Comparing vintage photos of the Gem linked earlier, and from Bill2’s statement that the Stadium Theatre is now a woodworking shop, it’s clear that the two photos uploaded by Norman Plant depict the Stadium Theatre, not the Gem. The Stadium is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
From the 1990s photo of the Gem linked by lostmemory, it is clear that the red brick sidewalls of the theater building were much older than the white brick front. Its possible that the 1936 opening date for the Gem was actually a reopening of a remodeled and perhaps renamed theater.
It’s also possible that the Gem was the theater mentioned in the May 20, 1916, issue of The American Contractor:
“Caruthersville, Mo.—Theater & Airdome: $10,000. 2 sty. 80x140. Archt. M. E. Worcester, Cape Girardeau, Mo. Owner Caruthersville Amusement Co., care archt. Plans ready for bids.”
. The Gem appears to be about 40 feet wide, and the airdome could have been on the adjacent parcel where a smaller building shows in the 1990s photo. However, various issues of The Moving Picture World from 1918 name three movie theaters then operating in Caruthers; the Exchange, the Dixie, and the Liberty. Any of these might have been the 1916 project, but any of them might also have been the Gem under an earlier name.
Architect M. E. Worcester also designed a theater in Cape Girardeau in 1916, though I’ve been unable to track down its name or discover if the project was ever carried out.
The history of the Baldwin Theatre that seymourcox linked to says that it was destroyed by fire on January 6, 1909. It’s possible that it never operated as a movie house, though it might have presented exhibitions of early films as a technological curiosity.
This web page from the Springfield-Greene County Library, says that the Landers Theatre opened on September 18, 1909 (our introduction currently says 1890 for some reason.)
The Landers Theatre suffered a major fire on December 17, 1920, and was not reopened until 1922. David and Noelle’s list of known Boller Brothers theaters lists the Landers Theatre as both a 1909 and 1921 project, so Robert Boller, who took over the Kansas City office when Carl moved to California around 1920, should also be credited as architect, as he probably did the plans for the rebuilding.
The official web site says that during the period when the theater was part of the Orpheum circuit, it was called the Landers Orpheum Theatre. The Landers Orpheum sign on the stage house has been restored, and can be seen here. The house was apparently never called just the Orpheum Theatre.
Although the official web site’s main page is captioned Springfield Little Theatre, the site uses the name Landers Theatre throughout, including in the company’s mission statement which says:
“Springfield Little Theatre is a volunteer driven organization, energized by the highest artistic ideals, that strives to entertain, educate and involve the community in live productions and in the preservation of the historic Landers Theatre.”
It appears that they still call the theater itself by its original name, while Springfield Little Theatre is only the name of the organization.
However, the Lyric might have been open only intermittently during its later years. In this 1963 photo, signage indicates that the theater was closed. The marquee advertised the Nor Shor Theatre.
The Minnesota Digital Library also has this photo depicting the original Lyric Theatre, which was at 114-116 W. Superior Street.
The address is one number off, but this item in the December 27, 1913, issue of The Construction News is surely about the Zelda Theatre:
“Duluth, Minn.—Moving Picture Theater. $20,000. 311 W. Superior St. Brk. & conc., frpf., 2 stys., 40x140. Refiguring. Archt., Wangenstein & Giliuson, 702 Providence Bldg. Owncr. Wm. M. Abrahamson, 31 E. Superior St.”
Wangenstein & Giliuson (John J. Wangenstein and Ephraim C. Giliuson) also designed the Lyric Theatre, which opened in the next block of Superior Street in 1914 as the New Grand Theatre.
The Majestic Theatre was still in operation at Belle Plaine in 1915 when the July 24 issue of The Moving Picture World reported that it had been sold to A. D. Beaudreaux of Wadena by the manager, a Mr. Webber.
Although two photos from the Minnesota Digital Library give the Alhambra Theatre the same address as the Doric, a third photo gives what is apparently the correct address. The Alhambra Theatre was at 321 N. Central Avenue. The Doric was apparently the only theater ever located at 5715 Grand Avenue.
This article from Zenith City Online has a photo of the Lyric Theatre and a brief history of it. At the bottom of the article are links to four PDF files with scans of articles about the theater that were published in 1914.
The house opened as the New Grand Theatre on August 20, 1914. It was designed in the French Renaissance style by local architects John J. Wangenstein and Ephraim C. Giliuson. The New Grand was operated as a vaudeville house, originally by Marcus Loew, who had taken over parts of the Sullivan & Considine circuit. Apparently the Grand had originally been slated to be a Sullivan & Considine house.
