A 1921 issue of the architectural journal Pencil Points ran this ad for The Northwestern Terra Cotta Company, which featured a photo of the Orpheum with its original entrance configuration and marquee.
The photos linked in the previous comment show that elements of the original facade of the Miles Theatre survived through both of the major remodelings of the building.
A photo of the Miles Theatre from the trade journal The Western Architect, issue of December, 1908, attributes the design of the Miles to the architectural firm of Kees & Colburn, also architects of the Loring, Orpheum, and Pantages theaters in Minneapolis.
A later page of the magazine displays the original floor plan of the Miles Tehatre.
In addition to the Victoria, Stearns & Castor (George R. Stearns and Horace W. Castor) designed the similar Eureka Theatre, at Market and 40th, sometime before the firm was dissolved in 1916. I don’t know if the Eureka is listed at Cinema Treasures under some later name or not. If it’s listed, it’s missing the aka Eureka.
Photos and floor plans of both the the Victoria and the Eureka, along with two other theaters by different architects, illustrate an article about movie theaters in a 1915 issue of The Architectural Record.
Regarding my November 2, 2007, comment in which I linked to a Philadelphia Buildings web page attributing the Ocean Theatre to an architectural firm called Lee & Thaete Associates. I’ve only just discovered that the Lee in Lee & Thaete was theater architect William Harold Lee. His partner in the firm, which was formed in 1964, was named Walter Frederick Thaete.
Philadelphia Buildings also attributes the Liberty Theatre at Cape May, New Jersey, to Lee & Thaete Associates (this was a remodeling job), though Cinema Treasures currently attributes it to Willam Harold Lee alone. Lee died in 1971, but the firm continued to operate under the same name until 1983.
Here is the 1920 Architectural Record article with several photos of the Winema, including a couple of interior shots. The auditorium has an impressive hammerbeam roof, and the interior has elements of both the Gothic and Arts and Crafts styles. It has some nice finishes, and is considerably less rustic than the exterior.
(If the Google Books page doesn’t load immediately, try clicking on the “View All” link and then selecting the link for page 557, then scroll down to see the five photos.)
The magazine has decided to remove its archive from Issuu, a free site, and put it on their own site, where it will be available only to paying subscribers, at $20 a month. I enjoy Boxoffice, but that’s way beyond my limited budget, and only slightly less than I now pay for access to the entire Internet. And though I miss digging up bits of information from Boxoffice, its absence has given me a lot more free time.
David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group were the architects for the conversion of the Astor Plaza into the Nokia Theatre, according to a Billboard article of October 1, 2005.
So he did, and in the very first comment, at that. I must have been too dazed by five o'clock in the morning to notice it.
Seeing the satellite and aerial views of Long Beach at Bing and Google maps is just flabbergasting. Practically everything I remember having been there is gone. Southern Californians used to criticize Long Beach for being dull and bland (one friend of mine used to call it Dubuque-By-the-Sea) but I always liked it (and I probably would have liked Dubuque, too.) It’s too bad that so few of its own citizens liked it enough to save more of it from the redevelopers.
The street name in the address has to be changed to Ocean Boulevard. Ocean Avenue is way over on Terminal Island, so that name misdirects the Google Maps link.
Also, I think it might have been W. Ocean Boulevard rather than E. Ocean Boulevard, but I’m not sure. Maybe somebody local will remember which direction the theater was from Pine Street.
I also came across an old photo of this theater in which the marquee bore the name Stanley, so that must have been an aka around 1940. See the movie clip titled “Pacific Electric Trolley Waltz” on this page.
Arthur Burnett Benton drew the original plans for this Mission Playhouse in 1921, and the cornerstone was laid in 1923, but the progress of construction was slow and the building was not completed until 1927, when it opened on March 5.
I’ve come across several sources (a scholarly tome by William Deverell, published by the University of California, for one) claiming that, by 1926, Benton had become too ill (he died in 1927) to complete the project, and it was taken over by William J. Dodd and the firm Dodd & Richards (architects of the Kinema Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, later to become the Fox Criterion.)
Dodd is said to have substantially altered the design, so he should probably be credited along with Benton as the architect. Dodd & Richards also designed a 1929 addition to the playhouse, a project that added a curio shop and exhibition gallery.
