Schenck & Williams designed the Dayton Theatre in a restrained Beaux Arts style, as can be seen from the photographs here, in the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. There’s also a floor plan. Scroll down to see a page with four interior photos.
The Internet Archive reader displays the photos as they were published, so some face sideways on the monitor, and there’s no mechanism for turning them right side up. Fortunately, they can be downloaded. Resize the pages using the + sign in the toolbar at lower right, then right click and save as usual. Any decent image viewer program should be able to rotate them. I’d recommend IrfanView for anyone who doesn’t have it. It’s free, and fairly easy to use.
A facade photo and a floor plan of the Frederick Theatre appeared in the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. It can bee seen online here, at the Internet Archive. The caption says that the Frederick was designed by Pittsburgh architect Harry S. Bair.
A book called “Brookville” by Carole A. Briggs has a photo of the Columbia, and provides the information that the 1904 structure was a hotel. The auditorium was added to the back of the building some years later. The alterations were designed by Pittsburgh architect Harry S. Bair.
A photo and floor plan of the Plaza Theatre appeared in the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. It can be seen online here, courtesy of the Internet Archive. The caption attributes the design of the Plaza Theatre to architect Harry S. Bair, who also designed Pittsburgh’s Regent Theatre.
I was hoping to see some interior photos of this theater here, so I could compare them with the photos of a Pittsburgh theater called the Grand, designed by C. Howard Crane and displayed on this page of the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. As the Warner is the only Pittsburgh theater attributed to Crane at Cinema Treasures, I’m guessing that it must be the 1920 Grand. Maybe somebody who attended the Warner will recognize it in the photos and confirm my surmise.
Scroll down the page at Internet Archive to see a longitudinal section and floor plans of the Grand Theatre. Pages can be resized using the + and – signs in the toolbar at lower left, and the images can be dowloaded in the size you’ve chosen using your computer’s usual right click-save feature.
The Book “West Haven Revisited” by Carole A. Laydon McElrath displays the front page of a souvenir program from the opening day of the Rivoli, which was December 25, 1926.
A book published in 1918 titled “A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County” says this about a Mr. William H. Wood: “In 1916 he, in partnership with his brother-inlaw, Wm. H. Whitman, erected a fine large modern building at No. 812 Dixwell avenue in Highwood for his drug store and the Dixwell Theater.”
Bing Maps locates 812 Dixwell Avenue across Cherry Ann Street from the Dixwell Theatre, and that lot is the site of some buildings that look to date from before 1916, so I suspect that a renumbering of the lots has taken place, and the 1916 Dixwell was on the same lot as the current Dixwell.
The question then is whether the current Dixwell Theatre is the 1916 house, and it was remodeled in 1938, of if some disaster befell the 1916 theater and it was replaced by an entirely new building in 1938. The bird’s eye view at Bing Maps shows that the bulk of the theater is a brick structure of a type that might have been built in either year, so it provides no answer.
Responding to the comments by Prov (March 16, 2008) and Ron Salters (October 19, 2008,) I’ve found this item in the trade journal The Moving Picture World, issue of August 19, 1916: “LOWELL, MASS.â€"Archts. Funk & Wilcox, 120 Boylston street, Boston, are preparing plans for a two-story theater, store and office building, 52 by 115 feet, and 106 by 151 feet.” The project must have been the Strand.
The matchbook picture shows that the Adams was a Streamline Modern style theater. I found a Facebook comment by a user from Dorchester who says she remembers seeing the Adams Theatre built and seeing it torn down, though she doesn’t say what years those were. She also remembers seeing “Now, Voyager” and “Gone With the Wind” at the Adams. My guess would be that the house was probably built in the late 1930s, and certainly no later than 1940.
Patricia Favata’s book says that the damage to the theater from the 1943 fire that destroyed the building next door was primarily water damage. Apparently, the fire burned so hot that the fire department had to keep pouring water on the theater’s roof to prevent it from combusting. The 1943 fire took place on January 22.
The long delay in the restoration and reopening of the theater was probably due to the wartime shortages of materials, and the difficulty in getting permits. As Newburgh was then plentifully supplied with theaters, restoring the Broadway would not have been given a high priority by the Federal officials in charge of such matters.
Warren is correct. The building in the photo he linked to might or might not be in Newburgh, but it certainly isn’t the Broadway Theatre. Not only was the Broadway, as restored after the 1943 fire, an Art Moderne building, but it was demolished following the second fire in 1965, so couldn’t have been there to be photographed in 1986.
