Articles about the opening of the Edge Moor Theatre appeared in the Wilmington Sunday Morning Star of November 30, 1941. The new house had opened the previous Wednesday. One article reveals that the Edge Moor Theatre was designed by architect Armand de Cortieux Carroll.
The introductory line of our description for this theater is a bit misleading. The Garden Cinemas was across Isaac Street from the corner of the parking lot behind the Globe/Roxy Theatre. Saying “…by the former Globe/Roxy” makes it sound like they were in neighboring buildings, when actually the back of one is a couple of hundred feet from the front of the other.
Google Maps camera car didn’t go down Isaac Street, but if you look south on Isaac from Wall Street, I believe the Cinema Norwalk/Garden Cinemas was in the building at the end of the block, with the red and white vertical stripes.
Yes, the Polonia Theatre is listed at 405-407 Maryland from 1915 to 1921, but I don’t know if that was a different building exactly a block away, or if Wilmington simply renumbered its blocks in 1921.
Maryland Avenue (aka Delaware 4) maps properly at Google Maps. The map for our page probably needs to be reset with the correct zip code, which is 19804.
The Library of Congress has this closeup photo of the State Theatre’s marquee and tower, dated 1937.
A catalog of copyrights issued in 1935 has an entry for a copyright issued to architect Victor A. Rigaumont for “…additions to State Theatre at Manchester, N. H., for M. A. Shea and associates.” It is dated April 12, 1935. There’s no indication as to the nature or extent of the additions.
This piece about the Empire Theatre (linked earlier by lostmemory) says that “New York architect, Claufflin, designed the new house.” Maine Memory is the only web site that makes any reference to a theater architect named Claufflin, and I don’t find him mentioned in any periodicals of the time.
I suppose that they must be referring to Fuller Claflin, the somewhat peripatetic theater architect who was practicing in New York City at the time the Empire was built. He had previously worked in San Francisco (1890-1895), and would open an office in Detroit in 1909.
The 1915 Manchester City Directory lists the Modern Theatre as 58 Amory Street. I don’t know if that is an error, or if the Modern Theatre actually moved across the street, or if Manchester flipped its odd and even numbers to the opposites sides of the streets.
There is no listing for a Notre Dame Theatre, though Notre Dame was an apt name in this district of Manchester. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the area west of the river was the home of many French Canadians who had come to work in the Amoskeag company’s textile mills.
The vertical sign and side wall of the Modern Theatre can be seen at the left in this photo from the Library of Congress. A large poster on the theater’s wall advertises the 1937 movie Thunder in the City, starring Edward G. Robinson.
As can be seen by comparing the photo with the Google Street View of this neighborhood, the entire area has been redeveloped and the Modern Theatre building is gone, along with everything else on the block.
There’s a 1939 photo of Elm Street showing part of the State Theatre at the bottom of page 32 of Manchester Streetcars, by O. R. Cummings (Google Books preview.)
Google’s camera car went through the alleys on this block of Manchester, so street view shows the back of the building. The auditorium end of the Strand Theatre’s entrance arcade can be seen from across the parking lot where the auditorium once stood.
The Strand Theatre opened on January 24, 1881, as the Manchester Opera House. A history of the building can be seen on this web page. The building was designed by architect John T. Fanning in the Queen Anne style (unlike many Victorian architects who would call just about any old pile of ornament Queen Anne, Fanning gave the Opera Block a fairly credible reinterpretation of the original English Renaissance-Baroque style.) The theater was renamed the Strand as early as 1906.
Several sources indicate that the Strand operated as a regular movie theater until the early 1970s, then operated as an adult movie house for several years. The building suffered two fires in 1985, the second of which, on March 10, resulted in the demolition of the auditorium. The surviving portion of the building was renovated not long after the fire and now houses luxury apartments, office space, and trendy retail establishments.
The entrance to the theater was through an arcade leading from the arch seen at the center of this modern photo of the restored Opera Block (aka Harrington-Smith Block.) The name Strand is still set into the tile at the entrance.
The caption of a c. 1912 photo of the Crown Theatre on page 48 of Manchester, by Robert B. Perreault (Google Books preview), says that the Crown was renamed the Variety Theatre in 1955 and continued to operate under that name until closing in 1961.
The Lyric Theatre is listed as a moving picture theater at 51 Hanover Street in the 1920 Manchester City Directory. I don’t know if the directory got the address wrong or if the Lyric moved a few doors down the block sometime between 1920 and 1922.
