The RKO Uptown/Six Mile Theatre, built in 1927, had to have been designed by Percival Pereira, who had been practicing architecture in Detroit for many years. Percival Pereira was never a member of the firm of Pereira & Pereira, which was founded in 1931 by brothers William and Hal Pereira. The brothers had nothing to do with the design of this theater.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that designed the 1934 and 1942 remodeling jobs for this theater, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1935 remodeling of the Rialto Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The firm of Pereira & Pereira was dissolved in 1943, according to William Pereira’s entry in the AIA’s Directory of American Architects. William Pereira then operated his own firm until forming a partnership with Charles Luckman in 1951.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1936 remodeling of the West Englewood Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1936 remodeling of the Hamilton Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
As the East End Theatre was built in 1926, it must have been designed by Percival Pereira alone. Percival Pereira was never a member of the firm of Pereira & Pereira, which was founded in 1931 by brothers William and Hal Pereira.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1934 remodeling of the E.A.R. Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1935 remodeling of the Des Plaines Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1934 remodeling of the Covent Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1936 remodeling of this theater, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
Percival Pereira was not connected with the design of this theater. The principals of the firm of Pereira & Pereira were William Pereira and Hal Pereira.
The architect field is still not right. The principals of the firm of Pereira & Pereira were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never associated with the firm.
The firm was founded in 1931, so any theaters attributed to them that were built prior to 1930 are probably the work of Percival Pereira (except, of course, in the case of theaters that were remodeled by the firm in the 1930s.)
The architect and firm fields for this page don’t match up with most other sources. The caption pages for the Gottscho-Schleisner photos of the Beach Theatre at the Library of Congress (see my previous comment) say that Pereira & Pereira acted as design consultants on the project, but the architects were Weed & Reeder. There’s no mention of Albert Anis.
The Pacific Coast Architecture Database page for Hal (not Percival) Pereira lists him as a consultant to Weed & Reeder on the Beach Theatre project, and cites an article from The Architectural Record, August, 1941, as the source. It is possible that William Pereira was not involved in the project. Although the firm of Pereira & Pereira was not formally dissolved until 1943 (according to the AIA’s Directory of American Architects), William appears to have been very busy in Los Angeles in the early 1940s.
The entry for architect Frank H. Shuflin in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s Directory of American Architects lists the Beach Theatre in Miami Beach as one of his principal works. It lists Shuflin’s positions at the firm of Weed & Reeder as draftsman from 1927 to 1934, and Associate in charge of the office from 1935 to 1941. I’m not sure if that means he was the lead architect on the Beach Theatre or not.
A questionnaire sent to the AIA from architect Edwin T. Reeder in 1946 also lists the Beach Theatre as one of his works. Reeder left the partnership with Robert Law Reed in 1941 and established his own practice, so the Beach must have been one of their last projects together.
Percival Pereira was not a member of the firm of Pereira & Pereira. That firm consisted of brothers William and Hal Pereira. There is a lot of conflation of Percival and Hal on the Internet, and I suspect that much of it has been spread from Cinema Treasures. I really ought to have noticed this sooner.
Well, it looks like some of the theaters attributed to Pereira & Pereira at Cinema Treasures (Downtown Theatre, Detroit, for example) are actually the work of Percival Pereira. It’s going to take some time to sort this out. Information about Percival Pereira is rather thin on the Internet, and information about William and Hal is not much more plentiful.
The September 17, 1938, Boxoffice article which includes photos of the Model Theatre is now to be found at this link The first page of the article has a photo of William and Hal Pereira.
For some reason, Hal Pereira, William’s brother, and his partner in the firm Pereira & Pereira, has often been conflated with an older architect, Percival R. Pereira. Percival Pereira was associated with C. Howard Crane in 1921-1922, and is supposed to have designed the interiors of the Fox Theatre in Detroit, but all the Pereira & Pereira theater designs listed at Cinema Treasures were William and Hal’s work. I’ve been unable to discover if Percival Pereira was related to the Pereira brothers or not.
Roger, I think the phone number might belong to Tom Alexander, who submitted this theater. His family owned the Luzerne Theatre.