It’s possible that the building in the photo was not a theater at all. The entrance was awfully narrow for a theater, plus it looks like the side walls had large, factory-style windows in them. It might have originally been a printing plant or some such thing. Whatever its original use, it certainly looks to have been built in the 19th century. The small, moderne marquee and the poster cases at the entrance suggest that it might have been used later as a dance hall, as those frequently had such features.
As for the Broadway Theatre, according to the book “Newburgh: The Heart of the City,” by Patricia A. Favata, the Broadway originally opened on February 28, 1914. The 1965 fire which ended its career took place on September 1.
Gustavus A. Mang must have been the local associate architect for this theater. The Regent Theatre in Buffalo is listed among the works of Detroit architect C. Howard Crane in the thesis of Lisa Maria DiChiera, “The Theater Designs of C. Howard Crane,” which can be read on line at the Internet Archive.
Like the Majestic Theatre (1915) in Detroit, also a Crane design, the Regent featured a section of stadium seating which had considerably greater capacity than the orchestra floor.
Loren Ruth Lerner and Mary F. Williamson’s book “Art and Architecture in Canada” attributes the design of the Bedford Theatre to architect Murray Brown.
The July, 1916, issue of Canadian trade journal Construction featured a multi-page article about the Theatre St-Denis with more than a dozen photos, drawings, and plans. Read online at the Internet Archive, or choose another format from this page.
An article titled “Some Problems in Theatre Construction” in the July, 1921, issue of the Canadian journal Construction is illustrated by photos of the Allen Theatre in Vancouver. The facade, entrance, foyer, mezzanine, balcony, and auditorium are all depicted. Judging from the photos, I’d consider the architectural style to be predominantly Adamesque rather than Greek Revival.
The article is available online from the Internet Archive (for those whose browsers might not be compatible with that format, you can select other formats from this page.) Navigating the Internet Archive’s online reader can be tricky, until you get used to it, which is why I usually link to the easier-to-use Google Books when they both have the item available, even though Internet Archive provides far better page scans.
The November 26, 1919, issue of the trade journal Engineering and Contracting featured an article about the construction system used for the roof the new theater. There are four line drawings, one of which (a longitudinal section of the building) was unfortunately printed upside down.
Allen’s Bloor Theatre was designed by the architectural firm of Hynes, Feldman & Watson, also designers of Allen’s Downtown Theatre (later the Tivoli) and associate architects for Allen’s Danforth Theatre, now the Danforth Music Hall.
Loren Ruth Lerner and Mary F. Williamson’s book “Art and Architecture of Canada” calls the exterior style of the Bloor Theatre “somewhat Italian” and describes the interior as “…a modern development of Louis XVI style….”
This web page says that the Rich Theatre opened in 1923 in a building formerly occupied by an automobile dealership.
I wonder if the project listed in the January 6, 1919, issue of the trade journal Lumber ever got built:
“Montpelierâ€"S. A. Shreeve, architect, Col.-Hudson Building, Ogden, Utah, is preparing preliminary plans for 80x150 ft. brick theater on Main Street here. $70,000.”
Does anybody know if there were any other theaters operating in Montpelier during the 1920s?
For what it’s worth, the March, 1920, issue of The Architect & Engineer had this item, which might or might not have something to do with the origins of the Gaslighter Theatre’s building:[quote]“Bank to Erect Building
“Messrs. Wolfe and Higgins, Auzerais building, San Jose, are preparing plans for a bank building, stores and moving picture theatre, to be built at Campbell, near San Jose, for the Growers National Bank. Forty thousand dollars will be expended on the improvements.”[/quote]Perhaps only the part of the project that housed the bank was completed, or perhaps the original plans were discarded altogether and a different architect designed the building that was actually built. It’s a mystery someone from the area might be able to unravel.
I should note that the article I cited in my previous comment is in the December, 1919, issue of The Architect & Engineer, not the October issue. Here’s a direct link. Scroll up one page for a photo of the facade. Four interior photos are farther down, following the article text.
I still can’t find confirmation that John Eberson designed or remodeled this theater. Eberson designed the third Majestic, opened January 29, 1923. The day Eberson’s Majestic opened, this theater was renamed the Palace, according to the book “Cinema Houston” by David Welling and Jack Valenti.
As the Palace it housed a stock company, and served various other uses, including stints as a church and as a theater for radio broadcasts, until it was remodeled in 1937 and reopened as the Zoe Theatre. The Zoe ran westerns for about a year, then foreign films, and even attempted a revival of vaudeville. After being closed for some time, the house reopened in 1945 as a Spanish language movie theater called the Neuvo Palacio, but soon closed its doors for the last time, on April 3, 1946. The theater was demolished to make way for an expansion of the Houston Chronicle building.
