Recent comments on the State Theatre page indicate that it was the Washington Theatre, not the State, that was renovated and renamed the Penn Theatre. The Washington reopened as the Penn in March, 1961, and closed in April, 1973. It was demolished shortly after closing.
RSM3853’s list of movies shown at the State and Penn Theatres indicates that the State closed at the end of May, 1960, and the Penn opened in March, 1961. The operators must have decided to close the larger State Theatre and renovate and rename the smaller Washington Theatre to be their first-run house. With the decline in theater attendance that took place in the 1950s and 1960s, that would have made economic sense.
There were two houses called the Orpheum in Danvers. The annual report of the Peabody Institute published in March, 1912, mentioned an event with movies held at the Orpheum Theatre in Danvers the previous November. I’ve also found references from 1916 to a Danvers house called Brown’s Orpheum, operated by Louis Brown.
However, various issue of The Film Daily from 1926 and 1927 say that a house called either the Danvers Theatre or the Elm Theatre in various items was destroyed by fire in 1926, and was replaced by a 1000-seat theater which was originally to have been called the Capitol (issue of January 9) but which opened as the Orpheum (issue of February 9.)
The owner was Louis Brown, presumably the same who was the operator of Brown’s Orpheum in 1916, so it seems likely that the house destroyed by fire was the original Orpheum using a different name. A 1922 directory of New England businesses lists only one theater for Danvers, that being the Elm, though its address was 12 High Street. Mr.Brown might have acquired extra frontage for his rebuilding project, or perhaps simply shifted the theater entrance to a different part of the lot.
Auction site WorthPoint was recently offering a movie program from the Orpheum Theatre in Danvers for the week of October 20, 1940. The house had three changes a week at that time. The Orpheum is also mentioned in a 2011 article about the 50th reunion of a local high school’s class of 1961, and the author mentions attending the Orpheum during his high school years, so the house probably operated at least into the early 1960s.
Chuck, if the Penn was torn down and replaced by a parking lot in 1973 then it must have been the Washington that was renamed the Penn, not the State. The only parking lot on this block of Chestnut Street is the one where the Washington Theatre used to be, right across the street from the State. The State’s entrance building, at least, is still standing.
A paragraph about the Washington Theatre on this web page says that it did become the Penn Theatre, and this earlier comment by sgtjim says that he thought the Washington and the Penn were the same house, too.
I’m sure this is the same house that was listed as the Alpine Theatre, 834 Alpine Street, in the Moving Picture Theatres section of the 1926 city directory, and at 826 Alpine Street in the 1929 city directory. It’s back at 834 Alpine in the 1936 and 1938 directories. In 1939, the Alpine Theatre is gone and the first listing for the Carmen Theatre at 722 N. Figueroa Street appears. No theaters are listed under any name at either address in the 1927 or 1932 directories.
The February 29, 1936, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that D. F. Lyon was reopening the Alpine Theatre in Los Angeles, which had been closed for some time. The place apparently closed and reopened multiple times. I remember seeing this theater in the early 1960s, but I can’t remember if it was open or closed, nor can I remember what name, if any, was on the marquee.
Boxoffice of July 27, 1935, said that the Beverly Theatre was designed by architects Ronald F. Perry and Helmuth Bartsch. >This web page about Helmut [sic] Bartsch has seven photos of the Beverly Theatre (and also four apparently unrelated photos mistakenly labeled as depicting the Beverly Theatre.)
Helmuth Bartsch was an associate of Holabird & Root or its successor firms from 1928 through 1965. Ronald Perry was not mentioned in an exhaustive list of the Holabird & Root’s associates, so he must have been an independent architect.
I don’t know why I wrote Joe Goodman in my previous comment. The songwriter’s name was Joe Goodwin.
The Worcester Theatre isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures, and I’ve been unable to discover if it ever showed movies, other than a single exhibition of an early sound film process in 1913. Here’s a page with a photo of it anyway. It had a somewhat more ornate front than the Fine Arts, with some nice Romanesque detailing. Almost every comment on the page conflates it with either the Lothrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts or the Poli/Hanover Theatre.
Volume two of History of Worcester and its People, by Charles Nutt, published in 1919, says that the Strand Theatre was opened in 1916. It was devoted primarily to movies, but sometimes presented vaudeville acts as well.
bbatty: The 1986 photo linked to by lostmemory in the comment of May 15, 2009, shows the same building that is in the Google Street View currently displayed at the top of this page. The Google view shows Pleasant Street, and is dated August, 2007. I believe that the Worcester Theatre on Exchange Street was long gone by that time. The theater in our photos has to be the Lathrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts.
