Riverside Theater

Patsy on January 15, 2006 at 6:46 pm

Jim: I see from the list of Wisconsin theatres that many of Milwaukee’s old movie palaces have been demolished or closed so in your opinion of the ones standing which ones would you suggest someone seeing when making a trip to Milwaukee? I have a dear friend who works at Marquette and have just started exchanging emails so I wanted to tell him of my cinema interest and mention your choices. Thank you.

JimRankin on June 2, 2005 at 9:56 am

This news item may not be pleasant to read, but at least we might possibly have hope that our venerable Riverside Theatre might still be with us for some time to come: View link

Now, who would have thought that a tax-supported and much larger facility would take away a large amount of the buiness that our local theatres had survived upon? Yeah, who??? ;) Well, maybe, just maybe there is a bright side to all this IF the new management will be more sympathetic to letting Dairyland Theatre Organ Society back in to bring that Wurli alive again for the public. We can only hope.

muyloco on February 4, 2005 at 1:44 am

This is the URL for the Riverside website. As all you Milwaukee residents now know, she is up and running in fantastic (!!!) shape once again…

www.newriversidetheatre.com/

JimRankin on August 20, 2004 at 10:04 am

Yes, Bruce, I too wish the Powers That Be in Milwaukee were more like those in Minneapolis and a number of other cities, but, as I pointed out at length in my recent Comment on the city’s WARNER/GRAND ( /theaters/1903/ ), that is not to come to be in all likelihood. You are perfectly right: “ I think the City of Milwaukee should come up with a master plan for both the Riverside and the Warner. They need to look at the long term and the rebirth of the downtown core ….” And the city is looking at that in their slow, meandering way, always careful not to spend much of the taxpayer’s money, but it must be remembered that both theatres are in private hands, private hands with lots of money and political clout! No one would dare to try to seize their lands under Eminent Domain statues, and the city would then own the buildings anyway, and when it divested itself of the opulent PABST ( /theaters/2753/ ) a couple years ago, it effectively vowed not to own another theatre, or any other building that could eventually become a burden. There are no munificent budgets here such as there may be in the really big cities for public preservation; a building sinks or swims on its own, for the most part.

If you want to make your voice heard on this matter, why not write to the “Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel” to their Letters column at: www.jsonline.com and possibly they will publish it. If you would rather be more direct and send a letter to the city, here is the address:
His Honor, the Mayor: Tom Barrett
City Hall, 200 E. Wells St.
Milwaukee, WI 53201

You must, of course, let us know if they publish your letter or if City Hall responds in any way.

DavidHurlbutt on August 8, 2004 at 4:06 pm

In the 1940s The Riverside was managed by Standard Theaters Management which managed theaters in various Wisconsin cities. In Milwaukee they had the Riverside, Bay(Lake), Times, Tosa and 41 Twin Outdoor. Both the Times and Tosa are still operating. The Tosa has recently has been renamed the Rosebud.

JimRankin on April 30, 2004 at 1:22 pm

Few theatres can say that they have been discussed by the Supreme Court, but that is the case for the RIVERSIDE when the Wis. state Supreme Court was asked to decide about the theatre’s vertical sign. Here is the story:

When the RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Vaudeville circuit was looking for a larger venue to better dominate the Milwaukee market, they approached the developers of the land at the junction of Water St. and Grand Ave. (now N. Plankinton Ave. and W. Wisconsin Ave.) and offered to become the star tenant in the planned new giant office bldg. and theatre to be erected for a 1928 opening. During the planning stages the theatre was referred to as the “New Majestic,” the then Majestic Theatre only two blocks away being RKO’s current venue. Adaptations to the needs of RKO were made in the drawings of architects Kirchoff and Rose of Milwaukee, such as six boxes in the auditorium and 3, ten-foot-long girders to project from the facade to carry a future giant vertical sign.

Like most cities, Milw. had ordinances limiting the size of signs, and prior to July of 1928, it was a maximum of 60 feet high and no more than 4 feet in projection from a building. Perhaps the ordinance was based on old construction safety limitations or merely on aesthetics, but evidently the RKO people foresaw changing the ordinance. The 3 giant girders were built into the new building’s steelwork in 1927. The lease between tenant RKO (then styled as “The New Majestic Theatre Co.”) and building/land owner “Water-Grand Holding Co.” allowed for a sign and even for future sign changes of approximately similar nature. Apparently, as the theatre approached opening day and the ordinance hadn’t changed yet, RKO (who was responsible for costs of the planned eight-story-high sign) had to arrange for a smaller 60-foot-high by 4-foot-wide design, the contract for which it gave to Milw.’s Federal Sign Co., the local licensee of the highly litigious Claude Neon Co. of France, the putative originator of neon tubing. They produced a vertical of the size above (not the 70 foot one as claimed in the day-before-opening ad on pg. 8 of the (Milwaukee) “Sentinel” of April 28, 1928), which utilized the then new neon tubing (500 feet of it along with 1,500 incandescent lamps) apparently for the fist time on a Milw. theatre sign. This vertical was erected before opening day (a Grand Opening without a sign would have looked naked indeed!). On those 3 beams/girders which were far larger than the sign, Federal’s design must have seemed peculiar. The only known photo from that day shows this to have been the case!

