A history of Reno County published in 1917 has a biographical sketch of a William A. Loe who was at the time of publication the manager of the Home Theatre. It says that in 1892 he leased the Hutchinson Opera House, and operated it until “…1904, in which year he became manager of the new Home theater, at the corner of B avenue and Main street and has ever since been in charge of the same.”
The year given for Mr. Loe’s acquisition of the house must have been wrong, as the 1902-1903 Cahn guide already lists him as manager of the 900-seat Shaw Theatre. The 1903-1904 Cahn guide lists the house as the Home Theatre. Mr. Loe was still manager of the Home in 1921, when the Cahn-Hill guide listing for the house carried the notation “Plays legitimate attractions only.”
This is from the March 6, 1915 issue of Motography: “The Ruby theater, which has been operated at 427 South Main street, Hutchinson, for the negroes, is closed. Mr. Thomas, the owner of the fixtures, is to reopen the show within a few weeks.” The fact that the Ruby was a segregated house for African-Americans undoubtedly accounts for its out-of-the-way location.
In case the information proves useful, the fire that destroyed the old Kingman Opera House took place on May 11, 1910.
A bit more recently, The March 22, 1971 issue of Boxoffice said that the former Meade Theatre, which had been closed for a month, had reopened as the Towne Cinema on February 19 following some renovations. A more extensive redecoration was planned. S. F. Meade had closed the house for economic reason after almost fifty years of continuous operation.
He reopened the house in partnership with Jack Luthi. The theater would be open six nights a week (dark Wednesday), with a matinee and a special midnight show on Saturday. If the enterprise was a success, then the partners planned to reopen the Meade Drive-In as well in the spring, at which time the Towne would be reduced for the season to weekend only operation. So far I haven’t found any follow-up articles, so I don’t know if these plans came to fruition, or how long the house operated as the Towne Cinema.
The January 11, 1930 issue of Motion Picture News had this item mentioning the Regent: “Competition Causes Change
“Wellington, Kan. — Opening of the Regent has resulted in a switch to Friday and Saturday shows only at the Majestic. Both are Fox houses.”
However, the 1922 Sanborn map of Wellington shows a 700-seat theater at the Regent’s site, but it must have operated under a different name. The 1926 FDY lists only the 400-seat Ashland and the 500-seat Majestic at Wellington, and no theater of 700 seats.
The Sanborn maps of 1912 and 1922 show two movie theaters on Main Street, a 425-seat house at 106 S., and a 360-seat house across the street at 105. The house at 106, per various sources, opened by 1909 as the Pioneer Theatre and was listed in the 1914-1915 AMPD, but had been renamed the Isis Theatre by 1916. I’ve found no name for the house at 105.
The NRHP registration form for the Wellington Downtown Historic District says the Isis was converted to retail in 1923 and the information about the building at 105 is ambiguous and does not mention a theater, so I’m unable to determine the locations of the Ashland and the Majestic. At this time all I can be sure of is that the theater at 114 W. Lincoln was in existence by October, 1922, and had become the Regent by the start of 1930.
I haven’t gotten email notifications from Cinema Treasures for a couple of years now. I thought it was just an issue with my email service, but I guess not. I will usually check my recent comments for responses for a week or two after I make them. After that there are just too many to keep track of, but I will check the site’s “recent comments” page and click on theater names that seem familiar. Sometimes it pays off, but not often.
The latest ad I’ve found for Owens Midtown Theatre is from October, 1974. A search of the newspaper archive yields no results from 1975, but an April 17, 1976 Charleston Daily Mail item mentions a new Baptist church installing “…seats that came from the former Owens Midtown theater in Charleston.”
The Silent Era has a brief history of the Plaza/Capitol Theatre. The Plaza era ended in 1919 when the house was bought by United Theatre Enterprise, which would control the house for the next forty years. On acquiring it, United closed the Plaza for extensive remodeling, reopening as the Capitol Theatre on December 26, 1921.
On November 15, 1923 the Capitol was ravaged by a major fire, leading to the collapse of the auditorium roof. The rebuild took about a year, and the Capitol reopened in November, 1924. The rebuilt and expanded house had a Wurlitzer organ, but no information about it is available. The Aaron family’s Sharon Lee Corporation acquired the Capitol in 1959, making it one of ten theaters they operated in the city. They closed the house as a movie theater in 1981.