In 1922, the Grand Theatre merged with the Lyric Theatre, a house across the street, and the Lyric name was moved to the Grand. The article gives the address of the Grand/Lyric as 213 W. Superior, so I would surmise that the 214 we currently have listed for it was actually the address of the original Lyric. The article doesn’t say what became of the original Lyric’s building, but I would imagine that it was closed when the operation moved across the street.
The article says that the Grand/Lyric Theatre was demolished in 1976, but doesn’t say when it closed.
Architects Wangenstein & Giliuson also designed the Zelda Theatre which opened in the next block of Superior Street the same year as the New Grand.
The Minnesota Digital Library also has a 1913 photo of a theater called the Alhambra. The caption says that it was also at 5715 Grand Avenue. If that address is correct, the Doric Theatre must have been either a replacement for, or an expansion of, the Alhambra.
The Alhambra Theatre opened on September 15, 1913, with seating for 500, according to the February 21, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World.
The Minnesota Digital Library dates this photo of the Doric Theatre 1919. They might be a bit early, as the Doric was probably the project that the October 18, 1919, issue of The American Contractor said was ready for bids:
“Theater (M. P.): $30,000. 2 sty. 75x 125. Grand av. & 58th st. Archt. W. P. Allred, Fergusson bldg. Owner Cont. Invest. Co, 1st Natl. Bank bldg. Brk. Drawing plans. Archt. ready for bids.”
In the photo, the theater looks like it’s already in operation, and it seems unlikely that the building would have been completed before the end of 1919 if it was only going out for bids on October 18. W. P. Allred was probably also the architect of the Orpheum Theatre in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, which is now the Fergus Falls Center for the Arts.
It is likely that the Orpheum was the theater project noted in the “Bids Desired” section of Engineering News-Record on March 25, 1920:
“Minn., Fergus Falls — Theatre — Until April 15, by J. B. Clinton, mgr. Clinton Investment Co., Torrey Bldg., constructing 2 story. 50 x 142 ft, brick, rein.-con. flooring and foundation, on Lincoln Ave. About $60,000. W. P. Allred, Fergusson Bldg., Duluth, archt. and engr. Noted Jan. 15.”
W. P. Allred also designed the Doric Theatre in Duluth.
The village of Schoolfield was a company town built for the employees of Dan River Mills, a textile firm founded by the Schoolfield brothers. The town was founded in 1903 and the theater was in operation by the early 1920s. The company’s ownership of the village ended in the early 1930s, and it was annexed to the City of Danville in 1951.
I’m not sure how long the theater remained in operation, but the movie Backfire, showing at the North Theatre in the ad posted above, was released in 1950. Adventure in Baltimore was released in 1949 and High Fury in 1947, so the Schoolfield must have been a very late run house by that time.
In the unlikely event that Donboss is still checking this page, the Schoolfield Theatre has a Cinema Treasures page here. Very little is known about it, though.
The 1913 edition of the Cahn guide lists the Majestic Theatre in Danville with a total of 1,101 seats, of which 426 were on the main floor and 275 in the balcony. Closing the 366-seat gallery and the boxes with their collective 40 seats would have reduced capacity to 701.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives an original construction date of 1922 and an effectively built date of 1935 (a major renovation) for the 11,532 square foot building at this address. The 1923 City Directory has no theater listed at 3645 E. 1st St., but the Unique Theatre is listed at that address in the 1926 directory.
As the 1923 directory lists the Unique Theatre at 4007 ½ E. 1st, I wonder if the street numbers were adjusted for this section of 1st Street sometime between 1923 and 1926? That would be odd, though, as I’ve found no indication that any other streets in the area were renumbered during that time.
It’s possible that the building was converted into a theater from some other use, but it’s also possible that the address listed for the Unique in the 1923 directory was simply a mistake. If a 1924 directory becomes available and it lists the Unique at 3645, I’d certainly believe the address listed in 1923 to have been an error. IN any case, the Unique Theatre was definitely in operation at this address by 1926.
An article about San Francisco’s movie theaters in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Garrick Theatre had 1,600 seats. In 1916, the Garrick was being operated as a five-cent movie house by Von Hagen Brothers.
The Moving Picture World article Tinseltoes linked to says that this house was the second New Fillmore Theatre. The first was an 800-seat that had been built on the lot next door and opened in early 1915. The lobby of the original theater had been incorporated into the lobby of the new house, and the old auditorium had been converted into a room with a dance floor for private parties, though it was still equipped for showing movies as well.
