The Marien Theatre was at 106 N. Forest Street, according to comments on a Marienville Facebook page. The building had been a fire station, which is also its current use, so it might be that the theater and the volunteer fire department shared the building, which looks almost as wide as it is deep. Consensus of the comments is that the house closed in the mid-1950s. I’ve found the Marien mentioned twice in Boxoffice. The January 3, 1948 issue said it had been transferred by John L. Barr to A. A. Nuhfer, and the January 19, 1952 issue said it had been sold by Clarence Nuhfer to W. E. Anderson.
This house was partly owned by Bob Fridley in the 1940s, according to this item that appeared in Boxoffice of April 5, 1947:
“Sharon Theatre Reopens
“NEW SHARON, IOWA—The Sharon Theatre has reopened after being dark ten days because of a flu epidemic. It was the first time in six years this town had been without motion picture entertainment. Showings canceled during the shutdown will be rescheduled during April, according to Bob Fridley and Bev Mahon, owners.”
Fridley was also mentioned in connection with the house in the January 6, 1945 Boxoffice, which referred to him as “Sgt. Bob Fridley.” He apparently dropped in to see old friends on Des Moines' film row while on leave from his military service.
In fact, the Sharon was Fridley’s first theater. An article in Boxoffice of December 5, 1977 said “Robert Fridley, who operated the old Sharon Theatre (now the Capri) from 1941-49 and still owns it, now operates a circuit out of Des Moines, where he now lives.” The article notes that Fridley became an exhibitor at the age of 19. His memorial page (he died in 2021, at the age of 103) says that his first experience was taking over his uncle’s jackrabbit circuit, a traveling operation that took movies to theater-less towns. He was 24 when he bought the Sharon Theatre.
Here is something about the heating system of the new National Theatre, then under construction in Louisville, from he March 29, 1913 issue of Domestic Engineering: “A. J. Anderson & Company, Main Street steam-fitters, recently secured the contract for heating equipment to be installed in the new National Theater, the foundation of which is now being sunk at Fifth avenue and Walnut street in this city. The theater itself will be one of the largest in the south, seating more than 3,000 persons, and the structure housing it, containing a number of stores and offices as well, will cost more than $250,000. A representative outfit of modern steam heating equipment, with temperature and humidity registers throughout and several hundred feet of radiation connections, is to be installed by the Anderson Co.”
News about the Lake Theatre from the February 5, 1955 issue of Motion Picture Herald: “John Mowry, formerly owner of the Fall
theatre at River Falls, Wisc., has purchased the Lake theatre at Chetek, Wisc., from Miner Properties, Inc., Chippewa Falls, Wisc.”
The recent redecoration of the Roane Theatre at Rockwood and the installation of new lights was noted in the August 6, 1955 issue of Boxoffice.
Historic Aerials shows a building that might have been (and probably was) the Roane near the corner of Rockwood Street and Gateway Avenue from at least 1958 (the earliest aerial available) until it vanished between 1992 and 1994. The building that replaced it, which fronts on Gateway Ave., is occupied by a Walgreen’s drug store.
That does seem very likely. The wider vintage view shows the theater had neighboring buildings on both sides, so the entrance must have been between the mystery building with the posters and the building that has the bike shop in Google street view. There are no street numbers on this building either, but since the bike shop was at 138 this one is probably about 130 or 132.
Incidentally, the book I cited in my earlier comment says that the Mecca closed in 1940, so odds are we’ll never hear from anyone who actually went there. Both the Mecca and Palace are listed in the 1940 FDY, but the 219-seat Mecca is listed as closed. The Palace must have been a replacement theater, and likely opened by the end of 1939.
One source says that the Mecca Theatre originally opened around 1915 in the same block of Main Street the Palace Theatre was later built in, but it burned in 1924 and was rebuilt in the 100 N block of Main Street, across the street from the depot. The depot is at 169 N. Main, and one of the buildings across from it has a copy of the photo of the Mecca we have above mounted on its front. This is supposed to have been the Mecca’s building, though it isn’t recognizable.
The building has no visible street number, but judging from the businesses up and down the block it is probably about 124 N. Main. The front and the alley side display several posters advertising various productions of the Cumberland County Playhouse, and the side wall has the theater company’s name on it. The Playhouse itself is at another location, but as the old Mecca building has the company’s sign on it, it must serve some auxiliary purpose, though there’s no clue what.
Here is a Google street view. Oddly, a street view notation says this is the location of an outfit called Southern Crane, but a search for Southern Crane gives that company a totally different address.
