This comment on a local web page gives the location of the Price Theatre as Myers Avenue, mentions that it was operating during the 1960s, and says that it was converted into a shoe store and later demolished to make way for a Rite-Aid store. Internet says the Rite-Aid in Dunbar is at 1101 Myers Avenue, so that would be the approximate address of the theater.
Cezar Joseph Del Valle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index says that the Oxford Theatre opened on October 9, 1910. The house was designed in the Moorish style by architect William McElfatrick. It was a rather small theater, with only 648 seats.
The April, 1911, issue of Architecture and Building featured two photos, a plan of the orchestra floor, and a cross-section of the Oxford Theatre as part of an article on theaters (Google Books scan). The first photo is on page 350.
The cornice and window trim of the building to the left of the modern building in Street View is recognizable in the 1939 photo of the Chief, so the theater has been demolished.
After the Griffith and Dickinson theater chains merged in 1939, the consolidated firm embarked on a project to renovate its theaters. All the plans were designed by the Dallas architectural firm Corgan & Moore. It was at this time that the Royal Theatre in Hiawatha was renamed the Chief Theatre.
A photo of the Chief, sporting its new marquee, is the second in the column on the right side of this page of Boxoffice, August 19, 1939.
In 1939, the Booth Theatre became part of the Griffith-Dickinson theater chain. The company was in the process of remodeling and renovating many of its theaters, with plans for all the projects being done by the Dallas architectural firm Corgan & Moore. According to the August 19, 1939, issue of Boxoffice, the Booth Theatre was one of the former Dickinson houses that the newly combined circuit was updating.
The new marquee added as part of the project, seen at top right on this page of Boxoffice, appears to be the one still on the building.
A PDF file of the NRHP nomination form for the Booth Theatre can be downloaded from this link. An interesting revelation in the document is that Lee DeCamp was the supervising architect on the Boller Brothers' Booth Theatre project.
DeCamp’s connection with the Bollers apparently went back to at least 1911, when one or both of the Bollers probably supervised the construction of the Empress Theatre in Kansas City that DeCamp designed for the Sullivan & Considine circuit. When Robert Boller went to Los Angeles later that year, it was to work on projects for Sullivan & Considine. It’s possible that Boller and DeCamp were associated on some other projects over the next few years, until the Sullivan & Considine circuit collapsed, and Robert Boller returned to Kansas City by 1915.
In 1939 Dickinson Theatres embarked on a $250,000 project of remodeling and renovating many of the theaters in the circuit. An article about the program appeared in the August 19, 1939, issue of Boxoffice. All the projects were designed by the Dallas architectural firm of Corgan and Moore.
One of the houses that the article listed as part of the project was the Osawa. The theater had been renamed, but the article didn’t say what the previous name had been.
Neither of the old buildings still standing on this block could have been the Osawa Theatre. It was probably where the modern Landmark National Bank building is now located. The theater has undoubtedly been demolished.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to reveals that the 1939 Dixwell Theatre was a rebuild of the 1916 theater, which had already been expanded from its original 400 seats in 1926, and then severely damaged by a fire in 1938. Parts of the original building were incorporated in the 1939 rebuild.
The January 10, 1914, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide mentioned the project that became the Cumberland Theatre in an item about recent projects in Brooklyn’s Hill section:
“An
old coal yard, which has been an eyesore to the neighborhood has been removed to make way for a modern moving-picture theater, which is now under way at the southeast corner of Greene avenue and Cumberland street.
“The new owners have begun the erection of a theater on plans made by Architect William J. Dilthey of Manhattan. The architecture of the theater is a modern treatment of the Spanish mission style. The walls are to be of pearl-gray stucco with red tile covering the roof and canopies on the two street fronts.
“The theater has been leased through the realty company and William H. Allen for a long term to the Beacon Photoplay Corporation, an operating company, at an aggregate rental of about $84,000.
Andrew Craig Morrison’s Theatres says that the Majestic was built in 1910, and designed by Paterson architect Charles E. Sleight. Sleight designed at least one other theater in Paterson. His son, Alfred E. Sleight, designed the Plaza Theatre, built in 1921.
Paterson, by Philip M. Read, attributes the design of the Regent Theatre to architect Fred W. Wentworth, who later designed several more theaters for Jacob Fabian.
The Union Street on which the Regent Theatre was located had its name changed to Veterans Place ages ago. Google Maps will not find this downtown location unless the street name Veterans Place is used in the address field.