As the 1915 house had also been called the New Fillmore, it suggests that there was an even earlier Fillmore Theatre for it to be Newer than, but so far I’ve been unable to track down anything about it.
The July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had an article about San Francisco’s movie theaters which included a paragraph about the 1915 New Fillmore and a nearby house called the Progress Theatre:
“Kahn & Greenfield have a splendid foothold in the Fillmore district with the New Fillmore and Progress theaters located within a block of each other. The former is one of the finest houses in the city and was opened a little more than a year ago. It has a seating capacity of 1,000 and features the Paramount program at ten cents. Joseph E. Levin is manager. The Progress theater nearby was recently remodeled and the price of admission raised to ten cents, Triangle and Metro services being used. It seats 800. For a time Kahn & Greenfield also had two other houses in this district, but disposed of these in order to give more attention to the two largest ones.”
I don’t think the Progress is listed at Cinema Treasures yet. Several other Fillmore area houses mentioned in the article (scan at Google Books) aren’t listed yet either.
The Fillmore Street location of the Chutes Amusement Park didn’t fade into history so much as vanish overnight, as most of it was destroyed in a memorable blaze on the morning of May 29, 1911, a little over two years after it had opened. The park had sported both a movie theater and a vaudeville house, and I’m not sure which of the two it was that survived to become the Lyric. The July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had a paragraph about the house in an article about San Francisco’s movie theaters:
“The Lyric theater on Fillmore street, between Turk and Eddy, was erected several years ago, but only recently was devoted to moving pictures. This house was formerly a part of the Chutes and after that amusement enterprise went out of business was dark for a long time. It was recently turned around at a heavy expense and an entrance installed from Fillmore. It has a seating capacity of 1,100 and is conducted by Ackerman & Harris, under the management of Charles Cole.”
A few years after the reopening, the Lyric was again remodeled. The February 14, 1920, issue of Domestic Engineering ran this item:
“Architects Reid Bros, are planning alterations on a motion picture theater at 1226 Fillmore Street. The improvements will cost $20,000 and will include new plumbing and ventilating systems.”
Construction on the building that became the Lyric Theatre began in 1874, and was completed in 1876. The official name of the building was Centennial Hall, but the theater originally operated under the name Paul’s Opera House. Thomas Paul was the builder and original proprietor of the theater, and the building was designed by his son, John T. H. Paul. The younger Paul was born in 1856, so if he had taken any formal training as an architect by 1874 it must have been very limited.
A description of the building published in 1882 said that the auditorium of the opera house was on the third floor, and that it seated 500. The original building was only 100 feet deep, and modern satellite view shows a building about 160 feet deep which appears to have an auditorium at the rear, with a stage house, so an entirely new auditorium must have been added at some point. The Moving Picture World item about the 1917 fire I cited in my earlier comment refers to the “…new Lyric Theatre building….” so perhaps the new auditorium had been added before that fire. I have no idea what was done with the original auditorium on the third floor.
Maryland’s Motion Picture Theaters, by Robert K. Headley, (Google Books preview) says that the Lyric suffered another major fire in 1921 and was subsequently rebuilt. If the new auditorium had not been added before or after the 1917 fire, then it was probably done after the 1921 fire. According to The Fire Insurance Press of November 30, 1921, the fire the previous May had done $30,000 worth of damage to a building with an estimated value of $45,000:
“The Lyric Theater Building, Frostburg, Md., burned for five hours in the morning of May 17, 1921, for several of which the firemen could not locate the fire, on account of the faulty construction of stone walls under the building. The eight persons in the building escaped without injury, but there was $30,000 damage out of a possible $45,000.”
Mariah95: The Lyric Theatre building did not yet exist in 1874. According to Firefighting in Allegany County, by Warren W. Jenkins, Frostburg did suffer two major fires in its business district in 1874, but the book gives no details about them. Possibly an older theater was destroyed by one of them and the opera house was built to replace it.
This web page has many items from the December 9, 2002, issue of The Florida Times-Union, one of which concerns a proposed project on the site of the UA Regency. The theater building was 33,405 square feet on a 6.3 acre parcel, and the address the item gives is 9333 Atlantic Boulevard. The UA Regency was replaced by a Circuit City store, now also closed, and other retail shops, all in new construction.