The Shubert Theatre is listed at 201-209 Bleeker Street in the 1910 Utica city directory. Norman O. Keim’s Our Movie Houses gives the aka Buckley Theatre for this house in 1914, and lists it as the Colonial from 1917 to 1945. The name Buckley must have been temporary, as I’ve found the Shubert mentioned in 1916, and in 1915, when the August 7 issue of The Moving Picture World said that an organ was being installed in the house.
The “New Theaters” column of the May 17, 1928, issue of The Film Daily ran a brief announcement saying that the Queen Anne Theatre in Bogota, New Jersey, had opened.
The September 4, 2012, edition of the Shawnee Dispatch ran this fairly long article about the delay in getting the Fine Arts Theatre open. There have been conflicts over the city’s building permit requirements, and the owner of the building said that he was ready to abandon the project and sell the building for the $240,000 he had invested in it. I haven’t found anything more recent about the project, so I guess we can assume that it is still stalled.
The Yearbook did sometimes fail to update a theater’s name when it was changed, so we’ll probably have to dig up some other source to be sure when the Jason became the Victor, but the odds are that it didn’t happen until the 1950s.
I’ve found references to a stage production sponsored by the Federal Theatre Project being mounted at the Roosevelt Theatre in East Weymouth in 1938.
This page has an early photo of the Odd Fellows Building. It looks like there’s a poster case next to the Cottage Street entrance at far right.
Various fragments on the Internet indicate that, in the 1930s, Nelson E. Ward was the owner of the Mt. Sterling Amusement Company, operating the Trimble and Tabb Theatres in Mount Sterling. The Tabb opened in 1910 on South Maysville Street as the Tabb Opera House. It was listed by Julius Cahn as a 700-seat, ground floor theater. The Trimble Theatre isn’t listed in any of the Cahn guides available, so it probably opened after 1922.
The Canby Cinema 8 was designed by Seattle architectural firm The Design Collective, headed by James R. Blissett. Five photos can be seen in the Portfolio section of the firm’s web site.
James Blissett, principal architect with The Design Collective, the Seattle firm that designed this multiplex, is also a partner in SEEfilm, the company that operates it. SEEfilm intends to build additional cinemas serving smaller, under-served markets such as Bremerton.
Built atop a parking garage in downtown Bremerton, this 1,400-seat multiplex features auditoriums seating between 48 and 280. Four screens are equipped to show 3D movies, and one auditorium, admitting only patrons over 21, will have beer and wine available.
The Design Collective has designed at least ten other cinema projects, some newly built and some expanded or remodeled, at locations in Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, and one project in Ohio.
There is a Jason Theatre at East Weymouth listed in the Film Daily Yearbook at least as as late as 1953. If it is the same house as the Victor, the name changed after that. This Weymouth chronology says that there were three movie theaters in Weymouth in 1946: the Cameo in South Weyouth, the Weymouth at Weymouth Landing, and the Jason in East Weymouth. The Roosevelt Theatre is mentioned in a 1936 issue of Motion Picture Herald.
Parts of Center Street were incorporated into Lincoln Avenue, but that did not include the part that was between Anaheim Blvd. and the railroad tracks, as well as a stretch west of Anaheim Blvd. to a point near Harbor Blvd.. The stretch just east of Anaheim Blvd. was realigned about 100 feet north, but it is still called Center Street. See this aerial view at Historic Aerials to see where Center Street has survived (select “All Roads” from the overlays menu to see the street names.)
The stretch of Center Street just west of Anaheim Blvd., where the Star Theatre was located, was covered with new construction in the 1970s, as part of an urban renewal project. As the theater was on the north side of the street its site is now part of the driveway and parking lot just north of where Vons Market is presently located.
After the Star Theatre closed, Mr. Beddig operated a house in Anaheim called the Mason Theatre, according to the November 21, 1914, issue of Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer, which said that he had let a $5,000 contract for installation of a Wurlitzer pipe organ in the theater.
The Mason was probably the theater on the ground floor of the Masonic lodge built at Center and Emily streets in 1913, and designed by local architect Fred H. Eley. That part of Center Street still exists, so when the Mason is added to Cinema Treasures it should keep its historic Center Street address. The Grand Theatre was also east of Anaheim Blvd., so it too should be listed on Center Street, not Lincoln Avenue.
Articles about the opening of the Edge Moor Theatre appeared in the Wilmington Sunday Morning Star of November 30, 1941. The new house had opened the previous Wednesday. One article reveals that the Edge Moor Theatre was designed by architect Armand de Cortieux Carroll.
The introductory line of our description for this theater is a bit misleading. The Garden Cinemas was across Isaac Street from the corner of the parking lot behind the Globe/Roxy Theatre. Saying “…by the former Globe/Roxy” makes it sound like they were in neighboring buildings, when actually the back of one is a couple of hundred feet from the front of the other.
Google Maps camera car didn’t go down Isaac Street, but if you look south on Isaac from Wall Street, I believe the Cinema Norwalk/Garden Cinemas was in the building at the end of the block, with the red and white vertical stripes.
Yes, the Polonia Theatre is listed at 405-407 Maryland from 1915 to 1921, but I don’t know if that was a different building exactly a block away, or if Wilmington simply renumbered its blocks in 1921.
Maryland Avenue (aka Delaware 4) maps properly at Google Maps. The map for our page probably needs to be reset with the correct zip code, which is 19804.
The Library of Congress has this closeup photo of the State Theatre’s marquee and tower, dated 1937.
A catalog of copyrights issued in 1935 has an entry for a copyright issued to architect Victor A. Rigaumont for “…additions to State Theatre at Manchester, N. H., for M. A. Shea and associates.” It is dated April 12, 1935. There’s no indication as to the nature or extent of the additions.
This piece about the Empire Theatre (linked earlier by lostmemory) says that “New York architect, Claufflin, designed the new house.” Maine Memory is the only web site that makes any reference to a theater architect named Claufflin, and I don’t find him mentioned in any periodicals of the time.
I suppose that they must be referring to Fuller Claflin, the somewhat peripatetic theater architect who was practicing in New York City at the time the Empire was built. He had previously worked in San Francisco (1890-1895), and would open an office in Detroit in 1909.
This weblog post from MassHistory has several photos of the Buzzards Bay Theatre, including an early postcard that appears to be from the 1930s.
The 1915 Manchester City Directory lists the Modern Theatre as 58 Amory Street. I don’t know if that is an error, or if the Modern Theatre actually moved across the street, or if Manchester flipped its odd and even numbers to the opposites sides of the streets.
There is no listing for a Notre Dame Theatre, though Notre Dame was an apt name in this district of Manchester. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the area west of the river was the home of many French Canadians who had come to work in the Amoskeag company’s textile mills.
The vertical sign and side wall of the Modern Theatre can be seen at the left in this photo from the Library of Congress. A large poster on the theater’s wall advertises the 1937 movie Thunder in the City, starring Edward G. Robinson.
As can be seen by comparing the photo with the Google Street View of this neighborhood, the entire area has been redeveloped and the Modern Theatre building is gone, along with everything else on the block.
There’s a 1939 photo of Elm Street showing part of the State Theatre at the bottom of page 32 of Manchester Streetcars, by O. R. Cummings (Google Books preview.)
Google’s camera car went through the alleys on this block of Manchester, so street view shows the back of the building. The auditorium end of the Strand Theatre’s entrance arcade can be seen from across the parking lot where the auditorium once stood.
The Strand Theatre opened on January 24, 1881, as the Manchester Opera House. A history of the building can be seen on this web page. The building was designed by architect John T. Fanning in the Queen Anne style (unlike many Victorian architects who would call just about any old pile of ornament Queen Anne, Fanning gave the Opera Block a fairly credible reinterpretation of the original English Renaissance-Baroque style.) The theater was renamed the Strand as early as 1906.
Several sources indicate that the Strand operated as a regular movie theater until the early 1970s, then operated as an adult movie house for several years. The building suffered two fires in 1985, the second of which, on March 10, resulted in the demolition of the auditorium. The surviving portion of the building was renovated not long after the fire and now houses luxury apartments, office space, and trendy retail establishments.
The entrance to the theater was through an arcade leading from the arch seen at the center of this modern photo of the restored Opera Block (aka Harrington-Smith Block.) The name Strand is still set into the tile at the entrance.
The caption of a c. 1912 photo of the Crown Theatre on page 48 of Manchester, by Robert B. Perreault (Google Books preview), says that the Crown was renamed the Variety Theatre in 1955 and continued to operate under that name until closing in 1961.
The Lyric Theatre is listed as a moving picture theater at 51 Hanover Street in the 1920 Manchester City Directory. I don’t know if the directory got the address wrong or if the Lyric moved a few doors down the block sometime between 1920 and 1922.
The Eagle Theatre is listed at 1182 Elm Street in the 1920 Manchester City Directory.
The Crown Theatre is listed at 97 Hanover Street in the 1920 Manchester City Directory.
The Modern Theatre is listed in the 1920 Manchester City Directory.
The Shubert Theatre is listed at 201-209 Bleeker Street in the 1910 Utica city directory. Norman O. Keim’s Our Movie Houses gives the aka Buckley Theatre for this house in 1914, and lists it as the Colonial from 1917 to 1945. The name Buckley must have been temporary, as I’ve found the Shubert mentioned in 1916, and in 1915, when the August 7 issue of The Moving Picture World said that an organ was being installed in the house.
The “New Theaters” column of the May 17, 1928, issue of The Film Daily ran a brief announcement saying that the Queen Anne Theatre in Bogota, New Jersey, had opened.
The September 4, 2012, edition of the Shawnee Dispatch ran this fairly long article about the delay in getting the Fine Arts Theatre open. There have been conflicts over the city’s building permit requirements, and the owner of the building said that he was ready to abandon the project and sell the building for the $240,000 he had invested in it. I haven’t found anything more recent about the project, so I guess we can assume that it is still stalled.
The Yearbook did sometimes fail to update a theater’s name when it was changed, so we’ll probably have to dig up some other source to be sure when the Jason became the Victor, but the odds are that it didn’t happen until the 1950s.
I’ve found references to a stage production sponsored by the Federal Theatre Project being mounted at the Roosevelt Theatre in East Weymouth in 1938.
This page has an early photo of the Odd Fellows Building. It looks like there’s a poster case next to the Cottage Street entrance at far right.
Various fragments on the Internet indicate that, in the 1930s, Nelson E. Ward was the owner of the Mt. Sterling Amusement Company, operating the Trimble and Tabb Theatres in Mount Sterling. The Tabb opened in 1910 on South Maysville Street as the Tabb Opera House. It was listed by Julius Cahn as a 700-seat, ground floor theater. The Trimble Theatre isn’t listed in any of the Cahn guides available, so it probably opened after 1922.
The Canby Cinema 8 was designed by Seattle architectural firm The Design Collective, headed by James R. Blissett. Five photos can be seen in the Portfolio section of the firm’s web site.
James Blissett, principal architect with The Design Collective, the Seattle firm that designed this multiplex, is also a partner in SEEfilm, the company that operates it. SEEfilm intends to build additional cinemas serving smaller, under-served markets such as Bremerton.
Built atop a parking garage in downtown Bremerton, this 1,400-seat multiplex features auditoriums seating between 48 and 280. Four screens are equipped to show 3D movies, and one auditorium, admitting only patrons over 21, will have beer and wine available.
The Design Collective has designed at least ten other cinema projects, some newly built and some expanded or remodeled, at locations in Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, and one project in Ohio.
There is a Jason Theatre at East Weymouth listed in the Film Daily Yearbook at least as as late as 1953. If it is the same house as the Victor, the name changed after that. This Weymouth chronology says that there were three movie theaters in Weymouth in 1946: the Cameo in South Weyouth, the Weymouth at Weymouth Landing, and the Jason in East Weymouth. The Roosevelt Theatre is mentioned in a 1936 issue of Motion Picture Herald.
Parts of Center Street were incorporated into Lincoln Avenue, but that did not include the part that was between Anaheim Blvd. and the railroad tracks, as well as a stretch west of Anaheim Blvd. to a point near Harbor Blvd.. The stretch just east of Anaheim Blvd. was realigned about 100 feet north, but it is still called Center Street. See this aerial view at Historic Aerials to see where Center Street has survived (select “All Roads” from the overlays menu to see the street names.)
The stretch of Center Street just west of Anaheim Blvd., where the Star Theatre was located, was covered with new construction in the 1970s, as part of an urban renewal project. As the theater was on the north side of the street its site is now part of the driveway and parking lot just north of where Vons Market is presently located.
After the Star Theatre closed, Mr. Beddig operated a house in Anaheim called the Mason Theatre, according to the November 21, 1914, issue of Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer, which said that he had let a $5,000 contract for installation of a Wurlitzer pipe organ in the theater.
The Mason was probably the theater on the ground floor of the Masonic lodge built at Center and Emily streets in 1913, and designed by local architect Fred H. Eley. That part of Center Street still exists, so when the Mason is added to Cinema Treasures it should keep its historic Center Street address. The Grand Theatre was also east of Anaheim Blvd., so it too should be listed on Center Street, not Lincoln Avenue.
Linkrot repair: Here is a fresh link to the 1950 Gulistan Carpet ad with the photo of the Academy Theatre’s mezzanine lounge.