Salem History changed all its URL’s. The photo of the Wexford Theatre is now at this link. The caption gives the theater’s known period of operation as 1911-1915, but this web page says that the building was probably built in 1909, and that it had been altered into a retail store by 1926.
The building now at this address might or might not have housed a theater. Here is an item from the February 5, 1916, issue of The Motion Picture World tells a different story:
“Judge P. H. D'Arcy, who owns two pieces of theater property in Salem, Ore., is erecting another theater on Court street, on the site of the Wexford theater, recently burned. The building will be 100 by 120 In size, and part of it will be occupied by stores. The auditorium will seat 800 and Judge D'Arcy intends to make the house the finest picture theater in the valley.”
A few weeks later, on February 19 MPW reported that George Bligh had taken over operation of all the movie theaters in Salem, so it’s possible that Mr. D'Arcy had decided to leave the theater business altogether, and rebuilt the D'Arcy Building without a theater in it. I’ve found no references to the Wexford Theatre after the 1916 item, so it’s possible that the Wexford’s career ended with the fire in late 1915 or early 1916.
The Moving Picture World of July 15, 1916, had an article about Carl Laemmle’s first venture into the movie business (Google Books scan here.) There’s a 1906 photo of the White Front Theatre, but it is cropped too close to reveal whether or not it was in the building that now houses the Foot Locker store.
The building did have narrow windows on the upper floor, like the windows in the Foot Locker building, but the article says that the White Front property had a fifty foot frontage, while the Foot Locker building appears to be only half that width. If the theater was at what is now 1257 N. Milwaukee, it’s likely that it has been demolished, as the building now on the site has much wider windows on the second floor. At the very least, the entire facade was replaced.
The MPW article says that Laemmle gave up the theater when his original five-year lease ran out, at that in 1916 the building housed a five-and-ten-cent store.
A book about Fort Wayne published by the Fort Wayne News in 1913 attributes the design of the Lyric Theatre to one of the town’s leading architects of the period, John M. E. Riedel. He also designed the Empress Theatre.
A book about Fort Wayne published by the Fort Wayne News in 1913 attributes the design of the Empress Theatre to one of the town’s leading architects of the period, John M. E. Riedel. He also designed the Lyric Theatre.
In its early years, the Empress presented Sullivan & Considine vaudeville, and as Lee DeCamp was the supervising architect for the circuit, it’s possible that he also had a hand in designing the Empress. In 1912, DeCamp had his main office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about 150 miles from Fort Wayne.
The three photos of the Madison in the November 20, 1967, issue of Boxoffice can now be seen at this link.
The 1947 photo of the auditorium is in the Thortel fabrics ad on this page of Boxoffice.
The Lyric was operated for most of the 1920s by Godfrey Kotzin. L. B. Wilson bought the house in 1927. The news was published in the November 22 issue of the Kentucky Post, but I can’t find it online.
Saraswati8’s comment makes it clear that the Allen could not have been the theater designed by George Burnett and Evan Jones in 1930, as it was opened as the Garden Theatre in 1924. The 1930 project was most likely the Avon Theatre, which was on Long Beach Boulevard at Santa Ana Street, according to this comment by millermike on the Teatro Los Pinos page.
The 1936 remodeling job designed by Clarence Smale was certainly done on the Garden/Allen Theatre, though, and that is the most likely date at which it would have been renamed the South Gate Theatre. It became the Allen Theatre sometime after November 1, 1943, on which date it was still being listed as the South Gate Theatre (comment earlier in this thread by kd6dkc on August 29, 2009).
There was a Reel Joy Theatre operating in King City at least as early as 1922, when the December 9 issue of The Music Trades said that a Fotoplayer had been placed in the house by the San Jose branch of dealers Sherman, Clay & Company
I’ve found a reference to a house called the Sunset Theatre at 630 Irving Street, San Francisco, in the March 25, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. That’s only a bit over a mile from the Superba, so unless the two theaters used the same name at the same time for a while, which seems unlikely, this house must have changed its name before the house on Irving Street opened.
It occurs to me that this theater might well have opened in 1914, but under a different name. Perhaps the grand opening ad from 1919 was just a re-opening under the new name Euclid Theatre. If so, there might be listings for this theater with a 9th Street address and a different name in city directories from 1915 to 1918.
Cleveland also had a house called the Euclid Theatre earlier than 1914. The August 8, 1908, issue of The Billboard mentions a Mr. J.H. Eschman, then operating an amusement park in Minneapolis, saying that “…he started in with the old Euclid Theatre of Cleveland, Ohio….”
A trade journal called Buildings and Building Management published an article about the Union Trust Building in its issue of August 21, 1922. Here is the section that mentions the Euclid Theatre:
“Money and Commerce reports that ground has already been broken for the new twenty-story bank and office building of the Union Trust Company, Cleveland. This building is to be erected at the northeast corner of Euclid avenue and East Ninth street.
“The old Lennox building, which now stands at the northeast corner, the Euclid Theatre building on the corner of Ninth and Chester, a frame house, a power house and large packing ground now occupying the Chester avenue frontage are being removed to make way for the new banking structure.”
I notice that the grand opening ad in Mike Rivest’s album gives the theater’s location as “East 9th Street at Euclid Avenue (Next to Lennox Building)” so the entrance must have been on 9th Street, despite the theater’s name.
I’ve just noticed that the address is visible on the awning of the middle store in the bay-windowed building in the second photo Velostigmat linked to. It was 533. Counting north, 527 would have been in the dark building with the office furniture and stationers shops in it, assuming that that building had been built by 1910 (which it probably was, given its style.)
The Redding Theatre was altered in early 1927. The January 7 issue of The Film Daily said that the stage was being enlarged, the scenery loft rebuilt, and the interior decoration rehabilitated.
This theater had another AKA. In 1947, a Motion Picture Herald item said that the 325-seat World Theatre, formerly the Olentangy, had been remodeled and was about to reopen. Operators Al Sugarman and Lee Hofheimer also operated the Avondale and Indianola Theatres.
dmccann: A Sainted Devil was released in 1924, three years before the Electric Theatre at 1514 South Main Street opened, so the handbill must have been issued by the earlier Electric Theatre at 515 S. Main Street. That is the house listed at Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Paramount Theatre.
This house opened about 1915 as the Royal Theatre. The Prairie Style building was designed by the local architectural firm Peterson & Johnson. According to Rockford: 1920 and Beyond, by Eric A. Johnson, the house later operated as the Strand Theatre and then the Roxy Theatre before becoming the Rex.
The building originally had a “triumphal arch” entrance characteristic of small movie houses in the 1910s, and the peak of the arch could be seen above the streamlined marquee added later.
Rockford 1900-World War I, by Eric A. Johnson, gives the address of the Orpheum Theatre as 118 N. Main Street. It was converted into a movie house in 1915, after Orpheum vaudeville shows were moved to the new Palace Theatre across the street.
The Alfred Jones who designed this theater was not the Alfred E. Jones who remodeled the Theatre De Luxe in Dublin, Ireland, in 1936. The Spokane Jones was born in Chicago in 1872, while Alfred Edwin Jones of Dublin lived from 1894 to 1973.
Alfred Jones of Spokane formed a partnership with Joseph Levesque in early 1910, and a couple of years later moved to Arizona after contracting tuberculosis. He never returned to Spokane, and I’ve been unable to find any later information about him.
This theater probably opened in late 1907 or early 1908 as the Washington Theatre, and was probably designed by local architect Alfred Jones. It was renamed the Empress Theatre in 1911.
The 1913 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide lists the Empress as a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house, but provides no details. This page at BoxRec, the online boxing encyclopedia, cites a 1927 Spokane Spokesman Review item about fighter Young Stribling, which said that he had visited Spokane in 1911 as part of a family acrobatic troupe which appeared at Sullivan & Considine’s Empress Theatre, which had at that time been called the Washington Theatre.
A list of Sullivan & Considine houses at which Charles Chaplin appeared in 1911 (the text is mostly in German) has him appearing at the Washington Theatre in Spokane on April 24, 1911, and at the Empress Theatre in Spokane on September 24, 1911, so the name change took place between those dates.
A history of Spokane published in 1912 has the following information about local architect Alfred Jones:
“Mr. Jones also designed and was financially interested in the company that instituted the first moving picture showhouse in Spokane. They operated under the name of the Spokane Scenic Theater Company and opened the Scenic Theater at First avenue and Stevens street. Subsequently they built the Empress Theater. Mr. Jones was secretary and treasurer of the company and later promoted another organization known as the Arcade Amusement Company of which he was president. This company built the Arcade Theater on Riverside avenue.”
An item in the September 11, 1907, edition of the Spokane Evening Chronicle said that old buildings at a site on the north side of Riverside Avenue between Washington and Bernard were being razed in preparation for a new theater to be built by the Spokane Scenic Theatre Company. This must have been the Washington/Empress/Studio, which was on that block.
The opening name Washington Theatre was apparently moved to this house from another theater. A February 26, 1906, item in the Spokane Evening Chronicle said that John Considine and Timothy Sullivan were planning to visit Spokane, and said that their theater in that city was called the Washington. I don’t know the location of the first Washington Theatre, or what became of it after the name was moved, but it might not have been very old at the time. A Washington Theatre Company was incorporated at Spokane on May 15, 1905, with capital of $20,000.
OK, the PDF I linked to has a map showing the address of the parcel on which the Town Hall was located as 36-38 S.Main Street. The post office was probably at 38 and the Auditorium at 36.
Further correction: The correct address of the Auditorium might have been 36 S. Main. I can’t find the actual address anywhere on the Internet, but a 1964 photo in this PDF (a very large file) shows the block and singles out the building next door as having the address 34 S. Main. I think the Town Hall/Auditorium’s address must have been higher rather than lower, but I’m not positive.
Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society has this page about the Grand Theatre, with several photos.
The web site Salem History provides this photo from 1992.
Salem History changed all its URL’s. The photo of the Wexford Theatre is now at this link. The caption gives the theater’s known period of operation as 1911-1915, but this web page says that the building was probably built in 1909, and that it had been altered into a retail store by 1926.
The building now at this address might or might not have housed a theater. Here is an item from the February 5, 1916, issue of The Motion Picture World tells a different story:
A few weeks later, on February 19 MPW reported that George Bligh had taken over operation of all the movie theaters in Salem, so it’s possible that Mr. D'Arcy had decided to leave the theater business altogether, and rebuilt the D'Arcy Building without a theater in it. I’ve found no references to the Wexford Theatre after the 1916 item, so it’s possible that the Wexford’s career ended with the fire in late 1915 or early 1916.The Moving Picture World of July 15, 1916, had an article about Carl Laemmle’s first venture into the movie business (Google Books scan here.) There’s a 1906 photo of the White Front Theatre, but it is cropped too close to reveal whether or not it was in the building that now houses the Foot Locker store.
The building did have narrow windows on the upper floor, like the windows in the Foot Locker building, but the article says that the White Front property had a fifty foot frontage, while the Foot Locker building appears to be only half that width. If the theater was at what is now 1257 N. Milwaukee, it’s likely that it has been demolished, as the building now on the site has much wider windows on the second floor. At the very least, the entire facade was replaced.
The MPW article says that Laemmle gave up the theater when his original five-year lease ran out, at that in 1916 the building housed a five-and-ten-cent store.
Here is a 1927 photo of the Jefferson Theatre.
A book about Fort Wayne published by the Fort Wayne News in 1913 attributes the design of the Lyric Theatre to one of the town’s leading architects of the period, John M. E. Riedel. He also designed the Empress Theatre.
A book about Fort Wayne published by the Fort Wayne News in 1913 attributes the design of the Empress Theatre to one of the town’s leading architects of the period, John M. E. Riedel. He also designed the Lyric Theatre.
In its early years, the Empress presented Sullivan & Considine vaudeville, and as Lee DeCamp was the supervising architect for the circuit, it’s possible that he also had a hand in designing the Empress. In 1912, DeCamp had his main office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about 150 miles from Fort Wayne.
Here is a fresh link to the photo of the Garmar’s lobby on the cover of the “Modern Theatre” section of Boxoffice, December 2, 1950.
Sorry, I put the wrong link for the 1947 photo. It’s here.
The three photos of the Madison in the November 20, 1967, issue of Boxoffice can now be seen at this link.
The 1947 photo of the auditorium is in the Thortel fabrics ad on this page of Boxoffice.
The Lyric was operated for most of the 1920s by Godfrey Kotzin. L. B. Wilson bought the house in 1927. The news was published in the November 22 issue of the Kentucky Post, but I can’t find it online.
Saraswati8’s comment makes it clear that the Allen could not have been the theater designed by George Burnett and Evan Jones in 1930, as it was opened as the Garden Theatre in 1924. The 1930 project was most likely the Avon Theatre, which was on Long Beach Boulevard at Santa Ana Street, according to this comment by millermike on the Teatro Los Pinos page.
The 1936 remodeling job designed by Clarence Smale was certainly done on the Garden/Allen Theatre, though, and that is the most likely date at which it would have been renamed the South Gate Theatre. It became the Allen Theatre sometime after November 1, 1943, on which date it was still being listed as the South Gate Theatre (comment earlier in this thread by kd6dkc on August 29, 2009).
There was a Reel Joy Theatre operating in King City at least as early as 1922, when the December 9 issue of The Music Trades said that a Fotoplayer had been placed in the house by the San Jose branch of dealers Sherman, Clay & Company
I’ve found a reference to a house called the Sunset Theatre at 630 Irving Street, San Francisco, in the March 25, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World. That’s only a bit over a mile from the Superba, so unless the two theaters used the same name at the same time for a while, which seems unlikely, this house must have changed its name before the house on Irving Street opened.
It occurs to me that this theater might well have opened in 1914, but under a different name. Perhaps the grand opening ad from 1919 was just a re-opening under the new name Euclid Theatre. If so, there might be listings for this theater with a 9th Street address and a different name in city directories from 1915 to 1918.
Cleveland also had a house called the Euclid Theatre earlier than 1914. The August 8, 1908, issue of The Billboard mentions a Mr. J.H. Eschman, then operating an amusement park in Minneapolis, saying that “…he started in with the old Euclid Theatre of Cleveland, Ohio….”
A trade journal called Buildings and Building Management published an article about the Union Trust Building in its issue of August 21, 1922. Here is the section that mentions the Euclid Theatre:
I notice that the grand opening ad in Mike Rivest’s album gives the theater’s location as “East 9th Street at Euclid Avenue (Next to Lennox Building)” so the entrance must have been on 9th Street, despite the theater’s name.I’ve just noticed that the address is visible on the awning of the middle store in the bay-windowed building in the second photo Velostigmat linked to. It was 533. Counting north, 527 would have been in the dark building with the office furniture and stationers shops in it, assuming that that building had been built by 1910 (which it probably was, given its style.)
A 1946 photo of the Vernal Theatre.
The Redding Theatre was altered in early 1927. The January 7 issue of The Film Daily said that the stage was being enlarged, the scenery loft rebuilt, and the interior decoration rehabilitated.
This theater had another AKA. In 1947, a Motion Picture Herald item said that the 325-seat World Theatre, formerly the Olentangy, had been remodeled and was about to reopen. Operators Al Sugarman and Lee Hofheimer also operated the Avondale and Indianola Theatres.
dmccann: A Sainted Devil was released in 1924, three years before the Electric Theatre at 1514 South Main Street opened, so the handbill must have been issued by the earlier Electric Theatre at 515 S. Main Street. That is the house listed at Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Paramount Theatre.
This house opened about 1915 as the Royal Theatre. The Prairie Style building was designed by the local architectural firm Peterson & Johnson. According to Rockford: 1920 and Beyond, by Eric A. Johnson, the house later operated as the Strand Theatre and then the Roxy Theatre before becoming the Rex.
The building originally had a “triumphal arch” entrance characteristic of small movie houses in the 1910s, and the peak of the arch could be seen above the streamlined marquee added later.
Rockford 1900-World War I, by Eric A. Johnson, gives the address of the Orpheum Theatre as 118 N. Main Street. It was converted into a movie house in 1915, after Orpheum vaudeville shows were moved to the new Palace Theatre across the street.
The Alfred Jones who designed this theater was not the Alfred E. Jones who remodeled the Theatre De Luxe in Dublin, Ireland, in 1936. The Spokane Jones was born in Chicago in 1872, while Alfred Edwin Jones of Dublin lived from 1894 to 1973.
Alfred Jones of Spokane formed a partnership with Joseph Levesque in early 1910, and a couple of years later moved to Arizona after contracting tuberculosis. He never returned to Spokane, and I’ve been unable to find any later information about him.
This theater probably opened in late 1907 or early 1908 as the Washington Theatre, and was probably designed by local architect Alfred Jones. It was renamed the Empress Theatre in 1911.
The 1913 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide lists the Empress as a Sullivan & Considine vaudeville house, but provides no details. This page at BoxRec, the online boxing encyclopedia, cites a 1927 Spokane Spokesman Review item about fighter Young Stribling, which said that he had visited Spokane in 1911 as part of a family acrobatic troupe which appeared at Sullivan & Considine’s Empress Theatre, which had at that time been called the Washington Theatre.
A list of Sullivan & Considine houses at which Charles Chaplin appeared in 1911 (the text is mostly in German) has him appearing at the Washington Theatre in Spokane on April 24, 1911, and at the Empress Theatre in Spokane on September 24, 1911, so the name change took place between those dates.
A history of Spokane published in 1912 has the following information about local architect Alfred Jones:
An item in the September 11, 1907, edition of the Spokane Evening Chronicle said that old buildings at a site on the north side of Riverside Avenue between Washington and Bernard were being razed in preparation for a new theater to be built by the Spokane Scenic Theatre Company. This must have been the Washington/Empress/Studio, which was on that block.The opening name Washington Theatre was apparently moved to this house from another theater. A February 26, 1906, item in the Spokane Evening Chronicle said that John Considine and Timothy Sullivan were planning to visit Spokane, and said that their theater in that city was called the Washington. I don’t know the location of the first Washington Theatre, or what became of it after the name was moved, but it might not have been very old at the time. A Washington Theatre Company was incorporated at Spokane on May 15, 1905, with capital of $20,000.
OK, the PDF I linked to has a map showing the address of the parcel on which the Town Hall was located as 36-38 S.Main Street. The post office was probably at 38 and the Auditorium at 36.
Further correction: The correct address of the Auditorium might have been 36 S. Main. I can’t find the actual address anywhere on the Internet, but a 1964 photo in this PDF (a very large file) shows the block and singles out the building next door as having the address 34 S. Main. I think the Town Hall/Auditorium’s address must have been higher rather than lower, but I’m not positive.