I have doubts that this UA house was called the Regency I & II. Regency I & II is what Boxoffice called the ABC-Florida State Theatres house at the northeast corner of Regency Square Mall, which is listed at Cinema Treasures as the Regency Twin. It was opened in 1968 or 1969 as a single-screen theater, and closed in 1989 or 1990.
I think the UA Regency might have started out as an 8-screen theater that was later expanded to 12 screens. Its actual name might have been UA Regency Plaza, which is on a list of theaters from a company called Universal Cinema Services. Another 8-screen Jacksonville house on the list was called Movies at Regency Square. The name Regency was used way too often for theaters in Jacksonville. It makes for a lot of confusion.
The Arlington Expressway address we currently list apparently belongs to the shopping center as a whole. I think that a better address to list for the theater would be that of the Piccadilly Cafeteria that replaced it, which was 200 Monument Road. The cafeteria was built on the theater’s parking lot, and the theater’s site became the parking lot for the cafeteria, but Google Maps won’t know the difference. At least listing it at 200 Monument Road should get the pin icon out of that intersection it’s in now.
On this web page there is a transcription of an interview with Chuck Hankinson, a native of Jacksonville. Mr. Hankinson’s answer to question #9 lists many Jacksonville theaters he recalls, and he specifically says that he remembers the Regency both before and after it became a twin, so this house did indeed open as a single-screen operation.
Comparing vintage photos of the Gem linked earlier, and from Bill2’s statement that the Stadium Theatre is now a woodworking shop, it’s clear that the two photos uploaded by Norman Plant depict the Stadium Theatre, not the Gem. The Stadium is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
From the 1990s photo of the Gem linked by lostmemory, it is clear that the red brick sidewalls of the theater building were much older than the white brick front. Its possible that the 1936 opening date for the Gem was actually a reopening of a remodeled and perhaps renamed theater.
It’s also possible that the Gem was the theater mentioned in the May 20, 1916, issue of The American Contractor:
. The Gem appears to be about 40 feet wide, and the airdome could have been on the adjacent parcel where a smaller building shows in the 1990s photo. However, various issues of The Moving Picture World from 1918 name three movie theaters then operating in Caruthers; the Exchange, the Dixie, and the Liberty. Any of these might have been the 1916 project, but any of them might also have been the Gem under an earlier name.Architect M. E. Worcester also designed a theater in Cape Girardeau in 1916, though I’ve been unable to track down its name or discover if the project was ever carried out.
The history of the Baldwin Theatre that seymourcox linked to says that it was destroyed by fire on January 6, 1909. It’s possible that it never operated as a movie house, though it might have presented exhibitions of early films as a technological curiosity.
This web page from the Springfield-Greene County Library, says that the Landers Theatre opened on September 18, 1909 (our introduction currently says 1890 for some reason.)
The Landers Theatre suffered a major fire on December 17, 1920, and was not reopened until 1922. David and Noelle’s list of known Boller Brothers theaters lists the Landers Theatre as both a 1909 and 1921 project, so Robert Boller, who took over the Kansas City office when Carl moved to California around 1920, should also be credited as architect, as he probably did the plans for the rebuilding.
The official web site says that during the period when the theater was part of the Orpheum circuit, it was called the Landers Orpheum Theatre. The Landers Orpheum sign on the stage house has been restored, and can be seen here. The house was apparently never called just the Orpheum Theatre.
Although the official web site’s main page is captioned Springfield Little Theatre, the site uses the name Landers Theatre throughout, including in the company’s mission statement which says:
It appears that they still call the theater itself by its original name, while Springfield Little Theatre is only the name of the organization.The description of this photo of the New Grand Theatre, ca.1914, says that, as the Lyric, the house showed movies into the 1970s.
However, the Lyric might have been open only intermittently during its later years. In this 1963 photo, signage indicates that the theater was closed. The marquee advertised the Nor Shor Theatre.
The Minnesota Digital Library also has this photo depicting the original Lyric Theatre, which was at 114-116 W. Superior Street.
The address is one number off, but this item in the December 27, 1913, issue of The Construction News is surely about the Zelda Theatre:
Wangenstein & Giliuson (John J. Wangenstein and Ephraim C. Giliuson) also designed the Lyric Theatre, which opened in the next block of Superior Street in 1914 as the New Grand Theatre.The Majestic Theatre was still in operation at Belle Plaine in 1915 when the July 24 issue of The Moving Picture World reported that it had been sold to A. D. Beaudreaux of Wadena by the manager, a Mr. Webber.