The Yosemite Theatre opened either in 1892 or 1893. The conversion of the house into the State Theatre took place in 1920. In a column listing projects in the works for 1920, the December, 1919, issue of the San Francisco-based professional journal The Architect & Engineer included Weeks & Day’s remodeling of the Yosemite Theatre in Stockton. The projected cost was $130,000.
The first-quarter theater construction survey in Boxoffice of April 26, 1941, reported that the Griffith circuit had opened its new Tulsa Theatre in Tulsa.
Regarding cosmic ray’s comment of September 1, 2007, I think the Oklahoma Historical Society’s statements about these theaters come from notes accompanying the Griffith circuit’s collection of photos. The claim that the Main Street Theatre was “replaced” by the Tulsa Theatre probably only means that the Tulsa supplanted the Main Street in the circuit’s hierarchy of theaters in the city. The OHS can be faulted for not providing context for the statement, but there might not be much written information to work with in the photo collection.
I haven’t found a source to confirm this, but after seeing the Griffith collection photos of the Tulsa Theatre, and considering the fact that it was a Griffith house from 1941, I’d lay odds that this theater was designed by Jack Corgan and William J. Moore. It has the characteristic look of their work. Plus, Moore was R.E. Griffith’s nephew, and it’s known that Corgan & Moore designed other Griffith houses during this period. I would be surprised if the Tulsa turned out not to be one of their works.
The July 19, 1919, issue of trade journal The Lumber Manufacturer and Dealer reported that architect E.W. Houghton was preparing plans for a theater to be erected at Raymond, Washington.
The journal Engineering and Contracting reported on September 3, 1919, that George Reisner (spelling error) had awarded the contracts for the construction of the Tokay Theater at Raymond.
As no other theaters were being built in Raymond at that time, the Tokay must have been the Houghton project.
The Regent Theatre was expanded in 1919, so it probably opened earlier. The November 12, 1919, issue of trade journal Engineering & Contracting said that Mrs. Gertrude Richtey was investing at least $25,000 to build an addition to her Regent Theatre in Lyons. The addition was to be on Pearl Street, which is the street behind Church Street.
Here is yet another web page with photos of the Brook Theatre. The accompanying text says that the Brook served as the home of the American Theatre Company (Tulsa’s leading theatre group) for fifteen years before being converted into a restaurant. ATC’s web site says the Brook became the company’s second stage in 1979, so fifteen years would be just about right if the restaurant conversion took place in the mid-1990s.
Schenck & Williams designed the Dayton Theatre in a restrained Beaux Arts style, as can be seen from the photographs here, in the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. There’s also a floor plan. Scroll down to see a page with four interior photos.
The Internet Archive reader displays the photos as they were published, so some face sideways on the monitor, and there’s no mechanism for turning them right side up. Fortunately, they can be downloaded. Resize the pages using the + sign in the toolbar at lower right, then right click and save as usual. Any decent image viewer program should be able to rotate them. I’d recommend IrfanView for anyone who doesn’t have it. It’s free, and fairly easy to use.
A facade photo and a floor plan of the Frederick Theatre appeared in the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. It can bee seen online here, at the Internet Archive. The caption says that the Frederick was designed by Pittsburgh architect Harry S. Bair.
A book called “Brookville” by Carole A. Briggs has a photo of the Columbia, and provides the information that the 1904 structure was a hotel. The auditorium was added to the back of the building some years later. The alterations were designed by Pittsburgh architect Harry S. Bair.
A photo and floor plan of the Plaza Theatre appeared in the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. It can be seen online here, courtesy of the Internet Archive. The caption attributes the design of the Plaza Theatre to architect Harry S. Bair, who also designed Pittsburgh’s Regent Theatre.
I was hoping to see some interior photos of this theater here, so I could compare them with the photos of a Pittsburgh theater called the Grand, designed by C. Howard Crane and displayed on this page of the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. As the Warner is the only Pittsburgh theater attributed to Crane at Cinema Treasures, I’m guessing that it must be the 1920 Grand. Maybe somebody who attended the Warner will recognize it in the photos and confirm my surmise.
Scroll down the page at Internet Archive to see a longitudinal section and floor plans of the Grand Theatre. Pages can be resized using the + and – signs in the toolbar at lower left, and the images can be dowloaded in the size you’ve chosen using your computer’s usual right click-save feature.
The Book “West Haven Revisited” by Carole A. Laydon McElrath displays the front page of a souvenir program from the opening day of the Rivoli, which was December 25, 1926.
A book published in 1918 titled “A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County” says this about a Mr. William H. Wood: “In 1916 he, in partnership with his brother-inlaw, Wm. H. Whitman, erected a fine large modern building at No. 812 Dixwell avenue in Highwood for his drug store and the Dixwell Theater.”