We are missing an aka for this house. This item is from the August 1, 1917 issue of The New York Clipper: “Saginaw, Mich., July 29. — Charles Carlisle, manager of the Mecca Theatre, is back on the job after a week in the hospital. The management of this house has taken over the Palace Theatre and will conduct it as a high class picture house, renaming it the Mecca-Palace. The old Mecca is now called the Grand.” I haven’t discovered how long the Grand operated, but it was not listed in 1926.
This item appears in the July 15, 1946 issue of Motion Picture News: “Among new theatres nearly completed in this area are C. T. Nelson’s Park in Hahira, Ga., which is expected to open about Aug. 1.” Why the Park was being rebuilt in 1946 is explained by this earlier item from Showmen’s Trade Review of April 6 that same year: “The Park Theatre, Hahira, Ga., was destroyed by fire when flames swept the entire central business block of the South Georgia tobacco center.”
The April 17, 1948 issue of Boxoffice said that the new theater to be built at Russellville, Alabama, for the Hartselle Theatre Corp. of Nashville would be designed by the architectural firm of Speight & Hibbs. Clarence Speight and Lacy Hibbs established their practice in 1937. Cinema Treasures currently attributes eight other movie theaters to the firm.
A vacant lot in 1904, by 1911 the site of the Grand Theatre was occupied by a two-story wood framed building with a furniture store on the ground floor and an Opera House upstairs. By 1919, a Sanborn map shows a motion picture theater on the ground floor and a “Hall” upstairs. The map now has the notation “stuccoed” for the building, which was still wood framed. It seems likely that the modern building is the same one, but with a brick veneer added at some point. It also seems likely that movies were shown in the upstairs hall for some time before the dedicated movie house was installed on the ground floor.
For most of its history the Grand was operated by members of the Vincent family. For five years between 1929 and 1934 it was operated by Emil Plain. A Thursday, January 24, 1929 item about the transfer in Film Daily noted that Wilfrid Vincent had operated the house for about ten years, suggesting that it might have been he who had installed the house on the ground floor, possibly by late 1918 and certainly by August, 1919, when it appeared on the Sanborn map. After Plain’s lease expired in 1934, the Grand returned to the Vincents control, operated by Wilfrid’s son Irving and then by Irving’s wife Magdalene, who was still operating the house when it closed in 1976.
This house was once part of the Miner circuit, as noted in this item from the April 23, 1957 issue of Motion Picture Daily: “Leo Miner has sold the Isle Theatre, Cumberland, Wisc. to Robert Taylor of Menomonie, Wisc. The house has been part of the Miner circuit for several years.”
The theater’s current occupant, Nezzy’s Sports Bar & Grill, is now billing itself as the Isle Event Center. The web site has a few recent photos of the space.
Scheicke’s address for the theater is wrong, but the remainder, including the opening year, appears to be correct. The apartment house now on the theater’s site (and adjacent lots) uses the address 215 Grand.
This is the description of the Badger Theatre in Konrad Scheicke’s Historic Movie Theatres of Wisconsin:“206 Grand Avenue. Open: 1904; closed: 1960; seats: 500 The Badger Hotel and Opera House opened on October 10, 1904, in a ‘flat iron design’ by architects Van Ryn and DeGelleke. Movies started to be presented around 1911. The entire structure was gutted by fire in 1967.”
Henry J. Van Ryn and Gerrit Jacob DeGelleke had one of Milwaukee’s leading architectural firms during the first third of the 20th century.
Konrad Scheicke’s Historic Movie Theatres of Wisconsin has this brief paragraph for the Milltown Theatre: “Milltown Theatre Main Street. Open: 1946; closed: 1970; seats: 358 The theatre was built by Paulsen Amusements who also built the theatre in Amery. The theatre building is currently [2009] for sale.”
The Roza Theatre opened on January 25, 1947 with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical “State Fair.” According to comments on a Zillah history page at Facebook, the theater building was next door to the Granger building on 1st Avenue, and was still standing as recently as 2016, but has since been demolished. The address of the theater was probably 507 1st Avenue. This Facebook page has a photo clipped from a 1951 issue of the Yakima Valley Mirror showing the 500 Block of 1st Avenue with the modest, concrete block Roza Theatre building at left.
Anthony Bou offered this drive-in and his indoor Mendota Theatre for sale in 1963, citing poor health as his reason for selling. Both were still in operation at that time.
Zooming in with Google Street View we can see that the building at 719 Quince has the name “A. Bou” on its parapet. It also has the year 1941 on it, presumably the year it was built. I don’t see how there could be any doubt that this was the building that housed Anthony Bou’s Mendota Theatre.
In a classified ad in the July 15, 1963 issue of Boxoffice, Anthony Bou offered a 500-space drive-in theater and a 512-seat conventional theater showing “Spanish films” for sale. The ad gave Bou’s reason for selling as “[f]orced to retire from business, bad health.”
This item appears in the March 23, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World: “NEOSHO, MO.—White Way is name of new moving picture theater opened here by G. D. Hall.”
I haven’t yet come across a reference to the Rex, but I would not be surprised if Grand was not just an aka for the Masonic Opera House. Although the Cahn guides listed it as the Masonic Opera House, theatrical journals of the period such as Billboard often called it the Oskaloosa Grand Opera House, and the earliest mention of it in Moving Picture World (from 1908) also called it the Grand Opera House.
Nothing about the Unique, but an item in the April 6, 1912 issue of Moving Picture World pertains to the profusion of theaters in Oskaloosa. It says that there were then five movie theaters operating in the city of 10,000. Managers of four houses had formed a combine with the purpose of buying the lease on the fifth house and closing it permanently, but the County Attorney had implied that if they attempted to carry out this plan he could prosecute them under Iowa’s rather strict laws forbidding combines to restrain trade in any way. Hefty fines of $500 to $5,000 and/or up to a year in prison were the prescribed punishments. I’ve found no follow-up articles about the plan, so I suspect the managers had wise second thoughts and gave it up.
Whether the Palace opened in 1908 or not, it underwent rebuilding in 1911, according to the June issue of Motography that year: “The new Palace theater of Oskaloosa which has been in the hands of the carpenters and decorators for some time, has again opened its doors to the public. The theater has been rebuilt at much expense. All the material used has been the very best. The front of the theater is illuminated by nearly 300 electric lights. The house is ventilated by two rear exits and eight large fans and is always cool. Newell Bros. are the owners and operators.”
The Marien Theatre was at 106 N. Forest Street, according to comments on a Marienville Facebook page. The building had been a fire station, which is also its current use, so it might be that the theater and the volunteer fire department shared the building, which looks almost as wide as it is deep. Consensus of the comments is that the house closed in the mid-1950s. I’ve found the Marien mentioned twice in Boxoffice. The January 3, 1948 issue said it had been transferred by John L. Barr to A. A. Nuhfer, and the January 19, 1952 issue said it had been sold by Clarence Nuhfer to W. E. Anderson.
This house was partly owned by Bob Fridley in the 1940s, according to this item that appeared in Boxoffice of April 5, 1947:
“Sharon Theatre Reopens
“NEW SHARON, IOWA—The Sharon Theatre has reopened after being dark ten days because of a flu epidemic. It was the first time in six years this town had been without motion picture entertainment. Showings canceled during the shutdown will be rescheduled during April, according to Bob Fridley and Bev Mahon, owners.”
Fridley was also mentioned in connection with the house in the January 6, 1945 Boxoffice, which referred to him as “Sgt. Bob Fridley.” He apparently dropped in to see old friends on Des Moines' film row while on leave from his military service.
In fact, the Sharon was Fridley’s first theater. An article in Boxoffice of December 5, 1977 said “Robert Fridley, who operated the old Sharon Theatre (now the Capri) from 1941-49 and still owns it, now operates a circuit out of Des Moines, where he now lives.” The article notes that Fridley became an exhibitor at the age of 19. His memorial page (he died in 2021, at the age of 103) says that his first experience was taking over his uncle’s jackrabbit circuit, a traveling operation that took movies to theater-less towns. He was 24 when he bought the Sharon Theatre.
Here is something about the heating system of the new National Theatre, then under construction in Louisville, from he March 29, 1913 issue of Domestic Engineering: “A. J. Anderson & Company, Main Street steam-fitters, recently secured the contract for heating equipment to be installed in the new National Theater, the foundation of which is now being sunk at Fifth avenue and Walnut street in this city. The theater itself will be one of the largest in the south, seating more than 3,000 persons, and the structure housing it, containing a number of stores and offices as well, will cost more than $250,000. A representative outfit of modern steam heating equipment, with temperature and humidity registers throughout and several hundred feet of radiation connections, is to be installed by the Anderson Co.”
