Trade publication The Billboard noted in its issue of December 5, 1908, that the Jefferson Theatre in Memphis had opened on the 16th of the previous month. A 1912 book called “Standard History of Memphis, Tennessee: From a Study of the Original Sources,” by John Preston Young and A. R. James, devoted several paragraphs to the Jefferson Theatre ( Google Books scan here.) As it is out of copyright, I’ll quote the entire passage:
“In 1908 a three-story, fire-proof building was erected at 291-3-5 Madison Avenue, by the Madison Avenue Theatre Building Company, for a theatre and leased to the Jefferson Theatre Company November, 1908. This theatre is an ornament to the city with its cream-colored brick and terra-cotta trimmings and an artistic marquee of iron and glass stretching across the sidewalk. The lobby is of variegated Tennessee marble and the interior finishings and seating are in mahogany and leather.
“This new theatre was opened with a dramatic stock company and presented standard and popular plays at popular prices, under the management of Mr. A. B. Morrison.
“Mr. Stainback follows the history of this new play-house, thus:
“‘In September, 1909, the Jefferson opened as a link in the chain of vaudeville theatres under the direction of William Morris. For six weeks high-class vaudeville at popular prices remained the policy of the house, but a few weeks later the theatre again became the home of a stock organization under the management of Mr. Morrison and as such finished the season 1909-1910. During the memorable summer of 1910, when plans for the theatrical war between Klaw and Erlanger (known as the Syndicate) and the Shubert’s was formulated, Klaw and Erlanger secured a long term lease on the Jefferson in which to play their attractions; so the opening in September found the pretty Jefferson presenting the Syndicate shows at high (or standard) prices. At the close of the season 1910-1911 quasi peace was declared between the warring factions of the theatrical world.’
“May 1, 1911, Mr. Stainback, then operating the Bijou Theatre, secured the lease of the Jefferson. The Bijou Company then made some improvements to the theatre and renamed it the Lyric. Under this management it opened in September, 1911, with Mr. Jake Wells, president, and Mr. B. M. Stainback, an experienced theatre man, manager.
“Again quoting Mr. Stainback:
“‘On June 29, 1912, the Lyric closed its first season, the longest and most successful in the history of the theatre. Standard dramas and musical comedies at popular prices, booked through the Stair and Havlin agency, was the policy of the Lyric for the season 1911-1912.’”
Trade journal The Bridgemen’s Magazine reported in its May, 1908, issue that the Jefferson Theatre had been designed by Memphis architect John Gaisford.
Page 20 of a history of Cooper Theatres (a pdf can be downloaded from this web page) says that the Cooper 1-2-3 was an expansion of the Cooper 70. The two new auditoriums were added in 1970.
The Google Maps pin icon is near the southwest corner of the square, but the article Ken linked to on August 23, 2008, says that the Capitol Theatre was at the southeast corner of the square. The band shell the article mentions has now been built on part of the theater’s site, and can be seen in Google Street View.
Jeff: I’m sure that Avalon Boulevard’s name was once South Park Avenue. Long before Victor Gruen’s minions decided to attach the name South Park to the southern part of downtown, Los Angeles already had a neighborhood called South Park, and there still is a park called South Park, at Avalon and 51st.
The Elite Theatre was listed at 3818 South Park Avenue in the 1926 City Directory, but at 3818 Avalon Boulevard in the 1927 directory, so it was probably during 1926 that the name was changed.
Street View shows that the Edison Theatre/Columbia Cinema has been demolished, and a high rise project has been built on its site. Compare the photo Al Alvarez linked to earlier.
The pin icon on the Google Map is too far south. The Roosevelt Theatre was farther north, on the east side of the street. The extension of Temple Street east of Main crosses the site of the theater. It was about where the street’s eastbound lanes and southern sidewalk now are.
The caption also says that the house might once have been called the West Duluth Theatre; but if it ever had that name, it had to have been before 1921. The Doric was mentioned by name in the January 29, 1921, issue of Domestic Engineering, which said that the Northern Plumbing Company had been given a $20,000 contract to install the plumbing and heating equipment in the Doric Theater at Duluth.
