This theater was designed for the Excelsior Amusement Company by architect G. Albert Lansburgh. It was mentioned in several issues of Building and Engineering News in 1921.
The Southwest Builder & Contractor article I cited as the source for the architect’s name misspelled it. The correct name of the architect was Harry C. Deckbar. Among his other works was Trinity Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, designed when he was a partner in the firm of Fitzhugh, Krucker & Deckbar.
Here is a newspaper ad for the reopening of the former Victory Theatre as the Indiana, in the September 11, 1926, issue of The Kokomo Daily Tribune. The Indiana opened on September 12.
The January 21, 1920, issue of the same publication said that the Victory Theatre was scheduled to open on February 2.
The address currently given for this theater must be wrong. This article gives the location of the Victory/Indiana Theatre as the southeast corner of Main and Taylor. Odd numbers are on the west sides of streets in Kokomo, so the theater must have had an even street number.
I’ve also come across a reference to an Ohio Theatre and a State Theatre operating in Barnesville in the late 1940s. They were operated by an Edward J. Modie. I don’t think the spelling of the name was a typo, as I’ve found other references to an Edward Modie living in Barnesville from the 1930s, and a 2010 item in the Barnesville Enterprise mentions the Modie family in connection with the theater business in the town. Edward Modi must have Anglicized the spelling of his surname at some point.
The 2010 article also says that the building at 145 W. Main Street was the original home of the Ohio Theatre, and later became a bank and then a thrift store. If the Modi Theatre was a 137 W. Main, the two must have been nearly neighbors- unless there’s been an address mixup, and the Modi and the Ohio were the same theater.
Someone named Joseph Modi was listed as the operator of a 500-seat house in Barnesville called the Acme Strand Theatre in the supplement to the 1922 edition of The Julius Cahn-Gus Hill Theatrical Guide and Moving Picture Directory. It must have been the predecessor of the Modi Theatre.
An Edward Joseph Modi and a Paul Gregory Modi were both listed in a 1921 directory of students at Ohio State University. A 1925 publication about former Ohio State students mentions P. G. Modi as manager of a popular movie theater at Barnesville. I would surmise that these two were Joseph Modi’s sons. If he could put two sons through college in the early 1920s, he must have been fairly prosperous.
The April 30, 1910, issue of The American Contractor said that the Dubuque Opera House was to be remodeled. The architects for the $70,000 project were C.W. and G.L. Rapp.
When J.D. Sugg died in 1925, the Waurika News-Democrat published an article noting some of the bequests made in his will. Among them was a bequest “…to MRS. BELL MCCOWN of Fort Worth, a niece and her children, the Sugg Theatre building in Chickasha and $5,000 each….”
There was also a reference to another theater in Chickasha that Mr. Sugg owned: “The Kozy Theatre building in Chickasha goes to J. D. LINDSAY of that city for life, reverting to the estate on his death.”
Either the Kozy is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures, or is listed under another name and is missing the aka. The Kozy was mentioned in the July 29, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, so it was at least that old.
I think it’s possible that the building currently on the site of the Sugg Theatre incorporates the lower portions of the theater’s side and back walls. Brick is pretty good at surviving fires. But as the theater had both a balcony and a gallery, and the current building is a single floor structure, the upper parts of the walls at least have clearly been demolished. The front is obviously post-fire construction, as it is mostly glass show windows.
The June 12, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Broadway Theatre in Everett had changed hands. N. Parentin and G. W. Vaughan had sold their interests in the house to C. F. Rollins, who planned to make improvements.
Google Maps puts its pin at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 17th Street. The Illinois Theatre was actually a block west, at the southeast corner of 2nd Avenue and 16th Street. Street View has been set to the proper location. The theater was in the three-story building diagonally across the intersection.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide follows its listing of the Nevada Theatre at Nevada City with the addition of “Broadway Theatre—Pictures.” During that period, the guide usually listed movie houses at the end of the entries for a given city, following the town’s stage houses. At least in 1912, there must have been both a Nevada Theatre and a Broadway Theatre in Nevada City.
I don’t know if there was a relationship to the Broadway Theatre at 409 Broad Street listed in the FDYs in the 1940s and early 1950s. Is it possible that Broadway Theatre was never an aka for the Nevada/Cedar Theatre? 409 Broad would have been a few doors up the hill from the Nevada Theatre. The buildings on that site now look like old houses converted to shops, but they could be newer construction in a vintage style.
Here is a photo of the auditorium of the Victory Theatre, with a note on it indicating that it was taken on the opening night, February 6, 1914.
I’m wondering if this theater might have actually been built a few years earlier and operated for a while as the Ukiah Opera House. A house of that name is listed in the 1912 Cahn guide, with 400 seats on the main floor and 250 in the balcony. The photo of the Victory shows that it had just about 400 seats on the main floor. The balcony is a bit harder to count, as the seats are smaller and the rows of different lengths, but it does appear to seat about 250.
There was an earlier opera house in Ukiah, but it was probably not the one listed in the Cahn guide, as it was a single-floor building, and appears much too small to have held 650 seats. Here’s a photo of it.
The September 2, 1908, issue of The American Architect and Building News has an item saying that San Francisco architects Banks & Copeland were preparing plans for a brick and concrete theater to be built at Ukiah. This could have been the Opera House.
I’ve been unable to find any mention of any other theater in Ukiah before the Victory opened, and 1912 is the last mention of the Ukiah Opera House I’ve found. It seems possible that the Opera House was equipped for movies and renamed the Victory in 1914, and that its first few years of operation as a live theater have since been forgotten.
The Majestic Theatre was open by 1911, when it was mentioned in an August 26 item in The Rounder, headed “Season Opens in Redlands.”
The Majestic was showing movies by 1914, when it was mentioned in several issues of The Moving Picture World in connection with a proposal to forbid the exhibition of movies on Sunday, and another proposal to establish a local board for censoring movies. Another of the three movie houses then operating in Redlands, the Grand Theatre, was also mentioned.
The July 8, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Family Theater in Rock Island would “…open for a summer run of moving pictures and illustrated songs.”
Drive-Ins.com gives the address of the Village Drive-In as 6695 Coddington, Santa Rosa, CA 95405. However, there is apparently no street called Coddington in Santa Rosa, though there is a shopping center called Coddingtown Mall. I’ve been unable to track down the name of the street the drive-in was actually on.
In any case, the drive-in’s zip code should be changed to 95405. Giving Google Maps the wrong zip code has sent this theater to Stockton, a hundred miles from its actual location.
Looking at the map of Moberly, I have to reconsider my belief that this theater could not have been the Baby Grand. 4th Street is one block west of Williams Street, and 5th Street is two blocks west. It looks as though Williams Street was probably called 3rd Street at one time. The next two streets east have names rather than numbers, too, and most likely they were once called 2nd Street and 1st Street.
If the Star was not the same house as the Wheaton Theatre, it reopens the question of when the Star was built. If it was opened by 1921, it could have been the Star that had the organ installed that year.
I came across a 1909 reference to a lecture held at the Wheaton Theatre, so the 1916 Music Trade Review announcement I cited must have marked its conversion into a movie theater. Judging from the photo I linked to, it looks like the Wheaton might have been a second-floor theater. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find it listed in any edition of the Cahn guide.
Although the 1908-1909 edition of Julius Cahn’s Theatrical Guide listed the Page Theatre at Medford as “under construction,” there was a long delay in getting the project underway. Various issues of Pacific Coast Architect from late 1912 and early 1913 said that local architects Power & West were designing a theater for Dr. F. C. Page. (Some early references to the firm call it Powers & West, but I believe that is an error. Two newspaper items calling for construction bids on projects, presumably placed by the firm itself, use Power & West, and give the firm’s address.)
This web page about the Page Theatre has excerpts from multiple newspaper articles about the theater, dating from its opening on May 19, 1913, through its destruction by fire in late December, 1923.
The Page Theatre showed movies from the year it opened, though it was also the principal venue in Medford for travelling stage shows and vaudeville. A 1920 remodeling included the installation of an organ to provide musical accompaniment for silent movies.
The gutted ruin of the Page Theatre stood for a number of years, but the house was never rebuilt. In 1932, the considerably smaller Roxy Theatre was built on the Page Theatre’s site. The Roxy was at 420 E. Main, so the Page most likely had the same address.
matt54: The contact link, leading to the site’s e-mail addresses for various purposes, including theater updates, is now in the “About” section, which is linked in the banner at the top of each page.
The map can only be fixed by having a Cinema Treasures moderator add the correct full address of the theater to this page, although sometimes even that doesn’t work. There’s some problem with the interface between Cinema Treasures and Google Maps. Whatever it is, I hope they fix it eventually. It’s frustrating to see so many theaters misplaced on the maps, so far from their actual locations.
Judging from the postcard Don Lewis uploaded, the Mission was across the street and up a few doors from the Border Theatre. Comparing it with Google Street View (you can use the Street View feature on the Border page,) it appears to have been about where Edelstein’s furniture store is now, which would be 922 N. Conway.
Bing Maps has a bird’s-eye view for the location, and though the front of the building has been remodeled, the back wall and roof both look old, so if the theater was there it could still be standing— although I don’t see any evidence of theater-style rear exits on that building. If the Mission was any farther south, though, it must have been demolished to make way for the Texas State Bank building.
On page 127 of the book Akron, by David W. Francis and Diane DeMali Francis, there’s a 1920s photo of the Allen Theatre, and it appears to fit the description of a house then ready for construction according to the following item from the June 10, 1920, issue of Engineering News-Record:
“O., Akron—Theatre—Akron Theatre Co., c/o Frank, Wagner & Mitchell, archts.. 602 Perm Title & Trust Bldg., let contract building 3 and 6 story, 130 x 160 ft. rein.con., brick and steel, rein.-con. flooring, concrete foundation, on South Main St., to Carmichael Constr. Co., 524 Hamilton Bldg. About $500,000.”
Partner G. Evans Mitchell withdrew from the firm later that year, and the successor firm Frank & Wagner were local associates of the New York firm George G. Post & Sons. They designed a theater that was to have been built at Ravenna, Ohio, in 1921, but I’ve been unable to discover if that project was carried out.
The August, 1922, issue of The Architect and Engineer says that architect G. A. Lansburgh had “…completed plans for the new Pajaro Theatre at Watsonville, to cost $60,000.”
This theater was designed for the Excelsior Amusement Company by architect G. Albert Lansburgh. It was mentioned in several issues of Building and Engineering News in 1921.
The Southwest Builder & Contractor article I cited as the source for the architect’s name misspelled it. The correct name of the architect was Harry C. Deckbar. Among his other works was Trinity Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, designed when he was a partner in the firm of Fitzhugh, Krucker & Deckbar.
Here is a newspaper ad for the reopening of the former Victory Theatre as the Indiana, in the September 11, 1926, issue of The Kokomo Daily Tribune. The Indiana opened on September 12.
The January 21, 1920, issue of the same publication said that the Victory Theatre was scheduled to open on February 2.
The address currently given for this theater must be wrong. This article gives the location of the Victory/Indiana Theatre as the southeast corner of Main and Taylor. Odd numbers are on the west sides of streets in Kokomo, so the theater must have had an even street number.
This page has a photo of the Wood Theatre, and says that it closed in 1953. Google Street View shows that the building is still standing.
Here is an ad for opening night, in the April 13, 1925, issue of the Kokomo Daily Tribune. The theater opened the following night.
I’ve also come across a reference to an Ohio Theatre and a State Theatre operating in Barnesville in the late 1940s. They were operated by an Edward J. Modie. I don’t think the spelling of the name was a typo, as I’ve found other references to an Edward Modie living in Barnesville from the 1930s, and a 2010 item in the Barnesville Enterprise mentions the Modie family in connection with the theater business in the town. Edward Modi must have Anglicized the spelling of his surname at some point.
The 2010 article also says that the building at 145 W. Main Street was the original home of the Ohio Theatre, and later became a bank and then a thrift store. If the Modi Theatre was a 137 W. Main, the two must have been nearly neighbors- unless there’s been an address mixup, and the Modi and the Ohio were the same theater.
Someone named Joseph Modi was listed as the operator of a 500-seat house in Barnesville called the Acme Strand Theatre in the supplement to the 1922 edition of The Julius Cahn-Gus Hill Theatrical Guide and Moving Picture Directory. It must have been the predecessor of the Modi Theatre.
An Edward Joseph Modi and a Paul Gregory Modi were both listed in a 1921 directory of students at Ohio State University. A 1925 publication about former Ohio State students mentions P. G. Modi as manager of a popular movie theater at Barnesville. I would surmise that these two were Joseph Modi’s sons. If he could put two sons through college in the early 1920s, he must have been fairly prosperous.
The theater in the photo is still in operation as the Cameo Cinema, and is in the Napa County town of St. Helena.
Helena, California, is a tiny hamlet in Trinity County, and has no theaters.
The April 30, 1910, issue of The American Contractor said that the Dubuque Opera House was to be remodeled. The architects for the $70,000 project were C.W. and G.L. Rapp.
When J.D. Sugg died in 1925, the Waurika News-Democrat published an article noting some of the bequests made in his will. Among them was a bequest “…to MRS. BELL MCCOWN of Fort Worth, a niece and her children, the Sugg Theatre building in Chickasha and $5,000 each….”
There was also a reference to another theater in Chickasha that Mr. Sugg owned: “The Kozy Theatre building in Chickasha goes to J. D. LINDSAY of that city for life, reverting to the estate on his death.”
Either the Kozy is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures, or is listed under another name and is missing the aka. The Kozy was mentioned in the July 29, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, so it was at least that old.
I think it’s possible that the building currently on the site of the Sugg Theatre incorporates the lower portions of the theater’s side and back walls. Brick is pretty good at surviving fires. But as the theater had both a balcony and a gallery, and the current building is a single floor structure, the upper parts of the walls at least have clearly been demolished. The front is obviously post-fire construction, as it is mostly glass show windows.
Two interior photos of the Halsey Theatre appear on page 39 of the January, 1913, issue of the trade journal Architecture and Building.
The June 12, 1909, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Broadway Theatre in Everett had changed hands. N. Parentin and G. W. Vaughan had sold their interests in the house to C. F. Rollins, who planned to make improvements.
Google Maps puts its pin at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 17th Street. The Illinois Theatre was actually a block west, at the southeast corner of 2nd Avenue and 16th Street. Street View has been set to the proper location. The theater was in the three-story building diagonally across the intersection.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide follows its listing of the Nevada Theatre at Nevada City with the addition of “Broadway Theatre—Pictures.” During that period, the guide usually listed movie houses at the end of the entries for a given city, following the town’s stage houses. At least in 1912, there must have been both a Nevada Theatre and a Broadway Theatre in Nevada City.
I don’t know if there was a relationship to the Broadway Theatre at 409 Broad Street listed in the FDYs in the 1940s and early 1950s. Is it possible that Broadway Theatre was never an aka for the Nevada/Cedar Theatre? 409 Broad would have been a few doors up the hill from the Nevada Theatre. The buildings on that site now look like old houses converted to shops, but they could be newer construction in a vintage style.
Here is a photo of the auditorium of the Victory Theatre, with a note on it indicating that it was taken on the opening night, February 6, 1914.
I’m wondering if this theater might have actually been built a few years earlier and operated for a while as the Ukiah Opera House. A house of that name is listed in the 1912 Cahn guide, with 400 seats on the main floor and 250 in the balcony. The photo of the Victory shows that it had just about 400 seats on the main floor. The balcony is a bit harder to count, as the seats are smaller and the rows of different lengths, but it does appear to seat about 250.
There was an earlier opera house in Ukiah, but it was probably not the one listed in the Cahn guide, as it was a single-floor building, and appears much too small to have held 650 seats. Here’s a photo of it.
The September 2, 1908, issue of The American Architect and Building News has an item saying that San Francisco architects Banks & Copeland were preparing plans for a brick and concrete theater to be built at Ukiah. This could have been the Opera House.
I’ve been unable to find any mention of any other theater in Ukiah before the Victory opened, and 1912 is the last mention of the Ukiah Opera House I’ve found. It seems possible that the Opera House was equipped for movies and renamed the Victory in 1914, and that its first few years of operation as a live theater have since been forgotten.
The Majestic Theatre was open by 1911, when it was mentioned in an August 26 item in The Rounder, headed “Season Opens in Redlands.”
The Majestic was showing movies by 1914, when it was mentioned in several issues of The Moving Picture World in connection with a proposal to forbid the exhibition of movies on Sunday, and another proposal to establish a local board for censoring movies. Another of the three movie houses then operating in Redlands, the Grand Theatre, was also mentioned.
The July 8, 1908, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Family Theater in Rock Island would “…open for a summer run of moving pictures and illustrated songs.”
Drive-Ins.com gives the address of the Village Drive-In as 6695 Coddington, Santa Rosa, CA 95405. However, there is apparently no street called Coddington in Santa Rosa, though there is a shopping center called Coddingtown Mall. I’ve been unable to track down the name of the street the drive-in was actually on.
In any case, the drive-in’s zip code should be changed to 95405. Giving Google Maps the wrong zip code has sent this theater to Stockton, a hundred miles from its actual location.
Looking at the map of Moberly, I have to reconsider my belief that this theater could not have been the Baby Grand. 4th Street is one block west of Williams Street, and 5th Street is two blocks west. It looks as though Williams Street was probably called 3rd Street at one time. The next two streets east have names rather than numbers, too, and most likely they were once called 2nd Street and 1st Street.
I finally found the Wheaton listed in the 1914 Cahn guide, and it was indeed a second-floor house. Cahn listed it as having 567 seats.
The Onion Skin Players, current occupants of the Star Theatre, have a web site.
If the Star was not the same house as the Wheaton Theatre, it reopens the question of when the Star was built. If it was opened by 1921, it could have been the Star that had the organ installed that year.
I came across a 1909 reference to a lecture held at the Wheaton Theatre, so the 1916 Music Trade Review announcement I cited must have marked its conversion into a movie theater. Judging from the photo I linked to, it looks like the Wheaton might have been a second-floor theater. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find it listed in any edition of the Cahn guide.
Here is the PSTOS page about the Pythian/Star Theatre. It has three photos.
Although the 1908-1909 edition of Julius Cahn’s Theatrical Guide listed the Page Theatre at Medford as “under construction,” there was a long delay in getting the project underway. Various issues of Pacific Coast Architect from late 1912 and early 1913 said that local architects Power & West were designing a theater for Dr. F. C. Page. (Some early references to the firm call it Powers & West, but I believe that is an error. Two newspaper items calling for construction bids on projects, presumably placed by the firm itself, use Power & West, and give the firm’s address.)
This web page about the Page Theatre has excerpts from multiple newspaper articles about the theater, dating from its opening on May 19, 1913, through its destruction by fire in late December, 1923.
The Page Theatre showed movies from the year it opened, though it was also the principal venue in Medford for travelling stage shows and vaudeville. A 1920 remodeling included the installation of an organ to provide musical accompaniment for silent movies.
The gutted ruin of the Page Theatre stood for a number of years, but the house was never rebuilt. In 1932, the considerably smaller Roxy Theatre was built on the Page Theatre’s site. The Roxy was at 420 E. Main, so the Page most likely had the same address.
matt54: The contact link, leading to the site’s e-mail addresses for various purposes, including theater updates, is now in the “About” section, which is linked in the banner at the top of each page.
The map can only be fixed by having a Cinema Treasures moderator add the correct full address of the theater to this page, although sometimes even that doesn’t work. There’s some problem with the interface between Cinema Treasures and Google Maps. Whatever it is, I hope they fix it eventually. It’s frustrating to see so many theaters misplaced on the maps, so far from their actual locations.
Judging from the postcard Don Lewis uploaded, the Mission was across the street and up a few doors from the Border Theatre. Comparing it with Google Street View (you can use the Street View feature on the Border page,) it appears to have been about where Edelstein’s furniture store is now, which would be 922 N. Conway.
Bing Maps has a bird’s-eye view for the location, and though the front of the building has been remodeled, the back wall and roof both look old, so if the theater was there it could still be standing— although I don’t see any evidence of theater-style rear exits on that building. If the Mission was any farther south, though, it must have been demolished to make way for the Texas State Bank building.
On page 127 of the book Akron, by David W. Francis and Diane DeMali Francis, there’s a 1920s photo of the Allen Theatre, and it appears to fit the description of a house then ready for construction according to the following item from the June 10, 1920, issue of Engineering News-Record:
Partner G. Evans Mitchell withdrew from the firm later that year, and the successor firm Frank & Wagner were local associates of the New York firm George G. Post & Sons. They designed a theater that was to have been built at Ravenna, Ohio, in 1921, but I’ve been unable to discover if that project was carried out.The August, 1922, issue of The Architect and Engineer says that architect G. A. Lansburgh had “…completed plans for the new Pajaro Theatre at Watsonville, to cost $60,000.”