Here is a photo of this theater when it was the Olympia. The John Wayne movie Flame of the Barabary Coast is advertised on the marquee, which dates the photo to about 1945.
The photo comes from this weblog post about songwriter Joe Goodman, which is worth a visit in its own right, as are Chet Williamson’s other posts about Worcester’s songwriters.
The July 24, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World spells the name Dorris, with two r’s, as does an item in the August 26, 1916, issue of the same publication saying that the Dorris Theatre at Roseville had been sold to J. E. Edmonds, formerly of Los Gatos, and had been combined with the Rose Theatre (listed here as the Roxie.) Those are the only two references to this theater in publications of the period that I can find.
The December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that a group of Williamsburg exhibitors had met at the Progress Theater, 116 Graham Avenue, on November 20 to establish a branch of the New York City Exhibitors' Association.
I don’t know if the addresses have been shifted since 1913, or if the entrance to the theater actually was once in the other store building that fronts the auditorium. It must have been the same house, in any case.
Cezar DelValle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index says that this house was in operation as the Progress Theatre in 1912-1913, became the Variety Theatre from 1914-1917, and returned to being the Progress Theatre from 1918 until 1933, when it became the Lindy Theatre, closing in 1954.
This house didn’t make it into Cezar Del Valle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index, but it did get mentioned in the December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World. The Leonard Theatre was to host the second meeting of the recently-formed Williamsburg branch of the New York City Exhibitor’s League.
The first meeting, which had been held at the Progress Theatre, was attended by representatives of the Leonard Theatre and of the Broadway Lyceum, Graham Palace, Tompkins Amusement Company, Bushwick Casino, and the Progress, Metropolitan, Lewis, Williamsburg, Owl, Sutter, Bushwick, Old Postoffice, Greenpoint, and Kensington Theatres.
Rumors that Shubert might take over the old Warner Hollywood have been around for more than a decade. An August 31, 2001, item in the Los Angeles Times said that the idea had been floated by Leron Gubler, executive director of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. It’s been floating ever since.
Maybe the Shubert organization was just waiting for the church’s lease to end, but then with their deep pockets it seems they would have been able to buy out the church’s lease twelve years ago, before the Shubert Theatre in Century City was demolished, if they’d really wanted the place.
Because the Warner’s auditorium is set at a 45 degree angle, the stage is rather oddly shaped and small, being stuck into a corner of the building. That could be a deterrent to conversion. There is a parking lot next door, so there would be room to expand the stage (if the land is available), but it would be very costly.
It’s likely that the Dominion Theatres were part of the original group of houses operated by Famous Players when the company was chartered in 1920. This 1945 article from the Montreal Gazette lists among the 18 theaters the circuit began with two houses in Vancouver, one in Victoria, and one in Nanaimo.
Manjunath Pendakur’s Canadian Dreams and American Control: The Political Economy of the Canadian Film Industry mentions J. R. Muir twice, once as managing director of Famous Players subsidiary B.C. Paramount Theatres in 1926, and once as district manager of Famous Players in British Columbia in 1929. Muir might well have been one of N. L. Nathanson’s original associates in the circuit.
John Ritchie Muir was the original operator of the Dominion Theatre. He joined the Dominion Theatre Company of Vancouver in 1906, and later became its president, managing director, and principal stockholder. He built the Dominion Theatre in Victoria several years later. Later, he opened a third house of the same name at Nanaimo, B.C.
A brief notice in the October, 1912 issue of The Pacific Coast Architect said that Edwin W. Houghton had prepared plans for a theater at Victoria for a company promoted by J. A.[sic] Muir. A recent article in the Victoria Times Colonist about events in the city in 1913 has a few paragraphs about entertainment, and one says that the Dominion Theatre opened in May, 1913.
According to this page at ArchitectDB, the Majestic was designed by Seattle architect Edwin W. Houghton. The house only remained a theater until 1930, when it was gutted and converted into a parking garage. The building was demolished in 1981. The 43-floor office building now on the theater’s site was completed in 1987.
ArchitectDB says that Sullivan & Considine renamed the Majestic the Empress in 1911. The various Empress Theatres were included in the sale of Sullivan & Considine’s holdings to Marcus Loew in 1914, as reported in The New York Times of March 27. However, the Majestic/Empress ended up being operated for several years by the Ackerman & Harris circuit as the Palace Hippodrome before finally becoming Loew’s Palace Hip by 1921.
The acquisition of Sullivan & Considine’s holdings made Loew’s the largest vaudeville circuit in the United States, even though a number of S&C’s houses were parceled out to other chains, including the Orpheum and Pantages circuits.
The Regent hosted at least one live event in its last year. The March 24, 1973, issue of Billboard said that B.B. King would perform at the house on April 1.
The Regent was being operated by Paramount in 1946, when the July 2 issue of The Daily Record, a Rochester business and legal publication, reported that the chain would remodel the Center Theatre and rename it the Paramount, and build a new lounge at the Regent. The architect for remodeling the Center was Michael J. DeAngelis, and though the article didn’t specify him as the architect of the Regent project, it’s likely that it was a package deal and he designed both.
Apparently the photo in Boxoffice only captured about one third of the Park Theatre’s auditorium. Looking at the Williams Avenue side of the theater’s building in Street View, it can be seen that it was quite long, so it certainly could have held over 1000 seats.
Houma’s blocks must have been renumbered at some point (and it’s not just Google, as Bing Maps can’t find the address 610 Main Street either.) I believe that this Street View shows the approximate site of the Bijou, but it is now the 7900 block instead of the 600 block (the Bijou was probably at about 7910.)
Google’s program has made its best guess from the old address we gave it, and has placed the Street View and pin icon for our page in the 6200 block of Main Street, as apparently there is no longer a 610 Main Street for it to find. We need to update the address and reset the Google Map.
Our page for the Grand Theatre also has the old address, but the Fox Theatre page shows the correct address, and I moved the Street View to the proper location. However, the map’s pin icon is still in the wrong spot.
Oddly, even using a three-digit address, Google’s pin icon is only about four blocks off for the Park Theatre.
The June 29, 1945, issue of the Webster Herald reported that the War Production Board had granted permission to Crawford Enterprises to build a movie theater at Webster. The new house, as yet unnamed, was designed by architect Michael J. DeAngelis.
Recent comments on the State Theatre page indicate that it was the Washington Theatre, not the State, that was renovated and renamed the Penn Theatre. The Washington reopened as the Penn in March, 1961, and closed in April, 1973. It was demolished shortly after closing.
RSM3853’s list of movies shown at the State and Penn Theatres indicates that the State closed at the end of May, 1960, and the Penn opened in March, 1961. The operators must have decided to close the larger State Theatre and renovate and rename the smaller Washington Theatre to be their first-run house. With the decline in theater attendance that took place in the 1950s and 1960s, that would have made economic sense.
There were two houses called the Orpheum in Danvers. The annual report of the Peabody Institute published in March, 1912, mentioned an event with movies held at the Orpheum Theatre in Danvers the previous November. I’ve also found references from 1916 to a Danvers house called Brown’s Orpheum, operated by Louis Brown.
However, various issue of The Film Daily from 1926 and 1927 say that a house called either the Danvers Theatre or the Elm Theatre in various items was destroyed by fire in 1926, and was replaced by a 1000-seat theater which was originally to have been called the Capitol (issue of January 9) but which opened as the Orpheum (issue of February 9.)
The owner was Louis Brown, presumably the same who was the operator of Brown’s Orpheum in 1916, so it seems likely that the house destroyed by fire was the original Orpheum using a different name. A 1922 directory of New England businesses lists only one theater for Danvers, that being the Elm, though its address was 12 High Street. Mr.Brown might have acquired extra frontage for his rebuilding project, or perhaps simply shifted the theater entrance to a different part of the lot.
Auction site WorthPoint was recently offering a movie program from the Orpheum Theatre in Danvers for the week of October 20, 1940. The house had three changes a week at that time. The Orpheum is also mentioned in a 2011 article about the 50th reunion of a local high school’s class of 1961, and the author mentions attending the Orpheum during his high school years, so the house probably operated at least into the early 1960s.
Chuck, if the Penn was torn down and replaced by a parking lot in 1973 then it must have been the Washington that was renamed the Penn, not the State. The only parking lot on this block of Chestnut Street is the one where the Washington Theatre used to be, right across the street from the State. The State’s entrance building, at least, is still standing.
A paragraph about the Washington Theatre on this web page says that it did become the Penn Theatre, and this earlier comment by sgtjim says that he thought the Washington and the Penn were the same house, too.
I’m sure this is the same house that was listed as the Alpine Theatre, 834 Alpine Street, in the Moving Picture Theatres section of the 1926 city directory, and at 826 Alpine Street in the 1929 city directory. It’s back at 834 Alpine in the 1936 and 1938 directories. In 1939, the Alpine Theatre is gone and the first listing for the Carmen Theatre at 722 N. Figueroa Street appears. No theaters are listed under any name at either address in the 1927 or 1932 directories.
The February 29, 1936, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that D. F. Lyon was reopening the Alpine Theatre in Los Angeles, which had been closed for some time. The place apparently closed and reopened multiple times. I remember seeing this theater in the early 1960s, but I can’t remember if it was open or closed, nor can I remember what name, if any, was on the marquee.
Here is a postcard view of the Court Theatre, Washington, Pennsylvania, probably from around 1920.
Comments on this theater from before August 2, 2007, seem to have gone missing. I think that this 1949 photo must have been the one Chuck linked to.
Boxoffice of July 27, 1935, said that the Beverly Theatre was designed by architects Ronald F. Perry and Helmuth Bartsch. >This web page about Helmut [sic] Bartsch has seven photos of the Beverly Theatre (and also four apparently unrelated photos mistakenly labeled as depicting the Beverly Theatre.)
Helmuth Bartsch was an associate of Holabird & Root or its successor firms from 1928 through 1965. Ronald Perry was not mentioned in an exhaustive list of the Holabird & Root’s associates, so he must have been an independent architect.
I don’t know why I wrote Joe Goodman in my previous comment. The songwriter’s name was Joe Goodwin.
The Worcester Theatre isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures, and I’ve been unable to discover if it ever showed movies, other than a single exhibition of an early sound film process in 1913. Here’s a page with a photo of it anyway. It had a somewhat more ornate front than the Fine Arts, with some nice Romanesque detailing. Almost every comment on the page conflates it with either the Lothrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts or the Poli/Hanover Theatre.
Volume two of History of Worcester and its People, by Charles Nutt, published in 1919, says that the Strand Theatre was opened in 1916. It was devoted primarily to movies, but sometimes presented vaudeville acts as well.
bbatty: The 1986 photo linked to by lostmemory in the comment of May 15, 2009, shows the same building that is in the Google Street View currently displayed at the top of this page. The Google view shows Pleasant Street, and is dated August, 2007. I believe that the Worcester Theatre on Exchange Street was long gone by that time. The theater in our photos has to be the Lathrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts.
Here is a photo of this theater when it was the Olympia. The John Wayne movie Flame of the Barabary Coast is advertised on the marquee, which dates the photo to about 1945.
The photo comes from this weblog post about songwriter Joe Goodman, which is worth a visit in its own right, as are Chet Williamson’s other posts about Worcester’s songwriters.
The July 24, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World spells the name Dorris, with two r’s, as does an item in the August 26, 1916, issue of the same publication saying that the Dorris Theatre at Roseville had been sold to J. E. Edmonds, formerly of Los Gatos, and had been combined with the Rose Theatre (listed here as the Roxie.) Those are the only two references to this theater in publications of the period that I can find.
Ah, there it is. I must have overlooked it.
The December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that a group of Williamsburg exhibitors had met at the Progress Theater, 116 Graham Avenue, on November 20 to establish a branch of the New York City Exhibitors' Association.
I don’t know if the addresses have been shifted since 1913, or if the entrance to the theater actually was once in the other store building that fronts the auditorium. It must have been the same house, in any case.
Cezar DelValle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index says that this house was in operation as the Progress Theatre in 1912-1913, became the Variety Theatre from 1914-1917, and returned to being the Progress Theatre from 1918 until 1933, when it became the Lindy Theatre, closing in 1954.
This house didn’t make it into Cezar Del Valle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index, but it did get mentioned in the December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World. The Leonard Theatre was to host the second meeting of the recently-formed Williamsburg branch of the New York City Exhibitor’s League.
The first meeting, which had been held at the Progress Theatre, was attended by representatives of the Leonard Theatre and of the Broadway Lyceum, Graham Palace, Tompkins Amusement Company, Bushwick Casino, and the Progress, Metropolitan, Lewis, Williamsburg, Owl, Sutter, Bushwick, Old Postoffice, Greenpoint, and Kensington Theatres.
Rumors that Shubert might take over the old Warner Hollywood have been around for more than a decade. An August 31, 2001, item in the Los Angeles Times said that the idea had been floated by Leron Gubler, executive director of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. It’s been floating ever since.