News about the Lake Theatre from the February 5, 1955 issue of Motion Picture Herald: “John Mowry, formerly owner of the Fall theatre at River Falls, Wisc., has purchased the Lake theatre at Chetek, Wisc., from Miner Properties, Inc., Chippewa Falls, Wisc.”
The Grand Opera House was the only theater listed at Chetek in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The recent redecoration of the Roane Theatre at Rockwood and the installation of new lights was noted in the August 6, 1955 issue of Boxoffice.
Historic Aerials shows a building that might have been (and probably was) the Roane near the corner of Rockwood Street and Gateway Avenue from at least 1958 (the earliest aerial available) until it vanished between 1992 and 1994. The building that replaced it, which fronts on Gateway Ave., is occupied by a Walgreen’s drug store.
That does seem very likely. The wider vintage view shows the theater had neighboring buildings on both sides, so the entrance must have been between the mystery building with the posters and the building that has the bike shop in Google street view. There are no street numbers on this building either, but since the bike shop was at 138 this one is probably about 130 or 132.
Incidentally, the book I cited in my earlier comment says that the Mecca closed in 1940, so odds are we’ll never hear from anyone who actually went there. Both the Mecca and Palace are listed in the 1940 FDY, but the 219-seat Mecca is listed as closed. The Palace must have been a replacement theater, and likely opened by the end of 1939.
One source says that the Mecca Theatre originally opened around 1915 in the same block of Main Street the Palace Theatre was later built in, but it burned in 1924 and was rebuilt in the 100 N block of Main Street, across the street from the depot. The depot is at 169 N. Main, and one of the buildings across from it has a copy of the photo of the Mecca we have above mounted on its front. This is supposed to have been the Mecca’s building, though it isn’t recognizable.
The building has no visible street number, but judging from the businesses up and down the block it is probably about 124 N. Main. The front and the alley side display several posters advertising various productions of the Cumberland County Playhouse, and the side wall has the theater company’s name on it. The Playhouse itself is at another location, but as the old Mecca building has the company’s sign on it, it must serve some auxiliary purpose, though there’s no clue what.
Here is a Google street view. Oddly, a street view notation says this is the location of an outfit called Southern Crane, but a search for Southern Crane gives that company a totally different address.
This item appeared in the January 24, 1922 issue of Film Daily: “Crossville, Tenn.—The Mecca is now under the management of C. P. Harrison.”
We are missing an aka for this house. This item is from the August 1, 1917 issue of The New York Clipper: “Saginaw, Mich., July 29. — Charles Carlisle, manager of the Mecca Theatre, is back on the job after a week in the hospital. The management of this house has taken over the Palace Theatre and will conduct it as a high class picture house, renaming it the Mecca-Palace. The old Mecca is now called the Grand.” I haven’t discovered how long the Grand operated, but it was not listed in 1926.
This item appears in the July 15, 1946 issue of Motion Picture News: “Among new theatres nearly completed in this area are C. T. Nelson’s Park in Hahira, Ga., which is expected to open about Aug. 1.” Why the Park was being rebuilt in 1946 is explained by this earlier item from Showmen’s Trade Review of April 6 that same year: “The Park Theatre, Hahira, Ga., was destroyed by fire when flames swept the entire central business block of the South Georgia tobacco center.”
The April 17, 1948 issue of Boxoffice said that the new theater to be built at Russellville, Alabama, for the Hartselle Theatre Corp. of Nashville would be designed by the architectural firm of Speight & Hibbs. Clarence Speight and Lacy Hibbs established their practice in 1937. Cinema Treasures currently attributes eight other movie theaters to the firm.
Here is the official web site of the Dallas Theatre.
A vacant lot in 1904, by 1911 the site of the Grand Theatre was occupied by a two-story wood framed building with a furniture store on the ground floor and an Opera House upstairs. By 1919, a Sanborn map shows a motion picture theater on the ground floor and a “Hall” upstairs. The map now has the notation “stuccoed” for the building, which was still wood framed. It seems likely that the modern building is the same one, but with a brick veneer added at some point. It also seems likely that movies were shown in the upstairs hall for some time before the dedicated movie house was installed on the ground floor.
For most of its history the Grand was operated by members of the Vincent family. For five years between 1929 and 1934 it was operated by Emil Plain. A Thursday, January 24, 1929 item about the transfer in Film Daily noted that Wilfrid Vincent had operated the house for about ten years, suggesting that it might have been he who had installed the house on the ground floor, possibly by late 1918 and certainly by August, 1919, when it appeared on the Sanborn map. After Plain’s lease expired in 1934, the Grand returned to the Vincents control, operated by Wilfrid’s son Irving and then by Irving’s wife Magdalene, who was still operating the house when it closed in 1976.
This house was once part of the Miner circuit, as noted in this item from the April 23, 1957 issue of Motion Picture Daily: “Leo Miner has sold the Isle Theatre, Cumberland, Wisc. to Robert Taylor of Menomonie, Wisc. The house has been part of the Miner circuit for several years.”
The theater’s current occupant, Nezzy’s Sports Bar & Grill, is now billing itself as the Isle Event Center. The web site has a few recent photos of the space.
Scheicke’s address for the theater is wrong, but the remainder, including the opening year, appears to be correct. The apartment house now on the theater’s site (and adjacent lots) uses the address 215 Grand.
This is the description of the Badger Theatre in Konrad Scheicke’s Historic Movie Theatres of Wisconsin:“206 Grand Avenue. Open: 1904; closed: 1960; seats: 500 The Badger Hotel and Opera House opened on October 10, 1904, in a ‘flat iron design’ by architects Van Ryn and DeGelleke. Movies started to be presented around 1911. The entire structure was gutted by fire in 1967.”
Henry J. Van Ryn and Gerrit Jacob DeGelleke had one of Milwaukee’s leading architectural firms during the first third of the 20th century.
Konrad Scheicke’s Historic Movie Theatres of Wisconsin has this brief paragraph for the Milltown Theatre: “Milltown Theatre Main Street. Open: 1946; closed: 1970; seats: 358 The theatre was built by Paulsen Amusements who also built the theatre in Amery. The theatre building is currently [2009] for sale.”
The Roza Theatre opened on January 25, 1947 with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical “State Fair.” According to comments on a Zillah history page at Facebook, the theater building was next door to the Granger building on 1st Avenue, and was still standing as recently as 2016, but has since been demolished. The address of the theater was probably 507 1st Avenue. This Facebook page has a photo clipped from a 1951 issue of the Yakima Valley Mirror showing the 500 Block of 1st Avenue with the modest, concrete block Roza Theatre building at left.
Anthony Bou offered this drive-in and his indoor Mendota Theatre for sale in 1963, citing poor health as his reason for selling. Both were still in operation at that time.
Zooming in with Google Street View we can see that the building at 719 Quince has the name “A. Bou” on its parapet. It also has the year 1941 on it, presumably the year it was built. I don’t see how there could be any doubt that this was the building that housed Anthony Bou’s Mendota Theatre.
In a classified ad in the July 15, 1963 issue of Boxoffice, Anthony Bou offered a 500-space drive-in theater and a 512-seat conventional theater showing “Spanish films” for sale. The ad gave Bou’s reason for selling as “[f]orced to retire from business, bad health.”
This item appears in the March 23, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World: “NEOSHO, MO.—White Way is name of new moving picture theater opened here by G. D. Hall.”
I haven’t yet come across a reference to the Rex, but I would not be surprised if Grand was not just an aka for the Masonic Opera House. Although the Cahn guides listed it as the Masonic Opera House, theatrical journals of the period such as Billboard often called it the Oskaloosa Grand Opera House, and the earliest mention of it in Moving Picture World (from 1908) also called it the Grand Opera House.
Nothing about the Unique, but an item in the April 6, 1912 issue of Moving Picture World pertains to the profusion of theaters in Oskaloosa. It says that there were then five movie theaters operating in the city of 10,000. Managers of four houses had formed a combine with the purpose of buying the lease on the fifth house and closing it permanently, but the County Attorney had implied that if they attempted to carry out this plan he could prosecute them under Iowa’s rather strict laws forbidding combines to restrain trade in any way. Hefty fines of $500 to $5,000 and/or up to a year in prison were the prescribed punishments. I’ve found no follow-up articles about the plan, so I suspect the managers had wise second thoughts and gave it up.
Whether the Palace opened in 1908 or not, it underwent rebuilding in 1911, according to the June issue of Motography that year: “The new Palace theater of Oskaloosa which has been in the hands of the carpenters and decorators for some time, has again opened its doors to the public. The theater has been rebuilt at much expense. All the material used has been the very best. The front of the theater is illuminated by nearly 300 electric lights. The house is ventilated by two rear exits and eight large fans and is always cool. Newell Bros. are the owners and operators.”