-DB, that’s definitely the Terrace Theatre in City Terrace. I don’t remember ever having seen it, but I recognize the neighborhood. Other than the loss of the theater and a few other buildings, and a few new buildings added, it changed remarkably little between the 1950s and the 1980s, when I became familiar with it. Alas, the trolly buses were gone by then, too.
The marquee Mike and tlsloews admire was installed in the early 1960s, after the Edwards circuit took over operation from Fox West Coast, who had at that time operated the house for well over a decade. Edwards had operated the El Rey for a while earlier, too, under an arrangement with leaseholder Fox.
The 1951 USC photo ken mc linked to above has been moved and is now here. It gives only a glimpse of the side of the older marquee, a boxy, neon affair probably installed in the 1930s. The original, triple-arched entrance of the Temple Theatre, seen in the photo at the top of this page, was long gone by the time I first saw the place.
The architects of the Temple were Walker & Eisen, by the way, as noted in Southwest Builder & Contractor of June 4, 1921. The Temple opened in December, 1921.
I believe there was a Ventura Boulevard in Thousand Oaks at one time. Before the freeways were built, Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles County was U.S. Highway 101, and I think road had the same name as it passed through Ventura County. Most of the old road, which was originally part of El Camino Real, was gradually converted into the Ventura Freeway over the years. In a few places bypasses were built.
My memory of the area in the pre-freeway era is very dim, and the changes since have been drastic, but I suspect that the oldest part of Thousand Oaks was one of the areas bypassed, and that the business street that was once Highway 101/Ventura Boulevard is probably the street now called Thousand Oaks Boulevard. Unfortunately I have no old maps of the area to check.
The actual architect for the Empress Theatre was Lee DeCamp. The Kansas City Journal of February 1, 1910, said that pouring of the foundations for the new theater of the Sullivan and Considine vaudeville circuit was to begin that day. I’m not sure what role the Boller Brothers filled in the project, but it was most likely to supervise construction for DeCamp, whose office was at the time located in Cincinnati.
Many Sullivan and Considine houses were called the Empress, and a number of these were designed by DeCamp. Among them was the Empress in Sacramento, California, which was later renamed the Hippodrome, and then gutted and rebuilt as the Crest in the late 1940s.
An item in the August 7, 1915, issue of Moving Picture World said that DeCamp had by then designed more than forty theaters, and had several more in the works. His most recent commission was for a theater to be built at London, Ontario, for Canadian showman C. H. Bangs.
The city of Culpeper required this infill project to resemble the surrounding vintage buildings of its historic downtown, thus the faux-Vicotrian detailing. The design was by Kansas City-based TK Architects.
A digital IMAX auditorium is being added to the 21st Street Warren Theatre. The 600-seat IMAX is expected to open by mid-December. The project will include remodeling and updating the theater’s existing 17 auditoriums as well.
A June 3 item on the Wichita Eagle web site includes three renderings of the project.
Three photos of the Regal Cinemas 16 at Indian Lake are displayed on the web site of the project’s designers, the Kansas City firm TK Architects (click on “Cinemas” then “Traditional”)
I’ve found four references on the Internet to a California architect with the surname Polley, but his middle initial was “A” in all cases. There could have been an R. W. Polley as well, but if there was I’ve been unable to find him mentioned on the Internet.
A document about the former Carnegie Library in Oxnard, Ventura County, says that the building’s basement was remodeled in 1949, with plans drawn by local architect R. A. Polley. Another document names R. A. Polley as architect for alterations to a commercial building in Oxnard in 1952.
The California Index contains a card referring to an item in Architect & Engineer of June, 1931, saying that Rudolph A. Polley, of Santa Barbara, had received a license to practice architecture in California.
A web page for the Elks Club of Santa Maria says that their former lodge hall (since demolished) erected in 1939 had been designed by L. N. Crawford and Rudolph Polley. The site of the hall now has a marker (pictured) which notes L. N. Crawford and R. A. Polley as architects of the vanished structure.
The Grand has an official web site.
A 1921 issue of the architectural journal Pencil Points ran this ad for The Northwestern Terra Cotta Company, which featured a photo of the Orpheum with its original entrance configuration and marquee.
The photos linked in the previous comment show that elements of the original facade of the Miles Theatre survived through both of the major remodelings of the building.