THE SUPERME COURT BECOMES INVOLVED
It appears from the digest of a case before the Wis. State Supreme Court that RKO was still trying to get the larger vertical sign it wanted (and already had, no doubt, in other cities) and so filed an application on April 1, 1928 for a permit for a 70 foot by 10 foot sign. The city stalled with a reply that such size was presently illegal but that the common council was due to consider a new statute. AS if this were not enough to frustrate them, an odd thing now happens. For reasons not yet found, the bldg. owner, Water-Grand Holding Co., objected to the new proposed larger sign, and foreseeing the coming change in city statute, they commenced a long correspondence with their tenant (RKO) to persuade them against a new large sign for which the steelwork already projected from the building’s face and well beyond the edge of the smaller sign! This produced no resolution so they obtained a restraining order against RKO and a trial ensued in circuit court which terminated on the very day the theatre opened, in favor of the tenant. The landlord appealed to the Supreme court and precisely one year later, in 1929, the Court affirmed the tenant’s right to the new sign in view of lease language and the revision of the Milw. sign ordinance which had occurred on July 11, 1928. This is documented in the “Wis. [state supreme court] Reports”, Vol. 199, Pgs. 8-12, April 30, 1929.

An item on page 16, col. 2 of the “Wis. News” of Tuesday, April 30, 1929 headlined THEATRE GETS SIGN gives the above results and states that a new sign to be 80 feet by 10 feet is now to begin construction, according to a Mr. Billings, the RIVERSIDE’s then manager. Mr. Robert Baird of Everbrite Sign Co. of Milw. has recently confirmed that they did indeed build this second vertical sign back then (the one shown in the 1950s photo on this site where the caption should read “Wis. Avenue” not ‘Wis. street") but they no longer retain reliable records of it. All of this was occasioned by an April 1991 news story about the then operators trying to find out about the original signage in order to design a new one to better reflect the now live action venue the theatre had become. The theatre now has no vertical sign since the second one was removed as shown in a dramatic photo (with a man walking along the lowermost girder) in the “Milwaukee Journal” of March 5, 1967, though allusions to it did appear in artist’s depictions in ads in Dec. of 1991. From late in 1991 to today, the theatre’s 1946 marquee frame has been revamped with the attraction boards replaced with smooth plastic panels in burgundy with white lettering reading The Riverside in a serifed typeface with the word 'theatre’ below it in a scrolled frame, all illuminated by fluorescents from behind. A modern sign board tops the line of ten entry doors below it to carry the name of the attraction. It would seem that the Supreme Court’s action is moot today, with neither this nor any other theatre in the city retaining their vertical signs, a sad loss to the street scene of the glitter that entranced so many, so years ago, as brought out in a nostalgic letter to the “National Observer” of March 13, 1967:

“CURTAIN COMES DOWN ON A SHOW-BIZ FAVORITE"
Milwaukee: An eight-story sign on Milwaukee’s main shopping street that read from top to bottom R-I-V-E-R-S-I-D-E came down this month and with its dismantling an era ended. It was the last of what theater men call "verticals” on Wisconsin Avenue, a street that once was the closest thing Milwaukee had to a great white way. In those vanished days, every downtown theater had these flashing signs, but over the years the signs and some of the theaters disappeared until only the Riverside’s eight-ton vertical was left.

When the theater and its sign were built in 1929, show-business devotees from smaller Wisconsin cities came to stand on the sidewalk and watch admiringly as the 3,500 bulbs winked on and off [on the double-sided sign]. It was the biggest sign of its kind in the state and a source of some envy.

The sign was still faithfully blinking in days of pork pie hats, when Benny Goodman played swing music on the Riverside stage or Bill “Bojangles” Robinson demonstrated how to tap dance down a flight of stairs.

Some years ago, when styles in theaters as well as other things had changed, the sign was allowed to glow instead of flash on and off. Finally it was decided to take it down altogether.

Russell Mortenson, vice president of Standard Theatres, said the sign was taken down to modernize the theater front in line with downtown beautification efforts â€" which seemed to imply that those 3,500 blinking bulbs weren’t once a thing of beauty on a Saturday night.“
By (the late) Robert Wells, then retired reporter for the "Milw. Journal”

RobertR on February 10, 2004 at 12:06 pm

It is so sad, yet amusing how many theatre histories contain the line “UA ran the theatre into the ground”. In NY the list is endless.