There is nothing on the Summit Hippodrome’s official web site but a rather cryptic message from what is probably the hosting company. Nothing is listed at web sites such as Box Office Mojo, either. I don’t think this theater is open.
Before it was merged with Union Hill in 1925, this section of Union City was called West Hoboken. The March 19, 1921, issue of The American Contractor had an item about the proposed theater:
“West Hoboken, N. J. Theater (M. P.):
“$225,000. S. E. cor. Summit av. & Courtland St., West Hoboken. Archt. W. E. Lehman, 738 Broad St.. Newark, N. J. Owner Roosevelt Theater Corp., R. Robinson, pres., 150 Summit av., West Hoboken. Drawing plans”
Courtland Street was later renamed 8th Street. The theater is still standing, at least in part, occupied by a CVS drug store. There is a parking lot in front of the building. I don’t know if CVS lopped off the front of the building, or if the parking lot was there when the theater opened, but I suspect that the lobby and foyer were removed and that the store occupies the auditorium space. The address of the CVS is 714 Summit Avenue, so that must have been the theater’s address as well.
Cinema Treasures currently has eight theaters listed as having been designed by architect William E. Lehman. There could be others that have not yet been identified.
The article RidgewoodKen linked to says that the theater was built “…in the early 1900s….” and notes that local resident John Carmazzi remembers going to the theater in 1939, the year before Warren Grimes bought the house and renamed it after his daughter.
Another article about the closing of the Urbana Cinema notes its connection to the Clifford Theatre, saying this: “In September of 1940, Urbana aviation lighting pioneer and industrialist Warren Grimes bought the building and tore out the decayed parts, remodeling the old structure into a premier motion picture house for Champaign countians.”
Mr. Carmazzi’s memory indicates that the Clifford Theatre was still operating (though he doesn’t mention the name) in the late 1930s. As I noted earlier, it’s pretty clear from the look of the building that it incorporates at least the side walls of the Clifford Theatre, built in 1905.
This house was mentioned as the Seneca Theatre in the January 24, 1945, issue of The Film Daily. It had just been sold to C. F. Sanders by John Panapoulos.
A Belington movie house called the Grand is mentioned in the January 15, 1928, issue of the same publication, and I’ve found a Grand Theatre mentioned in The Moving Picture World as early as September 14, 1918. I don’t know if it was the same theater that later became the Bellington/Seneca, or a different theater. The Seneca’s building does look old enough to have been around in the 1910s or even earlier.
The web site Jazz Age Chicago, to which I linked in a comment on January 25, 2010, has vanished from the Internet. Fortunately, the site’s article on the Star and Garter Theatre has been preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. It can be read at this link.
An architect named George H. Dieringer had his office in the Southern Theater Building, Wheeling, according to items in issues of The American Contractor in 1913. I’ve been unable to find references to the theater itself, though, and I don’t know if the Southern Theater Building of 1913 housed this theater or an earlier one of the same name.
The building in Adam’s photos does look old enough to have been around in 1913, though it also looks as though it might have been an ordinary commercial and office block that was altered to accommodate a theater at some point. It also seems unlikely that a busy architect would have had his office in this outlying neighborhood instead of downtown.
This photo of Baker Street circa 1930 includes the Rialto Theatre. Click on the image to enlarge, then follow instructions to zoom in. The Rialto is on the far corner of the intersection on the right.
Here is another photo showing the Princess/Ellis Theatre late in its history, during the 1960s, when it had become Mt. Zion Church.
From the same time period, the back of the theater, with the name Princess Theatre still painted on the stage house. Everything around it had already been demolished for an urban undo-all project, and the theater building would soon fall victim to the same folly.
The photo of the Egyptian-styled theater that kenmcintyre linked to earlier has gone missing. This is its current location, but the California State Library doesn’t provide permalinks so it will probably vanish again. It turns out to be, as GaryParks surmised, a sort of architectural sampler. It was a model theater produced around 1915 by the Epco Theatre Supply Company (EPCO = Electrical Products Corporation, so it probably displayed something like theater lighting equipment.)
Gary is right about the S. Charles Lee drawing being for the Hollywood Egyptian. The drawing was mislabled by the S. C. Lee Collection as being a house in Long Beach. Lee probably had nothing to do with this theater, so only Baume and Davies should be credited as the architects.
The photo information with the Long Beach Digital Archives' copy of the picture of the Oriental Theatre discussed in earlier comments gives the correct address of 5384 Long Beach Boulevard. That means that Oriental Theatre and Murray’s Theatre (the name on the side of the stage house) are aka’s for the La Shell. It was the L.A.Public Library that got the Oriental’s address wrong, as I’d suspected (although their digital copy is bigger and a bit clearer than the copy Long Beach shows.) Our listing for the Oriental Theatre is redundant and should be deleted.