Numbered streets don’t match up with the addresses on cross streets in Pacific Grove. The Grove Theatre was at the corner of Lighthouse Avenue and 17th Street. The current occupant of the former theater building appears to be a salon and day spa called Canty & Marquez, the address of which is 618 Lighthouse Avenue. Google Maps gets the pin spot on with that address.
I think I updated Street View to the wrong building. After careful examination of the 1912 photo, it’s clear that the Colonial Theatre was in the building to the right of the building that has the Hallmark shop in Street View. The former theater entrance was in the location now occupied by the Glenn Gobel Custom Frames shop, which is at 562 Lighthouse Avenue.
Several sources indicate that the view above does depict the Prospect Avenue side of the Colonial Hotel. The Euclid Avenue side featured a central cupola, as seen here, that the Prospect Avenue side lacked.
The book “Cleveland: The Making of a City,” by William Ganson Rose, has a brief paragraph about this theater. It says that the house opened in April, 1904, as the Prospect Theatre. Originally the home of the Baldwin-Melville Stock Company, it was taken over by B. F. Keith in 1905, renamed Keith’s Prospect Theatre, and was operated as a vaudeville house.
Some time later, Keith took over the much larger Hippodrome Theatre (in 1908 or 1909, as near as I can find,) and the circuit dropped this house and it reverted to its original name. It operated as a lower-priced independent vaudeville theater for several years, but the building was eventually rebuilt and converted to retail use. A history of Cleveland published in 1910 tells pretty much the same early story about the theater, but gives its opening year as 1903. Another source says that the building was demolished in 1965.
A 1908 issue of Insurance Engineering reported on a fire in Keith’s Theatre which produced “…clouds of smoke so dense that they shut out the sun and drove the crowds, choking and coughing, from Prospect Avenue….” The fire, the report said, had started in a motion picture machine, so the house was showing movies as part of its program at least as early as 1908.
The comment by chadhauris says that the Howard Hodge Theatre is now used by the Midland Downtown Lions Club. The Internet gives the address of the Downtown Lions Activity Center as 200 Plaza Street. It’s a Midcentury Modern building built of that nice buff-colored brick they make in Texas.
Although Cinema Treasures currently attributes the design of this theater to Jack Corgan, the biographical entry for Midland architect Joe Bill Pierce in the 1962 AIA Architects Directory lists the Hodge Theatre among his works. Of course, Pierce could have been only Corgan’s local associate overseeing construction of this project, but I’ve been unable to find any source on the Internet other than Cinema Treasures attributing the design of the Hodge to Corgan.
To complicate things a bit more, CinemaTour has an architectural rendering that is claimed to depict the Hodge Theatre, and it appears to be signed by someone named Fred Carlton. I’ve been unable to discover anything about him.
The Pierce entry in the AUA directory also says that the Hodge Theatre was a 1960 project.
I’ve been unable to identify the original architect of the Florida Theatre, but the architect for the rebuilding after the 1960 fire was Theodore C. Poulos. It is listed among his works in his biographical entry in the 1962 AIA Architects Directory.
The Mirror Theatre was in operation at least as early as April, 1923, which is the date given byt the Putnam Museum for this photo showing several buildings in the 100 block of Third Street, with the Mirror at far left.
There is a simplified floor plan of the New Theatre on this page from the Kalamazoo Public Library. The caption says that the New Theatre operated from March 2, 1912, to September 6, 1947.
There is a photo of the Uptown Theatre on this web page, along with a simplified floor plan. The caption says that the Uptown was in operation from August 24, 1938, to June 6, 1959.
This web page from the Kalamazoo Public Library features a small photo of the Orpheum Theatre ca.1915. The caption says the theater operated from August 5, 1911, to May, 1949.
The Orpheum must have been a storefront conversion. Judging from the architectural style of the facade, the building must date from sometime between the early 1850s and the late 1870s.
I finally found some unambiguous information about the Fuller Theatre. Here is a photo of the Fuller from the Kalamazoo Public Library. It appears to be from the late 1940s. The caption says that the Fuller operated from September 3, 1909, until March 29, 1953.
The page also has a lot plan of part of the block, showing the Fuller and an earlier theater it replaced, the Wonderland, with the address 143 Burdick (Kalamazoo renumbered its blocks sometime between 1915 and 1926, with the 100 block becoming the 200 block.)
This photo gallery, which is also from the Kalamazoo Public Library, shows the block of Burdick Street on which the Fuller was located at various dates from c1875 until 2005.
The theater’s bay-windowed entrance building, seen in the earliest photo of the theater at Water Winter Wonderland (linked in an earlier comment by lostmemory,) was there in the c1875 photo. The Water Winter Wonderland photo probably dates from 1924, the year “Desert Outlaw” with Buck Jones was released.
The Fuller’s entrance building was remodeled (or perhaps completely rebuilt) sometime between 1935 and the 1940s, and is still standing, but Google Satellite view shows that the auditorium has been replaced by a parking lot.
Street View has been updated to show the State Theatre, which is two blocks south of the Fuller’s site, and on the opposite side of the street. The Google Maps pin icon is in the wrong location, too, but it’s only one block too far south. The Fuller Theatre was just north of South Street.
There’s a lot of ambiguous and contradictory information about this theater on the Internet. I’ll post more about it if I can puzzle out its history from the fragments.
Binghamton is the largest city in Broome County, and the county seat. The office of Sanford O. Lacey, architect of the Goodwill Theatre, was in Binghamton. Johnson City, despite its name, is classified under New York law as an incorporated village, and is part of the Binghamton Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Google Maps has no street view for the old Orange Theatre/Town Hall, but Bing Maps has a very good bird’s eye view for 6 Prospect Street (select “Bird’s eye” and zoom in.)
Street View has been “updated” to the north side of the street. That building must be the town library jacobschen mentions. Even numbers are on the south side of Main Street. The final Orange Theatre must have been in the building that now has the shingled fake mansard on it. If you move a bit east or west in street view, you can see the former auditorium, which has had windows punched through the walls.
The April, 1914, issue of New England Magazine has an ad for the Eastern Theaters Company, a movie house circuit which had just taken over operation of a house in Orange called the Art Theater. The company was also operating the Premier Theatre at Newburyport, Majestic Theater at Easthampton, and the Majestic Theater at Keene, New Hampshire. The Art Theatre was also mentioned in the August 2, 1913, issue of Moving Picture World. I’m wondering if Art Theater was an aka for the Town Hall?
Trade publication The Billboard noted in its issue of December 5, 1908, that the Jefferson Theatre in Memphis had opened on the 16th of the previous month. A 1912 book called “Standard History of Memphis, Tennessee: From a Study of the Original Sources,” by John Preston Young and A. R. James, devoted several paragraphs to the Jefferson Theatre ( Google Books scan here.) As it is out of copyright, I’ll quote the entire passage:
Trade journal The Bridgemen’s Magazine reported in its May, 1908, issue that the Jefferson Theatre had been designed by Memphis architect John Gaisford.The correct address for the Enean/Showcase Theatre is 1970 Grant Street.
Page 20 of a history of Cooper Theatres (a pdf can be downloaded from this web page) says that the Cooper 1-2-3 was an expansion of the Cooper 70. The two new auditoriums were added in 1970.
The Google Maps pin icon is near the southwest corner of the square, but the article Ken linked to on August 23, 2008, says that the Capitol Theatre was at the southeast corner of the square. The band shell the article mentions has now been built on part of the theater’s site, and can be seen in Google Street View.
Jeff: I’m sure that Avalon Boulevard’s name was once South Park Avenue. Long before Victor Gruen’s minions decided to attach the name South Park to the southern part of downtown, Los Angeles already had a neighborhood called South Park, and there still is a park called South Park, at Avalon and 51st.
The Elite Theatre was listed at 3818 South Park Avenue in the 1926 City Directory, but at 3818 Avalon Boulevard in the 1927 directory, so it was probably during 1926 that the name was changed.
Street View shows that the Edison Theatre/Columbia Cinema has been demolished, and a high rise project has been built on its site. Compare the photo Al Alvarez linked to earlier.
The pin icon on the Google Map is too far south. The Roosevelt Theatre was farther north, on the east side of the street. The extension of Temple Street east of Main crosses the site of the theater. It was about where the street’s eastbound lanes and southern sidewalk now are.
imrobert: The 20th Century West Theatre has been listed at Cinema Treasures under its later name, Coddingtown Cinemas.
Here is the Clyde Theatre with its vertical sign intact. Thumbnails below the photo include a shot of the theater’s auditorium.
Photo of the Quimby Theatre.
Color photo of the Quimby Theatre.
Here is a ca.1931 photo of the Doric Theatre. Here is a 1925 photo, without all that snow. The caption says that it was remodeled in 1941 and was closed on October 10, 1958.
The caption also says that the house might once have been called the West Duluth Theatre; but if it ever had that name, it had to have been before 1921. The Doric was mentioned by name in the January 29, 1921, issue of Domestic Engineering, which said that the Northern Plumbing Company had been given a $20,000 contract to install the plumbing and heating equipment in the Doric Theater at Duluth.
Numbered streets don’t match up with the addresses on cross streets in Pacific Grove. The Grove Theatre was at the corner of Lighthouse Avenue and 17th Street. The current occupant of the former theater building appears to be a salon and day spa called Canty & Marquez, the address of which is 618 Lighthouse Avenue. Google Maps gets the pin spot on with that address.
I think I updated Street View to the wrong building. After careful examination of the 1912 photo, it’s clear that the Colonial Theatre was in the building to the right of the building that has the Hallmark shop in Street View. The former theater entrance was in the location now occupied by the Glenn Gobel Custom Frames shop, which is at 562 Lighthouse Avenue.
Several sources indicate that the view above does depict the Prospect Avenue side of the Colonial Hotel. The Euclid Avenue side featured a central cupola, as seen here, that the Prospect Avenue side lacked.
The book “Cleveland: The Making of a City,” by William Ganson Rose, has a brief paragraph about this theater. It says that the house opened in April, 1904, as the Prospect Theatre. Originally the home of the Baldwin-Melville Stock Company, it was taken over by B. F. Keith in 1905, renamed Keith’s Prospect Theatre, and was operated as a vaudeville house.
Some time later, Keith took over the much larger Hippodrome Theatre (in 1908 or 1909, as near as I can find,) and the circuit dropped this house and it reverted to its original name. It operated as a lower-priced independent vaudeville theater for several years, but the building was eventually rebuilt and converted to retail use. A history of Cleveland published in 1910 tells pretty much the same early story about the theater, but gives its opening year as 1903. Another source says that the building was demolished in 1965.
A 1908 issue of Insurance Engineering reported on a fire in Keith’s Theatre which produced “…clouds of smoke so dense that they shut out the sun and drove the crowds, choking and coughing, from Prospect Avenue….” The fire, the report said, had started in a motion picture machine, so the house was showing movies as part of its program at least as early as 1908.
The comment by chadhauris says that the Howard Hodge Theatre is now used by the Midland Downtown Lions Club. The Internet gives the address of the Downtown Lions Activity Center as 200 Plaza Street. It’s a Midcentury Modern building built of that nice buff-colored brick they make in Texas.
Although Cinema Treasures currently attributes the design of this theater to Jack Corgan, the biographical entry for Midland architect Joe Bill Pierce in the 1962 AIA Architects Directory lists the Hodge Theatre among his works. Of course, Pierce could have been only Corgan’s local associate overseeing construction of this project, but I’ve been unable to find any source on the Internet other than Cinema Treasures attributing the design of the Hodge to Corgan.
To complicate things a bit more, CinemaTour has an architectural rendering that is claimed to depict the Hodge Theatre, and it appears to be signed by someone named Fred Carlton. I’ve been unable to discover anything about him.
The Pierce entry in the AUA directory also says that the Hodge Theatre was a 1960 project.
I’ve been unable to identify the original architect of the Florida Theatre, but the architect for the rebuilding after the 1960 fire was Theodore C. Poulos. It is listed among his works in his biographical entry in the 1962 AIA Architects Directory.
The Mirror Theatre was in operation at least as early as April, 1923, which is the date given byt the Putnam Museum for this photo showing several buildings in the 100 block of Third Street, with the Mirror at far left.
There is a simplified floor plan of the New Theatre on this page from the Kalamazoo Public Library. The caption says that the New Theatre operated from March 2, 1912, to September 6, 1947.
There is a photo of the Uptown Theatre on this web page, along with a simplified floor plan. The caption says that the Uptown was in operation from August 24, 1938, to June 6, 1959.
This web page from the Kalamazoo Public Library features a small photo of the Orpheum Theatre ca.1915. The caption says the theater operated from August 5, 1911, to May, 1949.
The Orpheum must have been a storefront conversion. Judging from the architectural style of the facade, the building must date from sometime between the early 1850s and the late 1870s.
I finally found some unambiguous information about the Fuller Theatre. Here is a photo of the Fuller from the Kalamazoo Public Library. It appears to be from the late 1940s. The caption says that the Fuller operated from September 3, 1909, until March 29, 1953.
The page also has a lot plan of part of the block, showing the Fuller and an earlier theater it replaced, the Wonderland, with the address 143 Burdick (Kalamazoo renumbered its blocks sometime between 1915 and 1926, with the 100 block becoming the 200 block.)
This photo gallery, which is also from the Kalamazoo Public Library, shows the block of Burdick Street on which the Fuller was located at various dates from c1875 until 2005.
The theater’s bay-windowed entrance building, seen in the earliest photo of the theater at Water Winter Wonderland (linked in an earlier comment by lostmemory,) was there in the c1875 photo. The Water Winter Wonderland photo probably dates from 1924, the year “Desert Outlaw” with Buck Jones was released.
The Fuller’s entrance building was remodeled (or perhaps completely rebuilt) sometime between 1935 and the 1940s, and is still standing, but Google Satellite view shows that the auditorium has been replaced by a parking lot.
Street View has been updated to show the State Theatre, which is two blocks south of the Fuller’s site, and on the opposite side of the street. The Google Maps pin icon is in the wrong location, too, but it’s only one block too far south. The Fuller Theatre was just north of South Street.
There’s a lot of ambiguous and contradictory information about this theater on the Internet. I’ll post more about it if I can puzzle out its history from the fragments.
Binghamton is the largest city in Broome County, and the county seat. The office of Sanford O. Lacey, architect of the Goodwill Theatre, was in Binghamton. Johnson City, despite its name, is classified under New York law as an incorporated village, and is part of the Binghamton Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Google Maps has no street view for the old Orange Theatre/Town Hall, but Bing Maps has a very good bird’s eye view for 6 Prospect Street (select “Bird’s eye” and zoom in.)
Street View has been “updated” to the north side of the street. That building must be the town library jacobschen mentions. Even numbers are on the south side of Main Street. The final Orange Theatre must have been in the building that now has the shingled fake mansard on it. If you move a bit east or west in street view, you can see the former auditorium, which has had windows punched through the walls.
The April, 1914, issue of New England Magazine has an ad for the Eastern Theaters Company, a movie house circuit which had just taken over operation of a house in Orange called the Art Theater. The company was also operating the Premier Theatre at Newburyport, Majestic Theater at Easthampton, and the Majestic Theater at Keene, New Hampshire. The Art Theatre was also mentioned in the August 2, 1913, issue of Moving Picture World. I’m wondering if Art Theater was an aka for the Town Hall?