The February 9, 1921, issue of The Film Daily ran this item about the Apollo Theatre:
“Los Angeles — The new Apollo on
Hollywood Blvd., which will be about the last word in elegance among residential district picture houses, will open shortly with a pre-release of the latest Christie special comedy, ‘Hey, Rube,’ featuring Bobby Vernon, as one of the features.”
It’s very likely that the New Jefferson was the theater referred to in this item in the July 29, 1908, issue of The American Architect and Building News:
“We learn from despatches that Architect Arland C. Johnson, of Toledo, Ohio, is at work on plans for a handsome new theater for Mose Reis to be located at Auburn.”
Aside from getting the architect’s middle initial wrong, this report was probably reliable. Entertainment magazine The Billboard reported (belatedly) on the scheduled opening of the New Jefferson Theatre in its issue of December 12, 1908:
“After making preparations for the past six months, the opening of the New Jefferson Theatre, Auburn, N. Y., will occur November 23 with Eddie Foy in Mr. Hamlet of Broadway. The theatre contains all the latest and most modern improvements of the day. It will be managed by J. O. Brooks, formerly of the Majestic Theatre, Utica, N. Y. The theatre is on the Reis Circuit and has a seating capacity of 1,600.”
C. V. Martina was operating a house in Mount Morris called the Family Theatre at least as early as 1930, when it was mentioned in the Nunda, New York News on December 30. The New Family Theatre could have been either a replacement theater, or the old Family Theatre remodeled.
C. V. Martina of the Martina circuit still had his offices in Albion at least as late as 1960, when he wrote a letter to Motion Picture Herald. He was also mentioned in connection with Albion in an item in the Medina, New York Herald of November 28, 1935, which said that he had taken over the Rialto Theatre at Albion. The Rialto was still in operation at least as late as 1953.
I’ve found theaters in Albion called the Family and the Temple mentioned in various items issues of The Moving Picture world from 1916. Albion also had a stage house called the Pratt Theatre, listed in the Cahn guide of 1910. The theater listed as the Grand Opera House in the 1920 guide was probably the same house.
That photo of Second Avenue at Off the Grid must have been taken from one of the upper floors of the National Theatre building on Houston Street at Chrystie.
The April 28, 1921, issue of Engineering News-Record said that architect and engineer I. Margon was preparing plans for a theater and store building, 138x160 feet, on Kingsbridge Road at Jerome Avenue.
A few years after this theater was built, architect Irving Margon, then in partnership with Adolph Holder, would design, in association with Emery Roth, one of New York City’s iconic apartment buildings, the twin-towered Eldorado Apartments at 300 Central Park West.
I found a later item in Record confirming that Eugene DeRosa was the architect of the Ogden Theatre. The general contract for the project had been let to M. Shapiro & Sons.
An item in the January 21, 1922, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide says that architects Moore & Landsiedel were preparing plans for a 100x100-foot brick theater and store building for a site on the west side of Webster Avenue about 100 feet north of 204th Street. The project would be ready for bids about February 20.
The Majestic Theatre has been demolished. The building, which was on the southwest corner of Second Avenue and First Street, is to be replaced within two years by a twelve-story apartment building. This photo, taken in December, 2011, by Scott Lynch, shows a bulldozer bringing rubble from inside the building to Second Avenue.
This post from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s Off the Grid blog has some information about the building, and a photo from April, 2011. It says that the house was called the Woolworth Theatre when it first opened, and that by 1930 the theater was gone.
An item in the lower left corner of this page of the January 14, 1922, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide concerns the sale of the theater to the M&S circuit. That’s most likely when the theater’s name was changed to Majestic.
In its last decades, the building was the site of the Mars Bar, a famous East Village drinking establishment, the impending demise of which occasioned a plethora of posts to the Internet. I’ve read a number of these, and have yet to find one that mentions the theater the building once housed. It’s likely that nobody in the neighborhood now, bohemian or yuppie, remembers a theater that closed over eighty years ago.
I don’t know if the Mars Bar occupied any part of the building which had been part of the theater, or if it was confined to the storefronts along the First Street side. If it did extend into the theater’s space, the space must have been so changed that its former purpose was unrecognizable… or maybe the denizens of the bar were simply too drunk to see what it had been.
The January 21, 1922, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide published a list of major projects scheduled for 1922, one of which was a theater on Ogden Avenue north of 171st Street. The architect of the $100,000 project was listed as “Emilie De Rosa,” but I think it must have been meant to read Eugene DeRosa.
Ah, if the parcels actually back up to each other then I think I know what happened. Blinderman & Cohen announced that they were building a theater that would be at 80-82 Clinton Street and at 97-103 Attorney Street, and somebody at MPW mistakenly thought that it was two different projects. It was just the Clinton Theatre, running through the block to Attorney Street.
The difference in the numbers probably threw them off, just as it did me. I’d thought that 97-103 Attorney would be several doors farther north than the property behind 80-82 Clinton.
When I look at the satellite view of this theater, I wonder if the auditorium of the Jackson Theatre has not been demolished? The footprint of the existing apartment building looks much too small to have accommodated a theater of almost 800 seats, but there is plenty of vacant land behind it where there could once have been an auditorium. The land looks torn up, too, as though something had been removed from it.
My guess would be that the upper floors of the apartment house are just about as they have always been, and that the entrance to the theater passed all the way through the building to the auditorium behind it, most likely via the arch at left.
Jerome Jackson took over this house around the beginning of 1918, as noted in the January 5 issue of The Moving Picture World that year:
“Carrel theater in Eastern avenue, near Carrel street, operated by Shober Brothers, has been purchased by Jerome M. Jackson. Structure will be remodeled and seating capacity increased.”
The Shober Brothers had already enlarged the Carrell Theatre at least once, as reported in The Moving Picture World of September 4, 1915, which said that the house would have 570 seats once the project was completed.
An item in the September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that C. J. Butler of Ishpeming had hired architect D. Fred Charlton to design his new theater there, and added that Charlton had been the architect of the Delft Theatres in Munising and Marquette.
Demetrius Frederick Charlton was, in 1916 when the Butler Theatre opened, in the partnership Charlton & Kuenzli with architect Edwin O. Kuenzli, but I don’t know when the partnership was formed. Charlton apparently used the name D. Fred Charlton professionally, as that is how he signed his application to practice architecture in Michigan, and how he was listed in the AIA'a American Architects Directory.
An item in the September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that C. J. Butler of Ishpeming had hired architect D. Fred Charlton to design his new theater there, and added that Charlton had been the architect of the Delft Theatres in Munising and Marquette.
The September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World noted that the new theater at 80-82 Beekman Avenue in North Tarrytown had opened, but failed to mention the name of the house. The article gave the name of the owner, Edward Pollock; listed the seating capacity as 800; said there was a stage 16x50 feet; even noted that the booth was equipped with two Powers 6-A machines, but the article left the theater itself unnamed.
This house opened in 2001 with seven screens and 1,200 seats. I’ve been unable to discover if the additonal screens were new construction or resulted from splitting one or two of the original seven auditoriums. The Liberty Cinema was designed by the Alpharetta, Georgia, architectural firm Hiscutt & Associates, who have designed at least 14 cinema projects for Georgia Theatre Company II.
A July 7, 2001, Savannah Evening Post article about the opening of the Liberty 7 Cinemas said that Barron Godbee had encouraged the Georgia Theatre Company II to build the new multiplex after his company, Pal Amusements, had closed its twin-screen Brice Cinema, which had then been Hinesville’s only movie theater for over a decade, the previous year.
Earlier, Pal Amusements had operated two other theaters in Hinesville: the Pal Theatre, built on Main Street in 1940, and a drive-in built in the 1950s. The Brice Cinema had opened adjacent to the drive-in in the 1970s.
The original Georgia Theatre Company was sold to United Artists in 1986, but the Georgia Theatre Company II was founded in 1991 by members of the Stembler family, who had been connected with the original company. The Liberty 7 was the new company’s 23rd location, and brought their total number of screens to 201.
Incidental: The “Related Websites” link for this page isn’t working. Links to Georgia Theatre Company operations from some other CT pages also appear to be broken. The current web page for the Liberty Cinema 9 is here. The Georgia Theatre Company’s home page is here.
When this multiplex was Eastern Federal’s Movies at Crown Point, the expansion to 12 screens was designed by the Alpharetta, Georgia, architectural firm Hiscutt & Associates. There are three small photos on the firm’s web site.
The conversion of the Merchants Walk Cinemas into a stadium-style multiplex for Georgia Theatre Company II was designed by Alpharetta, Georgia, architectural firm Hiscutt & Associates.
The Glynn Place 11 was designed by Hiscutt & Associates, and is one of more than a dozen cinema projects the Alpharetta, Georgia, firm has designed for the Georgia Theatre Company II.
Thanks for letting me know about UT’s online collection of Sanborn Maps, Larry. I wasn’t aware it was available.
The 1910 map shows buildings labeled “Picture Show” at both 1004 and 1010 S Main Street. The Odeon could have been one or the other of those, assuming the maps were not drawn before the theater opened that year. Unfortunately, the 1911 map set is missing the sheet the Odeon would be on, so I can’t check to see if it changed between 1910 and 1911. The 1911 set is the most recent the collection has available of Fort Worth.
The Fort Worth Library’s Sanborn collection is available online only to card holders of the library, and as I don’t live in Texas I can’t get access to it. The UT collection should prove be a helpful resource, though.
The building occupied by Fitness Active now has the address 10125 Whittwood Drive, so that must be just about where the theater was located. The March 15, 1965, Boxoffice article about the Whittwood Theatre can be seen at this link. An additional photo of the auditorium is on the subsequent page of the magazine.
If the report in the February 9, 1921, issue of The Film Daily is anywhere near accurate, this theater has lost most of its seats:
The February 9, 1921, issue of The Film Daily ran this item about the Apollo Theatre:
It’s very likely that the New Jefferson was the theater referred to in this item in the July 29, 1908, issue of The American Architect and Building News:
Aside from getting the architect’s middle initial wrong, this report was probably reliable. Entertainment magazine The Billboard reported (belatedly) on the scheduled opening of the New Jefferson Theatre in its issue of December 12, 1908:C. V. Martina was operating a house in Mount Morris called the Family Theatre at least as early as 1930, when it was mentioned in the Nunda, New York News on December 30. The New Family Theatre could have been either a replacement theater, or the old Family Theatre remodeled.
C. V. Martina of the Martina circuit still had his offices in Albion at least as late as 1960, when he wrote a letter to Motion Picture Herald. He was also mentioned in connection with Albion in an item in the Medina, New York Herald of November 28, 1935, which said that he had taken over the Rialto Theatre at Albion. The Rialto was still in operation at least as late as 1953.
I’ve found theaters in Albion called the Family and the Temple mentioned in various items issues of The Moving Picture world from 1916. Albion also had a stage house called the Pratt Theatre, listed in the Cahn guide of 1910. The theater listed as the Grand Opera House in the 1920 guide was probably the same house.
That photo of Second Avenue at Off the Grid must have been taken from one of the upper floors of the National Theatre building on Houston Street at Chrystie.
The April 28, 1921, issue of Engineering News-Record said that architect and engineer I. Margon was preparing plans for a theater and store building, 138x160 feet, on Kingsbridge Road at Jerome Avenue.
A few years after this theater was built, architect Irving Margon, then in partnership with Adolph Holder, would design, in association with Emery Roth, one of New York City’s iconic apartment buildings, the twin-towered Eldorado Apartments at 300 Central Park West.
I found a later item in Record confirming that Eugene DeRosa was the architect of the Ogden Theatre. The general contract for the project had been let to M. Shapiro & Sons.
An item in the January 21, 1922, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide says that architects Moore & Landsiedel were preparing plans for a 100x100-foot brick theater and store building for a site on the west side of Webster Avenue about 100 feet north of 204th Street. The project would be ready for bids about February 20.
The Majestic Theatre has been demolished. The building, which was on the southwest corner of Second Avenue and First Street, is to be replaced within two years by a twelve-story apartment building. This photo, taken in December, 2011, by Scott Lynch, shows a bulldozer bringing rubble from inside the building to Second Avenue.
This post from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s Off the Grid blog has some information about the building, and a photo from April, 2011. It says that the house was called the Woolworth Theatre when it first opened, and that by 1930 the theater was gone.
An item in the lower left corner of this page of the January 14, 1922, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide concerns the sale of the theater to the M&S circuit. That’s most likely when the theater’s name was changed to Majestic.
In its last decades, the building was the site of the Mars Bar, a famous East Village drinking establishment, the impending demise of which occasioned a plethora of posts to the Internet. I’ve read a number of these, and have yet to find one that mentions the theater the building once housed. It’s likely that nobody in the neighborhood now, bohemian or yuppie, remembers a theater that closed over eighty years ago.
I don’t know if the Mars Bar occupied any part of the building which had been part of the theater, or if it was confined to the storefronts along the First Street side. If it did extend into the theater’s space, the space must have been so changed that its former purpose was unrecognizable… or maybe the denizens of the bar were simply too drunk to see what it had been.
The January 21, 1922, issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide published a list of major projects scheduled for 1922, one of which was a theater on Ogden Avenue north of 171st Street. The architect of the $100,000 project was listed as “Emilie De Rosa,” but I think it must have been meant to read Eugene DeRosa.
Ah, if the parcels actually back up to each other then I think I know what happened. Blinderman & Cohen announced that they were building a theater that would be at 80-82 Clinton Street and at 97-103 Attorney Street, and somebody at MPW mistakenly thought that it was two different projects. It was just the Clinton Theatre, running through the block to Attorney Street.
The difference in the numbers probably threw them off, just as it did me. I’d thought that 97-103 Attorney would be several doors farther north than the property behind 80-82 Clinton.
The January 5, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Liberty Theatre was then under construction at Emmett, Idaho.
The Moving Picture World of January 5, 1918, had this item, datelined New York, N. Y.:
Cinema Treasures has no theater listed at the Attorney Street address. Does anyone know if that second project was carried out or not?When I look at the satellite view of this theater, I wonder if the auditorium of the Jackson Theatre has not been demolished? The footprint of the existing apartment building looks much too small to have accommodated a theater of almost 800 seats, but there is plenty of vacant land behind it where there could once have been an auditorium. The land looks torn up, too, as though something had been removed from it.
My guess would be that the upper floors of the apartment house are just about as they have always been, and that the entrance to the theater passed all the way through the building to the auditorium behind it, most likely via the arch at left.
Jerome Jackson took over this house around the beginning of 1918, as noted in the January 5 issue of The Moving Picture World that year:
The Shober Brothers had already enlarged the Carrell Theatre at least once, as reported in The Moving Picture World of September 4, 1915, which said that the house would have 570 seats once the project was completed.An item in the September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that C. J. Butler of Ishpeming had hired architect D. Fred Charlton to design his new theater there, and added that Charlton had been the architect of the Delft Theatres in Munising and Marquette.
Demetrius Frederick Charlton was, in 1916 when the Butler Theatre opened, in the partnership Charlton & Kuenzli with architect Edwin O. Kuenzli, but I don’t know when the partnership was formed. Charlton apparently used the name D. Fred Charlton professionally, as that is how he signed his application to practice architecture in Michigan, and how he was listed in the AIA'a American Architects Directory.
An item in the September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that C. J. Butler of Ishpeming had hired architect D. Fred Charlton to design his new theater there, and added that Charlton had been the architect of the Delft Theatres in Munising and Marquette.
The September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World noted that the new theater at 80-82 Beekman Avenue in North Tarrytown had opened, but failed to mention the name of the house. The article gave the name of the owner, Edward Pollock; listed the seating capacity as 800; said there was a stage 16x50 feet; even noted that the booth was equipped with two Powers 6-A machines, but the article left the theater itself unnamed.
This house opened in 2001 with seven screens and 1,200 seats. I’ve been unable to discover if the additonal screens were new construction or resulted from splitting one or two of the original seven auditoriums. The Liberty Cinema was designed by the Alpharetta, Georgia, architectural firm Hiscutt & Associates, who have designed at least 14 cinema projects for Georgia Theatre Company II.
A July 7, 2001, Savannah Evening Post article about the opening of the Liberty 7 Cinemas said that Barron Godbee had encouraged the Georgia Theatre Company II to build the new multiplex after his company, Pal Amusements, had closed its twin-screen Brice Cinema, which had then been Hinesville’s only movie theater for over a decade, the previous year.
Earlier, Pal Amusements had operated two other theaters in Hinesville: the Pal Theatre, built on Main Street in 1940, and a drive-in built in the 1950s. The Brice Cinema had opened adjacent to the drive-in in the 1970s.
The original Georgia Theatre Company was sold to United Artists in 1986, but the Georgia Theatre Company II was founded in 1991 by members of the Stembler family, who had been connected with the original company. The Liberty 7 was the new company’s 23rd location, and brought their total number of screens to 201.
Incidental: The “Related Websites” link for this page isn’t working. Links to Georgia Theatre Company operations from some other CT pages also appear to be broken. The current web page for the Liberty Cinema 9 is here. The Georgia Theatre Company’s home page is here.
When this multiplex was Eastern Federal’s Movies at Crown Point, the expansion to 12 screens was designed by the Alpharetta, Georgia, architectural firm Hiscutt & Associates. There are three small photos on the firm’s web site.
The conversion of the Merchants Walk Cinemas into a stadium-style multiplex for Georgia Theatre Company II was designed by Alpharetta, Georgia, architectural firm Hiscutt & Associates.
The Glynn Place 11 was designed by Hiscutt & Associates, and is one of more than a dozen cinema projects the Alpharetta, Georgia, firm has designed for the Georgia Theatre Company II.
The expansion of the Movies at Mount Berry Square to nine screens was designed by Alpharetta, Georgia, architectural firm Hiscutt & Associates.
Thanks for letting me know about UT’s online collection of Sanborn Maps, Larry. I wasn’t aware it was available.
The 1910 map shows buildings labeled “Picture Show” at both 1004 and 1010 S Main Street. The Odeon could have been one or the other of those, assuming the maps were not drawn before the theater opened that year. Unfortunately, the 1911 map set is missing the sheet the Odeon would be on, so I can’t check to see if it changed between 1910 and 1911. The 1911 set is the most recent the collection has available of Fort Worth.
The Fort Worth Library’s Sanborn collection is available online only to card holders of the library, and as I don’t live in Texas I can’t get access to it. The UT collection should prove be a helpful resource, though.
The building occupied by Fitness Active now has the address 10125 Whittwood Drive, so that must be just about where the theater was located. The March 15, 1965, Boxoffice article about the Whittwood Theatre can be seen at this link. An additional photo of the auditorium is on the subsequent page of the magazine.