The April 2, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that contracts had been awarded for the theater being built at Union and Redwood Avenues. The owner of the theater was H. Grossman, and the architect was Albert E. Sleight, both of Paterson.
Albert E. Sleight was the son of architect Charles E. Sleight, who designed Paterson’s Majestic Theatre of 1910.
I came across two items in the July 17, 1915, issue of The American Contractor. Both mention the Electric Theatre in St. Joseph, but they describe two different projects. One is a theater remodeling and the other a theater addition. The first is in the block the Electric Theatre was on, but the second item gives no location. I really don’t know what to make of them. I’ve had the impression that the Electric Theatre was newly built in 1915, but perhaps it was in a remodeled building. Here is the first item:
“St. Joseph… Theater (rem.): 2- sty. & bas. 76x 120. $18M. Edmond betw. Seventh & Eighth sts., St. Joseph, Mo. Archt. Carl Boller & Co., Gayety bldg., Kansas City. Owner Tootle Estate, St. Joseph. Lessee Electric Theater Co., St. Joseph, Mo. Work started. Fdns. & re. conc. let to Du Bois Re. Conc. Constr. Co., Corby Forsee bldg., St. Joseph. Plastering to C. A. Felling, 118 N. Eighth st., St. Joseph.”
Here is the second item:
“Theater (add.): 2 sty. & bas. 50x 120. St. Joseph, Mo. Archts. Carl Boiler & Bro., Gayety bldg. Kansas City. Owner Electric Theater, N. Philley, secy., St. Joseph, will take bids until July 21. Brk. & terra cotta trim, comp, rf., struct. iron.”
So I won’t be the cause of any more hair loss for HogGravy, here is a fresh link to the photo of the Trail Theatre on the cover of Boxoffice, October 6, 1951.
The Pitt Theatre was again remodeled in 1936, after the Shuberts gave the house up. This is probably when it was renamed the Barry and began showing movies. Here’s the item from the “Pittsburgh Patter” column of The Film Daily for February 5, 1936:
“Victor Rigaumont, local architect
and member of the Variety Club, is in charge of the Pitt Theater remodeling work now under way.”
The original architect of the Fain Theatre was Roy A. Benjamin. Here is the announcement of the opening from the January 24, 1936, issue of The Film Daily:
“New Leesburg House Opens
“Leesburg, Fla. — The Fain Theater, new 500-seat motion picture house, was opened this week by Earle M. Fain, owner and manager. It was planned by R. A. Benjamin of Jacksonville, architect for E. J. Sparks, and cost about $25,000. Building includes separate balcony and ticket window for Negroes.”
A section about the Cayuga Theatre on this web page gives the theater’s opening year as 1911. It also says the house was renamed the Aardvark Theatre in the early 1950s. After closing in 1955, the building as a church for some time, and was eventually demolished to make way for expansion of the Roosevelt Expressway.
The Cayuga Theatre was at the corner of Germantown Avenue and Cayuga Street, which is the 4300 block- probably 4371 Germantown Avenue.
I’ve set Street View to the proper location, but the pin icon on the map is still a couple of miles off. The Fox Theatre building is currently occupied by Fakier’s Jewelers. The Fox was just west of Gabasse Street.
Houma, by Thomas Blum Cobb and Mara Currie, says that the Fox was built in 1936, and there’s a photo with the 1938 release Romance on the Run on the marquee (Google Books preview– scroll down past two photos of the Bijou.) The Fox had a bit of simplified Art Deco detailing, and a nice marquee. It has all been stripped away by remodeling.
Thomas Blum Cobb and Mara Currie’s book Houma (from Arcadia’s Images of America series) says that the Bijou was built in 1940. However, a Bijou Theatre was listed at Houma in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. The 1940 house might have been a remodel, or perhaps an entirely new building. The Google Books preview of the Arcadia Press book has two photos of the Bijou (scroll down a bit for the second) as well as one of the slightly more decorative Fox (opened in 1936, according to the book.) Both theaters had modern fronts.
Bill Ellzey’s Daily Comet column for June 16, 2012 has a question from a former resident of Houma asking for information about Houma’s movie theaters. Ellzey says that the Bijou, Fox, and Grand were all on the three-block stretch of Main Street between Goode Street and Gabasse Street. That’s a considerable distance southeast of the location where Google Maps has put its pin icon for this theater.