Thanks for letting us know about the archive, DebraLea.
The January 21, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News had this item pertaining to the Schultz Opera House and two other Zanesville theaters:
“The Shultz Opera House, Zanesville, Ohio, is to become one of a chain of three houses which will be operated by the Imperial Theatres Co., recently incorporated at Columbus, Ohio. According to announcement by Manager Sam K. Lind. approximately $70,000 will be spent for improvements which will include a new organ. The Shultz was the first house in the city to play legitimate attractions, having recently gone into vaudeville and pictures. The new organization will also operate the Imperial and Quimby theatres in Zanesville.”
On June 17, 1928, The Film Daily reported that the three houses owned by Imperial Theatres had been taken over by Caldwell Brown, operator of Zanesville’s three other theaters. The names of the houses were unchanged from 1927, except that the Schultz Opera House had become the Schultz Theatre.
In 1933, the Caldwell Brown circuit got into financial trouble, and the July 15 issue of The Film Daily reported that the company’s Weller Theatre would be transfered to the Shea circuit. The other three houses Brown was operating would be part of a new company formed by Brown and Sam Lind. The three theaters were the Liberty, the Imperial, and the a house called the Columbia Theatre.
This raises the possibility that by 1933 either the Schultz Theatre or the first Imperial Theatre on Main Street had been renamed the Columbia. If it was the house on Main Street, then this theater had probably been renamed the Imperial by that time. This house was renamed the Imperial at some point in the 1930s, in any case, and prior to 1933 would be as good a time as any. A local source (newspaper announcement or the address in a city directory, for example) will have to confirm the change, though.
A 1905 book called Past and Present of the City of Zanesville and Muskingham County, Ohio, by J. Hope Sutor, says that the Weller Theatre was designed by Columbus, Ohio, architect Frederick Elliot in association with local architect Harry C. Meyer. The opening date was April 27, 1903. The opening night featured the operatic musical “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”, produced on Broadway in 1902 by F. C. Whitney. The book doesn’t specify, but this was probably the Whitney Opera Company’s own road show version of the production.
The Weller Theatre was decorated by artist Alfred Ronchetti, a recent immigrant from Switzerland who, in 1904, returned to Zanesville to establish himself as the town’s leading decorator.
By 1928, the Weller Theatre was controlled by Caldwell Brown, who also had the Liberty and Grand Theatres. The July 17, 1928, issue of The Film Daily reported that Brown had acquired control of the Imperial Theatres Company, operating the Imperial, Quimby, and Shultz Theatres in Zanesville.
The Shea circuit took over operation of the Weller Theatre in 1933. The announcement of the transfer of the house from the Caldwell Brown circuit to M. A. Shea appeared in the July 28 issue of The Film Daily.
The August 8 issue of The Film Daily ran this announcement about Shea’s plans for the Weller Theatre:
“Zanesville, O. — M. A. Shea, lessee of the Weller, has retained Harry Holbrook, Columbus theatrical architect, to draft remodeling plans for the house, which will open with pictures and vaudeville early in September.”
The April 25, 1941, issue of The Film Daily reported that Shea Theatres, operators of the Weller Theatre, had taken over Zanesville’s other four movie houses: The Quimby, the Imperial, the New Liberty, and the Grand.
The building appears to still have some of the gear with which that ornate Art Nouveau front of 1907 or 1908 was attached to the structure. Though the theater front is gone, that single window on the second floor also remains as a testament to the alterations the facade underwent when the theater was installed.
The earliest instance of the name Casino Theatre being used at Zanesville that I’ve found in trade publications is in the September 26, 1908, issue of The Billboard. Prior to that, Clyde Quimby is noted as the manager of a movie house called the Pictorium. I don’t know if Pictorium was an earlier name for the Casino or not. Interestingly, some earlier issues of the magazine from 1908 also list a Grand Theatre in operation at Zanesville. It was a movie house managed by J. G. Harlan.
A photo of the interior of the Casino Theatre appears in an ad for the Rudolph Wurlizer Comapny on this page of The Moving Picture World along with a letter from W.C. Quimby, dated September 11, 1911, praising the Wurlitzer PianOrchestra which he had recently installed in the house.
The building at this address looks quite old. The three-story front is shallow, and the lower building behind it does look as though it could have been the auditorium. I think the Grand Theatre’s building is still standing, though the theater has undoubtedly long since been dismantled.
There is nothing on the Summit Hippodrome’s official web site but a rather cryptic message from what is probably the hosting company. Nothing is listed at web sites such as Box Office Mojo, either. I don’t think this theater is open.
Before it was merged with Union Hill in 1925, this section of Union City was called West Hoboken. The March 19, 1921, issue of The American Contractor had an item about the proposed theater:
Courtland Street was later renamed 8th Street. The theater is still standing, at least in part, occupied by a CVS drug store. There is a parking lot in front of the building. I don’t know if CVS lopped off the front of the building, or if the parking lot was there when the theater opened, but I suspect that the lobby and foyer were removed and that the store occupies the auditorium space. The address of the CVS is 714 Summit Avenue, so that must have been the theater’s address as well.Cinema Treasures currently has eight theaters listed as having been designed by architect William E. Lehman. There could be others that have not yet been identified.
The article RidgewoodKen linked to says that the theater was built “…in the early 1900s….” and notes that local resident John Carmazzi remembers going to the theater in 1939, the year before Warren Grimes bought the house and renamed it after his daughter.
Another article about the closing of the Urbana Cinema notes its connection to the Clifford Theatre, saying this: “In September of 1940, Urbana aviation lighting pioneer and industrialist Warren Grimes bought the building and tore out the decayed parts, remodeling the old structure into a premier motion picture house for Champaign countians.”
Mr. Carmazzi’s memory indicates that the Clifford Theatre was still operating (though he doesn’t mention the name) in the late 1930s. As I noted earlier, it’s pretty clear from the look of the building that it incorporates at least the side walls of the Clifford Theatre, built in 1905.
This house was mentioned as the Seneca Theatre in the January 24, 1945, issue of The Film Daily. It had just been sold to C. F. Sanders by John Panapoulos.
A Belington movie house called the Grand is mentioned in the January 15, 1928, issue of the same publication, and I’ve found a Grand Theatre mentioned in The Moving Picture World as early as September 14, 1918. I don’t know if it was the same theater that later became the Bellington/Seneca, or a different theater. The Seneca’s building does look old enough to have been around in the 1910s or even earlier.
The web site Jazz Age Chicago, to which I linked in a comment on January 25, 2010, has vanished from the Internet. Fortunately, the site’s article on the Star and Garter Theatre has been preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. It can be read at this link.
Adam Martin has photos of the Southern Theatre at CinemaTour.
An architect named George H. Dieringer had his office in the Southern Theater Building, Wheeling, according to items in issues of The American Contractor in 1913. I’ve been unable to find references to the theater itself, though, and I don’t know if the Southern Theater Building of 1913 housed this theater or an earlier one of the same name.
The building in Adam’s photos does look old enough to have been around in 1913, though it also looks as though it might have been an ordinary commercial and office block that was altered to accommodate a theater at some point. It also seems unlikely that a busy architect would have had his office in this outlying neighborhood instead of downtown.
In late 1909, the National Theatre was being advertised in San Francisco newspapers as a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house.
Here is a photo of the Victory Theatre dated 1909.
Here is a photo of downtown Dinuba with the Strand Theatre as it appeared in the 1920s.
Here is a photo of the New Alcazar Theatre dated 1907.
Here is a photo of the Optic Theatre in Whitter dated 1909.
This photo of Baker Street circa 1930 includes the Rialto Theatre. Click on the image to enlarge, then follow instructions to zoom in. The Rialto is on the far corner of the intersection on the right.
Here is a photo of the Tivoli Theatre dated 1917.
Here is a 1925 photo of Market Street with the Pompeii Theatre at the left.
Here is another photo showing the Princess/Ellis Theatre late in its history, during the 1960s, when it had become Mt. Zion Church.
From the same time period, the back of the theater, with the name Princess Theatre still painted on the stage house. Everything around it had already been demolished for an urban undo-all project, and the theater building would soon fall victim to the same folly.
Here is a photo of Theatre Visalia from the 1920s.
Here is a 1907 postcard photo showing the Orpheum Theatre and its neighbor, the Princess, later to be called the Ellis Theatre.
Here is a 1907 postcard photo showing the Princess Theatre and its neighbor, the Orpheum, later to be called the Garrick Theatre.
Oh, and this house was listed as the Fox Egyptian Theatre, at 234 E. 4th Street, in the 1935 Long Beach city directory.
The photo of the Egyptian-styled theater that kenmcintyre linked to earlier has gone missing. This is its current location, but the California State Library doesn’t provide permalinks so it will probably vanish again. It turns out to be, as GaryParks surmised, a sort of architectural sampler. It was a model theater produced around 1915 by the Epco Theatre Supply Company (EPCO = Electrical Products Corporation, so it probably displayed something like theater lighting equipment.)
