Development Design Group designed the interiors of the Muvico Parisien 20, but the building itself was designed by the Philadelphia architectural firm SPG3. There are two photos at SPG3’s web site.
The link to pictures of the theater on DDG’s web site posted by CSWalczak is dead, but this page of their site now has a slide show with four photos.
There is a conflicting claim about the design of this theater. Two photos of the Patriot Place Showcase Cinemas De Lux appears on the web site of the Philadelphia architectural firm SPG3. A brief biography of architect Irving Shapiro (the S in SPG3) says this about the firm’s relationship to National Amusements:
“In 2000, spg3 was engaged by National Amusements, the parent company of Viacom and CBS. Mr. Shapiro worked closely with the president of National, to create a new experience for their cinema patrons worldwide. Between 2000 and 2008, National reinvented their brand and brought the concept of Cinema de lux to new buildings throughout the United States, Russia, Argentina and the United Kingdom. In the UK projects, the cinema was the entertainment anchor for several of the largest ‘urban regeneration’ projects being contemplated in Europe. The initial planning was done in collaboration with several acclaimed international design firms, including Foreign Office Architects, Chapman Taylor, Cesar Pelli and Westfield Architecture. In Moscow, the work was done in collaboration with Callison and IKEA’s in house design professionals.”
Apparently, SPG3 designed all of National Amusements' Cinema De Lux projects, even when the larger developments of which they were a part, such as Patriot Place, were designed by other firms, such as Arrowstreet. Arrowstreet did design a number of projects for Hoyts America, though, and SPG3 has designed some theaters for other chains.
The biography also mentions the firm’s earlier connection to General Cinema:
“Mr. Shapiro acted as the Executive Architect for General Cinema from 1995 through 2000. During this time, spg3 was responsible for all new General Cinema design and construction.”
this article in the Rio Grande Herald of February 9, 1984, says that the Garmon Theatre opened in 1937. As of 1984, it was being operated by Concha Gavilan, who also operated the H & H Drive-In at Rio Grande City.
Ads for the Garmon Teahtre from the 1970s and 1980s give the address as 212-214 E. Main Street. A Chevron filling station across Main Street from the theater currently has the address 207 E.Main, so the theater’s old address must still be in use.
The 1911 Sanborn Map of Atlanta shows three moving picture theaters on this block, at 30, 32, and 36 Peachtree Street. The Bonita was the largest of the three. The house at 36 Peachtree was the Alamo. The house at 30 Peachtree was not on the 1922 Sanborn map, but the Bonita and the Alamo were. All three buildings have since been demolished.
The Alamo has been demolished, along with two other theaters on the block. A small house I don’t know the name of, not yet listed at Cinema Treasures, was located at 30 Peachtree on the 1911 Sanborn Map, along with the Bonita Theatre at 32 Peachtree and the Alamo at 36 Peachtree. The Bonita and the Alamo were on the 1922 Sanborn map, but the house at 30 Peachtree had been converted into a retail store.
Clickable version of street view. The V.F.W. Hall is in between Blue Smoke at 119 E. Main and Subway at 123 E. Main, so Cinema 63’s address must have been 121 E. Main.
As the Ritz opened in 1935, it was probably an earlier house called the Lyric Theatre renamed. The July 16, 1935, issue of The Film Daily said: “Ansted, W. V. — Skaggs and Ruffner have reopened the Lyric.” Though the item doesn’t mention a name change, the 1934 FDY lists only the Lyric Theatre, with 245 seats, at Ansted, and the 1935 FDY lists only the Ritz Theatre, again with 245 seats. Sounds like a name change to me.
The Lyric Theatre, Ansted, West Virginia, with 250 seats, was on a list of movie theaters published in the January 2, 1915, issue of The Billboard, so it was a pretty old house.
The Star-Lite Drive-In was closed in 1978 and demolished to make way for a shopping center. Prior to the closing, Boxoffice of January 2, 1978 published this article (upper right) about Pacific’s plans to build the four-screen Woodward Park Drive-In to replace the Star-Lite.