A 1973 source indicates that the Bijou was located where the drive-up area of the First National Bank was located by 1973. If the First National Bank is still in the same location it was then, then the approximate address of the Bijou was 7910 Main, which is the bank’s current address.
The modern address of the New Theatre should have four digits, as the Island Theatre’s address is 4074 Main Street and the address of the building that once housed Powell’s Theatre is 4098 Main Street, and all three theaters were close together.
In a 2006 interview of Anne Lumley Davis, which was part of the Chincoteague Island Library Oral History Project, Ms. Davis says this about the New Theatre:
“ Then we had what they called the New Theater and that was built – it was built in
the ‘40’s. But it seemed like – I don’t really know what happened to it but it was torn down. And it wasn’t old, it wasn’t an old building when it was torn down, but I don’t know whether – I don’t whether the ’62 flood got it or – I don’t know.”
Other sources indicate that the New Theatre was owned by the Powell family, and that they operated both it and Powell’s Theatre until both houses succumbed to competition from the Island Theatre in the 1950s.
This comment on a local web page gives the location of the Price Theatre as Myers Avenue, mentions that it was operating during the 1960s, and says that it was converted into a shoe store and later demolished to make way for a Rite-Aid store. Internet says the Rite-Aid in Dunbar is at 1101 Myers Avenue, so that would be the approximate address of the theater.
Cezar Joseph Del Valle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index says that the Oxford Theatre opened on October 9, 1910. The house was designed in the Moorish style by architect William McElfatrick. It was a rather small theater, with only 648 seats.
The April, 1911, issue of Architecture and Building featured two photos, a plan of the orchestra floor, and a cross-section of the Oxford Theatre as part of an article on theaters (Google Books scan). The first photo is on page 350.
The cornice and window trim of the building to the left of the modern building in Street View is recognizable in the 1939 photo of the Chief, so the theater has been demolished.
After the Griffith and Dickinson theater chains merged in 1939, the consolidated firm embarked on a project to renovate its theaters. All the plans were designed by the Dallas architectural firm Corgan & Moore. It was at this time that the Royal Theatre in Hiawatha was renamed the Chief Theatre.
A photo of the Chief, sporting its new marquee, is the second in the column on the right side of this page of Boxoffice, August 19, 1939.
In 1939, the Booth Theatre became part of the Griffith-Dickinson theater chain. The company was in the process of remodeling and renovating many of its theaters, with plans for all the projects being done by the Dallas architectural firm Corgan & Moore. According to the August 19, 1939, issue of Boxoffice, the Booth Theatre was one of the former Dickinson houses that the newly combined circuit was updating.
The new marquee added as part of the project, seen at top right on this page of Boxoffice, appears to be the one still on the building.
A PDF file of the NRHP nomination form for the Booth Theatre can be downloaded from this link. An interesting revelation in the document is that Lee DeCamp was the supervising architect on the Boller Brothers' Booth Theatre project.
DeCamp’s connection with the Bollers apparently went back to at least 1911, when one or both of the Bollers probably supervised the construction of the Empress Theatre in Kansas City that DeCamp designed for the Sullivan & Considine circuit. When Robert Boller went to Los Angeles later that year, it was to work on projects for Sullivan & Considine. It’s possible that Boller and DeCamp were associated on some other projects over the next few years, until the Sullivan & Considine circuit collapsed, and Robert Boller returned to Kansas City by 1915.
In 1939 Dickinson Theatres embarked on a $250,000 project of remodeling and renovating many of the theaters in the circuit. An article about the program appeared in the August 19, 1939, issue of Boxoffice. All the projects were designed by the Dallas architectural firm of Corgan and Moore.
One of the houses that the article listed as part of the project was the Osawa. The theater had been renamed, but the article didn’t say what the previous name had been.
Neither of the old buildings still standing on this block could have been the Osawa Theatre. It was probably where the modern Landmark National Bank building is now located. The theater has undoubtedly been demolished.
The Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to reveals that the 1939 Dixwell Theatre was a rebuild of the 1916 theater, which had already been expanded from its original 400 seats in 1926, and then severely damaged by a fire in 1938. Parts of the original building were incorporated in the 1939 rebuild.
The January 10, 1914, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide mentioned the project that became the Cumberland Theatre in an item about recent projects in Brooklyn’s Hill section:
Andrew Craig Morrison’s Theatres says that the Majestic was built in 1910, and designed by Paterson architect Charles E. Sleight. Sleight designed at least one other theater in Paterson. His son, Alfred E. Sleight, designed the Plaza Theatre, built in 1921.
