1939.
A 1995 article about the history of Mount Vernon’s theaters can be found on this web page. It says that the groundbreaking ceremony for the Granada was held on June 7, 1937, and the theater had its grand opening on December 16.
In 1971, the Granada and the Stadium were taken over by Kerasotes Theatres, which had for some time already operated the Mount Vernon Drive-In. The Granada was twinned in 1981. In 1995, Kerasotes built an 8-screen multiplex in an outlet mall on the outskirts of Mount Vernon, still open now as the AMC Classic Mount Vernon 8, and the Granada was closed after a run of almost sixty years.
Broan’s comment above, saying that the correct address of the Plaza is 118 S. Ninth Street, is indeed correct. However, a Plaza Theatre is listed at Mount Vernon in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, and its address was 116 S. Ninth.
The December 25, 1919, opening of the Plaza must have been for a new Plaza Theatre replacing the old house— which had undoubtedly been a storefront conversion, given the age of the building still standing on that lot— next door.
A “40 years ago” feature in the January 8, 1960, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News noted that the owners of the Plaza Theatre had purchased the Star Theatre and would operate both houses.
This web page has an article about the history of Mount Vernon’s theaters which says that the Majestic/Royal building survived the 1945 fire and was rebuilt as the Stadium Theatre, which opened on May 15, 1947.
The article says that the Stadium was twinned in 1985. It also gives the impression, though does not explicitly say, that both the Granada and Stadium were still in operation at the time the article was written in 1995, though a new eight-screen house which would replace them was under construction on the outskirts of Mount Vernon at that time.
Interestingly, the article does not mention a single-screen house opened by Kerasotes Theatres in the Times Square Shopping Mall in 1975, which suggests that the Times Square Cinema did not last very long and had been forgotten by 1995. CinemaTour has the mall house listed as the Times Square Cinema Four, aka Cinema Times Square, in operation from 1975 to 1987.
The Royal burned on Armistice Day (November 11), 1945, with a loss estimated at $30,000, according to an article in the January 6, 1956, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News.
The following paragraph from an article about the history of Mt. Vernon’s theaters on this web page conveys the impression that the Majestic/Royal building actually survived the 1945 fire, at least in part, and that the Stadium Theatre was built inside the shell of the original building:
“On Thanksgiving Day 1911, what was to become the first permanent theater, the Majestic, opened. This theater was known for showing many epic movies, such as, The Birth of a Nation. Many vaudeville acts were performed on the Majestic stage. During the remodeling, the theater was gutted by fire, and a new movie theater was built and named the Royal. The Royal was also destroyed by fire. But it was redesigned and reopened on May 15, 1947, as the Stadium Theater.”
Here is an item about the Monticello Theatre from the August 13, 1910, issue of The American Contractor:
“Theater & Office Building: 2 sty. 100x80. $55,000. Monticello av., Jersey City, N. J. Architects Hill & Stout, 1123 Broadway, New York city. Owner Ansbach Amusement Co., Jersey City. General Contractors Isaac A. Hopper & Son, 231 W. 125th St., New York city. Slag roofing let to the National Sheet Metal Roofing Co., 339 Grand St., Jersey City. Steam heat to Blake & Williams, 24 Barrow St., New York city. Plastering to Geo. A. Amos, 1123 Broadway, New York city.”
Architects Frederick P. Hill and Edmund C. Stout designed a number of significant buildings, though some of their best have not survived. Among the best knows survivors in Manhattan is a 1913 Gothic Revival style office block on Madison Avenue at 41st Street which has since been converted into the Library Hotel. As far as I’ve been able to discover, the Monticello was the only theater they designed.
The November 10, 1932, issue of The New York State Exhibitor said that Smalley’s Theatre in Norwich was scheduled to open that day. The subsequent issue of the semi-monthly journal, November 25, said that Smalley’s had been opened, though it didn’t confirm that the event had taken place on schedule.
An article in the St. Johnsville Enterprise and News of October 18, 1939 (PDF), says that William Smalley operated his 1913 movie theater at Mt. Upton in the Town Hall. I don’t know if that was the same building as the Opera house. Small settlements of that era frequently had only one public building other than their schoolhouse, and it would be used for all manner of public functions, and sometimes subleased to private individuals for other uses, such as showing movies.
I’ve been unable to find any other references to a Mount Upton Town Hall on the Internet. The writer of the 1939 article probably drew on Mr. Smalley’s own memories of his early career, and it’s possible that in 1913 the building was called the Town Hall and only later came to be known exclusively as the Opera House.
Here is a link to the photo of the former Opera house after it had been converted to a firehouse, to which adamghost made reference. The photo is followed by a comment from a member of the Hinman family claiming that the building is now her parents' garage, but that the upper floor has been removed due to damage.
This 2011 article from the San Luis Obispo Tribune has some information I know to be inaccurate (the Playhouse/ La Mode was not Atascadero’s first movie theater), and awkward writing makes it difficult to puzzle out in places, but it indicates that the Atascadero Playhouse on El Camino Real was the second theater of that name, and another article I came across suggests that the first, out on the east edge of town on Traffic Place, might also have shown movies for a while.
The linked article gives the location of the Playhouse that became La Mode Theatre as being “…next door to the Keetch Building and Ward’s garage….” both of which are still standing (though the garage is now a print shop) at 5660 and 5680 El Camino, respectively. That would put the theater’s site at 5670 El Camino Real. The parking lot at that location has, in the current Google street view, a sign offering it for sale through Peabody Commercial Real Estate.
The second Playhouse was built in 1924, and the first movie it ran was Roy del Ruth’s The Man Upstairs, released in 1926, which coincides with the installation of the organ noted in the previous comment by AndrewBarrett. I know of at least two earlier movie theaters in Atascadero, one of which might or might not have been the first Playhouse on Traffic Place. I’m still trying to track down more information.
Google has loads of photos (and some videos) from Stereo Live Dallas, many of them quite recent, and many apparently posted by DJs who have presented shows there. The original auditorium interior has been stripped and black-boxed, but the lobby has many original features intact. Judging from the size of the crowds in many photos it looks like business is thriving.
The building with the large cross above the entrance in Google street view was the location of the Oldham 8 Theatres. For the time being, the old theater facade can still be seen if you move street view left along First Street and then down Parker Drive.
Here is a quote from this article in the April 14, 2014 issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal:
The fire actually took place on January 17, 1960, and a photo of the event was published in the following day’s edition of The Courier-Journal. Ms. Theiss' statement that the theater “burned down” was only a slight exaggeration. An article from 1960 says that the back wall and roof of the theater caved in, but it is clear that most of the facade survived.Comparing the newspaper photo with Google’s current street view, it can be determined that the Griffith Theatre was at 123 E. Main Street, in a building now occupied by a dress shop called the Couture Closet. Some details of the building facade survived the fire, though a distinctive parapet was removed. Architectural details of the adjacent buildings are also recognizable.
The Griffith Theatre should not be confused with the D.W. Griffith Theatre, opened in 2017 in the local Peyton Samuel Head Family Museum, which shows movies related in some way to Oldham County, including movies directed by Griffith, twice a month. Silent era Director David Wark Griffith was a native of Oldham County.
The Griffith was not the first movie house in La Grange. A house called the Grand Theatre was mentioned in the September 7, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World.
Originally called the Princess Theatre, it was most likely opened in 1915 or 1916, as it was not listed in the 1914-15 edition of American Motion Picture Directory, which was published in early 1915, but was being mentioned in trade journals in 1916.
The El Rey, dark for some time, is reopening tomorrow night, Saturday, February 10, 2018, with live performances. Here is their web site. Proceeds from this event will go to continuing renovations of the house.
Sunday night the theater will present the 1938 film Robin Hood, much of which was filmed in Chico’s Bidwell Park.
The 808 seats we currently have listed for this house belonged to the Texas Theatre that burned in 1962. The Palace Theatre was listed in FDY with 525 seats from its first appearance in 1928 until the 1955 edition when it dropped to 519.
Prior to 1928 Ballinger had a house called the Maeroy Theatre, also with 525 seats, so I suspect its disappearance from the listings after 1927 and the appearance of the Palace in 1928 indicates a name change sometime before the 1928 FDY went to press. The Maeroy was mentioned in the January 13, 1923, issue of The Moving Picture World as having installed a new Wurlitzer organ, so it was in operation under that name at least that early.
The names I’ve found for theaters in Ballinger prior to 1923 are the Queen, the Cosy (which was on 7th Street), the White City Airdome, and the Princess, which was operated in 1916 by a Roy Reeder. A web page that has now gone missing said that today’s Texas Theatre (the former Palace) “… originated [as] Roy Reeder’s Princess Theater.” Unfortunately the snippet Google has saved from the missing page doesn’t provide any other details.
Though destroyed in 1946, the Ritz appears in the 1948 Film Daily Yearbook in the “Negro Theaters” listings. Most likely FDY simply hadn’t kept its records up-to-date, which was not unusual.
The Queen was one of three movie houses in Ballinger that was mentioned in an item in the July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
The Queen was also one of two houses listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, though no address was given (the other house was the Cosy, 127 Seventh Street.) The Queen was listed in issues of Film Daily Yearbook in the later 1920s, but always with 400 seats.The Queen was still listed in the FDY from 1937 through 1943, but with only 300 seats, and always listed as closed. It vanished from the listings in 1944. I suspect that the Queen was closed when the first Texas Theatre opened in 1936, and never reopened. The streamline modern facade on the building now probably dates from the building’s conversion to retail use sometime in the 1940s.
The ground floor retail shop (a shoe store in current Google street view) and the martial arts studio upstairs are still located in the Ironbound Theatre’s entrance building fronting on Ferry Street. The bakery, parking garage (and perhaps some other uses unidentified by any signage) occupy various parts of the former auditorium along Jackson Street.
The side wall Ironbound Theatre’s large former auditorium can be seen in street view from Jackson Street. It has been subdivided into a number of spaces, one of which is a garage for a bank and another the Maranatha Bakery.
In satellite view the structure appears to be about 80x100 feet, which indicates that it is probably the theater project of that size at Jackson and Ferry streets that was noted in the March 12, 1921, issue of The American Contractor. Newark Architect John B. Acocella was preparing the plans.
The building in which Smalley’s Theatre was located was built in 1885 as Klinkhart Hall, with retail space and the local post office on the ground floor and an opera house upstairs. Today it is under restoration as Klinkhart Hall Arts Center, and is located at 191 Main Street. A movie theater was first established on the ground floor in 1925. The auditorium, though in rough shape, still has its seats in place today. There is a photo at the link.
William Smalley called this house the Cameo Theatre or Smalley’s Cameo Theatre until sometime in 1933. The October 18, 1939, issue of the St. Johnsville Enterprise and News says that the former Rex reopened as the Cameo on October 15, 1924.
The earliest ad calling it simply Smalley’s Theatre that I’ve seen in the Enterprise and News is in the November 22, 1933 edition, though it might have been renamed anytime after the previous ad I’ve seen for Smalley’s Cameo, which appeared in February.
The Rex Theatre was in operation by 1917, the year the October 24 issue of the Enterprise said that the price of an adult admission was being raised to fifteen cents. Smalley’s Theatre was extensively rebuilt in 1939.
The Kerasotes ShowPlace 8 in Mount Vernon was built in 1995.
A 1995 article about the history of Mount Vernon’s theaters can be found on this web page. It says that the groundbreaking ceremony for the Granada was held on June 7, 1937, and the theater had its grand opening on December 16.
In 1971, the Granada and the Stadium were taken over by Kerasotes Theatres, which had for some time already operated the Mount Vernon Drive-In. The Granada was twinned in 1981. In 1995, Kerasotes built an 8-screen multiplex in an outlet mall on the outskirts of Mount Vernon, still open now as the AMC Classic Mount Vernon 8, and the Granada was closed after a run of almost sixty years.
Broan’s comment above, saying that the correct address of the Plaza is 118 S. Ninth Street, is indeed correct. However, a Plaza Theatre is listed at Mount Vernon in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory, and its address was 116 S. Ninth.
The December 25, 1919, opening of the Plaza must have been for a new Plaza Theatre replacing the old house— which had undoubtedly been a storefront conversion, given the age of the building still standing on that lot— next door.
A “40 years ago” feature in the January 8, 1960, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News noted that the owners of the Plaza Theatre had purchased the Star Theatre and would operate both houses.
This web page has an article about the history of Mount Vernon’s theaters which says that the Majestic/Royal building survived the 1945 fire and was rebuilt as the Stadium Theatre, which opened on May 15, 1947.
The article says that the Stadium was twinned in 1985. It also gives the impression, though does not explicitly say, that both the Granada and Stadium were still in operation at the time the article was written in 1995, though a new eight-screen house which would replace them was under construction on the outskirts of Mount Vernon at that time.
Interestingly, the article does not mention a single-screen house opened by Kerasotes Theatres in the Times Square Shopping Mall in 1975, which suggests that the Times Square Cinema did not last very long and had been forgotten by 1995. CinemaTour has the mall house listed as the Times Square Cinema Four, aka Cinema Times Square, in operation from 1975 to 1987.
The Royal burned on Armistice Day (November 11), 1945, with a loss estimated at $30,000, according to an article in the January 6, 1956, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News.
The following paragraph from an article about the history of Mt. Vernon’s theaters on this web page conveys the impression that the Majestic/Royal building actually survived the 1945 fire, at least in part, and that the Stadium Theatre was built inside the shell of the original building:
The Plaza Theatre opened on Christmas Day, 1919, according to an article in the July 29, 1972, issue of the Mt. Vernon Register-News.
Here is an item about the Monticello Theatre from the August 13, 1910, issue of The American Contractor:
Architects Frederick P. Hill and Edmund C. Stout designed a number of significant buildings, though some of their best have not survived. Among the best knows survivors in Manhattan is a 1913 Gothic Revival style office block on Madison Avenue at 41st Street which has since been converted into the Library Hotel. As far as I’ve been able to discover, the Monticello was the only theater they designed.Definitely looks like the same place, so a 1910 opening, then. Robinson and Burns must have merely taken over operation of the house in 1914.
Google finally has a decent street view of the Jones Theatre.
The November 10, 1932, issue of The New York State Exhibitor said that Smalley’s Theatre in Norwich was scheduled to open that day. The subsequent issue of the semi-monthly journal, November 25, said that Smalley’s had been opened, though it didn’t confirm that the event had taken place on schedule.
An article in the St. Johnsville Enterprise and News of October 18, 1939 (PDF), says that William Smalley operated his 1913 movie theater at Mt. Upton in the Town Hall. I don’t know if that was the same building as the Opera house. Small settlements of that era frequently had only one public building other than their schoolhouse, and it would be used for all manner of public functions, and sometimes subleased to private individuals for other uses, such as showing movies.
I’ve been unable to find any other references to a Mount Upton Town Hall on the Internet. The writer of the 1939 article probably drew on Mr. Smalley’s own memories of his early career, and it’s possible that in 1913 the building was called the Town Hall and only later came to be known exclusively as the Opera House.
Here is a link to the photo of the former Opera house after it had been converted to a firehouse, to which adamghost made reference. The photo is followed by a comment from a member of the Hinman family claiming that the building is now her parents' garage, but that the upper floor has been removed due to damage.
This 2011 article from the San Luis Obispo Tribune has some information I know to be inaccurate (the Playhouse/ La Mode was not Atascadero’s first movie theater), and awkward writing makes it difficult to puzzle out in places, but it indicates that the Atascadero Playhouse on El Camino Real was the second theater of that name, and another article I came across suggests that the first, out on the east edge of town on Traffic Place, might also have shown movies for a while.
The linked article gives the location of the Playhouse that became La Mode Theatre as being “…next door to the Keetch Building and Ward’s garage….” both of which are still standing (though the garage is now a print shop) at 5660 and 5680 El Camino, respectively. That would put the theater’s site at 5670 El Camino Real. The parking lot at that location has, in the current Google street view, a sign offering it for sale through Peabody Commercial Real Estate.
The second Playhouse was built in 1924, and the first movie it ran was Roy del Ruth’s The Man Upstairs, released in 1926, which coincides with the installation of the organ noted in the previous comment by AndrewBarrett. I know of at least two earlier movie theaters in Atascadero, one of which might or might not have been the first Playhouse on Traffic Place. I’m still trying to track down more information.
Google has loads of photos (and some videos) from Stereo Live Dallas, many of them quite recent, and many apparently posted by DJs who have presented shows there. The original auditorium interior has been stripped and black-boxed, but the lobby has many original features intact. Judging from the size of the crowds in many photos it looks like business is thriving.