Clickable version of kpkilburn2’s link. Zooming in on the Google street view you can see the address, 36 Michigan Avenue, on the door of the building.
The building looks as though it could have been built in 1863, so I’m wondering if that’s how the theater got its name? Or was it named to commemorate West Virgina’s admission to the Union as a state in 1863?
In late 1977, Metropolitan Theatres twinned the Village and Plaza Theatres in Palm Springs. The January 2, 1978, issue of Boxoffie ran a brief article with a drawing of one of the the Plaza’s twin auditoriums, prepared by the Filbert Company, the theater supply outfit that handled the alterations.
The partition dividing the old auditorium featured decorations matching those on the original side walls so that the theater’s Spanish atmospheric style could be retained. Unlike many twinnings, the Plaza’s also included reconfigured seating to maintain good sight lines. The Plaza and Village Theatres both reopened shortly before Christmas, 1977.
The Village Theatre might have been listed as an independent house in the newspapers before 1981, but before the end of 1977 it had already been taken over by Metropolitan Theatres. It was Metropolitan that twinned the Village and Plaza Theatres in 1977, as noted in this brief article in Boxoffice of January 2, 1978. The article features a drawing of the twinned auditorium of the Plaza, but says that the Village got new carpeting, draperies, and lobby treatment. Both houses got all new projection and sound equipment. Both theaters reopened shortly before Christmas, 1977.
An item in the July 19, 1935, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor said that Clifford Balch was preparing plans for alterations to a theater in Palm Springs for Earl “Streib.” It doesn’t give the name of the theater, but as 1935 was when Earl Strebe took over this house, it was probably this one. The Palm Springs (later Village) Theatre was only three years old, and the Plaza hadn’t been built yet.
This recent article in the Toledo Blade says that United North, the nonprofit organization that operates the Ohio Theatre and Event Center plans to begin showing first run art films and documentaries later this year. The Ohio, which broke even in 2013, will continue its various live events with movies worked into the schedule.
The article also contains some information about the difficulties art theaters have faced in Toledo in the past. Toledo itself has been without a dedicated art theater since the closing of the Southwyck Art Cinemas in 2001, and the nearest multiplex still showing such films on any of its screens is Cinemark’s Levis Commons 12 in the outlying town of Perrysburg.
The Toledo Blade was so anxious for the Southwyck Art Cinemas to succeed that it published this editorial urging public support for the house in its issue of May 15, 1998. The editorial said that the Art Cinemas had opened “…about four months ago,” so the house began operating with the art film policy around the beginning of 1998.
Since submitting this theater I’ve discovered more about it. It turns out that the house at 330 N. Summit Street was the first Priscilla Theatre, and the one that operated in the later 1920s and 1930s was at a different location.
The first Priscilla had been renamed the Pastime Theatre by 1928, and the name Priscilla had been moved to a theater at 2728 N. Summit Street. There had also been an earlier Pastime Theatre in Toledo, operating at 1418 Cherry Street as early as 1920.
Cinema Treasures lists it as the Gayety, but it only got that name in the 1950s, when it became a burlesque house. Earlier it had been called the Guild, and before that the Strand. It opened at 322 N. Summit in 1920 or 1921. Another that opened after 1913 was the Hippodrome, at 224 N. Summit, which was in operation by 1919 with 645 seats.
Thanks for the list with addresses. I had all the names, but not all the numbers, and I didn’t know that the Regent was the same theater as the Crown.
I’ve been trying to put together a list of the theaters that once operated on Summit Street in downtown Toledo. There are more than a dozen names, but some of them are undoubtedly aka’s. There aren’t any details for most of them, but there are a few I’ve found addresses and seating capacities for. All but the Gayety appear to have closed by the early 1930s, and all have since been demolished, but Summit Street was a thriving theater district for a few years during the silent era.
The May 19, 1977, issue of the Toledo Blade published this article headlined “Pantheon’s Screen Goes Dark For Final Time As Last Picture Show In Downtown Is Closed.” The theater had shown its last movie on Tuesday, May 17. The Pantheon had opened on November 19, 1919, with the Lilian and Dorothy Gish feature Broken Blossoms.