A photo of the Miles Theatre from the trade journal The Western Architect, issue of December, 1908, attributes the design of the Miles to the architectural firm of Kees & Colburn, also architects of the Loring, Orpheum, and Pantages theaters in Minneapolis.
A later page of the magazine displays the original floor plan of the Miles Tehatre.
In addition to the Victoria, Stearns & Castor (George R. Stearns and Horace W. Castor) designed the similar Eureka Theatre, at Market and 40th, sometime before the firm was dissolved in 1916. I don’t know if the Eureka is listed at Cinema Treasures under some later name or not. If it’s listed, it’s missing the aka Eureka.
Photos and floor plans of both the the Victoria and the Eureka, along with two other theaters by different architects, illustrate an article about movie theaters in a 1915 issue of The Architectural Record.
Regarding my November 2, 2007, comment in which I linked to a Philadelphia Buildings web page attributing the Ocean Theatre to an architectural firm called Lee & Thaete Associates. I’ve only just discovered that the Lee in Lee & Thaete was theater architect William Harold Lee. His partner in the firm, which was formed in 1964, was named Walter Frederick Thaete.
Philadelphia Buildings also attributes the Liberty Theatre at Cape May, New Jersey, to Lee & Thaete Associates (this was a remodeling job), though Cinema Treasures currently attributes it to Willam Harold Lee alone. Lee died in 1971, but the firm continued to operate under the same name until 1983.
Here is the 1920 Architectural Record article with several photos of the Winema, including a couple of interior shots. The auditorium has an impressive hammerbeam roof, and the interior has elements of both the Gothic and Arts and Crafts styles. It has some nice finishes, and is considerably less rustic than the exterior.
(If the Google Books page doesn’t load immediately, try clicking on the “View All” link and then selecting the link for page 557, then scroll down to see the five photos.)
The magazine has decided to remove its archive from Issuu, a free site, and put it on their own site, where it will be available only to paying subscribers, at $20 a month. I enjoy Boxoffice, but that’s way beyond my limited budget, and only slightly less than I now pay for access to the entire Internet. And though I miss digging up bits of information from Boxoffice, its absence has given me a lot more free time.
Like several other Loew’s houses of the period, the Metreon was designed by architect David Rockwell and his firm, Rockwell Group.
This was another of the theaters designed for Loew’s by architect David Rockwell.
Loew’s Georgetown was designed by architect David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group.
David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group were the architects for the conversion of the Astor Plaza into the Nokia Theatre, according to a Billboard article of October 1, 2005.
So he did, and in the very first comment, at that. I must have been too dazed by five o'clock in the morning to notice it.
Seeing the satellite and aerial views of Long Beach at Bing and Google maps is just flabbergasting. Practically everything I remember having been there is gone. Southern Californians used to criticize Long Beach for being dull and bland (one friend of mine used to call it Dubuque-By-the-Sea) but I always liked it (and I probably would have liked Dubuque, too.) It’s too bad that so few of its own citizens liked it enough to save more of it from the redevelopers.
The street name in the address has to be changed to Ocean Boulevard. Ocean Avenue is way over on Terminal Island, so that name misdirects the Google Maps link.
Also, I think it might have been W. Ocean Boulevard rather than E. Ocean Boulevard, but I’m not sure. Maybe somebody local will remember which direction the theater was from Pine Street.
I also came across an old photo of this theater in which the marquee bore the name Stanley, so that must have been an aka around 1940. See the movie clip titled “Pacific Electric Trolley Waltz” on this page.
Arthur Burnett Benton drew the original plans for this Mission Playhouse in 1921, and the cornerstone was laid in 1923, but the progress of construction was slow and the building was not completed until 1927, when it opened on March 5.
I’ve come across several sources (a scholarly tome by William Deverell, published by the University of California, for one) claiming that, by 1926, Benton had become too ill (he died in 1927) to complete the project, and it was taken over by William J. Dodd and the firm Dodd & Richards (architects of the Kinema Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, later to become the Fox Criterion.)
Dodd is said to have substantially altered the design, so he should probably be credited along with Benton as the architect. Dodd & Richards also designed a 1929 addition to the playhouse, a project that added a curio shop and exhibition gallery.