Gary is right about the S. Charles Lee drawing being for the Hollywood Egyptian. The drawing was mislabled by the S. C. Lee Collection as being a house in Long Beach. Lee probably had nothing to do with this theater, so only Baume and Davies should be credited as the architects.
The photo information with the Long Beach Digital Archives' copy of the picture of the Oriental Theatre discussed in earlier comments gives the correct address of 5384 Long Beach Boulevard. That means that Oriental Theatre and Murray’s Theatre (the name on the side of the stage house) are aka’s for the La Shell. It was the L.A.Public Library that got the Oriental’s address wrong, as I’d suspected (although their digital copy is bigger and a bit clearer than the copy Long Beach shows.) Our listing for the Oriental Theatre is redundant and should be deleted.
Thanks for letting us know about the archive, DebraLea.
The January 21, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News had this item pertaining to the Schultz Opera House and two other Zanesville theaters:
On June 17, 1928, The Film Daily reported that the three houses owned by Imperial Theatres had been taken over by Caldwell Brown, operator of Zanesville’s three other theaters. The names of the houses were unchanged from 1927, except that the Schultz Opera House had become the Schultz Theatre.In 1933, the Caldwell Brown circuit got into financial trouble, and the July 15 issue of The Film Daily reported that the company’s Weller Theatre would be transfered to the Shea circuit. The other three houses Brown was operating would be part of a new company formed by Brown and Sam Lind. The three theaters were the Liberty, the Imperial, and the a house called the Columbia Theatre.
This raises the possibility that by 1933 either the Schultz Theatre or the first Imperial Theatre on Main Street had been renamed the Columbia. If it was the house on Main Street, then this theater had probably been renamed the Imperial by that time. This house was renamed the Imperial at some point in the 1930s, in any case, and prior to 1933 would be as good a time as any. A local source (newspaper announcement or the address in a city directory, for example) will have to confirm the change, though.
A 1905 book called Past and Present of the City of Zanesville and Muskingham County, Ohio, by J. Hope Sutor, says that the Weller Theatre was designed by Columbus, Ohio, architect Frederick Elliot in association with local architect Harry C. Meyer. The opening date was April 27, 1903. The opening night featured the operatic musical “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”, produced on Broadway in 1902 by F. C. Whitney. The book doesn’t specify, but this was probably the Whitney Opera Company’s own road show version of the production.
The Weller Theatre was decorated by artist Alfred Ronchetti, a recent immigrant from Switzerland who, in 1904, returned to Zanesville to establish himself as the town’s leading decorator.
By 1928, the Weller Theatre was controlled by Caldwell Brown, who also had the Liberty and Grand Theatres. The July 17, 1928, issue of The Film Daily reported that Brown had acquired control of the Imperial Theatres Company, operating the Imperial, Quimby, and Shultz Theatres in Zanesville.
The Shea circuit took over operation of the Weller Theatre in 1933. The announcement of the transfer of the house from the Caldwell Brown circuit to M. A. Shea appeared in the July 28 issue of The Film Daily.
The August 8 issue of The Film Daily ran this announcement about Shea’s plans for the Weller Theatre:
The April 25, 1941, issue of The Film Daily reported that Shea Theatres, operators of the Weller Theatre, had taken over Zanesville’s other four movie houses: The Quimby, the Imperial, the New Liberty, and the Grand.The building appears to still have some of the gear with which that ornate Art Nouveau front of 1907 or 1908 was attached to the structure. Though the theater front is gone, that single window on the second floor also remains as a testament to the alterations the facade underwent when the theater was installed.
The earliest instance of the name Casino Theatre being used at Zanesville that I’ve found in trade publications is in the September 26, 1908, issue of The Billboard. Prior to that, Clyde Quimby is noted as the manager of a movie house called the Pictorium. I don’t know if Pictorium was an earlier name for the Casino or not. Interestingly, some earlier issues of the magazine from 1908 also list a Grand Theatre in operation at Zanesville. It was a movie house managed by J. G. Harlan.
A photo of the interior of the Casino Theatre appears in an ad for the Rudolph Wurlizer Comapny on this page of The Moving Picture World along with a letter from W.C. Quimby, dated September 11, 1911, praising the Wurlitzer PianOrchestra which he had recently installed in the house.
The building at this address looks quite old. The three-story front is shallow, and the lower building behind it does look as though it could have been the auditorium. I think the Grand Theatre’s building is still standing, though the theater has undoubtedly long since been dismantled.