Tom, are you sure of the opening year of the theater? I found this item in the July 8, 1922, issue of The American Contractor:
“LUZERNE, PA. •Theatre (M. P.), Store & Apts.: $60,000. 2 sty. 50x165. Luzerne. Archt. James A. McGlynn, Simon Long bldg., Wilkes Barre. Owner & Bldr. Louis Marines & Thomas Alexander, 27 Main St. Brk. & h. t., stone. Soon to start. Owner taking bids on sep. contrs.”
If the theater didn’t open until 1925, that was an awfully long construction time.
Wasn’t the Plaza Theatre in the building that is now Andy’s Bar, on the southeast corner of Locust and Oak? Because the Internet gives the address of 122 N. Locust Street for Andy’s Bar. That might be what has confused Google Maps into putting its pin icon up north of Pecan Street. There is no 121 N. Locust.
If the three theaters on the west side of the square were all in a row, the address of the Palace must have been 109 N. Elm Street. The Texas/Fine Arts was on a double lot at 113-115 N. Elm, which would have put the Dreamland next door at 111 N. Elm, and so the Palace would have been at 109 N. Elm. The lots at 105-107 are now a parking lot, and the Sherman Building occupies the double corner lot at 101-103.
I can’t find a construction year for the building currently at 109 N. Elm, but the building at 111, on the site of the Dreamland, was built in 1955, according to the property report on this page at City-Data.com. As the building at 109 has a facade almost identical to the building at 111, and both are the same height, they look like they were built at the same time.
At the very least, everything between the side walls of the Palace was probably gutted, and an entirely new facade (and probably roof) built in 1955.
Being next door to the Texas/Fine Arts Theatre, the address of the Dreamland would have been 111 N. Elm Street (the Fine Arts was on a double lot at 113-155 N. Elm.) Until last year this was the address of Ruby’s Diner on the Square, which closed in June, 2011. I can’t find a current occupant of the building, so it might still be vacant at this time.
A property report on this page at City-Data.com says that the improvement on the property, a 3000 square foot commercial building, was built in 1955. If that’s correct, then the Dreamland has been demolished, not converted to commercial space.
I’ve found another reference to the Royal Theatre, this in the October 10, 1908, issue of The Billboard, in the magazines “Playhouses” section:
“The Royal Theatre, which is to occupy a building at 218 East Houston street, San Antonio, Tex., will be one of the prettiest and coziest amusement places In the Southwest. Harry J. Moore, the manager, is busily arranging the bookings and making other details for the theatre. The Royal is to give high-class vaudeville for ten cents. The Royal Amusement Co., who control the theatre, have recently filed articles of incorporation with the secretary of state at Austin. The capital stock Is $15,000. The incorporators are E. W. Mills. J. M. Nix and Lee Shannon.”
It’s possible that the Royal Theatre on Houston Street was closed in or by 1920. A contributor to the Wikipedia article about the Majestic Theatre found this bit of information, and cites a 1988 article in the Theatre Historical Society’s journal Marquee as the source:
“The land on which the office building-theatre complex now stands was leased to Karl Hoblitzelle from J. M. Nix, who had purchased it in 1920 from the Enterprise Company of Dallas. The land came with the curious deed restriction that, until April 5, 1928, ‘neither aforesaid land nor any building or improvement or any part thereon shall be used or occupied for theatrical, motion picture, or amusement purposes at any time…’”
The wording doesn’t make clear if the deed restriction was part of the lease by Nix to Hoblitzelle, or part of the sale by Enterprise Company to Nix, or both. If the deed restriction was part of the sale, and included the portion of the property on which the Royal Theatre sat, then the house must have been closed when the sale was made. The Royal must also have been closed if it was included in the lease agreement.
But I can’t think of any reason why either Nix or Enterprise Company would place the deed restriction on the property unless they were either still operating the Royal themselves, in which case it must not have been included in the original lease, or if they had opened another theater nearby and wanted to prevent new competition at this location.
Also, I’ve found that architect H. L. Page’s first name was Harvey.
The Knickerbocker Theatre was built in 1913 or earlier. A biographical sketch of several members of the Skeel family in a book published that year says of the Skeel Brothers Company, a large construction and development firm: “The company built and owns the Knickerbocker Theatre and the Mercantile Office Building, Euclid avenue, and in this building their office is located.”
At least two members of the Skeel family were architects, so it’s possible that the Knickerbocker Theatre was designed by one or both of them, but I’ve been unable to confirm this.