The article includes mentions of many of the Toledo movie theaters that had closed over the years. The Pantheon was the last of the more than a dozen downtown cinemas that had been in operation fifty years earlier. The only theater still open downtown after the Pantheon closed was the Esquire, which was operating as a live burlesque house.
Here is still more information about the Princess Theatre from Mitch Woodbury’s column in the Toledo Blade of July 17, 1949. It presents information gathered by Martin Smith, a theater operator himself, who provides a somewhat different history than did the 1948 article I cited in the previous comment.
Smith said that in 1906 the Princess Theatre was a 300-seat moving picture house located on Summit Street, and was owned by Orra Brailey (the article uses the spelling Ora, but his 1966 obituary uses Orra, and is more likely to be right) who also owned the Columbia Theatre, a vaudeville house on St. Clair Street. When Brailey lost the lease on the Summit Street building in 1912, he moved the name Princess to the former Columbia (this house.) So the Princess mentioned in the 1911 MPW item was the one on Summit Street.
The column doesn’t mention the new Columbia Theatre that Mr. Brailey was reported by MPW to have been planning in 1911, so my guess would be that it never got built. Neither have I discovered the opening year of the Columbia that became the Princess in 1912. The column does say that, as the Princess, this house initially charged a top price of 25 cents for a ninety minute show, and raised the price to 35 cents in 1915 when a seven-piece orchestra was added to the theater’s attractions.
Here is another article about the Princess Theatre from the Toledo Blade. The article is about the reopening of the Princess after a renovation in 1948, but it recounts a bit of the theater’s early history. It says that the building originally housed a skating rink, then a bowling alley, and was converted into the Columbia Theatre in 1910. O. L. Brailey’s 1911 project for a new Columbia Theatre was probably what led him to rename this house the Princess.
Roger, the Valentine’s original entrance was on St. Clair Street, where it remained until the renovations of the 1990s. When the theater was renovated an addition was built on the Adams Street side of the building with a new entrance in it. The unrelated building the Victory/Metro Theatre was in was probably demolished ages ago.
April 22, 1916, must have been the date the house reopened as the Princess Paramount. There was a Princess Theatre operating in Toledo at least as early as 1911, when the July 22 issue of The Moving Picture World reported that O. L. Brailey, operator of the Princess and Royal Theatres, was building a new house on St. Clair Street. It was to be called the Columbia Theatre, but I can’t find any other references to a house of that name in Toledo so maybe it either never got built or it opened under a different name.
A brief article about the closing of the Princess Theatre appeared in the July 14, 1969, issue of the Toledo Blade (scan from Google News.) The house would close the following night, the paper said, leaving downtown Toledo with only two movie theaters in operation: the Pantheon and the Valentine.
I rechecked the 1919 list I cited earlier and it also has the Diamond listed at 1520 Broadway.
There is also this item from the October 7, 1922, issue of the Toledo City Journal: “A resolution granting permission to the Diamond Theatre to erect a metal electric sign at 1520 Broadway; referred to the Committee on Public Improvements.”
The Wisconsin Historical Society provides this web page about the Lancaster Municipal Building, which also houses the Grantland Theatre (the Historical Society page erroneously refers to the house as the Grantville Theatre.) Despite its 1930s Art Deco look, the building was actually completed in 1923 and had been designed in the Prairie Style by Madison architects Claude & Starck in 1919.
Louis W. Claude and Edward F. Starck established their partnership in 1896 and dissolved it in 1928. They designed at least two other buildings combining city offices and auditoriums; one at Mineral Point, which operated as a movie theater (and still does,) and one at Platteville, which might have shown movies, as it is known to have hosted vaudeville shows. The firm also designed at least two other theaters; the Majestic in Madison and the Fenway in Fennimore, Wisconsin.
