I’m sure the photos of 4th Street in Hansford’s book are correctly captioned. The building that, in the 1914 photo, has “MILNES FRIEND GRO.CO” painted on the side of it is still there. It has a very distinctive parapet that can still be picked out in the Google view. The two-storey building just beyond it is still there, too, occupied by a business called Front Page.
The building the Delphus Theatre was in had to have been on the site of the one-storey building that now has a loan company and the Abbey Title Company in it. The Delphus was definitely on 4th Street, and is definitely gone. If the Roxy was actually on Main Street, then the Delphus Theatre is definitely not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The Theatre on Main Street that Hansford’s book calls the Electric (with a question mark) might have actually been called the Elite. There was a house of that name in Carthage, according to the book “Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915,” by Thomas J. Schlereth (Google preview.)
The Parsons Theatre might have opened as early as 1921, when the February issue of The Bridgemen’s Magazine carried the following item: “Parsons—Theater and Office—Parsons Amusement Company having plans prepared by H. R. Primmer, architect, Nevada, Mo., for 3-story, 100 x 120-ft., reinforced concrete, steel and brick, reinforced concrete flooring, concrete foundation. About $250,000.” The building in the 1985 photo lostmemory linked to was certainly not 100 feet wide, but part of the building destroyed in the 1943 fire might not have been rebuilt.
The Reel Deal Theatre was designed by Santa Fe architect Karen Marsh. The theater was built using ICFs (insulated concrete forms,) and a few photos of it can be seen on this page of the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company that provided the forms.
The Cinemagic Atlantis 15 was designed by TK Architects. The Cinemagic is not featured on TK’s web site, but a few photos of it, mostly during construction, are featured on this page at the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company which provided the ICF blocks that were used in the construction of the project.
The page at FFKR Architects' web site is gone, but there is a photo here, at the web site of Yesco, the company that built the signage for the project.
There are a few photos, including some construction photos, on this page at the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company that provided the ICF blocks that were used in the construction of the theater.
There’s a bit of information about the history of the Crane Theatre in this item from a Carthage Press weblog. It says that the house opened around 1922, and had a Hope-Jones organ.
The 1955 Boxoffice article I linked to earlier is now available starting at this link. There are additional photos on the three subsequent pages.
In 1913 there was a movie theater called the Delphus located in this block of 4th Street. The August 2nd issue of The Moving Picture World said that a new airdome had been built at the rear of the Delphus Theatre in Carthage, and would be known as the Delphus Hippodrome. The operators of the theaters were J.P. Williams and Joseph Logan.
The Arcadia Publishing company’s book “Carthage, Missouri,” by Michele Newton Hansford, has a ca.1914 photo of the south side of the square in Carthage (Google Books preview,) and the caption says that the Delphus Theatre was located in the three-story Cassaday Building, about in the middle of the block. Goggle Street View shows that the building is no longer there. Is it possible that the Delphus Theatre was the house that eventually became the Roxy?
If the Roxy was not in the same building as the Delphus of 1913, it’s possible that it was the unnamed theater mentioned in the April 27, 1921, issue of The American Architect, which said that F.B. Logan was taking bids for construction of a two-story, 80x100-foot brick theater building on East 4th Street in Carthage. The project had been designed by a Kansas City architect named A.C. Wiser.
As both the Delphus and the 1921 theater project were connected with someone named Logan, it might be that the 1921 project was a replacement for the Delphus, which appears to have been located in a building dating from the 1870s or 1880s, judging from the photo in Hansford’s book.
The only problem I can see with the original Delphus or the 1921 project, assuming it was built, having become the Roxy is the difference in size. The 1922 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide listed the Delphus as a 1000-seat house, and the 1921 project was certainly a large building, so the 300 seats attributed to the Roxy here would be quite a way off.
Given gsmurph’s information that this house was located the Reliance Building, it’s clear that the Esquire was the Reliance Theatre that was mentioned in a list of current construction projects by the Van Sant-Houghton Company, published in the August, 1916, issue of The Architect and Engineer of California: “Reliance Theater and office building, Oakland (Seventeenth Street and San Pablo Avenue.)
The Reliance Theatre was mentioned in quite a few publications in 1916 and 1917, including the September 30, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, which said that the house had opened on September 2nd. An earlier issue of the same publication said of the theater, then under construction, that it was “…on the site of the old Rice Institute, but the old building has been practically rebuilt.”
The most effusive piece on the theater I’ve found is from the September issue of Pacific Service Magazine, the house organ of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company:
“Reliance Theatre, Oakland, threw open its doors to the public on Saturday evening, September 2d. The theatre is Oakland’s largest and one of the most attractive on the Pacific Coast, nothing having been spared that goes to make for the comfort, convenience and restfulness of a modern theatre.
“At the opening hour, the theatre stood forth, a blaze of light and color. Floodlighting projectors, located across the street, illuminated the three facades of the building. On the gore, a large vertical electric sign boldly announced the name of the new recreation place, and electric signs above the entrance parquet told of the high quality attractions to be seen there. In all, twelve hundred and fifty 5-watt sign lamps were used and the twinkling of the traveling borders produced the effect of a myriad of diamonds, sparkling in the white light.
“The exterior of the building is finished in white, the entrance and ticket-booth being of marble and white tile. Throughout the interior, a color scheme of old ivory, pink and blue harmonizes with the heavy blue carpet and draperies. Massive indirect lighting fixtures add to the richness of the interior decorations. The organ lofts are located on both sides of the picture screen, and in the near future a $20,000 organ will be installed; a small organ temporarily serving.
“The building itself is a Class A structure with main floor and balcony, and seats 1800 people. Located on a gore, it has exits on two streets besides a private court, and in an emergency can be emptied in less than two minutes. The ventilation system is a departure from established custom. A large electrically driven fan forces the air into a large air chamber in the basement of the building, from which pipes lead to outlets placed under every alternating seat on the main floor of the theatre. Exhaust fans, located at the rear of the theatre, carry out the vitiated air; a complete change taking place every ten minutes. A furnace heats the incoming air when desired. Outlets from a stationary vacuum plant are installed throughout for cleaning.
“The operating room is of reinforced concrete lined with galvanized iron and is fireproof throughout. Three Simplex projecting machines are installed, one being used for emergency only. All electrical apparatus is in duplicate, there being two mercury arc-rectifiers and a motor-generator set for supplying direct current to the picture machines. Full assurance of a reliable and continuous source of electric supply is given. A 3-phase, 4-wire, overhead service supplies the motor-generator set, emergency lighting and the power load throughout the building; single phase, 3-wire, underground service supplies the general lighting of the building and the two rectifiers. Both lines are supplied from the 30,000-h.p. steam plant, thereby backing up all that the name ‘Pacific Service’ implies. The total installed load at present is as follows: 3-phase power, 15 h. p.; rectifiers, 6.5 k. w.; lighting, 22.8 k.w.
“The ticket office is equipped with electrical ticket-selling machines and automatic change-making apparatus. Pretty girls in uniform do the ushering and distribute programs. The Reliance Theatre is a credit to the city and to the people who promoted it. ‘Pacific Service’ welcomes it to its list of consumers.”
Despite the many mentions of the Reliance Theatre on the Internet, I’ve so far been unable to track down the name of its architect.
The October, 1916, issue of The Architect and Engineer of California has an item concerning what must be the Theatre St. Francis, although it calls it the St. Francis Theater. The item also names a different architect for this house than the description does. Here is the relevant part of the item:
“It is announced that plans for the big moving picture theater at Fourth and Market Streets, San Francisco, are being made by Alfred Henry Jacobs, architect of the recently completed St. Francis Theater on Geary Street. The latter theater has occasioned some favorable comment on account of certain unique features, one of which is the placing of the picture screen at the entrance end of the theater, instead of forward. The seats all face the rear, the idea being to avoid the glare of the pictures when entering the theater.
The magazine might have been mistaken about Jacobs being the architect, but that doesn’t seem likely as this publication was usually quite reliable, and the item was published about the same time the house opened. It’s also interesting that the item reveals the St. Francis to have been a reverse theater. Perhaps evidence of the theater’s original projection booth still exists at the back of the building?
The May 9, 1960, issue of Boxoffice featured a photo on the front of the Modern Theatre section depicting the auditorium of the recently-renovated Art La Brea Theatre.
A fuzzier version of the same photo was one of several that illustrated an article about the opening of the house, which had been closed for some time, in the June 6 issue of Boxoffice.
The White River Cinema was designed by the Bolling, Cheshire, architectural firm NBDA Architects. Here are photos of the cinema at the firm’s web site.
I think the policy is that if a theater is currently in operation, even if it has been converted into a live venue and isn’t showing movies, it will be listed by its current name, and have its movie house names as AKAs.
In the case of theaters that are gone, such as the Rivoli, if they operated under one name for most of their history and under a later name for a fairly short time, it makes sense to use the name by which the greatest number of people visiting the site would probably remember it.
Incidentally, if you want to find the Rivoli under its final name, you have to search CT with the full name United Artists Twin. Nine other currently listed houses called UA Twin can be found only under the abbreviated name. Wikipedia-style redirects would be useful.
New Alcazar 1908-1911; 1912-1925 Republic;
Sutter 1926;
Uptown 1930-1970
The August, 1931 issue of Architect and Engineer had two interior photos of the Uptown Theatre: two interior photos of the Uptown The first shows the staircase to Mezzanine, and the second (scroll down) the Spanish-atmospheric auditorium. The architects of the Uptown were Fabre & Hildebrand.
Two photos depicting the front and the auditorium of the Soledad Theatre were used to illustrate an article on laminated wood construction which appeared in Boxoffice of August 5, 1950. The photos are at the bottom of this page. (To read the beginning of the article, use the “previous page” link. The final four paragraphs of the article are at this link.)
The architect of the Princess Theatre was D.J. Spence. The artist in the photo CSWalczak linked to earlier is most likely F.S. Challenor, who painted the mural on the theater’s sounding board. A brief article about the Princess Theatre appeared in the February, 1918, issue of the Canadian trade journal Construction.
From the description above, it seems unlikely that any trace of the original decoration of the 1917 Princess remains. The 1917 house was itself a replacement for an earlier Princess Theatre. The photo to which mortonbg linked earlier must depict the front of the pre-1917 Princess, as the facade as designed by Spence was as tall as that of Le Parisien.
I’m sure the photos of 4th Street in Hansford’s book are correctly captioned. The building that, in the 1914 photo, has “MILNES FRIEND GRO.CO” painted on the side of it is still there. It has a very distinctive parapet that can still be picked out in the Google view. The two-storey building just beyond it is still there, too, occupied by a business called Front Page.
The building the Delphus Theatre was in had to have been on the site of the one-storey building that now has a loan company and the Abbey Title Company in it. The Delphus was definitely on 4th Street, and is definitely gone. If the Roxy was actually on Main Street, then the Delphus Theatre is definitely not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The Theatre on Main Street that Hansford’s book calls the Electric (with a question mark) might have actually been called the Elite. There was a house of that name in Carthage, according to the book “Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915,” by Thomas J. Schlereth (Google preview.)
The Parsons Theatre might have opened as early as 1921, when the February issue of The Bridgemen’s Magazine carried the following item: “Parsons—Theater and Office—Parsons Amusement Company having plans prepared by H. R. Primmer, architect, Nevada, Mo., for 3-story, 100 x 120-ft., reinforced concrete, steel and brick, reinforced concrete flooring, concrete foundation. About $250,000.” The building in the 1985 photo lostmemory linked to was certainly not 100 feet wide, but part of the building destroyed in the 1943 fire might not have been rebuilt.
I should add that the name Delphus Theatre was in use in Carthage at least as late as 1946, when it was mentioned in an issue of The Billboard.
The Reel Deal Theatre was designed by Santa Fe architect Karen Marsh. The theater was built using ICFs (insulated concrete forms,) and a few photos of it can be seen on this page of the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company that provided the forms.
The Cinemagic Atlantis 15 was designed by TK Architects. The Cinemagic is not featured on TK’s web site, but a few photos of it, mostly during construction, are featured on this page at the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company which provided the ICF blocks that were used in the construction of the project.
The page at FFKR Architects' web site is gone, but there is a photo here, at the web site of Yesco, the company that built the signage for the project.
There are a few photos, including some construction photos, on this page at the web site of Reward Wall Systems, the company that provided the ICF blocks that were used in the construction of the theater.
There’s a bit of information about the history of the Crane Theatre in this item from a Carthage Press weblog. It says that the house opened around 1922, and had a Hope-Jones organ.
The 1955 Boxoffice article I linked to earlier is now available starting at this link. There are additional photos on the three subsequent pages.
In 1913 there was a movie theater called the Delphus located in this block of 4th Street. The August 2nd issue of The Moving Picture World said that a new airdome had been built at the rear of the Delphus Theatre in Carthage, and would be known as the Delphus Hippodrome. The operators of the theaters were J.P. Williams and Joseph Logan.
The Arcadia Publishing company’s book “Carthage, Missouri,” by Michele Newton Hansford, has a ca.1914 photo of the south side of the square in Carthage (Google Books preview,) and the caption says that the Delphus Theatre was located in the three-story Cassaday Building, about in the middle of the block. Goggle Street View shows that the building is no longer there. Is it possible that the Delphus Theatre was the house that eventually became the Roxy?
If the Roxy was not in the same building as the Delphus of 1913, it’s possible that it was the unnamed theater mentioned in the April 27, 1921, issue of The American Architect, which said that F.B. Logan was taking bids for construction of a two-story, 80x100-foot brick theater building on East 4th Street in Carthage. The project had been designed by a Kansas City architect named A.C. Wiser.
As both the Delphus and the 1921 theater project were connected with someone named Logan, it might be that the 1921 project was a replacement for the Delphus, which appears to have been located in a building dating from the 1870s or 1880s, judging from the photo in Hansford’s book.
The only problem I can see with the original Delphus or the 1921 project, assuming it was built, having become the Roxy is the difference in size. The 1922 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide listed the Delphus as a 1000-seat house, and the 1921 project was certainly a large building, so the 300 seats attributed to the Roxy here would be quite a way off.
Given gsmurph’s information that this house was located the Reliance Building, it’s clear that the Esquire was the Reliance Theatre that was mentioned in a list of current construction projects by the Van Sant-Houghton Company, published in the August, 1916, issue of The Architect and Engineer of California: “Reliance Theater and office building, Oakland (Seventeenth Street and San Pablo Avenue.)
The Reliance Theatre was mentioned in quite a few publications in 1916 and 1917, including the September 30, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, which said that the house had opened on September 2nd. An earlier issue of the same publication said of the theater, then under construction, that it was “…on the site of the old Rice Institute, but the old building has been practically rebuilt.”
The most effusive piece on the theater I’ve found is from the September issue of Pacific Service Magazine, the house organ of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company:
Despite the many mentions of the Reliance Theatre on the Internet, I’ve so far been unable to track down the name of its architect.The October, 1916, issue of The Architect and Engineer of California has an item concerning what must be the Theatre St. Francis, although it calls it the St. Francis Theater. The item also names a different architect for this house than the description does. Here is the relevant part of the item:
The magazine might have been mistaken about Jacobs being the architect, but that doesn’t seem likely as this publication was usually quite reliable, and the item was published about the same time the house opened. It’s also interesting that the item reveals the St. Francis to have been a reverse theater. Perhaps evidence of the theater’s original projection booth still exists at the back of the building?The May 9, 1960, issue of Boxoffice featured a photo on the front of the Modern Theatre section depicting the auditorium of the recently-renovated Art La Brea Theatre.
A fuzzier version of the same photo was one of several that illustrated an article about the opening of the house, which had been closed for some time, in the June 6 issue of Boxoffice.
Here is an updated link to the May 9, 1960, Boxoffice article about the newly renovated Capri Theatre, formerly the Melba.
The State reopened in 1960 after another remodeling. A photo of its updated auditorium appeared on the cover of Boxoffice of May 9 that year.
There are several photos of the Cinebowl on the web site of the project’s designers, NBDA Architects.
The 8-screen Odeon Wrexham was designed by the architectural firm NBDA Architects. The firm’s web site provides photos of the project.
The White River Cinema was designed by the Bolling, Cheshire, architectural firm NBDA Architects. Here are photos of the cinema at the firm’s web site.
The Reel Cinema at Newark-on-Trent was designed by the architectural firm NBDA Architects, which has photos of the project on its web site.
Odeon MetroCentre was designed by NBDA Architects, of Bollington, Cheshire. There are photos of the Odeon on the firm’s web site.
The AMC Tustin 14 was designed by the architectural firm Perkowitz + Ruth. The theater is featured in a slideshow on the firm’s web site.
The AMC Firewheel 18 was designed by the architectural firm Perkowitz + Ruth. The firm’s web site features a slide show of the theater.
I think the policy is that if a theater is currently in operation, even if it has been converted into a live venue and isn’t showing movies, it will be listed by its current name, and have its movie house names as AKAs.
In the case of theaters that are gone, such as the Rivoli, if they operated under one name for most of their history and under a later name for a fairly short time, it makes sense to use the name by which the greatest number of people visiting the site would probably remember it.
Incidentally, if you want to find the Rivoli under its final name, you have to search CT with the full name United Artists Twin. Nine other currently listed houses called UA Twin can be found only under the abbreviated name. Wikipedia-style redirects would be useful.
This list of San Francisco theaters and dancehalls has the following timeline for the Uptown Theatre:
The August, 1931 issue of Architect and Engineer had two interior photos of the Uptown Theatre: two interior photos of the Uptown The first shows the staircase to Mezzanine, and the second (scroll down) the Spanish-atmospheric auditorium. The architects of the Uptown were Fabre & Hildebrand.As noted above, the Baywood Theatre was on B Street, not El Camino Real.
Two photos depicting the front and the auditorium of the Soledad Theatre were used to illustrate an article on laminated wood construction which appeared in Boxoffice of August 5, 1950. The photos are at the bottom of this page. (To read the beginning of the article, use the “previous page” link. The final four paragraphs of the article are at this link.)
The architect of the Princess Theatre was D.J. Spence. The artist in the photo CSWalczak linked to earlier is most likely F.S. Challenor, who painted the mural on the theater’s sounding board. A brief article about the Princess Theatre appeared in the February, 1918, issue of the Canadian trade journal Construction.
From the description above, it seems unlikely that any trace of the original decoration of the 1917 Princess remains. The 1917 house was itself a replacement for an earlier Princess Theatre. The photo to which mortonbg linked earlier must depict the front of the pre-1917 Princess, as the facade as designed by Spence was as tall as that of Le Parisien.