The Knickerbocker Theatre got a few lines in an article about Cleveland movie houses that was published in The Moving Picture World on July 15, 1916:
“The Knickerbocker Theater, 8315 Euclid avenue, boasts of the most exclusive patronage of any Cleveland picture theater. Emery M. Downs, who manages both the Knickerbocker and the Metropolitan Theater, says high class music and the best obtainable pictures have built up this reputation.
“All the ushers in the Knickerbocker, which has 1,100 seats, are college boys, from either Western Reserve University or the Case School of Applied Science.
“Morris Spitalney’s orchestra provides music with the pictures. The Knickerbocker charges 10, 20 and 35 cents for admission.”
The RKO Uptown/Six Mile Theatre, built in 1927, had to have been designed by Percival Pereira, who had been practicing architecture in Detroit for many years. Percival Pereira was never a member of the firm of Pereira & Pereira, which was founded in 1931 by brothers William and Hal Pereira. The brothers had nothing to do with the design of this theater.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that designed the 1934 and 1942 remodeling jobs for this theater, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1935 remodeling of the Rialto Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The firm of Pereira & Pereira was dissolved in 1943, according to William Pereira’s entry in the AIA’s Directory of American Architects. William Pereira then operated his own firm until forming a partnership with Charles Luckman in 1951.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1936 remodeling of the West Englewood Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1936 remodeling of the Hamilton Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
As the East End Theatre was built in 1926, it must have been designed by Percival Pereira alone. Percival Pereira was never a member of the firm of Pereira & Pereira, which was founded in 1931 by brothers William and Hal Pereira.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1934 remodeling of the E.A.R. Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1935 remodeling of the Des Plaines Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1934 remodeling of the Covent Theatre, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
The principals of Pereira & Pereira, the firm that did the 1936 remodeling of this theater, were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never a member of this firm.
Percival Pereira was not connected with the design of this theater. The principals of the firm of Pereira & Pereira were William Pereira and Hal Pereira.
The architect field is still not right. The principals of the firm of Pereira & Pereira were William Pereira and Hal Pereira. Percival Pereira was an older architect who was never associated with the firm.
The firm was founded in 1931, so any theaters attributed to them that were built prior to 1930 are probably the work of Percival Pereira (except, of course, in the case of theaters that were remodeled by the firm in the 1930s.)
The architect and firm fields for this page don’t match up with most other sources. The caption pages for the Gottscho-Schleisner photos of the Beach Theatre at the Library of Congress (see my previous comment) say that Pereira & Pereira acted as design consultants on the project, but the architects were Weed & Reeder. There’s no mention of Albert Anis.
The Pacific Coast Architecture Database page for Hal (not Percival) Pereira lists him as a consultant to Weed & Reeder on the Beach Theatre project, and cites an article from The Architectural Record, August, 1941, as the source. It is possible that William Pereira was not involved in the project. Although the firm of Pereira & Pereira was not formally dissolved until 1943 (according to the AIA’s Directory of American Architects), William appears to have been very busy in Los Angeles in the early 1940s.
The entry for architect Frank H. Shuflin in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s Directory of American Architects lists the Beach Theatre in Miami Beach as one of his principal works. It lists Shuflin’s positions at the firm of Weed & Reeder as draftsman from 1927 to 1934, and Associate in charge of the office from 1935 to 1941. I’m not sure if that means he was the lead architect on the Beach Theatre or not.
A questionnaire sent to the AIA from architect Edwin T. Reeder in 1946 also lists the Beach Theatre as one of his works. Reeder left the partnership with Robert Law Reed in 1941 and established his own practice, so the Beach must have been one of their last projects together.
Percival Pereira was not a member of the firm of Pereira & Pereira. That firm consisted of brothers William and Hal Pereira. There is a lot of conflation of Percival and Hal on the Internet, and I suspect that much of it has been spread from Cinema Treasures. I really ought to have noticed this sooner.
Well, it looks like some of the theaters attributed to Pereira & Pereira at Cinema Treasures (Downtown Theatre, Detroit, for example) are actually the work of Percival Pereira. It’s going to take some time to sort this out. Information about Percival Pereira is rather thin on the Internet, and information about William and Hal is not much more plentiful.
The September 17, 1938, Boxoffice article which includes photos of the Model Theatre is now to be found at this link The first page of the article has a photo of William and Hal Pereira.
For some reason, Hal Pereira, William’s brother, and his partner in the firm Pereira & Pereira, has often been conflated with an older architect, Percival R. Pereira. Percival Pereira was associated with C. Howard Crane in 1921-1922, and is supposed to have designed the interiors of the Fox Theatre in Detroit, but all the Pereira & Pereira theater designs listed at Cinema Treasures were William and Hal’s work. I’ve been unable to discover if Percival Pereira was related to the Pereira brothers or not.
Roger, I think the phone number might belong to Tom Alexander, who submitted this theater. His family owned the Luzerne Theatre.
Tom, are you sure of the opening year of the theater? I found this item in the July 8, 1922, issue of The American Contractor:
If the theater didn’t open until 1925, that was an awfully long construction time.Wasn’t the Plaza Theatre in the building that is now Andy’s Bar, on the southeast corner of Locust and Oak? Because the Internet gives the address of 122 N. Locust Street for Andy’s Bar. That might be what has confused Google Maps into putting its pin icon up north of Pecan Street. There is no 121 N. Locust.
If the three theaters on the west side of the square were all in a row, the address of the Palace must have been 109 N. Elm Street. The Texas/Fine Arts was on a double lot at 113-115 N. Elm, which would have put the Dreamland next door at 111 N. Elm, and so the Palace would have been at 109 N. Elm. The lots at 105-107 are now a parking lot, and the Sherman Building occupies the double corner lot at 101-103.
I can’t find a construction year for the building currently at 109 N. Elm, but the building at 111, on the site of the Dreamland, was built in 1955, according to the property report on this page at City-Data.com. As the building at 109 has a facade almost identical to the building at 111, and both are the same height, they look like they were built at the same time.
At the very least, everything between the side walls of the Palace was probably gutted, and an entirely new facade (and probably roof) built in 1955.
Being next door to the Texas/Fine Arts Theatre, the address of the Dreamland would have been 111 N. Elm Street (the Fine Arts was on a double lot at 113-155 N. Elm.) Until last year this was the address of Ruby’s Diner on the Square, which closed in June, 2011. I can’t find a current occupant of the building, so it might still be vacant at this time.
A property report on this page at City-Data.com says that the improvement on the property, a 3000 square foot commercial building, was built in 1955. If that’s correct, then the Dreamland has been demolished, not converted to commercial space.
Here are updated links to the Boxoffice items cited in my previous comment.
November 7, 1942 article about three Jack Corgan projects, including the El Rancho Theatre.
Rendering of the proposed El Rancho Theatre (bottom of page) in Boxoffice of June 21, 1941.
I’ve found another reference to the Royal Theatre, this in the October 10, 1908, issue of The Billboard, in the magazines “Playhouses” section:
It’s possible that the Royal Theatre on Houston Street was closed in or by 1920. A contributor to the Wikipedia article about the Majestic Theatre found this bit of information, and cites a 1988 article in the Theatre Historical Society’s journal Marquee as the source:The wording doesn’t make clear if the deed restriction was part of the lease by Nix to Hoblitzelle, or part of the sale by Enterprise Company to Nix, or both. If the deed restriction was part of the sale, and included the portion of the property on which the Royal Theatre sat, then the house must have been closed when the sale was made. The Royal must also have been closed if it was included in the lease agreement.But I can’t think of any reason why either Nix or Enterprise Company would place the deed restriction on the property unless they were either still operating the Royal themselves, in which case it must not have been included in the original lease, or if they had opened another theater nearby and wanted to prevent new competition at this location.
Also, I’ve found that architect H. L. Page’s first name was Harvey.
Here is a photo of the Knickerbocker Playhouse auditorium from the Cleveland Memory project.
The Knickerbocker Theatre was built in 1913 or earlier. A biographical sketch of several members of the Skeel family in a book published that year says of the Skeel Brothers Company, a large construction and development firm: “The company built and owns the Knickerbocker Theatre and the Mercantile Office Building, Euclid avenue, and in this building their office is located.”
At least two members of the Skeel family were architects, so it’s possible that the Knickerbocker Theatre was designed by one or both of them, but I’ve been unable to confirm this.
The Knickerbocker Theatre got a few lines in an article about Cleveland movie houses that was published in The Moving Picture World on July 15, 1916: