Issues of Engineering News-Record from 1921 list two theater projects proposed for Wellsboro. One project was for an Arcadia Theatre company, but its description doesn’t fit the Arcadia as it appears in photos. The other project has no name attached, but its description is a better match for the Arcadia. I’ll post both items here:
“Wellsboro—Theatre—Arcadia Theatre Co., Wellsboro, and H. M. Haskell, archt, Hulett Bldg., Elmira, N. Y.. opens bids within month, building 2 story, 80 x 100 ft, concrete, brick and steel, on Main St About $75,000.”
The second item:
“Wellsboro—Theater—O. B. Roberts & Son, Bache Auditorium, receiving bids building 1 story, 50 x 187 ft. hollow tile and concrete, on Main St. About $150,000. H. Spann. 52 West Chippewa St.. Buffalo. N. Y., archt.”
I can’t find the dates of either issue of the journal, but the Roberts project was earlier in the Google Books scan, so it was probably the first announced. It’s possible that the Arcadia Theatre Company arranged to abandon their project and take over the Roberts project instead, as it might have been farther along. Perhaps the Arcadia project announcement was even a ploy to force Roberts into a deal to turn over operation of his new house to the other group.
In any case, the architect of the Arcadia Theatre was probably either H. M. Haskell of Elmira or H. Spann of Buffalo. Henry L. Spann was the architect of several theaters in Buffalo, but I’ve been unable to find anything about H. M. Haskell other than a couple of directory listings. Maybe somebody with access to records in Wellsboro can clear up the mystery.
It is likely, though not a certainty, that the Casino was the theater that was to be part of the project mentioned in this item from The Moving Picture World of January 3, 1914:
“The Keansburg Heights Company is laying out work to be completed before the summer of 1914 for an amusement park, to include dance ball, moving pictures, carosel, swings, park building and broadwalk.”
The earlier comment by KGordonMurray does say that the theater was located in an amusement park, and the Casino Theatre in the photo in the book I linked to earlier certainly looked old enough to have been built in 1914.
Keansburg, by Randall Gabrielan (Google Books preview), has a photo on page 46 showing the Casino Theatre about 1952. It was on the south side of Beachway about mid-block between Highland and Carr Avenues. The caption says that the theater has been demolished.
The architect of the Blue Mouse Theatre was Henderson Ryan. The September 8, 1920, issue of Engineering and Contracting said: “H. Ryan, Architect, will proceed with construction of the Blue Mouse Theatre.”
The Regent Theatre was drastically altered by the mid-1930s, when the original stadium seating section was removed and replaced with a conventional orchestra floor. A cross section of the Regent’s auditorium as originally designed can be seen on this page of Lisa Maria DiChiera’s The Theatre Designs of C. Howard Crane.
Contrast that with this photo of the remodeled Regent that was featured in a Heywood-Wakefield ad in Boxoffice of September 19, 1936.
I’ve been unable to find a photo of the Regent’s auditorium before its remodeling, but DeChiera’s thesis includes these photos of the Majestic Theatre in Detroit, built the year after the Regent and designed by Crane with a very similar seating configuration.
Here is a fresh link to the first page of the 1936 Boxoffice article about the Eastown Theatre. The article continues on subsequent pages of the magazine (click on “next page” links above or below the right side of the page scans.)
Keep clicking a couple of pages past the article about the Eastown and there is an article about the Washoe Theatre in Anaconda, Montana, opened the same year. The pair provide an interesting example of the two streams of modern design during the 1930s: the ornate (and costly) Art Deco details of the Washoe, versus the elegant simplicity of the Eastown’s Streamline Modern style.
Old Town has changed so much over the last century that old photos of Main Street are all but unrecognizable. Almost every building in this photo, which appears to be from the 1910s, is gone, including the Strand Theatre. Many of the buildings were already gone by the time this photo was taken, probably in 1959, though the Strand was still there with its modernized front from the mid-1930s.
The October 17, 1936, issue of Boxoffice published before and after photos of the recently remodeled Strand Theatre, which can be seen at lower right on this page. As near as I can tell, the Strand was on part of the site of a modern building that currently houses a Rite Aid drug store, and its front has been replaced by a blank brick wall.
The October 17, 1936, issue of Boxoffice featured a brief article about the Will Rogers Theatre, with a single photo of its Streamline Modern auditorium. The exterior had some Art Deco flourishes, but the auditorium was almost austere, nearly the sole exception being the florid upholstery on the seats. The scan of the photo is a bit blurry, but it serves to show the overall sleekness of the design.
The text is in Portuguese, but this web page features several interior photos of the Cine-Metro Passeio, a rendering of the exterior, floor plans, and a cross section of the building, all of which will be of interest to theater fans whether they can read the text or not.
This Rogers Theatre must be the one that can be seen in the two photos at the top of this page of the November 14, 1936, issue of Boxoffice. At the bottom of the page are two photos of the Central Theatre in Yonkers, New York. The last paragraph of the text says that both houses were designed by architect William Hohauser.
Warren G. Harris’s earlier comment on this house attributing the design to Charles Sandblom says that it was a 1935 project, but didn’t open until 1936. The belated opening must have been related to Sandblom’s 1935 plans being dropped, and Hohauser designing the theater as it was finally built.
An article by Helen Kent with a few photos of the Kiggins Theatre was published in Boxoffice of November 11, 1936 (additional photo on the subsequent page.) In addition, a view of the theater’s stairwell appeared as the frontispiece of that issue’s Modern Theatre section.
Here is a quote from the Landmark Designation Report for the Metro Theatre, regarding the involvement of architect Otto A. Deichmann in the 1941 remodeling of the house, and his professional relationship with Timothy Pflueger:
“While architect Timothy L. Pflueger (1892-1946) has long been associated with the 1941 renovation of the Metro Theatre, his involvement is less clear than that of architect Otto A. Deichmann (1890-1964). A city permit, dated 1941, for interior work and plumbing lists the name of the architect as Otto Deichmann, 321 Bush Street. Historical consultants involved with the 1998 renovation of the theatre believe that Deichmann worked with Timothy Pflueger during the renovation. Research has not confirmed that Deichmann worked in the offices of Pflueger’s firm, Miller and Pflueger, but the two men were associates and overlapped on important projects, most notably the Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939-1940, where Deichmann designed the Shasta-Cascade Building. The well-known mural by Diego Rivera, Pan American Unity, now located at the main campus of City College of San Francisco, was commissioned for the Golden Gate International Exposition. The mural depicts both Pflueger and Deichmann. Pflueger, friend and patron of Rivera, collaborated with him on the mural.”
Click this link to download a PDF file of the Landmark Designation Report. It has a fairly extensive history of the theater.
The building in which the De Luxe Theatre was located, at the southeast corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, was built in 1910, which might have been the year the theater opened. The theater was tucked into a two story “L” shaped structure, which can be seen at the very bottom of this 1956 aerial view, a bit right of center. The auditorium can be distinguished by its roof.
By the 1930s, the building housed a branch of the Thrifty Drug Company, which remained the main tenant for several decades. In 1970, the second floor of the “L” shaped section was removed, and the roof of the former auditorium was rebuilt along with the rest of the roof, at a lower level, so essentially nothing remains of the De Luxe Theatre but the walls.
Ponderpig: In 1923, your father and grandmother would have gone to the De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street. This house on Jefferson Avenue was then called the Favorite Theatre. The De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street was in operation by 1914, and continued at least into 1927. It does not appear in the 1929 city directory, so it had closed by then. My guess would be that it was unable to survive the competition from the new Westlake Theatre, which opened at 636 Alvarado in 1926. I’ve been unable to find any indication that a theater ever operated in this location again.
Note that this means that the earlier comments about the organ that was installed in the De Luxe Theatre in 1921 also pertain to the Alvarado Street house, not this Jefferson Boulevard house.
The Alvarado Street De Luxe is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures. I’ve submitted it for inclusion. A page for it should appear within a day or two, when a link to it will show up in the “Newest Theaters” section on the home page.
The earliest listing I can find for a theater at 1873 Jefferson Boulevard is in the 1923 city directory, in which it is listed as the Favorite Theatre (it might have opened earlier, but I don’t have access to directories between 1915 and 1923.) By 1926, it was listed as the St. Andrews Theatre, which is also listed as in the 1927 and 1929 directories. No theater is listed for the address in the 1932 directory, but by 1936 it was open again as the De Luxe Theatre.
The entry for architect Albert F. Keymar in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Fox-Bay Theatre as one of his works, with the design date of 1949.
According to his listing in the AIA’s American Architects Directory, the architect for the 1947-1948 renovation of the Gorman Theatre was Harry J. Korslund, of Norwood, Massachusetts.
This page of a web site called Elvis Presley Pedia list the opening of the Park Theatre as an event of 1940. No source is cited, but the site lists a few other theaters by opening year and it appears to be accurate in those cases.
Heh. It turns out that one of the sources that attributes the design of the Regent Theatre to C. Howard Crane is a blog at some site called Cinema Treasures. As it appears to be a fairly reliable site, we should probably add that information to this page.
The 1922 book A standard history of Springfield and Clark County, Ohio has this to say about Gus Sun’s Regent Theatre:
“In the realm of Springfield theaters, Gus Sun is easily the dean; he has leased theaters and operated them until he owned them. In 1912 he leased the Grand and in 1917 he purchased it, and in 1919 he dismantled it, constructing the Regent on the site….”
The book also has a bit about the Grand Theatre, the Regent’s predecessor:
“In 1881 the Grand Opera House was built on Limestone Street, on the site of the old Leffel Water Wheel industry. It was built by John W. Bookwalter, with a seating capacity of 1,200, and the advantage of a ground floor and other up-to-date improvements….”
Quite a few sources note that the architect of the Regent Theatre was C. Howard Crane, and that the house opened on August 16, 1920. Some sources also claim that it was built as a legitimate theater that was later converted to show movies, but in fact Gus Sun built the Regent for vaudeville and movies.
Issues of Engineering News-Record from 1921 list two theater projects proposed for Wellsboro. One project was for an Arcadia Theatre company, but its description doesn’t fit the Arcadia as it appears in photos. The other project has no name attached, but its description is a better match for the Arcadia. I’ll post both items here:
The second item:I can’t find the dates of either issue of the journal, but the Roberts project was earlier in the Google Books scan, so it was probably the first announced. It’s possible that the Arcadia Theatre Company arranged to abandon their project and take over the Roberts project instead, as it might have been farther along. Perhaps the Arcadia project announcement was even a ploy to force Roberts into a deal to turn over operation of his new house to the other group.In any case, the architect of the Arcadia Theatre was probably either H. M. Haskell of Elmira or H. Spann of Buffalo. Henry L. Spann was the architect of several theaters in Buffalo, but I’ve been unable to find anything about H. M. Haskell other than a couple of directory listings. Maybe somebody with access to records in Wellsboro can clear up the mystery.
It is likely, though not a certainty, that the Casino was the theater that was to be part of the project mentioned in this item from The Moving Picture World of January 3, 1914:
The earlier comment by KGordonMurray does say that the theater was located in an amusement park, and the Casino Theatre in the photo in the book I linked to earlier certainly looked old enough to have been built in 1914.Keansburg, by Randall Gabrielan (Google Books preview), has a photo on page 46 showing the Casino Theatre about 1952. It was on the south side of Beachway about mid-block between Highland and Carr Avenues. The caption says that the theater has been demolished.
The architect of the Blue Mouse Theatre was Henderson Ryan. The September 8, 1920, issue of Engineering and Contracting said: “H. Ryan, Architect, will proceed with construction of the Blue Mouse Theatre.”
The Regent Theatre was drastically altered by the mid-1930s, when the original stadium seating section was removed and replaced with a conventional orchestra floor. A cross section of the Regent’s auditorium as originally designed can be seen on this page of Lisa Maria DiChiera’s The Theatre Designs of C. Howard Crane.
Contrast that with this photo of the remodeled Regent that was featured in a Heywood-Wakefield ad in Boxoffice of September 19, 1936.
I’ve been unable to find a photo of the Regent’s auditorium before its remodeling, but DeChiera’s thesis includes these photos of the Majestic Theatre in Detroit, built the year after the Regent and designed by Crane with a very similar seating configuration.
Here is a fresh link to the first page of the 1936 Boxoffice article about the Eastown Theatre. The article continues on subsequent pages of the magazine (click on “next page” links above or below the right side of the page scans.)
Keep clicking a couple of pages past the article about the Eastown and there is an article about the Washoe Theatre in Anaconda, Montana, opened the same year. The pair provide an interesting example of the two streams of modern design during the 1930s: the ornate (and costly) Art Deco details of the Washoe, versus the elegant simplicity of the Eastown’s Streamline Modern style.
Old Town has changed so much over the last century that old photos of Main Street are all but unrecognizable. Almost every building in this photo, which appears to be from the 1910s, is gone, including the Strand Theatre. Many of the buildings were already gone by the time this photo was taken, probably in 1959, though the Strand was still there with its modernized front from the mid-1930s.
The October 17, 1936, issue of Boxoffice published before and after photos of the recently remodeled Strand Theatre, which can be seen at lower right on this page. As near as I can tell, the Strand was on part of the site of a modern building that currently houses a Rite Aid drug store, and its front has been replaced by a blank brick wall.
Two small interior photos of the Plaza Theatre illustrate this brief article in Boxoffice of October 17, 1936.
Another view of the Plaza’s auditorium illustrates an ad for Heywood-Wakefield theater seats on this page of the same issue of Boxoffice.
The 1936 Boxoffice article about the Frolic Theatre can be seen at this link. A photo and partial floor plan appear on the subsequent page.
The October 17, 1936, issue of Boxoffice featured a brief article about the Will Rogers Theatre, with a single photo of its Streamline Modern auditorium. The exterior had some Art Deco flourishes, but the auditorium was almost austere, nearly the sole exception being the florid upholstery on the seats. The scan of the photo is a bit blurry, but it serves to show the overall sleekness of the design.
The text is in Portuguese, but this web page features several interior photos of the Cine-Metro Passeio, a rendering of the exterior, floor plans, and a cross section of the building, all of which will be of interest to theater fans whether they can read the text or not.
There is a photo of the auditorium of the Center Mayfield Theatre at the upper right corner of this page of Boxoffice, November 14, 1936.
The Roxy opened a bit earlier than 1939. There is a photo of the recently-built house on this page of Boxoffice, November 14, 1936.
The architect’s rendering of the Crystal Theatre in Boxoffice of November 14, 1936, mentioned in my earlier comment, can be seen at this link.
This Rogers Theatre must be the one that can be seen in the two photos at the top of this page of the November 14, 1936, issue of Boxoffice. At the bottom of the page are two photos of the Central Theatre in Yonkers, New York. The last paragraph of the text says that both houses were designed by architect William Hohauser.
Warren G. Harris’s earlier comment on this house attributing the design to Charles Sandblom says that it was a 1935 project, but didn’t open until 1936. The belated opening must have been related to Sandblom’s 1935 plans being dropped, and Hohauser designing the theater as it was finally built.
An article by Helen Kent with a few photos of the Kiggins Theatre was published in Boxoffice of November 11, 1936 (additional photo on the subsequent page.) In addition, a view of the theater’s stairwell appeared as the frontispiece of that issue’s Modern Theatre section.
Here is a quote from the Landmark Designation Report for the Metro Theatre, regarding the involvement of architect Otto A. Deichmann in the 1941 remodeling of the house, and his professional relationship with Timothy Pflueger:
Click this link to download a PDF file of the Landmark Designation Report. It has a fairly extensive history of the theater.The new page for the De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street can be found at this link.
The building in which the De Luxe Theatre was located, at the southeast corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, was built in 1910, which might have been the year the theater opened. The theater was tucked into a two story “L” shaped structure, which can be seen at the very bottom of this 1956 aerial view, a bit right of center. The auditorium can be distinguished by its roof.
By the 1930s, the building housed a branch of the Thrifty Drug Company, which remained the main tenant for several decades. In 1970, the second floor of the “L” shaped section was removed, and the roof of the former auditorium was rebuilt along with the rest of the roof, at a lower level, so essentially nothing remains of the De Luxe Theatre but the walls.
Ponderpig: In 1923, your father and grandmother would have gone to the De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street. This house on Jefferson Avenue was then called the Favorite Theatre. The De Luxe Theatre on Alvarado Street was in operation by 1914, and continued at least into 1927. It does not appear in the 1929 city directory, so it had closed by then. My guess would be that it was unable to survive the competition from the new Westlake Theatre, which opened at 636 Alvarado in 1926. I’ve been unable to find any indication that a theater ever operated in this location again.
Note that this means that the earlier comments about the organ that was installed in the De Luxe Theatre in 1921 also pertain to the Alvarado Street house, not this Jefferson Boulevard house.
The Alvarado Street De Luxe is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures. I’ve submitted it for inclusion. A page for it should appear within a day or two, when a link to it will show up in the “Newest Theaters” section on the home page.
The earliest listing I can find for a theater at 1873 Jefferson Boulevard is in the 1923 city directory, in which it is listed as the Favorite Theatre (it might have opened earlier, but I don’t have access to directories between 1915 and 1923.) By 1926, it was listed as the St. Andrews Theatre, which is also listed as in the 1927 and 1929 directories. No theater is listed for the address in the 1932 directory, but by 1936 it was open again as the De Luxe Theatre.
The entry for architect Albert F. Keymar in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s American Architects Directory lists the Fox-Bay Theatre as one of his works, with the design date of 1949.
According to his listing in the AIA’s American Architects Directory, the architect for the 1947-1948 renovation of the Gorman Theatre was Harry J. Korslund, of Norwood, Massachusetts.
This page of a web site called Elvis Presley Pedia list the opening of the Park Theatre as an event of 1940. No source is cited, but the site lists a few other theaters by opening year and it appears to be accurate in those cases.
Heh. It turns out that one of the sources that attributes the design of the Regent Theatre to C. Howard Crane is a blog at some site called Cinema Treasures. As it appears to be a fairly reliable site, we should probably add that information to this page.
The 1922 book A standard history of Springfield and Clark County, Ohio has this to say about Gus Sun’s Regent Theatre:
The book also has a bit about the Grand Theatre, the Regent’s predecessor:Quite a few sources note that the architect of the Regent Theatre was C. Howard Crane, and that the house opened on August 16, 1920. Some sources also claim that it was built as a legitimate theater that was later converted to show movies, but in fact Gus Sun built the Regent for vaudeville and movies.