Maybe the Shubert organization was just waiting for the church’s lease to end, but then with their deep pockets it seems they would have been able to buy out the church’s lease twelve years ago, before the Shubert Theatre in Century City was demolished, if they’d really wanted the place.
Because the Warner’s auditorium is set at a 45 degree angle, the stage is rather oddly shaped and small, being stuck into a corner of the building. That could be a deterrent to conversion. There is a parking lot next door, so there would be room to expand the stage (if the land is available), but it would be very costly.
It’s likely that the Dominion Theatres were part of the original group of houses operated by Famous Players when the company was chartered in 1920. This 1945 article from the Montreal Gazette lists among the 18 theaters the circuit began with two houses in Vancouver, one in Victoria, and one in Nanaimo.
Manjunath Pendakur’s Canadian Dreams and American Control: The Political Economy of the Canadian Film Industry mentions J. R. Muir twice, once as managing director of Famous Players subsidiary B.C. Paramount Theatres in 1926, and once as district manager of Famous Players in British Columbia in 1929. Muir might well have been one of N. L. Nathanson’s original associates in the circuit.
John Ritchie Muir was the original operator of the Dominion Theatre. He joined the Dominion Theatre Company of Vancouver in 1906, and later became its president, managing director, and principal stockholder. He built the Dominion Theatre in Victoria several years later. Later, he opened a third house of the same name at Nanaimo, B.C.
A brief notice in the October, 1912 issue of The Pacific Coast Architect said that Edwin W. Houghton had prepared plans for a theater at Victoria for a company promoted by J. A.[sic] Muir. A recent article in the Victoria Times Colonist about events in the city in 1913 has a few paragraphs about entertainment, and one says that the Dominion Theatre opened in May, 1913.
The Pacific Coast Architecture Database says that the Spokane Theatre was designed by Seattle architect Edwin W. Houghton.
The Pacific Coast Architecture Database says that Beck’s Theatre in Bellingham was designed by architect Edwin W. Houghton.
According to this page at ArchitectDB, the Majestic was designed by Seattle architect Edwin W. Houghton. The house only remained a theater until 1930, when it was gutted and converted into a parking garage. The building was demolished in 1981. The 43-floor office building now on the theater’s site was completed in 1987.
ArchitectDB says that Sullivan & Considine renamed the Majestic the Empress in 1911. The various Empress Theatres were included in the sale of Sullivan & Considine’s holdings to Marcus Loew in 1914, as reported in The New York Times of March 27. However, the Majestic/Empress ended up being operated for several years by the Ackerman & Harris circuit as the Palace Hippodrome before finally becoming Loew’s Palace Hip by 1921.
The acquisition of Sullivan & Considine’s holdings made Loew’s the largest vaudeville circuit in the United States, even though a number of S&C’s houses were parceled out to other chains, including the Orpheum and Pantages circuits.
The Regent hosted at least one live event in its last year. The March 24, 1973, issue of Billboard said that B.B. King would perform at the house on April 1.
The Regent was being operated by Paramount in 1946, when the July 2 issue of The Daily Record, a Rochester business and legal publication, reported that the chain would remodel the Center Theatre and rename it the Paramount, and build a new lounge at the Regent. The architect for remodeling the Center was Michael J. DeAngelis, and though the article didn’t specify him as the architect of the Regent project, it’s likely that it was a package deal and he designed both.
Apparently the photo in Boxoffice only captured about one third of the Park Theatre’s auditorium. Looking at the Williams Avenue side of the theater’s building in Street View, it can be seen that it was quite long, so it certainly could have held over 1000 seats.
Houma’s blocks must have been renumbered at some point (and it’s not just Google, as Bing Maps can’t find the address 610 Main Street either.) I believe that this Street View shows the approximate site of the Bijou, but it is now the 7900 block instead of the 600 block (the Bijou was probably at about 7910.)
Google’s program has made its best guess from the old address we gave it, and has placed the Street View and pin icon for our page in the 6200 block of Main Street, as apparently there is no longer a 610 Main Street for it to find. We need to update the address and reset the Google Map.
Our page for the Grand Theatre also has the old address, but the Fox Theatre page shows the correct address, and I moved the Street View to the proper location. However, the map’s pin icon is still in the wrong spot.
Oddly, even using a three-digit address, Google’s pin icon is only about four blocks off for the Park Theatre.
The June 29, 1945, issue of the Webster Herald reported that the War Production Board had granted permission to Crawford Enterprises to build a movie theater at Webster. The new house, as yet unnamed, was designed by architect Michael J. DeAngelis.