The Pastime was remodeled again around the beginning of 1951. An item in the June 2 issue of Boxoffice that year uses the word “rebuilt” to describe the project, and says the house had reopened in February.
As it turns out, the Phoenix was in not one but, sequentially, both of the small theaters on the 1911 Sanborn (one was also the first location of the Elite Theatre.) It now seems much less likely that Phoenix was ever an aka for the Cozy. We can trace the Cozy name back to at least as early as 1916, as it was advertised in the March 23 issue of the Pratt Daily Tribune that year.
This was the second location of Pratt’s Elite Theatre, owned by C. F. Bays. The first was at 216 S. Main Street, where it began operating in the former location of the Phoenix Theatre sometime in 1911. I haven’t been able to pin down exactly when it moved to this location at 117-119 S. Main Street, but it was surely by 1914, when the Elite was listed in Gus Hill’s guide with 700 seats, a capacity much too large for the converted storefront at 216 Main.
Here is an article about the Colney Theatre, then under construction, from the February 28, 1925 issue of Exhibitors Herald:
“Olney, in Philadelphia, will have the distinction of one of the largest one floor theatres in the world when the handsome new Colney, at Fifth street and Olney avenue, is completed. The house is in every respect ‘the last word’ in construction and in artistic decoration and the Stanley Company of America dedicating the building to one of the city’s most progressive communities. Workmen put forth every effort to complete the operation so that the house was ready for opening on
Lincoln’s Birthday, February 12.
“A theatre of the quality of the Colney has long been desired at Olney. That section of the city is growing most rapidly and it is a residence neighborhood with thousands of separate new homes. Last April actual building operation began. A site 112 feet on Fifth street, extending 220 feet to Lawrence street in the rear, at Olney avenue, was obtained.
Building went on apace. Hodgens and Hill, architects, gave skillful treatment to the problem of providing a one floor theatre with a
seating capacity of 2500 and it is believed that the result of the planning will be to set a new standard for motion picture houses of the best class. Over the auditorium extends a dome, 50 feet in diameter.
The Italian Renaissance style was adopted and the color scheme chosen was blue, gray and gold. The exterior is in white tapestry brick and terra cotta.
“Apart from its general air of dignity and quality the Colney has distinctions in details of construction. For instance, ventilation and heating systems are independently operated. Heating is by warm air. The cooling apparatus consists of four of the largest typhon fans in the city. Each is ten feet in diameter. These systems are separately placed in ornamental bays on each side of the auditorium.
“The theatre is equipped with a fine stage so that the house may be used for any sort of theatrical entertainment. At each side of the proscenium arch is the organ chamber with grill work in handsome design. The stage has two machines for operation of curtains, border lights and foot lights and all are controlled directly from the motion picture booth.
“The operator’s booth, it is claimed, is the largest in Philadelphia, being 11 by 26 feet in ground dimension. There will be three projecting machines and two spotlights in the booth. Special care was taken with the illumination system. Indirect lighting has been provided although the lobby will be supplied with a handsome crystal chandelier.
“At either side of the entrance are two stores and the second floor front has office space and also hall room that may be utilized for dancing or for other public purposes. The operator’s booth is on the
mezzanine floor where the manager’s office is placed. Rooms for men and women are at the rear of the first floor. Handsome and comfortable chairs will be provided and in every detail there will be paid to comfort, convenience and beauty.
“The Colney will be an important addition to the Stanley theatres in Philadelphia. ‘It is eagerly awaited,’ said Jules E. Mastbaum, President of the Stanley Company, in speaking of the house. ‘The same high standard that prevails at all our houses will be maintained and the best of pictures will always be shown.’”
The building at 216 S. Main Street was the second location of Pratt’s Phoenix Theater and the first location of the Elite Theatre. I’m hoping that this big ugly url will work (I’m unfamiliar with the web site’s format.) It has a photo of the first Elite Theatre and a few lines of text about it, from a book about Pratt published in 1911. Another page in the same book pictures the third Phoenix Theatre and provides a bit more information about the Elite’s early history.
Messers C. I. Rice and C. F. Bays opened Pratt’s first Phoenix Theatre in the Williamson Block (the location of which I’ve as yet been unable to identify) and later moved it to this building at 216 S. Main Street. They also opened an Airdome theater in 1910. When they dissolved their partnership, apparently in early 1911, Mr. Rice acquired the building next door at 214 S. Main and converted it into the new location of the Phoenix Theatre, while Mr. Bays retained this house, renaming it the Elite Theatre. At some point the Elite was removed to a larger building at 117-119 S. Main Street.
This was the Phoenix Theatre, opened in 1911 by C. I. Rice following the dissolution of his partner ship with C. F. Bays, with whom he had operated the original Phoenix Theatre and an Airdome. This was the third location of the Phoenix, the first having been in the Williamson Block (which I have thus far been unable to identify) and the second being next door to the third Phoenix, at 216 S. Main Street, which Mr. Bays continued to operate as a theater called the Elite for some time before moving it to another location.
A book about Pratt and Pratt County first published in 1911 has brief sketches of local businesses and their owners, and the one about the third Phoenix and Mr. Rice can be seen at this link (though fair warning, the application the web site hosts the book on is one of the crankiest I’ve ever dealt with, and you might have to do a lot of fiddling about to make the image clean enough to see.)
This house was still called the Elite in 1921, when the April 2 issue of Exhibitors Herald said this: “PRATT, KAN. — J. C. Kelley of Osawatomie has purchased the Elite theatre from A. E. Dickhut for $10,000.”
The January 10, 1912 issue of Western Contractor had this notice about the Pratt IOOF hall: “PRATT, KAS., Dec. 30th., 1911-New I. O. O. F. Building The Committee will receive sealed bids up to the morning of February 5th, 1912, for a two story Brick building, 50 by 102 feet. C. W. Terry, Wichita, Kansas, Architect. For plans and specification apply to architect, or C. L. Cramer, Pratt. Kansas, secretary building Company. Bids must be accompanied by certified check for $150.00.”
I haven’t found the Phoenix Theater mentioned in any trade journals, but from at least 1919 to 1929 Pratt had a house called the Cozy Theatre. It was bought by Charles Barron in 1923, and last listed in the FDY in 1929. I think Cozy might have been an aka for the Phoenix. As the Cozy and Kansas were both in operation in 1924, and only the Kansas and this house at 322 S. Main appear on the 1924 Sanborn, I think this one has to have been the Cozy.
Coldwater is mentioned a few times in early theater trade journals, with two theater names we don’t have. Issues of The Motion Picture News from late 1911 and early 1912 published a few letters from a John H. Crowley, “care of the Odeon Theatre, Coldwater, Kan.” The December 25, 1925 and February 20, 1926 issues of Exhibitors Herald mention F. B. Moore of the Community Theatre, Coldwater.
The July 1, 1916 Moving Picture World mentions “[s]ome house in Coldwater, Kans….” that sent in a copy of its weekly program, and the magazine goes on to criticize the program for not giving the name of the theater. It notes that the program contains one advertisement for a glee club which mentions the Opera House, but there is no indication if the program is for the Opera House or some other unnamed theater.
As for the Opera House itself, though I’ve found no other mentions of it in trade journals, the October 15, 1915 issue of The Western Star, the local newspaper, mentions a movie being shown at the Opera House the following Monday, with admission prices of ten and fifteen cents. I’ve found no other mentions of movies in the paper, but not many editions from the movie era are available online. The Opera House opened in June, 1887, and in its early days appears to have served primarily as a skating rink and ballroom. The hall was 50 x 100 feet and had a flat floor.
The most recent use of the Gem Theatre has been as office space, first by a law firm and currently by a real estate firm. At some point the attraction boards on the marquee were replaced by digital signs. Local sources indicate that the Gem building was erected in 1892 as a furniture store and was converted for theater use in 1921. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists a Gem Theatre at Clio, but it must have been at a different location. A 1910 Sanborn map (the most recent available) shows an “Elec. Theatre” a few doors up the block from the later Gem’s site, but the lots have been renumbered and many buildings replaced, so I’m unable to determine just how far.
From the October 22, 1921 issue of Moving Picture World: “Henry Tucker opened the new Tucker Theatre at Liberal, Kans., September 28. His new house seats 900. The policy of the theatre will be to play tab shows and feature pictures. It is said that the Tucker is one of the nicest film houses in this territory.”
But it turns out that the Tucker may not have been an entirely new theater. Here is what the October 8 issue of the same journal had said: “Henry Tucker, of the Photoplay Theatre at Liberal, Kas., in re-modeling the house and will re-name it the Tucker.”
CinemaTour’s page for the Photoplay says it was demolished to make way for the Tucker, and it must have been pretty close to it, as the 1921 Cahn guide lists The Photoplay with only 300 seats, and the Tucker had over three times the capacity. If anything remained of the old theater it was probably no more than a wall.
Seth G: The Grand is a puzzle, as no Sanborns are available from its period of operation and there don’t appear to be any newspaper archives from that period available either. I’ve wondered if it might have been one of the other early theaters reopened.
The Garden City opened on March 8, 1921, and it has crossed my mind, purely as speculation, that it might have been the house that surfaced in 1931 as the Dickinson. Our photo of the Dickinson/Town certainly doesn’t look like anything that would have been built in 1931, especially in a small Kansas town on the edge of the dust bowl, but it does look like something that could have been built in a prosperous, growing prairie town in the early 1920s.
The 350-seat Garden last appears in the FDY in 1931, and the 600-seat Dickinson first appears in 1932. If the Garden had been built with an eye to future expansion, with the rear portion of the lot left unbuilt, then it would have been an easy and natural fit for Dickinson to snatch it up and do the expansion in 1931 while costs were low. I’ve done searches to see if the trade journals mentioned Dickinson’s 1931 Garden City project, but no luck. Still, it’s a tantalizing possibility.
rivest266: The Lyric Electric of 1907 was on Main Street next door to the Post Office, which was in the 200 block on both the 1905 and 1911 Sanborn maps. The 1911 Sanborn shows a bank building north of the Post Office and it was too shallow to have housed a theater. The Lyric had to have been in the storefront south of the Post Office, and that was at 209 N. Main.
I’m thinking that whoever wrote the 1910 Nickelodeon report probably got the street name for the first Edison wrong, and it was actually this one on Grant Avenue. As for the AMPD’s listing, perhaps the Edison returned to its original location for a while in its last days? Or maybe the AMPD just got ahold of some obsolete information, from an old city directory perhaps.
We don’t really know how that directory was compiled, but I suspect the information came mostly from other directories, from theater owners themselves, and from people connected with film distribution who would have had regular communication with the theaters. The latter would have been doing this as a side gig, and probably made quite a few careless mistakes. I know that the trade journals relied a lot on people from the distribution business to provide news about what was going on with theaters around the country.
The October 5, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon said that “D. E. Rice, of Negaunee, has leased the Quayle Block at Ishpeming and will convert it into a moving picture theater.”
The January 23, 1915 issue of Motography reported that “Arthur Poali has purchased the Lyric theater in Ishpeming from Guy Freese.”
I just left a comment on the nameless theater’s page, saying why I think it was indeed the Electric. The history of the Stevens Opera House, to which I linked in that comment, says that the Opera House did show movies occasionally, but was never successful as a cinema long term. It was closed in the early 1920s and a new owner sold it to the J. C. Penney company who converted it into a store that was still in operation in the late 1960s.
The absence of Garden City from the 1926 (and 1927) FDYs was certainly an error by the publishers. The population of Garden City was nearing 4,000 in 1920 and topped 6,000 in 1930, and the idea that so large a town would have no movie theaters in the middle of that decade is preposterous. In fact I’ve found two Garden City houses, the Electric Theatre and the Garden Theatre, mentioned in trade journals during the 1920s, and both are also listed in the 1928 FDY. The Electric is listed with 300 seats and the Garden with 350.
From what I’ve been able to glean from various scattered sources, I’m certain that the house at 413 N. Main was the Electric Theatre. This house is the only movie theater appearing on the May, 1920 Sanborn map, and the Garden City Theatre (opening name of the Garden) did not open until March 18, 1921, according to a history of the Stevens Opera House (good-sized PDF here.)
The Electric Theatre was in operation by January, 1908, and was to be Garden City’s first long-running cinema, still open in 1929. An earlier house called the Lyric Theatre opened next door to the Post Office (probably at 209 N. Main) in July, 1907, but had apparently closed by October that same year.
A history of Reno County published in 1917 has a biographical sketch of a William A. Loe who was at the time of publication the manager of the Home Theatre. It says that in 1892 he leased the Hutchinson Opera House, and operated it until “…1904, in which year he became manager of the new Home theater, at the corner of B avenue and Main street and has ever since been in charge of the same.”
The year given for Mr. Loe’s acquisition of the house must have been wrong, as the 1902-1903 Cahn guide already lists him as manager of the 900-seat Shaw Theatre. The 1903-1904 Cahn guide lists the house as the Home Theatre. Mr. Loe was still manager of the Home in 1921, when the Cahn-Hill guide listing for the house carried the notation “Plays legitimate attractions only.”
This is from the March 6, 1915 issue of Motography: “The Ruby theater, which has been operated at 427 South Main street, Hutchinson, for the negroes, is closed. Mr. Thomas, the owner of the fixtures, is to reopen the show within a few weeks.” The fact that the Ruby was a segregated house for African-Americans undoubtedly accounts for its out-of-the-way location.
In case the information proves useful, the fire that destroyed the old Kingman Opera House took place on May 11, 1910.
A bit more recently, The March 22, 1971 issue of Boxoffice said that the former Meade Theatre, which had been closed for a month, had reopened as the Towne Cinema on February 19 following some renovations. A more extensive redecoration was planned. S. F. Meade had closed the house for economic reason after almost fifty years of continuous operation.
He reopened the house in partnership with Jack Luthi. The theater would be open six nights a week (dark Wednesday), with a matinee and a special midnight show on Saturday. If the enterprise was a success, then the partners planned to reopen the Meade Drive-In as well in the spring, at which time the Towne would be reduced for the season to weekend only operation. So far I haven’t found any follow-up articles, so I don’t know if these plans came to fruition, or how long the house operated as the Towne Cinema.
The January 11, 1930 issue of Motion Picture News had this item mentioning the Regent: “Competition Causes Change
“Wellington, Kan. — Opening of the Regent has resulted in a switch to Friday and Saturday shows only at the Majestic. Both are Fox houses.”
However, the 1922 Sanborn map of Wellington shows a 700-seat theater at the Regent’s site, but it must have operated under a different name. The 1926 FDY lists only the 400-seat Ashland and the 500-seat Majestic at Wellington, and no theater of 700 seats.
The Sanborn maps of 1912 and 1922 show two movie theaters on Main Street, a 425-seat house at 106 S., and a 360-seat house across the street at 105. The house at 106, per various sources, opened by 1909 as the Pioneer Theatre and was listed in the 1914-1915 AMPD, but had been renamed the Isis Theatre by 1916. I’ve found no name for the house at 105.
The NRHP registration form for the Wellington Downtown Historic District says the Isis was converted to retail in 1923 and the information about the building at 105 is ambiguous and does not mention a theater, so I’m unable to determine the locations of the Ashland and the Majestic. At this time all I can be sure of is that the theater at 114 W. Lincoln was in existence by October, 1922, and had become the Regent by the start of 1930.
I haven’t gotten email notifications from Cinema Treasures for a couple of years now. I thought it was just an issue with my email service, but I guess not. I will usually check my recent comments for responses for a week or two after I make them. After that there are just too many to keep track of, but I will check the site’s “recent comments” page and click on theater names that seem familiar. Sometimes it pays off, but not often.
The latest ad I’ve found for Owens Midtown Theatre is from October, 1974. A search of the newspaper archive yields no results from 1975, but an April 17, 1976 Charleston Daily Mail item mentions a new Baptist church installing “…seats that came from the former Owens Midtown theater in Charleston.”
The Silent Era has a brief history of the Plaza/Capitol Theatre. The Plaza era ended in 1919 when the house was bought by United Theatre Enterprise, which would control the house for the next forty years. On acquiring it, United closed the Plaza for extensive remodeling, reopening as the Capitol Theatre on December 26, 1921.
On November 15, 1923 the Capitol was ravaged by a major fire, leading to the collapse of the auditorium roof. The rebuild took about a year, and the Capitol reopened in November, 1924. The rebuilt and expanded house had a Wurlitzer organ, but no information about it is available. The Aaron family’s Sharon Lee Corporation acquired the Capitol in 1959, making it one of ten theaters they operated in the city. They closed the house as a movie theater in 1981.
The Pastime was remodeled again around the beginning of 1951. An item in the June 2 issue of Boxoffice that year uses the word “rebuilt” to describe the project, and says the house had reopened in February.
As it turns out, the Phoenix was in not one but, sequentially, both of the small theaters on the 1911 Sanborn (one was also the first location of the Elite Theatre.) It now seems much less likely that Phoenix was ever an aka for the Cozy. We can trace the Cozy name back to at least as early as 1916, as it was advertised in the March 23 issue of the Pratt Daily Tribune that year.
This was the second location of Pratt’s Elite Theatre, owned by C. F. Bays. The first was at 216 S. Main Street, where it began operating in the former location of the Phoenix Theatre sometime in 1911. I haven’t been able to pin down exactly when it moved to this location at 117-119 S. Main Street, but it was surely by 1914, when the Elite was listed in Gus Hill’s guide with 700 seats, a capacity much too large for the converted storefront at 216 Main.
Here is an article about the Colney Theatre, then under construction, from the February 28, 1925 issue of Exhibitors Herald:
“Olney, in Philadelphia, will have the distinction of one of the largest one floor theatres in the world when the handsome new Colney, at Fifth street and Olney avenue, is completed. The house is in every respect ‘the last word’ in construction and in artistic decoration and the Stanley Company of America dedicating the building to one of the city’s most progressive communities. Workmen put forth every effort to complete the operation so that the house was ready for opening on Lincoln’s Birthday, February 12.
“A theatre of the quality of the Colney has long been desired at Olney. That section of the city is growing most rapidly and it is a residence neighborhood with thousands of separate new homes. Last April actual building operation began. A site 112 feet on Fifth street, extending 220 feet to Lawrence street in the rear, at Olney avenue, was obtained.
Building went on apace. Hodgens and Hill, architects, gave skillful treatment to the problem of providing a one floor theatre with a seating capacity of 2500 and it is believed that the result of the planning will be to set a new standard for motion picture houses of the best class. Over the auditorium extends a dome, 50 feet in diameter. The Italian Renaissance style was adopted and the color scheme chosen was blue, gray and gold. The exterior is in white tapestry brick and terra cotta.
“Apart from its general air of dignity and quality the Colney has distinctions in details of construction. For instance, ventilation and heating systems are independently operated. Heating is by warm air. The cooling apparatus consists of four of the largest typhon fans in the city. Each is ten feet in diameter. These systems are separately placed in ornamental bays on each side of the auditorium.
“The theatre is equipped with a fine stage so that the house may be used for any sort of theatrical entertainment. At each side of the proscenium arch is the organ chamber with grill work in handsome design. The stage has two machines for operation of curtains, border lights and foot lights and all are controlled directly from the motion picture booth.
“The operator’s booth, it is claimed, is the largest in Philadelphia, being 11 by 26 feet in ground dimension. There will be three projecting machines and two spotlights in the booth. Special care was taken with the illumination system. Indirect lighting has been provided although the lobby will be supplied with a handsome crystal chandelier.
“At either side of the entrance are two stores and the second floor front has office space and also hall room that may be utilized for dancing or for other public purposes. The operator’s booth is on the mezzanine floor where the manager’s office is placed. Rooms for men and women are at the rear of the first floor. Handsome and comfortable chairs will be provided and in every detail there will be paid to comfort, convenience and beauty.
“The Colney will be an important addition to the Stanley theatres in Philadelphia. ‘It is eagerly awaited,’ said Jules E. Mastbaum, President of the Stanley Company, in speaking of the house. ‘The same high standard that prevails at all our houses will be maintained and the best of pictures will always be shown.’”
The building at 216 S. Main Street was the second location of Pratt’s Phoenix Theater and the first location of the Elite Theatre. I’m hoping that this big ugly url will work (I’m unfamiliar with the web site’s format.) It has a photo of the first Elite Theatre and a few lines of text about it, from a book about Pratt published in 1911. Another page in the same book pictures the third Phoenix Theatre and provides a bit more information about the Elite’s early history.
Messers C. I. Rice and C. F. Bays opened Pratt’s first Phoenix Theatre in the Williamson Block (the location of which I’ve as yet been unable to identify) and later moved it to this building at 216 S. Main Street. They also opened an Airdome theater in 1910. When they dissolved their partnership, apparently in early 1911, Mr. Rice acquired the building next door at 214 S. Main and converted it into the new location of the Phoenix Theatre, while Mr. Bays retained this house, renaming it the Elite Theatre. At some point the Elite was removed to a larger building at 117-119 S. Main Street.
This was the Phoenix Theatre, opened in 1911 by C. I. Rice following the dissolution of his partner ship with C. F. Bays, with whom he had operated the original Phoenix Theatre and an Airdome. This was the third location of the Phoenix, the first having been in the Williamson Block (which I have thus far been unable to identify) and the second being next door to the third Phoenix, at 216 S. Main Street, which Mr. Bays continued to operate as a theater called the Elite for some time before moving it to another location.
A book about Pratt and Pratt County first published in 1911 has brief sketches of local businesses and their owners, and the one about the third Phoenix and Mr. Rice can be seen at this link (though fair warning, the application the web site hosts the book on is one of the crankiest I’ve ever dealt with, and you might have to do a lot of fiddling about to make the image clean enough to see.)
This house was still called the Elite in 1921, when the April 2 issue of Exhibitors Herald said this: “PRATT, KAN. — J. C. Kelley of Osawatomie has purchased the Elite theatre from A. E. Dickhut for $10,000.”
The January 10, 1912 issue of Western Contractor had this notice about the Pratt IOOF hall: “PRATT, KAS., Dec. 30th., 1911-New I. O. O. F. Building The Committee will receive sealed bids up to the morning of February 5th, 1912, for a two story Brick building, 50 by 102 feet. C. W. Terry, Wichita, Kansas, Architect. For plans and specification apply to architect, or C. L. Cramer, Pratt. Kansas, secretary building Company. Bids must be accompanied by certified check for $150.00.”
I haven’t found the Phoenix Theater mentioned in any trade journals, but from at least 1919 to 1929 Pratt had a house called the Cozy Theatre. It was bought by Charles Barron in 1923, and last listed in the FDY in 1929. I think Cozy might have been an aka for the Phoenix. As the Cozy and Kansas were both in operation in 1924, and only the Kansas and this house at 322 S. Main appear on the 1924 Sanborn, I think this one has to have been the Cozy.
From the April 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon: “PRATT, KANS.-Messrs. Rice and Bays have purchased a site on which they will erect an airdome.”
Coldwater is mentioned a few times in early theater trade journals, with two theater names we don’t have. Issues of The Motion Picture News from late 1911 and early 1912 published a few letters from a John H. Crowley, “care of the Odeon Theatre, Coldwater, Kan.” The December 25, 1925 and February 20, 1926 issues of Exhibitors Herald mention F. B. Moore of the Community Theatre, Coldwater.
The July 1, 1916 Moving Picture World mentions “[s]ome house in Coldwater, Kans….” that sent in a copy of its weekly program, and the magazine goes on to criticize the program for not giving the name of the theater. It notes that the program contains one advertisement for a glee club which mentions the Opera House, but there is no indication if the program is for the Opera House or some other unnamed theater.
As for the Opera House itself, though I’ve found no other mentions of it in trade journals, the October 15, 1915 issue of The Western Star, the local newspaper, mentions a movie being shown at the Opera House the following Monday, with admission prices of ten and fifteen cents. I’ve found no other mentions of movies in the paper, but not many editions from the movie era are available online. The Opera House opened in June, 1887, and in its early days appears to have served primarily as a skating rink and ballroom. The hall was 50 x 100 feet and had a flat floor.
The most recent use of the Gem Theatre has been as office space, first by a law firm and currently by a real estate firm. At some point the attraction boards on the marquee were replaced by digital signs. Local sources indicate that the Gem building was erected in 1892 as a furniture store and was converted for theater use in 1921. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists a Gem Theatre at Clio, but it must have been at a different location. A 1910 Sanborn map (the most recent available) shows an “Elec. Theatre” a few doors up the block from the later Gem’s site, but the lots have been renumbered and many buildings replaced, so I’m unable to determine just how far.
From the October 22, 1921 issue of Moving Picture World: “Henry Tucker opened the new Tucker Theatre at Liberal, Kans., September 28. His new house seats 900. The policy of the theatre will be to play tab shows and feature pictures. It is said that the Tucker is one of the nicest film houses in this territory.”
But it turns out that the Tucker may not have been an entirely new theater. Here is what the October 8 issue of the same journal had said: “Henry Tucker, of the Photoplay Theatre at Liberal, Kas., in re-modeling the house and will re-name it the Tucker.”
CinemaTour’s page for the Photoplay says it was demolished to make way for the Tucker, and it must have been pretty close to it, as the 1921 Cahn guide lists The Photoplay with only 300 seats, and the Tucker had over three times the capacity. If anything remained of the old theater it was probably no more than a wall.
Seth G: The Grand is a puzzle, as no Sanborns are available from its period of operation and there don’t appear to be any newspaper archives from that period available either. I’ve wondered if it might have been one of the other early theaters reopened.
The Garden City opened on March 8, 1921, and it has crossed my mind, purely as speculation, that it might have been the house that surfaced in 1931 as the Dickinson. Our photo of the Dickinson/Town certainly doesn’t look like anything that would have been built in 1931, especially in a small Kansas town on the edge of the dust bowl, but it does look like something that could have been built in a prosperous, growing prairie town in the early 1920s.
The 350-seat Garden last appears in the FDY in 1931, and the 600-seat Dickinson first appears in 1932. If the Garden had been built with an eye to future expansion, with the rear portion of the lot left unbuilt, then it would have been an easy and natural fit for Dickinson to snatch it up and do the expansion in 1931 while costs were low. I’ve done searches to see if the trade journals mentioned Dickinson’s 1931 Garden City project, but no luck. Still, it’s a tantalizing possibility.
rivest266: The Lyric Electric of 1907 was on Main Street next door to the Post Office, which was in the 200 block on both the 1905 and 1911 Sanborn maps. The 1911 Sanborn shows a bank building north of the Post Office and it was too shallow to have housed a theater. The Lyric had to have been in the storefront south of the Post Office, and that was at 209 N. Main.
I’m thinking that whoever wrote the 1910 Nickelodeon report probably got the street name for the first Edison wrong, and it was actually this one on Grant Avenue. As for the AMPD’s listing, perhaps the Edison returned to its original location for a while in its last days? Or maybe the AMPD just got ahold of some obsolete information, from an old city directory perhaps.
We don’t really know how that directory was compiled, but I suspect the information came mostly from other directories, from theater owners themselves, and from people connected with film distribution who would have had regular communication with the theaters. The latter would have been doing this as a side gig, and probably made quite a few careless mistakes. I know that the trade journals relied a lot on people from the distribution business to provide news about what was going on with theaters around the country.
The October 5, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon said that “D. E. Rice, of Negaunee, has leased the Quayle Block at Ishpeming and will convert it into a moving picture theater.”
The January 23, 1915 issue of Motography reported that “Arthur Poali has purchased the Lyric theater in Ishpeming from Guy Freese.”
I just left a comment on the nameless theater’s page, saying why I think it was indeed the Electric. The history of the Stevens Opera House, to which I linked in that comment, says that the Opera House did show movies occasionally, but was never successful as a cinema long term. It was closed in the early 1920s and a new owner sold it to the J. C. Penney company who converted it into a store that was still in operation in the late 1960s.
The absence of Garden City from the 1926 (and 1927) FDYs was certainly an error by the publishers. The population of Garden City was nearing 4,000 in 1920 and topped 6,000 in 1930, and the idea that so large a town would have no movie theaters in the middle of that decade is preposterous. In fact I’ve found two Garden City houses, the Electric Theatre and the Garden Theatre, mentioned in trade journals during the 1920s, and both are also listed in the 1928 FDY. The Electric is listed with 300 seats and the Garden with 350.
From what I’ve been able to glean from various scattered sources, I’m certain that the house at 413 N. Main was the Electric Theatre. This house is the only movie theater appearing on the May, 1920 Sanborn map, and the Garden City Theatre (opening name of the Garden) did not open until March 18, 1921, according to a history of the Stevens Opera House (good-sized PDF here.)
The Electric Theatre was in operation by January, 1908, and was to be Garden City’s first long-running cinema, still open in 1929. An earlier house called the Lyric Theatre opened next door to the Post Office (probably at 209 N. Main) in July, 1907, but had apparently closed by October that same year.