Paterson, by Philip M. Read, attributes the design of the Regent Theatre to architect Fred W. Wentworth, who later designed several more theaters for Jacob Fabian.
The Union Street on which the Regent Theatre was located had its name changed to Veterans Place ages ago. Google Maps will not find this downtown location unless the street name Veterans Place is used in the address field.
The April 2, 1921, issue of The American Contractor said that contracts had been awarded for the theater being built at Union and Redwood Avenues. The owner of the theater was H. Grossman, and the architect was Albert E. Sleight, both of Paterson. Albert E. Sleight was the son of architect Charles E. Sleight, who designed Paterson’s Majestic Theatre of 1910.
I came across two items in the July 17, 1915, issue of The American Contractor. Both mention the Electric Theatre in St. Joseph, but they describe two different projects. One is a theater remodeling and the other a theater addition. The first is in the block the Electric Theatre was on, but the second item gives no location. I really don’t know what to make of them. I’ve had the impression that the Electric Theatre was newly built in 1915, but perhaps it was in a remodeled building. Here is the first item:
Here is the second item:So I won’t be the cause of any more hair loss for HogGravy, here is a fresh link to the photo of the Trail Theatre on the cover of Boxoffice, October 6, 1951.
The Trenton Theatre was in the planning stage in early 1936, when the March 10 issue of The Film Daily ran this item:
The Pitt Theatre was again remodeled in 1936, after the Shuberts gave the house up. This is probably when it was renamed the Barry and began showing movies. Here’s the item from the “Pittsburgh Patter” column of The Film Daily for February 5, 1936:
The original architect of the Fain Theatre was Roy A. Benjamin. Here is the announcement of the opening from the January 24, 1936, issue of The Film Daily:
A section about the Cayuga Theatre on this web page gives the theater’s opening year as 1911. It also says the house was renamed the Aardvark Theatre in the early 1950s. After closing in 1955, the building as a church for some time, and was eventually demolished to make way for expansion of the Roosevelt Expressway.
The Cayuga Theatre was at the corner of Germantown Avenue and Cayuga Street, which is the 4300 block- probably 4371 Germantown Avenue.
Here is a photo of the Rex Theatre.
I’ve set Street View to the proper location, but the pin icon on the map is still a couple of miles off. The Fox Theatre building is currently occupied by Fakier’s Jewelers. The Fox was just west of Gabasse Street.
Houma, by Thomas Blum Cobb and Mara Currie, says that the Fox was built in 1936, and there’s a photo with the 1938 release Romance on the Run on the marquee (Google Books preview– scroll down past two photos of the Bijou.) The Fox had a bit of simplified Art Deco detailing, and a nice marquee. It has all been stripped away by remodeling.
Thomas Blum Cobb and Mara Currie’s book Houma (from Arcadia’s Images of America series) says that the Bijou was built in 1940. However, a Bijou Theatre was listed at Houma in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. The 1940 house might have been a remodel, or perhaps an entirely new building. The Google Books preview of the Arcadia Press book has two photos of the Bijou (scroll down a bit for the second) as well as one of the slightly more decorative Fox (opened in 1936, according to the book.) Both theaters had modern fronts.
Bill Ellzey’s Daily Comet column for June 16, 2012 has a question from a former resident of Houma asking for information about Houma’s movie theaters. Ellzey says that the Bijou, Fox, and Grand were all on the three-block stretch of Main Street between Goode Street and Gabasse Street. That’s a considerable distance southeast of the location where Google Maps has put its pin icon for this theater.
A 1973 source indicates that the Bijou was located where the drive-up area of the First National Bank was located by 1973. If the First National Bank is still in the same location it was then, then the approximate address of the Bijou was 7910 Main, which is the bank’s current address.
Here is a fresh link to the 1949 Boxoffice item with the photo of the Park Theatre’s collapsed ceiling.
The modern address of the New Theatre should have four digits, as the Island Theatre’s address is 4074 Main Street and the address of the building that once housed Powell’s Theatre is 4098 Main Street, and all three theaters were close together.
In a 2006 interview of Anne Lumley Davis, which was part of the Chincoteague Island Library Oral History Project, Ms. Davis says this about the New Theatre:
Other sources indicate that the New Theatre was owned by the Powell family, and that they operated both it and Powell’s Theatre until both houses succumbed to competition from the Island Theatre in the 1950s.