Bing Maps locates 812 Dixwell Avenue across Cherry Ann Street from the Dixwell Theatre, and that lot is the site of some buildings that look to date from before 1916, so I suspect that a renumbering of the lots has taken place, and the 1916 Dixwell was on the same lot as the current Dixwell.
The question then is whether the current Dixwell Theatre is the 1916 house, and it was remodeled in 1938, of if some disaster befell the 1916 theater and it was replaced by an entirely new building in 1938. The bird’s eye view at Bing Maps shows that the bulk of the theater is a brick structure of a type that might have been built in either year, so it provides no answer.
Responding to the comments by Prov (March 16, 2008) and Ron Salters (October 19, 2008,) I’ve found this item in the trade journal The Moving Picture World, issue of August 19, 1916: “LOWELL, MASS.â€"Archts. Funk & Wilcox, 120 Boylston street, Boston, are preparing plans for a two-story theater, store and office building, 52 by 115 feet, and 106 by 151 feet.” The project must have been the Strand.
The matchbook picture shows that the Adams was a Streamline Modern style theater. I found a Facebook comment by a user from Dorchester who says she remembers seeing the Adams Theatre built and seeing it torn down, though she doesn’t say what years those were. She also remembers seeing “Now, Voyager” and “Gone With the Wind” at the Adams. My guess would be that the house was probably built in the late 1930s, and certainly no later than 1940.
Patricia Favata’s book says that the damage to the theater from the 1943 fire that destroyed the building next door was primarily water damage. Apparently, the fire burned so hot that the fire department had to keep pouring water on the theater’s roof to prevent it from combusting. The 1943 fire took place on January 22.
The long delay in the restoration and reopening of the theater was probably due to the wartime shortages of materials, and the difficulty in getting permits. As Newburgh was then plentifully supplied with theaters, restoring the Broadway would not have been given a high priority by the Federal officials in charge of such matters.
Warren is correct. The building in the photo he linked to might or might not be in Newburgh, but it certainly isn’t the Broadway Theatre. Not only was the Broadway, as restored after the 1943 fire, an Art Moderne building, but it was demolished following the second fire in 1965, so couldn’t have been there to be photographed in 1986.
It’s possible that the building in the photo was not a theater at all. The entrance was awfully narrow for a theater, plus it looks like the side walls had large, factory-style windows in them. It might have originally been a printing plant or some such thing. Whatever its original use, it certainly looks to have been built in the 19th century. The small, moderne marquee and the poster cases at the entrance suggest that it might have been used later as a dance hall, as those frequently had such features.
As for the Broadway Theatre, according to the book “Newburgh: The Heart of the City,” by Patricia A. Favata, the Broadway originally opened on February 28, 1914. The 1965 fire which ended its career took place on September 1.
Gustavus A. Mang must have been the local associate architect for this theater. The Regent Theatre in Buffalo is listed among the works of Detroit architect C. Howard Crane in the thesis of Lisa Maria DiChiera, “The Theater Designs of C. Howard Crane,” which can be read on line at the Internet Archive.
Like the Majestic Theatre (1915) in Detroit, also a Crane design, the Regent featured a section of stadium seating which had considerably greater capacity than the orchestra floor.
Loren Ruth Lerner and Mary F. Williamson’s book “Art and Architecture in Canada” attributes the design of the Bedford Theatre to architect Murray Brown.
The July, 1916, issue of Canadian trade journal Construction featured a multi-page article about the Theatre St-Denis with more than a dozen photos, drawings, and plans. Read online at the Internet Archive, or choose another format from this page.
An article titled “Some Problems in Theatre Construction” in the July, 1921, issue of the Canadian journal Construction is illustrated by photos of the Allen Theatre in Vancouver. The facade, entrance, foyer, mezzanine, balcony, and auditorium are all depicted. Judging from the photos, I’d consider the architectural style to be predominantly Adamesque rather than Greek Revival.
The article is available online from the Internet Archive (for those whose browsers might not be compatible with that format, you can select other formats from this page.) Navigating the Internet Archive’s online reader can be tricky, until you get used to it, which is why I usually link to the easier-to-use Google Books when they both have the item available, even though Internet Archive provides far better page scans.
The November 26, 1919, issue of the trade journal Engineering and Contracting featured an article about the construction system used for the roof the new theater. There are four line drawings, one of which (a longitudinal section of the building) was unfortunately printed upside down.
Allen’s Bloor Theatre was designed by the architectural firm of Hynes, Feldman & Watson, also designers of Allen’s Downtown Theatre (later the Tivoli) and associate architects for Allen’s Danforth Theatre, now the Danforth Music Hall.
Loren Ruth Lerner and Mary F. Williamson’s book “Art and Architecture of Canada” calls the exterior style of the Bloor Theatre “somewhat Italian” and describes the interior as “…a modern development of Louis XVI style….”
This web page says that the Rich Theatre opened in 1923 in a building formerly occupied by an automobile dealership.
I wonder if the project listed in the January 6, 1919, issue of the trade journal Lumber ever got built:
Does anybody know if there were any other theaters operating in Montpelier during the 1920s?For what it’s worth, the March, 1920, issue of The Architect & Engineer had this item, which might or might not have something to do with the origins of the Gaslighter Theatre’s building:[quote]“Bank to Erect Building
“Messrs. Wolfe and Higgins, Auzerais building, San Jose, are preparing plans for a bank building, stores and moving picture theatre, to be built at Campbell, near San Jose, for the Growers National Bank. Forty thousand dollars will be expended on the improvements.”[/quote]Perhaps only the part of the project that housed the bank was completed, or perhaps the original plans were discarded altogether and a different architect designed the building that was actually built. It’s a mystery someone from the area might be able to unravel.
I should note that the article I cited in my previous comment is in the December, 1919, issue of The Architect & Engineer, not the October issue. Here’s a direct link. Scroll up one page for a photo of the facade. Four interior photos are farther down, following the article text.
I still can’t find confirmation that John Eberson designed or remodeled this theater. Eberson designed the third Majestic, opened January 29, 1923. The day Eberson’s Majestic opened, this theater was renamed the Palace, according to the book “Cinema Houston” by David Welling and Jack Valenti.
As the Palace it housed a stock company, and served various other uses, including stints as a church and as a theater for radio broadcasts, until it was remodeled in 1937 and reopened as the Zoe Theatre. The Zoe ran westerns for about a year, then foreign films, and even attempted a revival of vaudeville. After being closed for some time, the house reopened in 1945 as a Spanish language movie theater called the Neuvo Palacio, but soon closed its doors for the last time, on April 3, 1946. The theater was demolished to make way for an expansion of the Houston Chronicle building.
The Yosemite Theatre opened either in 1892 or 1893. The conversion of the house into the State Theatre took place in 1920. In a column listing projects in the works for 1920, the December, 1919, issue of the San Francisco-based professional journal The Architect & Engineer included Weeks & Day’s remodeling of the Yosemite Theatre in Stockton. The projected cost was $130,000.
The first-quarter theater construction survey in Boxoffice of April 26, 1941, reported that the Griffith circuit had opened its new Tulsa Theatre in Tulsa.
Regarding cosmic ray’s comment of September 1, 2007, I think the Oklahoma Historical Society’s statements about these theaters come from notes accompanying the Griffith circuit’s collection of photos. The claim that the Main Street Theatre was “replaced” by the Tulsa Theatre probably only means that the Tulsa supplanted the Main Street in the circuit’s hierarchy of theaters in the city. The OHS can be faulted for not providing context for the statement, but there might not be much written information to work with in the photo collection.
I haven’t found a source to confirm this, but after seeing the Griffith collection photos of the Tulsa Theatre, and considering the fact that it was a Griffith house from 1941, I’d lay odds that this theater was designed by Jack Corgan and William J. Moore. It has the characteristic look of their work. Plus, Moore was R.E. Griffith’s nephew, and it’s known that Corgan & Moore designed other Griffith houses during this period. I would be surprised if the Tulsa turned out not to be one of their works.
The July 19, 1919, issue of trade journal The Lumber Manufacturer and Dealer reported that architect E.W. Houghton was preparing plans for a theater to be erected at Raymond, Washington.
The journal Engineering and Contracting reported on September 3, 1919, that George Reisner (spelling error) had awarded the contracts for the construction of the Tokay Theater at Raymond.
As no other theaters were being built in Raymond at that time, the Tokay must have been the Houghton project.
The Regent Theatre was expanded in 1919, so it probably opened earlier. The November 12, 1919, issue of trade journal Engineering & Contracting said that Mrs. Gertrude Richtey was investing at least $25,000 to build an addition to her Regent Theatre in Lyons. The addition was to be on Pearl Street, which is the street behind Church Street.
Here is yet another web page with photos of the Brook Theatre. The accompanying text says that the Brook served as the home of the American Theatre Company (Tulsa’s leading theatre group) for fifteen years before being converted into a restaurant. ATC’s web site says the Brook became the company’s second stage in 1979, so fifteen years would be just about right if the restaurant conversion took place in the mid-1990s.