An item in the January 12, 1927, issue of The Film Daily says that negotiations for the sale of the Grand Theatre in Northfield had been opened. The Grand was at that time Northfield’s only movie theater.
We currently have an obsolete address for this theater. Montreal renumbered its streets after the theater closed. The article at Silent Toronto says that the Laurier Palace was on Sainte-Catherine near rue Dézéry, and that a church was built on the theater’s site in 1954. That church is now the Eglise Evangelique Hispanique Bethel, and its modern address is 3215 Rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montreal, QC H1W 2C5. There is a plaque commemorating the fire on the front of the building.
The Film Daily published an article about the fire in its issue of January 11, 1927. It begins at this link and concludes at this link.
The postcard lostmemory linked to shows that the State Theatre’s entrance was in the narrow building between what is now the Bank of Granite, 207 S. Center Street, and the City Center Building, 211 S. Center Street. The theater’s address must have been 209 S. Center Street, not N. Center Street.
The January 11, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that Carolina Theatres, Inc., planned to open two new houses that month; an unnamed theater at Elizabeth City and the Playhouse at Statesville, which would begin operation on January 29. This web page about theaters in Statesville indicates that they missed their target date, and that the Playhouse opened on February 19, 1927.
The Playhouse opened with a musical review, George White’s Scandals. As the first movie in that series was made in 1934, this had to have been a road company of the stage production. The last movie shown at the Playhouse, The Soggy Bottom Gang, closed on March 7, 1982. Demolition took place in April, 1983.
On May 1, 1969, the Connellsville Daily Courier ran an ad for the Orpheum Theatre that said “Closed for Repairs. Watch for Opening.” but the opening apparently never came. The July 14, 1970, issue of the newspaper had an item about proposed improvements for the former site of the Orpheum Theatre. The house closed at the end of April, 1969, and must have been demolished no more than 15 months later.
Was there more than one location for the Orpheum Theatre at Connellsville, or was this house enlarged at some point? The December 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Orpheum had opened on November 30 and seated 750.
The December 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Shapiro Theatre in Mount Union was nearing completion, and was expected to open by Christmas. The house was designed to accommodate traveling stage shows as well as movies.
The December 9, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Victoria Theatre had opened in 1911, but it gave the location as 17th and Alberta Streets. It also gave the seating capacity as about 400. If the magazine is correct about the location, the Victoria might have moved to a new building sometime in the 1920s. If the magazine got the location wrong, then the theater must have been enlarged.
The Grand Theatre in the 1916 article Tinseltoes linked to lasted barely four months. It opened on September 20, 1916, and was destroyed by a fire on January 8, 1917, according to a history of Emmet and Dickinson Counties published in 1917. The house was later rebuilt.
If the date of 1913 on the photo CharmaineZoe linked to is correct, there must have been four successive houses called the Grand Theatre in Estherville.
Other Voices, Other Towns: The Traveler’s Story, by Caleb Pirtle III, says that the La Rita Theatre closed as a movie house in 1957 and remained dark for nearly a third of a century, finally being renovated for use by the Dalhart Community Theatre in 1989.
This web page has an article about the Cathaum Theatre first published in The Collegian in 1996. It says that the theater opened on April 8, 1926.
The Baums must have had a hard time getting this project underway. The Cathaum is mentioned by name in construction trade journals as early as 1922, when it was in the planning stage, but at that time it was being designed by a different architect, Harry S. Bair of Pittsburgh. The firm of Hodgens & Hill was formed in 1923, so they had to have taken over the project after that.
I don’t know why I wrote 3137 as the bank’s address. The bank is at 5157 Butler, and the theater must have been at 5135. There is no 3100 block of Butler Street.
I probably saw the Mission Theatre a few times in the late 1950s, but I don’t remember it. After stumbling on the town around 1955, we used to visit once or twice a year to buy cookies and pastries at Birkholm’s Bakery. The town, then much less built up, had not yet become a big tourist destination, and many of its buildings had not yet been given the Danish style they now sport.
As near as I can figure, the site of Frederick (or Fredrick) Querner’s theater was either on the lot where there is now what looks like an annex to the Allegheny Valley Bank of Pittsburgh, or on the parking lot next to it. The theater was too narrow to have occupied the entire frontage of the bank building, which has a modern address of 3137 Butler Street.
Although the caption of the photo of the Frederick Theatre in the publication cited in my previous comment uses the long spelling of the name, there’s a possibility that the theater was actually called the Fredrick, without the second e. That’s the way Mr. Querner’s first name is spelled on this page, which cites the 1920 U.S. Census.