The 1989-1990 remodeling of the Grantland Theatre was carried out by the City of Lancaster on behalf of AGT Enterprises, a company then operating two small theaters in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, who had agreed to operate the house under a lease, conditional on its renovation. The project included removing the last two rows of seats in order to expand the lobby to accommodate a modern concession stand. Later known as Star Cinema, AGT grew to operate 95 screens in nine locations in Iowa and Wisconsin before selling most of its holdings to Kerasotes Theatres in 2008.
Development Design Group designed the interiors of the Muvico Parisien 20, but the building itself was designed by the Philadelphia architectural firm SPG3. There are two photos at SPG3’s web site.
The link to pictures of the theater on DDG’s web site posted by CSWalczak is dead, but this page of their site now has a slide show with four photos.
There is a conflicting claim about the design of this theater. Two photos of the Patriot Place Showcase Cinemas De Lux appears on the web site of the Philadelphia architectural firm SPG3. A brief biography of architect Irving Shapiro (the S in SPG3) says this about the firm’s relationship to National Amusements:
Apparently, SPG3 designed all of National Amusements' Cinema De Lux projects, even when the larger developments of which they were a part, such as Patriot Place, were designed by other firms, such as Arrowstreet. Arrowstreet did design a number of projects for Hoyts America, though, and SPG3 has designed some theaters for other chains.The biography also mentions the firm’s earlier connection to General Cinema:
The City Square Theatre in Trenton was mentioned in the January 8, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World.
this article in the Rio Grande Herald of February 9, 1984, says that the Garmon Theatre opened in 1937. As of 1984, it was being operated by Concha Gavilan, who also operated the H & H Drive-In at Rio Grande City.
Ads for the Garmon Teahtre from the 1970s and 1980s give the address as 212-214 E. Main Street. A Chevron filling station across Main Street from the theater currently has the address 207 E.Main, so the theater’s old address must still be in use.
The 1911 Sanborn Map of Atlanta shows three moving picture theaters on this block, at 30, 32, and 36 Peachtree Street. The Bonita was the largest of the three. The house at 36 Peachtree was the Alamo. The house at 30 Peachtree was not on the 1922 Sanborn map, but the Bonita and the Alamo were. All three buildings have since been demolished.
The Alamo has been demolished, along with two other theaters on the block. A small house I don’t know the name of, not yet listed at Cinema Treasures, was located at 30 Peachtree on the 1911 Sanborn Map, along with the Bonita Theatre at 32 Peachtree and the Alamo at 36 Peachtree. The Bonita and the Alamo were on the 1922 Sanborn map, but the house at 30 Peachtree had been converted into a retail store.
Clickable version of street view. The V.F.W. Hall is in between Blue Smoke at 119 E. Main and Subway at 123 E. Main, so Cinema 63’s address must have been 121 E. Main.
As the Ritz opened in 1935, it was probably an earlier house called the Lyric Theatre renamed. The July 16, 1935, issue of The Film Daily said: “Ansted, W. V. — Skaggs and Ruffner have reopened the Lyric.” Though the item doesn’t mention a name change, the 1934 FDY lists only the Lyric Theatre, with 245 seats, at Ansted, and the 1935 FDY lists only the Ritz Theatre, again with 245 seats. Sounds like a name change to me.
The Lyric Theatre, Ansted, West Virginia, with 250 seats, was on a list of movie theaters published in the January 2, 1915, issue of The Billboard, so it was a pretty old house.
The Star-Lite Drive-In was closed in 1978 and demolished to make way for a shopping center. Prior to the closing, Boxoffice of January 2, 1978 published this article (upper right) about Pacific’s plans to build the four-screen Woodward Park Drive-In to replace the Star-Lite.
Clickable version of kpkilburn2’s link. Zooming in on the Google street view you can see the address, 36 Michigan Avenue, on the door of the building.
The building looks as though it could have been built in 1863, so I’m wondering if that’s how the theater got its name? Or was it named to commemorate West Virgina’s admission to the Union as a state in 1863?
In late 1977, Metropolitan Theatres twinned the Village and Plaza Theatres in Palm Springs. The January 2, 1978, issue of Boxoffie ran a brief article with a drawing of one of the the Plaza’s twin auditoriums, prepared by the Filbert Company, the theater supply outfit that handled the alterations.
The partition dividing the old auditorium featured decorations matching those on the original side walls so that the theater’s Spanish atmospheric style could be retained. Unlike many twinnings, the Plaza’s also included reconfigured seating to maintain good sight lines. The Plaza and Village Theatres both reopened shortly before Christmas, 1977.
The Village Theatre might have been listed as an independent house in the newspapers before 1981, but before the end of 1977 it had already been taken over by Metropolitan Theatres. It was Metropolitan that twinned the Village and Plaza Theatres in 1977, as noted in this brief article in Boxoffice of January 2, 1978. The article features a drawing of the twinned auditorium of the Plaza, but says that the Village got new carpeting, draperies, and lobby treatment. Both houses got all new projection and sound equipment. Both theaters reopened shortly before Christmas, 1977.
An item in the July 19, 1935, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor said that Clifford Balch was preparing plans for alterations to a theater in Palm Springs for Earl “Streib.” It doesn’t give the name of the theater, but as 1935 was when Earl Strebe took over this house, it was probably this one. The Palm Springs (later Village) Theatre was only three years old, and the Plaza hadn’t been built yet.
This recent article in the Toledo Blade says that United North, the nonprofit organization that operates the Ohio Theatre and Event Center plans to begin showing first run art films and documentaries later this year. The Ohio, which broke even in 2013, will continue its various live events with movies worked into the schedule.
The article also contains some information about the difficulties art theaters have faced in Toledo in the past. Toledo itself has been without a dedicated art theater since the closing of the Southwyck Art Cinemas in 2001, and the nearest multiplex still showing such films on any of its screens is Cinemark’s Levis Commons 12 in the outlying town of Perrysburg.
The Toledo Blade was so anxious for the Southwyck Art Cinemas to succeed that it published this editorial urging public support for the house in its issue of May 15, 1998. The editorial said that the Art Cinemas had opened “…about four months ago,” so the house began operating with the art film policy around the beginning of 1998.
Since submitting this theater I’ve discovered more about it. It turns out that the house at 330 N. Summit Street was the first Priscilla Theatre, and the one that operated in the later 1920s and 1930s was at a different location.
The first Priscilla had been renamed the Pastime Theatre by 1928, and the name Priscilla had been moved to a theater at 2728 N. Summit Street. There had also been an earlier Pastime Theatre in Toledo, operating at 1418 Cherry Street as early as 1920.
Cinema Treasures lists it as the Gayety, but it only got that name in the 1950s, when it became a burlesque house. Earlier it had been called the Guild, and before that the Strand. It opened at 322 N. Summit in 1920 or 1921. Another that opened after 1913 was the Hippodrome, at 224 N. Summit, which was in operation by 1919 with 645 seats.
Thanks for the list with addresses. I had all the names, but not all the numbers, and I didn’t know that the Regent was the same theater as the Crown.
I’ve been trying to put together a list of the theaters that once operated on Summit Street in downtown Toledo. There are more than a dozen names, but some of them are undoubtedly aka’s. There aren’t any details for most of them, but there are a few I’ve found addresses and seating capacities for. All but the Gayety appear to have closed by the early 1930s, and all have since been demolished, but Summit Street was a thriving theater district for a few years during the silent era.
The May 19, 1977, issue of the Toledo Blade published this article headlined “Pantheon’s Screen Goes Dark For Final Time As Last Picture Show In Downtown Is Closed.” The theater had shown its last movie on Tuesday, May 17. The Pantheon had opened on November 19, 1919, with the Lilian and Dorothy Gish feature Broken Blossoms.
The article includes mentions of many of the Toledo movie theaters that had closed over the years. The Pantheon was the last of the more than a dozen downtown cinemas that had been in operation fifty years earlier. The only theater still open downtown after the Pantheon closed was the Esquire, which was operating as a live burlesque house.