-DB, that’s definitely the Terrace Theatre in City Terrace. I don’t remember ever having seen it, but I recognize the neighborhood. Other than the loss of the theater and a few other buildings, and a few new buildings added, it changed remarkably little between the 1950s and the 1980s, when I became familiar with it. Alas, the trolly buses were gone by then, too.
Richard Hardina’s intro to the El Rey Theatre says that the Analy Theatre was located on North Main Street.
The marquee Mike and tlsloews admire was installed in the early 1960s, after the Edwards circuit took over operation from Fox West Coast, who had at that time operated the house for well over a decade. Edwards had operated the El Rey for a while earlier, too, under an arrangement with leaseholder Fox.
The 1951 USC photo ken mc linked to above has been moved and is now here. It gives only a glimpse of the side of the older marquee, a boxy, neon affair probably installed in the 1930s. The original, triple-arched entrance of the Temple Theatre, seen in the photo at the top of this page, was long gone by the time I first saw the place.
The architects of the Temple were Walker & Eisen, by the way, as noted in Southwest Builder & Contractor of June 4, 1921. The Temple opened in December, 1921.
That long name is the way it’s listed on Regal’s web site, but I’d bet that nobody in Hendersonville ever calls it that.
I believe there was a Ventura Boulevard in Thousand Oaks at one time. Before the freeways were built, Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles County was U.S. Highway 101, and I think road had the same name as it passed through Ventura County. Most of the old road, which was originally part of El Camino Real, was gradually converted into the Ventura Freeway over the years. In a few places bypasses were built.
My memory of the area in the pre-freeway era is very dim, and the changes since have been drastic, but I suspect that the oldest part of Thousand Oaks was one of the areas bypassed, and that the business street that was once Highway 101/Ventura Boulevard is probably the street now called Thousand Oaks Boulevard. Unfortunately I have no old maps of the area to check.
The actual architect for the Empress Theatre was Lee DeCamp. The Kansas City Journal of February 1, 1910, said that pouring of the foundations for the new theater of the Sullivan and Considine vaudeville circuit was to begin that day. I’m not sure what role the Boller Brothers filled in the project, but it was most likely to supervise construction for DeCamp, whose office was at the time located in Cincinnati.
Many Sullivan and Considine houses were called the Empress, and a number of these were designed by DeCamp. Among them was the Empress in Sacramento, California, which was later renamed the Hippodrome, and then gutted and rebuilt as the Crest in the late 1940s.
An item in the August 7, 1915, issue of Moving Picture World said that DeCamp had by then designed more than forty theaters, and had several more in the works. His most recent commission was for a theater to be built at London, Ontario, for Canadian showman C. H. Bangs.
This page at the Empress Theatre’s official web site names the architect of the theater as William A. Jones.
The city of Culpeper required this infill project to resemble the surrounding vintage buildings of its historic downtown, thus the faux-Vicotrian detailing. The design was by Kansas City-based TK Architects.
A digital IMAX auditorium is being added to the 21st Street Warren Theatre. The 600-seat IMAX is expected to open by mid-December. The project will include remodeling and updating the theater’s existing 17 auditoriums as well.
A June 3 item on the Wichita Eagle web site includes three renderings of the project.
An August 20 Wichita Eagle item has photos depicting the progress of construction.
Three photos of the Regal Cinemas 16 at Indian Lake are displayed on the web site of the project’s designers, the Kansas City firm TK Architects (click on “Cinemas” then “Traditional”)
I’ve found four references on the Internet to a California architect with the surname Polley, but his middle initial was “A” in all cases. There could have been an R. W. Polley as well, but if there was I’ve been unable to find him mentioned on the Internet.
A document about the former Carnegie Library in Oxnard, Ventura County, says that the building’s basement was remodeled in 1949, with plans drawn by local architect R. A. Polley. Another document names R. A. Polley as architect for alterations to a commercial building in Oxnard in 1952.
The California Index contains a card referring to an item in Architect & Engineer of June, 1931, saying that Rudolph A. Polley, of Santa Barbara, had received a license to practice architecture in California.
A web page for the Elks Club of Santa Maria says that their former lodge hall (since demolished) erected in 1939 had been designed by L. N. Crawford and Rudolph Polley. The site of the hall now has a marker (pictured) which notes L. N. Crawford and R. A. Polley as architects of the vanished structure.