Although two photos from the Minnesota Digital Library give the Alhambra Theatre the same address as the Doric, a third photo gives what is apparently the correct address. The Alhambra Theatre was at 321 N. Central Avenue. The Doric was apparently the only theater ever located at 5715 Grand Avenue.
Also, the Minnesota Digital Library provides this photo of the Lyric Theatre. The movie Golden Gloves was released in August, 1940, according to IMDb.
This article from Zenith City Online has a photo of the Lyric Theatre and a brief history of it. At the bottom of the article are links to four PDF files with scans of articles about the theater that were published in 1914.
The house opened as the New Grand Theatre on August 20, 1914. It was designed in the French Renaissance style by local architects John J. Wangenstein and Ephraim C. Giliuson. The New Grand was operated as a vaudeville house, originally by Marcus Loew, who had taken over parts of the Sullivan & Considine circuit. Apparently the Grand had originally been slated to be a Sullivan & Considine house.
In 1922, the Grand Theatre merged with the Lyric Theatre, a house across the street, and the Lyric name was moved to the Grand. The article gives the address of the Grand/Lyric as 213 W. Superior, so I would surmise that the 214 we currently have listed for it was actually the address of the original Lyric. The article doesn’t say what became of the original Lyric’s building, but I would imagine that it was closed when the operation moved across the street.
The article says that the Grand/Lyric Theatre was demolished in 1976, but doesn’t say when it closed.
Architects Wangenstein & Giliuson also designed the Zelda Theatre which opened in the next block of Superior Street the same year as the New Grand.
The Minnesota Digital Library also has a 1913 photo of a theater called the Alhambra. The caption says that it was also at 5715 Grand Avenue. If that address is correct, the Doric Theatre must have been either a replacement for, or an expansion of, the Alhambra.
The Alhambra Theatre opened on September 15, 1913, with seating for 500, according to the February 21, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World.
The Minnesota Digital Library dates this photo of the Doric Theatre 1919. They might be a bit early, as the Doric was probably the project that the October 18, 1919, issue of The American Contractor said was ready for bids:
In the photo, the theater looks like it’s already in operation, and it seems unlikely that the building would have been completed before the end of 1919 if it was only going out for bids on October 18. W. P. Allred was probably also the architect of the Orpheum Theatre in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, which is now the Fergus Falls Center for the Arts.It is likely that the Orpheum was the theater project noted in the “Bids Desired” section of Engineering News-Record on March 25, 1920:
W. P. Allred also designed the Doric Theatre in Duluth.The village of Schoolfield was a company town built for the employees of Dan River Mills, a textile firm founded by the Schoolfield brothers. The town was founded in 1903 and the theater was in operation by the early 1920s. The company’s ownership of the village ended in the early 1930s, and it was annexed to the City of Danville in 1951.
I’m not sure how long the theater remained in operation, but the movie Backfire, showing at the North Theatre in the ad posted above, was released in 1950. Adventure in Baltimore was released in 1949 and High Fury in 1947, so the Schoolfield must have been a very late run house by that time.
In the unlikely event that Donboss is still checking this page, the Schoolfield Theatre has a Cinema Treasures page here. Very little is known about it, though.
The 1913 edition of the Cahn guide lists the Majestic Theatre in Danville with a total of 1,101 seats, of which 426 were on the main floor and 275 in the balcony. Closing the 366-seat gallery and the boxes with their collective 40 seats would have reduced capacity to 701.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives an original construction date of 1922 and an effectively built date of 1935 (a major renovation) for the 11,532 square foot building at this address. The 1923 City Directory has no theater listed at 3645 E. 1st St., but the Unique Theatre is listed at that address in the 1926 directory.
As the 1923 directory lists the Unique Theatre at 4007 ½ E. 1st, I wonder if the street numbers were adjusted for this section of 1st Street sometime between 1923 and 1926? That would be odd, though, as I’ve found no indication that any other streets in the area were renumbered during that time.
It’s possible that the building was converted into a theater from some other use, but it’s also possible that the address listed for the Unique in the 1923 directory was simply a mistake. If a 1924 directory becomes available and it lists the Unique at 3645, I’d certainly believe the address listed in 1923 to have been an error. IN any case, the Unique Theatre was definitely in operation at this address by 1926.
An article about San Francisco’s movie theaters in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Garrick Theatre had 1,600 seats. In 1916, the Garrick was being operated as a five-cent movie house by Von Hagen Brothers.
The Moving Picture World article Tinseltoes linked to says that this house was the second New Fillmore Theatre. The first was an 800-seat that had been built on the lot next door and opened in early 1915. The lobby of the original theater had been incorporated into the lobby of the new house, and the old auditorium had been converted into a room with a dance floor for private parties, though it was still equipped for showing movies as well.
As the 1915 house had also been called the New Fillmore, it suggests that there was an even earlier Fillmore Theatre for it to be Newer than, but so far I’ve been unable to track down anything about it.
The July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had an article about San Francisco’s movie theaters which included a paragraph about the 1915 New Fillmore and a nearby house called the Progress Theatre:
I don’t think the Progress is listed at Cinema Treasures yet. Several other Fillmore area houses mentioned in the article (scan at Google Books) aren’t listed yet either.The Fillmore Street location of the Chutes Amusement Park didn’t fade into history so much as vanish overnight, as most of it was destroyed in a memorable blaze on the morning of May 29, 1911, a little over two years after it had opened. The park had sported both a movie theater and a vaudeville house, and I’m not sure which of the two it was that survived to become the Lyric. The July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had a paragraph about the house in an article about San Francisco’s movie theaters:
A few years after the reopening, the Lyric was again remodeled. The February 14, 1920, issue of Domestic Engineering ran this item:Construction on the building that became the Lyric Theatre began in 1874, and was completed in 1876. The official name of the building was Centennial Hall, but the theater originally operated under the name Paul’s Opera House. Thomas Paul was the builder and original proprietor of the theater, and the building was designed by his son, John T. H. Paul. The younger Paul was born in 1856, so if he had taken any formal training as an architect by 1874 it must have been very limited.
A description of the building published in 1882 said that the auditorium of the opera house was on the third floor, and that it seated 500. The original building was only 100 feet deep, and modern satellite view shows a building about 160 feet deep which appears to have an auditorium at the rear, with a stage house, so an entirely new auditorium must have been added at some point. The Moving Picture World item about the 1917 fire I cited in my earlier comment refers to the “…new Lyric Theatre building….” so perhaps the new auditorium had been added before that fire. I have no idea what was done with the original auditorium on the third floor.
Maryland’s Motion Picture Theaters, by Robert K. Headley, (Google Books preview) says that the Lyric suffered another major fire in 1921 and was subsequently rebuilt. If the new auditorium had not been added before or after the 1917 fire, then it was probably done after the 1921 fire. According to The Fire Insurance Press of November 30, 1921, the fire the previous May had done $30,000 worth of damage to a building with an estimated value of $45,000:
Mariah95: The Lyric Theatre building did not yet exist in 1874. According to Firefighting in Allegany County, by Warren W. Jenkins, Frostburg did suffer two major fires in its business district in 1874, but the book gives no details about them. Possibly an older theater was destroyed by one of them and the opera house was built to replace it.
This web page has many items from the December 9, 2002, issue of The Florida Times-Union, one of which concerns a proposed project on the site of the UA Regency. The theater building was 33,405 square feet on a 6.3 acre parcel, and the address the item gives is 9333 Atlantic Boulevard. The UA Regency was replaced by a Circuit City store, now also closed, and other retail shops, all in new construction.
I have doubts that this UA house was called the Regency I & II. Regency I & II is what Boxoffice called the ABC-Florida State Theatres house at the northeast corner of Regency Square Mall, which is listed at Cinema Treasures as the Regency Twin. It was opened in 1968 or 1969 as a single-screen theater, and closed in 1989 or 1990.
I think the UA Regency might have started out as an 8-screen theater that was later expanded to 12 screens. Its actual name might have been UA Regency Plaza, which is on a list of theaters from a company called Universal Cinema Services. Another 8-screen Jacksonville house on the list was called Movies at Regency Square. The name Regency was used way too often for theaters in Jacksonville. It makes for a lot of confusion.
The Arlington Expressway address we currently list apparently belongs to the shopping center as a whole. I think that a better address to list for the theater would be that of the Piccadilly Cafeteria that replaced it, which was 200 Monument Road. The cafeteria was built on the theater’s parking lot, and the theater’s site became the parking lot for the cafeteria, but Google Maps won’t know the difference. At least listing it at 200 Monument Road should get the pin icon out of that intersection it’s in now.
On this web page there is a transcription of an interview with Chuck Hankinson, a native of Jacksonville. Mr. Hankinson’s answer to question #9 lists many Jacksonville theaters he recalls, and he specifically says that he remembers the Regency both before and after it became a twin, so this house did indeed open as a single-screen operation.