Here is still more information about the Princess Theatre from Mitch Woodbury’s column in the Toledo Blade of July 17, 1949. It presents information gathered by Martin Smith, a theater operator himself, who provides a somewhat different history than did the 1948 article I cited in the previous comment.
Smith said that in 1906 the Princess Theatre was a 300-seat moving picture house located on Summit Street, and was owned by Orra Brailey (the article uses the spelling Ora, but his 1966 obituary uses Orra, and is more likely to be right) who also owned the Columbia Theatre, a vaudeville house on St. Clair Street. When Brailey lost the lease on the Summit Street building in 1912, he moved the name Princess to the former Columbia (this house.) So the Princess mentioned in the 1911 MPW item was the one on Summit Street.
The column doesn’t mention the new Columbia Theatre that Mr. Brailey was reported by MPW to have been planning in 1911, so my guess would be that it never got built. Neither have I discovered the opening year of the Columbia that became the Princess in 1912. The column does say that, as the Princess, this house initially charged a top price of 25 cents for a ninety minute show, and raised the price to 35 cents in 1915 when a seven-piece orchestra was added to the theater’s attractions.
Here is another article about the Princess Theatre from the Toledo Blade. The article is about the reopening of the Princess after a renovation in 1948, but it recounts a bit of the theater’s early history. It says that the building originally housed a skating rink, then a bowling alley, and was converted into the Columbia Theatre in 1910. O. L. Brailey’s 1911 project for a new Columbia Theatre was probably what led him to rename this house the Princess.
Roger, the Valentine’s original entrance was on St. Clair Street, where it remained until the renovations of the 1990s. When the theater was renovated an addition was built on the Adams Street side of the building with a new entrance in it. The unrelated building the Victory/Metro Theatre was in was probably demolished ages ago.
April 22, 1916, must have been the date the house reopened as the Princess Paramount. There was a Princess Theatre operating in Toledo at least as early as 1911, when the July 22 issue of The Moving Picture World reported that O. L. Brailey, operator of the Princess and Royal Theatres, was building a new house on St. Clair Street. It was to be called the Columbia Theatre, but I can’t find any other references to a house of that name in Toledo so maybe it either never got built or it opened under a different name.
A brief article about the closing of the Princess Theatre appeared in the July 14, 1969, issue of the Toledo Blade (scan from Google News.) The house would close the following night, the paper said, leaving downtown Toledo with only two movie theaters in operation: the Pantheon and the Valentine.
Here is a photo of The Jewel Theatre which the MidPointe Library System dates circa 1920.
I rechecked the 1919 list I cited earlier and it also has the Diamond listed at 1520 Broadway.
There is also this item from the October 7, 1922, issue of the Toledo City Journal: “A resolution granting permission to the Diamond Theatre to erect a metal electric sign at 1520 Broadway; referred to the Committee on Public Improvements.”
That’s three to one against the postcard.
The Wisconsin Historical Society provides this web page about the Lancaster Municipal Building, which also houses the Grantland Theatre (the Historical Society page erroneously refers to the house as the Grantville Theatre.) Despite its 1930s Art Deco look, the building was actually completed in 1923 and had been designed in the Prairie Style by Madison architects Claude & Starck in 1919.
Louis W. Claude and Edward F. Starck established their partnership in 1896 and dissolved it in 1928. They designed at least two other buildings combining city offices and auditoriums; one at Mineral Point, which operated as a movie theater (and still does,) and one at Platteville, which might have shown movies, as it is known to have hosted vaudeville shows. The firm also designed at least two other theaters; the Majestic in Madison and the Fenway in Fennimore, Wisconsin.
The 1989-1990 remodeling of the Grantland Theatre was carried out by the City of Lancaster on behalf of AGT Enterprises, a company then operating two small theaters in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, who had agreed to operate the house under a lease, conditional on its renovation. The project included removing the last two rows of seats in order to expand the lobby to accommodate a modern concession stand. Later known as Star Cinema, AGT grew to operate 95 screens in nine locations in Iowa and Wisconsin before selling most of its holdings to Kerasotes Theatres in 2008.