Unfortunately the photo doesn’t show the name on the building itself. An old advertisement for the theater would confirm the spelling one way or the other, if somebody could find one.
Linkrot repair: The twice previously-linked page with the 1930s photo of the Cathaum Theatre is now at this URL, but it’s anybody’s guess for how long. The photo is a bit less than halfway down the very long page.
Thanks, Ken. I wonder if the choice of the name New Salem Theatre indicates that there was also an earlier Salem Theatre in town, as well as the Lyric? I haven’t found any mention of one in old publications, but towns named Salem are difficult to research on the Internet. It’s a common name, with at least one place called Salem in each of more than half the States, and multiple Salems in several of them.
The July 1, 1929, issue of The Film Daily said that the Lyric Theatre in Salem, Missouri, had been sold to L. L. Lewis by W. A. Donaldson. The May 2, 1936, issue of the same publication said that St. Louis architect Bruce F. Barnes would soon be taking bids “…for the house to be erected by Lyric Theater Co., Salem, Mo.” I’m not sure if the theater Barnes designed in 1936 was a replacement for the old Lyric, or if it was a new theater that would operate along with the Lyric.
Given how little information about Salem’s theaters there is on the Internet, it’s possible that the Preston was the theater built in 1936, and the old Lyric might have either been closed when the new house opened, or might have continued to operate for a while. The Preston is mentioned in a community forum, but the only mentions I can find of the Lyric are the one in the 1929 journal and in the walking tour brochure. That suggests that the Lyric was closed a very long time ago.
A walking tour brochure of downtown Salem places the Lyric Theatre at 306 N. Washington Street, but doesn’t make clear if the current building on the site is the historic building or not. It might be new construction. Google Maps has no street view for the location, nor does Bing Maps have a bird’s-eye view, and it’s impossible to determine the age of the current building from the aerial shots they do have.
A walking tour of downtown Salem gives the address of the modern City Administration Building that replaced the Preston Theatre as 400 N. Iron Street, but it’s possible that the theater was actually around the corner on 4th Street.
Comments about the Preston Theatre on a community forum page say that it closed in the 1960s, but all the movies people mention having seen there date from no later than the late 1950s. I think it might have closed before that decade ended. It was apparently demolished in the 1980s.
A 350-seat movie house called the Rex Theatre opened at Minneapolis on January 19, 1920, according to the January 23 issue of The Film Daily. The street name was not mentioned. The owner of the Rex was H. I. Krohling, and the house opened with Daddy Long Legs, starring Mary Pickford.
I suspect that Google Maps is putting this theater on the wrong stretch of O Street because we’ve got the wrong zip code listed. The zip code for downtown Lincoln is 68508.
A comment by lthomas on the Lincoln Theatre page says that the Capitol closed in the early 1950s, another victim of the cost of converting some old theaters to CinemaScope.
A brief item from the July 1, 1916, issue of the entertainment industry journal The New York Clipper discussed two large new theaters proposed for the Washington Heights district, and added the editorial opinion that the neighborhood already had enough theaters to satisfy local demand. The final line said: “The Wadsworth, at One Hundred and Eighty-first Street and Wadsworth Avenue, could not pay with any policy, so a bit of advice, don’t be hasty and overdo it.”
As this house opened as the Heights Theatre in 1913, either there must have been another theater at or near this intersection, or the Heights used the name Wadsworth at some point in its early history. Advertisements or theater listings from the period 1913-1916 should reveal which of those was the case. If the Heights and the Wadsworth were the same house, it would have been closed for some time in the first half of 1916.
Here is the complete item (which I cited in a previous comment) about the opening of the Heights Theatre, as reported in the November 15, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Heights Theater.
“The L. & B. Amusement Company opened a new picture theater at Wadsworth Avenue and 181st Street, New York City, on Saturday evening, October 11, to a large patronage and is enjoying a steady patronage of the most satisfactory character. W. A. Landau, formerly proprietor of the Audubon Theater, in 181st Street, is president of the company, and S. G. Bock, who was connected with the St. Nicholas Theater, in the same neighborhood, is secretary and treasurer. The new house is of regular theater construction, seats 600 persons and has twelve exits. The construction is fireproof throughout. Two Standard projecting machines and a mercury arc rectifier have been installed, providing a fine picture at a throw of no feet. The chairs are from the American Seating Company. An indirect lighting system and large exhaust fans for ventilating complete an up-to-date equipment. Retiring rooms for men and women insure the comfort of the patrons. A Hope-Jones unit orchestra provides music for the pictures.”
The Cameo Theatre in Jersey City was set to open the following night, according to an announcement in the January 16, 1927, issue of The Film Daily.
An item in the January 12, 1927, issue of The Film Daily says that negotiations for the sale of the Grand Theatre in Northfield had been opened. The Grand was at that time Northfield’s only movie theater.
We currently have an obsolete address for this theater. Montreal renumbered its streets after the theater closed. The article at Silent Toronto says that the Laurier Palace was on Sainte-Catherine near rue Dézéry, and that a church was built on the theater’s site in 1954. That church is now the Eglise Evangelique Hispanique Bethel, and its modern address is 3215 Rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montreal, QC H1W 2C5. There is a plaque commemorating the fire on the front of the building.
The Film Daily published an article about the fire in its issue of January 11, 1927. It begins at this link and concludes at this link.
The postcard lostmemory linked to shows that the State Theatre’s entrance was in the narrow building between what is now the Bank of Granite, 207 S. Center Street, and the City Center Building, 211 S. Center Street. The theater’s address must have been 209 S. Center Street, not N. Center Street.
The January 11, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that Carolina Theatres, Inc., planned to open two new houses that month; an unnamed theater at Elizabeth City and the Playhouse at Statesville, which would begin operation on January 29. This web page about theaters in Statesville indicates that they missed their target date, and that the Playhouse opened on February 19, 1927.
The Playhouse opened with a musical review, George White’s Scandals. As the first movie in that series was made in 1934, this had to have been a road company of the stage production. The last movie shown at the Playhouse, The Soggy Bottom Gang, closed on March 7, 1982. Demolition took place in April, 1983.
The January 11, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that Universal had opened the Strand at Jonesboro, a $110,000 house seating 1,262.
Here is a fresh link to the 1948 Boxoffice item with a photo of the Paramount’s remodeled lobby.
On May 1, 1969, the Connellsville Daily Courier ran an ad for the Orpheum Theatre that said “Closed for Repairs. Watch for Opening.” but the opening apparently never came. The July 14, 1970, issue of the newspaper had an item about proposed improvements for the former site of the Orpheum Theatre. The house closed at the end of April, 1969, and must have been demolished no more than 15 months later.
Was there more than one location for the Orpheum Theatre at Connellsville, or was this house enlarged at some point? The December 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Orpheum had opened on November 30 and seated 750.
The December 16, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Shapiro Theatre in Mount Union was nearing completion, and was expected to open by Christmas. The house was designed to accommodate traveling stage shows as well as movies.
The December 9, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Victoria Theatre had opened in 1911, but it gave the location as 17th and Alberta Streets. It also gave the seating capacity as about 400. If the magazine is correct about the location, the Victoria might have moved to a new building sometime in the 1920s. If the magazine got the location wrong, then the theater must have been enlarged.
Here is a photo of the Highland Temple mentioned by ChrisAckerman.
The Grand Theatre in the 1916 article Tinseltoes linked to lasted barely four months. It opened on September 20, 1916, and was destroyed by a fire on January 8, 1917, according to a history of Emmet and Dickinson Counties published in 1917. The house was later rebuilt.
If the date of 1913 on the photo CharmaineZoe linked to is correct, there must have been four successive houses called the Grand Theatre in Estherville.
Other Voices, Other Towns: The Traveler’s Story, by Caleb Pirtle III, says that the La Rita Theatre closed as a movie house in 1957 and remained dark for nearly a third of a century, finally being renovated for use by the Dalhart Community Theatre in 1989.
This web page has an article about the Cathaum Theatre first published in The Collegian in 1996. It says that the theater opened on April 8, 1926.
The Baums must have had a hard time getting this project underway. The Cathaum is mentioned by name in construction trade journals as early as 1922, when it was in the planning stage, but at that time it was being designed by a different architect, Harry S. Bair of Pittsburgh. The firm of Hodgens & Hill was formed in 1923, so they had to have taken over the project after that.
I don’t know why I wrote 3137 as the bank’s address. The bank is at 5157 Butler, and the theater must have been at 5135. There is no 3100 block of Butler Street.
An article about the Nielsen family, long-time operators of the Mission Theatre, says that the house closed in 1961.
This card from the California Index cites an undated Santa Ynez Valley News article saying that the Mission Theatre was built in 1927.
Here is a photo of the Mission Theatre dated 1939 by the Danish Royal Library.
I probably saw the Mission Theatre a few times in the late 1950s, but I don’t remember it. After stumbling on the town around 1955, we used to visit once or twice a year to buy cookies and pastries at Birkholm’s Bakery. The town, then much less built up, had not yet become a big tourist destination, and many of its buildings had not yet been given the Danish style they now sport.
As near as I can figure, the site of Frederick (or Fredrick) Querner’s theater was either on the lot where there is now what looks like an annex to the Allegheny Valley Bank of Pittsburgh, or on the parking lot next to it. The theater was too narrow to have occupied the entire frontage of the bank building, which has a modern address of 3137 Butler Street.
Although the caption of the photo of the Frederick Theatre in the publication cited in my previous comment uses the long spelling of the name, there’s a possibility that the theater was actually called the Fredrick, without the second e. That’s the way Mr. Querner’s first name is spelled on this page, which cites the 1920 U.S. Census.
Unfortunately the photo doesn’t show the name on the building itself. An old advertisement for the theater would confirm the spelling one way or the other, if somebody could find one.
Linkrot repair: The twice previously-linked page with the 1930s photo of the Cathaum Theatre is now at this URL, but it’s anybody’s guess for how long. The photo is a bit less than halfway down the very long page.
Thanks, Ken. I wonder if the choice of the name New Salem Theatre indicates that there was also an earlier Salem Theatre in town, as well as the Lyric? I haven’t found any mention of one in old publications, but towns named Salem are difficult to research on the Internet. It’s a common name, with at least one place called Salem in each of more than half the States, and multiple Salems in several of them.
The July 1, 1929, issue of The Film Daily said that the Lyric Theatre in Salem, Missouri, had been sold to L. L. Lewis by W. A. Donaldson. The May 2, 1936, issue of the same publication said that St. Louis architect Bruce F. Barnes would soon be taking bids “…for the house to be erected by Lyric Theater Co., Salem, Mo.” I’m not sure if the theater Barnes designed in 1936 was a replacement for the old Lyric, or if it was a new theater that would operate along with the Lyric.
Given how little information about Salem’s theaters there is on the Internet, it’s possible that the Preston was the theater built in 1936, and the old Lyric might have either been closed when the new house opened, or might have continued to operate for a while. The Preston is mentioned in a community forum, but the only mentions I can find of the Lyric are the one in the 1929 journal and in the walking tour brochure. That suggests that the Lyric was closed a very long time ago.
A walking tour brochure of downtown Salem places the Lyric Theatre at 306 N. Washington Street, but doesn’t make clear if the current building on the site is the historic building or not. It might be new construction. Google Maps has no street view for the location, nor does Bing Maps have a bird’s-eye view, and it’s impossible to determine the age of the current building from the aerial shots they do have.
A walking tour of downtown Salem gives the address of the modern City Administration Building that replaced the Preston Theatre as 400 N. Iron Street, but it’s possible that the theater was actually around the corner on 4th Street.
Comments about the Preston Theatre on a community forum page say that it closed in the 1960s, but all the movies people mention having seen there date from no later than the late 1950s. I think it might have closed before that decade ended. It was apparently demolished in the 1980s.
A 350-seat movie house called the Rex Theatre opened at Minneapolis on January 19, 1920, according to the January 23 issue of The Film Daily. The street name was not mentioned. The owner of the Rex was H. I. Krohling, and the house opened with Daddy Long Legs, starring Mary Pickford.
I suspect that Google Maps is putting this theater on the wrong stretch of O Street because we’ve got the wrong zip code listed. The zip code for downtown Lincoln is 68508.
A comment by lthomas on the Lincoln Theatre page says that the Capitol closed in the early 1950s, another victim of the cost of converting some old theaters to CinemaScope.
Here is an an updated link to the 1941 Boxoffice article with three photos of the Pine Theatre’s original interior.
A brief item from the July 1, 1916, issue of the entertainment industry journal The New York Clipper discussed two large new theaters proposed for the Washington Heights district, and added the editorial opinion that the neighborhood already had enough theaters to satisfy local demand. The final line said: “The Wadsworth, at One Hundred and Eighty-first Street and Wadsworth Avenue, could not pay with any policy, so a bit of advice, don’t be hasty and overdo it.”
As this house opened as the Heights Theatre in 1913, either there must have been another theater at or near this intersection, or the Heights used the name Wadsworth at some point in its early history. Advertisements or theater listings from the period 1913-1916 should reveal which of those was the case. If the Heights and the Wadsworth were the same house, it would have been closed for some time in the first half of 1916.
Here is the complete item (which I cited in a previous comment) about the opening of the Heights Theatre, as reported in the November 15, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World: