This house was known as the Strand Theatre until 1940. The August 24, 1940, issue of Boxoffice said that Harold Bowers and Carl Mansfield had taken over the Strand at Schuyler and would remodel it. The November 2 issue of Boxoffice said: “Harold Bowers has opened his Colfax at Schuyler, Neb., and the theatre will be operated by his father-in-law, Carl Mansfield.”
The September 11, 1937, issue of Boxoffice said that Joe Swoboda’s Avalon Theatre Corp.,operators of the Avalon and Strand theaters in Schuyler, had taken over another Strand Theatre at Pierce, Nebraska.
Schuyler had a Favorite Theatre in 1926 (The Reel Journal, September 18, 1926,) and Dome Theatre in 1930 (Boxoffice “Twenty years ago” feature on June 17, 1950.) These might have been aka’s for the Avalon and/or Strand/Colfax.
An E.G. Gannon took over the Avalon Theatre in 1945, and apparently operated it until he built the Sky Theatre in 1948 or 1949. Carl Mansfield was still operating the Colfax into the late 1950s, per various issues of Boxoffice.
I never saw this CT page before tonight, so I don’t know what information might have been in Lost Memory’s original introduction and later removed, but sarakali might have been mistaken about the Campus/Sosna never having been called the Varsity Theatre. There was an earlier Varsity Theatre in Manhattan, unrelated to the house that opened in the 1960s. The earlier Varsity Theatre was listed in the April 14, 1932, issue of New England Film News as one of the theaters that had recently installed RCA sound equipment.
An obituary of Sam L. Sosna in the February 8, 1960, issue of Boxoffice said that he had operated the Sosna Theatre at Manhattan from 1931 until his retirement in 1946, at which time he sold the house to the Griffith circuit. While this might indicate that the theater had been renamed the Sosna before the 1932 mention of the Varsity was published, it’s possible that Sam Sosna didn’t rename the theater immediately, or perhaps he was just thrifty and ordered the sound equipment using a remaining Varsity Theatre letterhead soon after acquiring the house in 1931.
This is a fairly tenuous surmise, though, so I wouldn’t add Varsity as an aka without confirmation from some other source.
The opening date currently given in the intro doesn’t match up with the information published in Boxoffice Magazine. The October 9, 1964, issue of Boxoffice had an article about the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Georgia Theatre Company’s new theater in Daniel Village which had recently taken place.
Various issues of Boxoffice over the next several months mention the project, and an article about the recent opening of the Daniel Village Theatre was published in the May 10, 1965, issue. The latter article did say that the movie the house opened with was Mary Poppins, which must have then been going into wider release following its initial road show run.
I can easily imagine Boxoffice publishing one or two items about a project late, but not every one of a whole series of items about a single project.
The 1964 item listed the architect of the theatre as Lowrey Stulb, and the 1965 item about the opening attributed the design to the firm of Eve and Stulb. Eve and Stulb had drawn the plans for the entire Daniel Village Shopping Center.
I believe that H. Lowrey Stulb is still living. In 2007, he wrote this letter to the Augusta Chronicle about the Augusta Library, another of his works.
A brief obituary of 78-year-old C.W. Docter was published in Boxoffice of October 26, 1946. It said that he had built the May Theatre, the town’s first movie house, but did not indicate the period when it had opened. The earliest mention of the May Theatre in the trade publications I’ve found is in the May 4, 1929, issue of Movie Age. It said that C.W. Docter was planning to install sound equipment in the house soon.
Google Maps has the address off quite a bit again, placing it at least 200' south of where it actually is. A sign reading MAY in vertical letters still hangs between two windows on the second floor above the entrance to Lloyd’s Appliances.
The original Majestic Theatre at Hebron was destroyed, along with most of Hebron’s other major buildings, when the town was swept by a tornado in the summer of 1953. The opening of the rebuilt house eight months later was noted by Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of January 23, 1954. A small photo of the new Majestic accompanied the article. The theater was owned at that time by Harold Struve.
At the time of its destruction by the tornado, the Majestic had been in operation since at least 1920. An item about then-owner Arthur H. Records which appeared in Boxoffice of July 15, 1944, said that Records had owned the Majestic for 24 years.
Mr. A.H. Records of Hebron, Nebraska, was listed among purchasers of Reproducto Player Pipe Organs in an ad for Jenkins & Sons Music Company of Kansas City, published in the September 18, 1926, issue of The Reel Journal.
MCM Theatres bought the Priest from its previous owner, Mrs. Mary Priest Logan, in 1953. The Boxoffice item about the transaction, published in the issue of November 7, said that MCM had already been operating the theater under a lease for more than seven years.
Google Maps shows a Hennigan Street in Merryville. It crosses Main Street. The theater is probably at the corner. There are no street views for Merryville.
The Sabine is mentioned rarely in Boxoffice. The July 4, 1953, issue mentions it in passing, and the February 16, 1959, issue names it among theaters recently closed. The February 22, 1960, issue lists it among theaters recently reopened.
The January 6, 1964, issue said “R.E. Almand reopened the Sabine Theatre in Merryville, which had been dark a couple of months.” That’s the last mention of it I’ve found.
I’ve found the Gem mentioned in issues of Boxoffice as early as 1936. A couple of times it’s called the New Gem. The earliest mention of the Lake is in 1950.
There was also an Alcazar Theatre in Brocton at one time, mentioned in the November 24, 1931, issue of Exhibitor’s Forum. I don’t know if this was an earlier name for the Gem/Lake or not.
Boxoffice published an obituary for Phil Reich on February 20, 1961. One line says “His career goes back to vaudeville days and silent movies at his State Theater here.” The item also said that he had leased the State to Larry Lowstuter for 11 years, but had resumed operation of it.
Various items from Boxoffice over the years reveal some of the history of this theater. It was called Reich Auditorium early in its history, though the 1938 Boxoffice items that announced its renovation and reopening all spelled the name as Reicht. One of these items said that the auditorium had not been used as a theater for several years. It reopened as the Meyersdale Theatre in 1938, but had been renamed the State by 1939.
I can’t find anything about Phil Reich actually operating the house when it was called the State, prior to the last two years of his life. It was operated by several different lessees. In 1964 Larry Lowstuter, who had leased the house from 1942 until 1953, bought the State from Phil Reich’s widow. I don’t find it mentioned after that.
Meyersdale had another theater, called the Main, which was renamed the Roxy in 1931. It was in operation as late as 1958, but apparently closed by 1961 when a classified ad in Boxoffice offered the State for sale (for $27,000) and said that it had no competition in the town.
The Avalon was in operation by the late 1920s. An item in Boxoffice of October 13, 1945, said that its owner of 17 years, E.R. Adams, had recently sold the house. The side walls of the building do look quite old. The zig-zag decoration on the facade was undoubtedly the result of a later remodeling, but I can’t find anything in Boxoffice indicating when that took place.
The Building at 1145 Military Avenue was converted into the Blue Castle restaurant in 1957. An item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of October 16, 1961, says “Marion Nichols is reopening the New Baxter Theatre in Baxter Springs, Kas., on a weekend policy. Fred Harpist is doing the booking and buying for the house.” As in 1961 the Blue Castle was firmly established in the building at 1145 Military Avenue, that could not have been the address of the New Baxter Theatre. It had to have been the address of the Ritz.
The building at the corner of 12th street would not have been large enough for the seating capacity of the New Baxter. Numerous items in Boxoffice from the 1940s and 1950s made it clear that the New Baxter was Commonwealth’s “A” house in town, and the Ritz their smaller “B” house.
There is a building at 1117 Military Avenue currently occupied by the local branch of Westco Home Furnishings. In Google satellite view it looks like it might have had a small stage area, though without a fly loft. It’s large enough to have housed a theater of 786 seats, too. I wonder if that might have been the location of the New Baxter, and FDY not only conflated it with the Ritz, but also misprinted the address of what it thought was the Ritz but was actually the New Baxter as 117 Military Avenue?
Well, in addition to correcting my misspelling of Nayfach, I should have done more searches before posting the comment above. The June 24, 1939, issue of Boxoffice says that N. Straus Nayfach was the architect of an addition and other work being done at the Nacional Theatre in San Antonio. Among planned improvements were a Spanish tile front, indirect lighting, and new auditorium equipment (by which I suppose they meant seats and such.)
In 1945, N. Straus Nayfach joined the advisory board of Boxoffice’s Modern Theatre Planning Institute. An item introducing him to Boxoffice readers was run in the February 3, 1945, issue, and it said that he had “…planned approximately 20 commercial and theater structures….” and that he was “…working on a very large postwar theatre program….” Though I’ve looked for other theater projects Nayfach designed, I’ve been unable to identify any.
This theater might be the one that was one of the subjects of an article in the March 3, 1945, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The article, by Helen Kent, was about theater designs, and featured a San Antonio house called El Nacional along with a few Canadian movie theaters. There is a rather vague night photo which looks as though it is this theater, though it appears to have a different marquee than the one it sports in either the older or newer photos Lost Memory linked to, and the descriptions in the text of the article don’t entirely match the information about the National here.
The article says that the El Nacional was “…erected in 1940…,” and had 2000 seats. A photo of the auditorium shows a space large enough to accommodate far more than the 500 currently cited above, but even with a large balcony 2000 seems an exaggeration. Just going by the photo I’d have guessed a capacity of somewhere between 1200 and 1500. The article does say that the house was designed to serve the Spanish-speaking population of San Antonio, and presented Mexican and other Spanish language movies as well as American films.
Either there was another Nacional Theatre in San Antonio or Ms. Kent was mistaken about the house being built in 1940, and it was actually this older theater, and it was remodeled in 1940.
In any case, the article says that the architect of the El Nacional was N. Straus Neyfach (later to be the architect of the Alameda Theatre) and says that he was then preparing the designs for another large Latin American theater in San Antonio to be built after the war. So far I’ve been unable to discover if that project was ever carried out.
It’s Henry, not Henty, Jensen. Still, the California Index at the L.A. Library’s web site has only one card citing a Times article naming Henry Jensen, and that’s an article from June 21, 1914, about the Palace Grand Theatre in Glendale. All the other cards mentioning Jensen cite articles in Southwest Builder & Contractor or other publications. The name Theaterium does not appear in the Index at all.
crackdog is right. The distinctive cornice line of the theater is on the building at 608 NW 65th Street. The Woodland was not in the building Molly Maguire’s is in now, and where the confectionery was located in the 1932 photo, but in the building next door.
From the satellite view and from the Google street view along 6th Avenue NW, it’s clear that this narrow section of the building was only the entrance to the theater, and the auditorium was at right angles to it, with its rear exits on 6th Avenue. The auditorium is still there, and is probably used by Advanced Sign Design, Inc., which occupies all the storefronts from the former theater entrance to the corner.
In any case, whatever the address of the Woodland was in historic times, the former entrance is now clearly numbered 608 NW 65th Street, as can be seen in the Google street view.
I’ve found the Woodland Theatre mentioned in Boxoffice Magazine a couple of times. The December 16, 1950, issue said that Ted H. Wilson had bought the Woodland from John Danz of Sterling Theatres. Then the January 13, 1951, issue said: “Don Wilson, former owner of the Kent (Wash.) theatre, purchased the Woodland in Seattle.” Then on July 14, 1951, came the notice that “Walter Timm, who recently purchased the Woodland Theatre here from Ted Wilson, was on the row….”
The next mention of Walter Timm I can find is from 1957, by which time he was operating a theater in Portland, and there’s no mention of the Woodland. I’ve been unable to find any references to the house when it was the Olympic.
I misstated the original seating capacity of the Palace in my comment above. That line in paragraph 2 should read “…increasing the theater’s total seating capacity from a little under 600 to 825.” The article said that “about 250” seats had been added in the remodeling. The figure currently at the top of this page (571) was probably accurate for the Palace. I’m guessing Bryan found the theater in the listings in an FDY published before the 1952 remodel and renaming.
The Bijou was indeed built as the Lakeside Theatre in 1937. The Lakeside was renamed the Bijou in 1981 by new owner Judy Mace, who sold the house to Keith and Betsy Altomare in 1996. Boxoffice Magazine’s special ShoWest edition, published April 1, 2000, had an article about the Bijou and the Altomares.
I’ve found this theater referred to as the Palace in Boxoffice as far back as 1937, but never more recently than 1951. The July 11, 1953, issue of Boxoffice ran an article about the Palace being renamed the San Carlos Theatre when a major remodeling and expansion of the house had recently taken place. The theater was operated by Miami showman Milton Frackman and his local partners, A.W. Castro and Gerald Abreu.
Among other changes to the theater, a small shelf balcony had been enlarged into a full balcony, increasing the theater’s total seating capacity from a little over 600 to 825. The article did not give a name for an architect of the remodeling, but the decoration was by Eugene Vitanza, of Miami. An interesting sidelight mentioned int he article is that Ernest Hemingway occasionally attended this theater when he lived in Key West.
The last of the partners who had operated the San Carlos since the early 1950s, Gerald Abreu, gave over the operation to Marshall & Rode Theatres of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in 1968, according to Boxoffice of April 15 that year. That’s the last mention of the San Carlos I’ve found in Boxoffice, and I’ve been unable to find the house mentioned under its later name of Cinema II at all.
The DeRay’s vertical and marquee can be seen in this 1941 photo of Joplin’s Main Street. The theater also had a large rooftop sign at this time, but it is facing the other direction. The vertical signs of the Fox and Paramount can also be seen, down the street on the left side.
This theater should be listed under its final name, the Lux Theatre. It also had at least one name between Lyric and Lux. From the 1930s until 1952 it was the DeRay Theatre.
The Lyric Theatre opened after 1900 and was in operation at least as early as 1906 when it was shown on the Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Joplin. Though it was a narrow house it had a fairly deep stage, and may have presented legitimate stage productions, though it was not the town’s largest theater. The Lyric was more likely a vaudeville house before movies became popular.
I’ve been unable to find out anything about the house between the 1900s and the 1930s, but at least as early as 1937 it was being operated as the DeRay Theatre by the Fite brothers, whose small regional movie house circuit consisted of five theaters in Kansas and Missouri.
In 1952 the DeRay was acquired by Dickinson Theatres, and was completely remodeled and reopened as the Lux Theatre. Dickinson operated the Lux for two decades, and it appears to have been a first-run house the entire time.
The Lux closed when Dickinson opened their new Northpark I & II Theatres at Northpark Mall in 1972. The Lyric Theatre building has since been demolished, along with everything else on its block.
The January 15, 1979, issue of Boxoffice said that the Eastgate opened as a twin in 1971, and was acquired by Dickinson Theatres in 1974 when the addition of a third auditorium was underway. The Boxoffice item was about Dickinson’s plans to add two more screens to the complex.
As a triplex the Eastgate had provided 861 seats, and the two additional screens would bring the total capacity to 1,463. The alterations were to be substantial, including the addition of a new lobby, a new front and signage, and redesigning the existing parts of the complex to be wheelchair accessible.
The expansion project was designed by Denver architects Mel Glatz & Associates.
Note: I misspelled Heinemann in my comment above. I can only plead that my computer has a surplus of n’s and wants to get rid of as many as possible.
If it’s the same Peter Heinemann, he’s become a fairly well-known artist and a number of his paintings, often featuring images of cats and birds (as in this one), can be seen at various web sites. The painter Peter Heinemann was born in 1931 and would have been about 23 years old when the Clearwater Carib was built. I believe he is still living. It it’s the same guy, maybe he’ll find this page and tell us about the murals.
I’ve been unable to find out who created the very similar but more elaborate mural on the facade of the Miami Carib, but if it wasn’t Cohen and Heinemann (or at least Cohen, as Heinemann would have been about 19 in 1950) then the Clearwater mural was a pretty blatant imitation. I’d be inclined to blame the owners of the project. They must have had a case of mural envy. Interestingly, the name of the company they formed to build the Clearwater theater is from the initials of their surnames, N and V, but spelled out as En Vee, Inc. Freudian, perhaps?
The Carib Theatre in Clearwater opened in 1954, and was the subject of an article in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of March 6 that year. Considerably smaller than the Miami Beach house of the same name, it had 1,194 seats on opening, and was the first Florida theater built to accommodate a CinemaScope screen from its opening day.
Despite any similarities it may have with the Miami Beach Carib, which was designed by architect Michael DeAngelis, the Clearwater Carib was designed by architect James E. Casale. The murals in the auditorium and on the theater’s facade were the work of artists Peter Cohen and Peter Heinnemann.
The Carib was originally operated under lease by the Bay-Lan Theatre Corporation of Tampa (the Miami Beach Carib was a Wometco house), though the building was owned by two men who had winter homes in Clearwater; Anast Notopoulos, the head of a Pennsylvania theater circuit, and Philip Voulis of Chicago.
This house was known as the Strand Theatre until 1940. The August 24, 1940, issue of Boxoffice said that Harold Bowers and Carl Mansfield had taken over the Strand at Schuyler and would remodel it. The November 2 issue of Boxoffice said: “Harold Bowers has opened his Colfax at Schuyler, Neb., and the theatre will be operated by his father-in-law, Carl Mansfield.”
The September 11, 1937, issue of Boxoffice said that Joe Swoboda’s Avalon Theatre Corp.,operators of the Avalon and Strand theaters in Schuyler, had taken over another Strand Theatre at Pierce, Nebraska.
Schuyler had a Favorite Theatre in 1926 (The Reel Journal, September 18, 1926,) and Dome Theatre in 1930 (Boxoffice “Twenty years ago” feature on June 17, 1950.) These might have been aka’s for the Avalon and/or Strand/Colfax.
An E.G. Gannon took over the Avalon Theatre in 1945, and apparently operated it until he built the Sky Theatre in 1948 or 1949. Carl Mansfield was still operating the Colfax into the late 1950s, per various issues of Boxoffice.
I never saw this CT page before tonight, so I don’t know what information might have been in Lost Memory’s original introduction and later removed, but sarakali might have been mistaken about the Campus/Sosna never having been called the Varsity Theatre. There was an earlier Varsity Theatre in Manhattan, unrelated to the house that opened in the 1960s. The earlier Varsity Theatre was listed in the April 14, 1932, issue of New England Film News as one of the theaters that had recently installed RCA sound equipment.
An obituary of Sam L. Sosna in the February 8, 1960, issue of Boxoffice said that he had operated the Sosna Theatre at Manhattan from 1931 until his retirement in 1946, at which time he sold the house to the Griffith circuit. While this might indicate that the theater had been renamed the Sosna before the 1932 mention of the Varsity was published, it’s possible that Sam Sosna didn’t rename the theater immediately, or perhaps he was just thrifty and ordered the sound equipment using a remaining Varsity Theatre letterhead soon after acquiring the house in 1931.
This is a fairly tenuous surmise, though, so I wouldn’t add Varsity as an aka without confirmation from some other source.
The opening date currently given in the intro doesn’t match up with the information published in Boxoffice Magazine. The October 9, 1964, issue of Boxoffice had an article about the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Georgia Theatre Company’s new theater in Daniel Village which had recently taken place.
Various issues of Boxoffice over the next several months mention the project, and an article about the recent opening of the Daniel Village Theatre was published in the May 10, 1965, issue. The latter article did say that the movie the house opened with was Mary Poppins, which must have then been going into wider release following its initial road show run.
I can easily imagine Boxoffice publishing one or two items about a project late, but not every one of a whole series of items about a single project.
The 1964 item listed the architect of the theatre as Lowrey Stulb, and the 1965 item about the opening attributed the design to the firm of Eve and Stulb. Eve and Stulb had drawn the plans for the entire Daniel Village Shopping Center.
I believe that H. Lowrey Stulb is still living. In 2007, he wrote this letter to the Augusta Chronicle about the Augusta Library, another of his works.
It’s a tiny town. I doubt it ever had two theaters. The building in the photo must be the Sabine.
A brief obituary of 78-year-old C.W. Docter was published in Boxoffice of October 26, 1946. It said that he had built the May Theatre, the town’s first movie house, but did not indicate the period when it had opened. The earliest mention of the May Theatre in the trade publications I’ve found is in the May 4, 1929, issue of Movie Age. It said that C.W. Docter was planning to install sound equipment in the house soon.
Google Maps has the address off quite a bit again, placing it at least 200' south of where it actually is. A sign reading MAY in vertical letters still hangs between two windows on the second floor above the entrance to Lloyd’s Appliances.
The original Majestic Theatre at Hebron was destroyed, along with most of Hebron’s other major buildings, when the town was swept by a tornado in the summer of 1953. The opening of the rebuilt house eight months later was noted by Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of January 23, 1954. A small photo of the new Majestic accompanied the article. The theater was owned at that time by Harold Struve.
At the time of its destruction by the tornado, the Majestic had been in operation since at least 1920. An item about then-owner Arthur H. Records which appeared in Boxoffice of July 15, 1944, said that Records had owned the Majestic for 24 years.
Mr. A.H. Records of Hebron, Nebraska, was listed among purchasers of Reproducto Player Pipe Organs in an ad for Jenkins & Sons Music Company of Kansas City, published in the September 18, 1926, issue of The Reel Journal.
MCM Theatres bought the Priest from its previous owner, Mrs. Mary Priest Logan, in 1953. The Boxoffice item about the transaction, published in the issue of November 7, said that MCM had already been operating the theater under a lease for more than seven years.
Google Maps shows a Hennigan Street in Merryville. It crosses Main Street. The theater is probably at the corner. There are no street views for Merryville.
The Sabine is mentioned rarely in Boxoffice. The July 4, 1953, issue mentions it in passing, and the February 16, 1959, issue names it among theaters recently closed. The February 22, 1960, issue lists it among theaters recently reopened.
The January 6, 1964, issue said “R.E. Almand reopened the Sabine Theatre in Merryville, which had been dark a couple of months.” That’s the last mention of it I’ve found.
I’ve found the Gem mentioned in issues of Boxoffice as early as 1936. A couple of times it’s called the New Gem. The earliest mention of the Lake is in 1950.
There was also an Alcazar Theatre in Brocton at one time, mentioned in the November 24, 1931, issue of Exhibitor’s Forum. I don’t know if this was an earlier name for the Gem/Lake or not.
Boxoffice published an obituary for Phil Reich on February 20, 1961. One line says “His career goes back to vaudeville days and silent movies at his State Theater here.” The item also said that he had leased the State to Larry Lowstuter for 11 years, but had resumed operation of it.
Various items from Boxoffice over the years reveal some of the history of this theater. It was called Reich Auditorium early in its history, though the 1938 Boxoffice items that announced its renovation and reopening all spelled the name as Reicht. One of these items said that the auditorium had not been used as a theater for several years. It reopened as the Meyersdale Theatre in 1938, but had been renamed the State by 1939.
I can’t find anything about Phil Reich actually operating the house when it was called the State, prior to the last two years of his life. It was operated by several different lessees. In 1964 Larry Lowstuter, who had leased the house from 1942 until 1953, bought the State from Phil Reich’s widow. I don’t find it mentioned after that.
This reminiscence of life in Meyersdale in the 1920s contains the lines “My school days at Meyersdale High were typical. Basketball was played in Reich’s Auditorium because we had no gym.”
Meyersdale had another theater, called the Main, which was renamed the Roxy in 1931. It was in operation as late as 1958, but apparently closed by 1961 when a classified ad in Boxoffice offered the State for sale (for $27,000) and said that it had no competition in the town.
The Avalon was in operation by the late 1920s. An item in Boxoffice of October 13, 1945, said that its owner of 17 years, E.R. Adams, had recently sold the house. The side walls of the building do look quite old. The zig-zag decoration on the facade was undoubtedly the result of a later remodeling, but I can’t find anything in Boxoffice indicating when that took place.
The Building at 1145 Military Avenue was converted into the Blue Castle restaurant in 1957. An item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of October 16, 1961, says “Marion Nichols is reopening the New Baxter Theatre in Baxter Springs, Kas., on a weekend policy. Fred Harpist is doing the booking and buying for the house.” As in 1961 the Blue Castle was firmly established in the building at 1145 Military Avenue, that could not have been the address of the New Baxter Theatre. It had to have been the address of the Ritz.
The building at the corner of 12th street would not have been large enough for the seating capacity of the New Baxter. Numerous items in Boxoffice from the 1940s and 1950s made it clear that the New Baxter was Commonwealth’s “A” house in town, and the Ritz their smaller “B” house.
There is a building at 1117 Military Avenue currently occupied by the local branch of Westco Home Furnishings. In Google satellite view it looks like it might have had a small stage area, though without a fly loft. It’s large enough to have housed a theater of 786 seats, too. I wonder if that might have been the location of the New Baxter, and FDY not only conflated it with the Ritz, but also misprinted the address of what it thought was the Ritz but was actually the New Baxter as 117 Military Avenue?
Well, in addition to correcting my misspelling of Nayfach, I should have done more searches before posting the comment above. The June 24, 1939, issue of Boxoffice says that N. Straus Nayfach was the architect of an addition and other work being done at the Nacional Theatre in San Antonio. Among planned improvements were a Spanish tile front, indirect lighting, and new auditorium equipment (by which I suppose they meant seats and such.)
In 1945, N. Straus Nayfach joined the advisory board of Boxoffice’s Modern Theatre Planning Institute. An item introducing him to Boxoffice readers was run in the February 3, 1945, issue, and it said that he had “…planned approximately 20 commercial and theater structures….” and that he was “…working on a very large postwar theatre program….” Though I’ve looked for other theater projects Nayfach designed, I’ve been unable to identify any.
This theater might be the one that was one of the subjects of an article in the March 3, 1945, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The article, by Helen Kent, was about theater designs, and featured a San Antonio house called El Nacional along with a few Canadian movie theaters. There is a rather vague night photo which looks as though it is this theater, though it appears to have a different marquee than the one it sports in either the older or newer photos Lost Memory linked to, and the descriptions in the text of the article don’t entirely match the information about the National here.
The article says that the El Nacional was “…erected in 1940…,” and had 2000 seats. A photo of the auditorium shows a space large enough to accommodate far more than the 500 currently cited above, but even with a large balcony 2000 seems an exaggeration. Just going by the photo I’d have guessed a capacity of somewhere between 1200 and 1500. The article does say that the house was designed to serve the Spanish-speaking population of San Antonio, and presented Mexican and other Spanish language movies as well as American films.
See the Boxoffice article here.
Either there was another Nacional Theatre in San Antonio or Ms. Kent was mistaken about the house being built in 1940, and it was actually this older theater, and it was remodeled in 1940.
In any case, the article says that the architect of the El Nacional was N. Straus Neyfach (later to be the architect of the Alameda Theatre) and says that he was then preparing the designs for another large Latin American theater in San Antonio to be built after the war. So far I’ve been unable to discover if that project was ever carried out.
It’s Henry, not Henty, Jensen. Still, the California Index at the L.A. Library’s web site has only one card citing a Times article naming Henry Jensen, and that’s an article from June 21, 1914, about the Palace Grand Theatre in Glendale. All the other cards mentioning Jensen cite articles in Southwest Builder & Contractor or other publications. The name Theaterium does not appear in the Index at all.
crackdog is right. The distinctive cornice line of the theater is on the building at 608 NW 65th Street. The Woodland was not in the building Molly Maguire’s is in now, and where the confectionery was located in the 1932 photo, but in the building next door.
From the satellite view and from the Google street view along 6th Avenue NW, it’s clear that this narrow section of the building was only the entrance to the theater, and the auditorium was at right angles to it, with its rear exits on 6th Avenue. The auditorium is still there, and is probably used by Advanced Sign Design, Inc., which occupies all the storefronts from the former theater entrance to the corner.
In any case, whatever the address of the Woodland was in historic times, the former entrance is now clearly numbered 608 NW 65th Street, as can be seen in the Google street view.
I’ve found the Woodland Theatre mentioned in Boxoffice Magazine a couple of times. The December 16, 1950, issue said that Ted H. Wilson had bought the Woodland from John Danz of Sterling Theatres. Then the January 13, 1951, issue said: “Don Wilson, former owner of the Kent (Wash.) theatre, purchased the Woodland in Seattle.” Then on July 14, 1951, came the notice that “Walter Timm, who recently purchased the Woodland Theatre here from Ted Wilson, was on the row….”
The next mention of Walter Timm I can find is from 1957, by which time he was operating a theater in Portland, and there’s no mention of the Woodland. I’ve been unable to find any references to the house when it was the Olympic.
I misstated the original seating capacity of the Palace in my comment above. That line in paragraph 2 should read “…increasing the theater’s total seating capacity from a little under 600 to 825.” The article said that “about 250” seats had been added in the remodeling. The figure currently at the top of this page (571) was probably accurate for the Palace. I’m guessing Bryan found the theater in the listings in an FDY published before the 1952 remodel and renaming.
The Bijou was indeed built as the Lakeside Theatre in 1937. The Lakeside was renamed the Bijou in 1981 by new owner Judy Mace, who sold the house to Keith and Betsy Altomare in 1996. Boxoffice Magazine’s special ShoWest edition, published April 1, 2000, had an article about the Bijou and the Altomares.
I’ve found this theater referred to as the Palace in Boxoffice as far back as 1937, but never more recently than 1951. The July 11, 1953, issue of Boxoffice ran an article about the Palace being renamed the San Carlos Theatre when a major remodeling and expansion of the house had recently taken place. The theater was operated by Miami showman Milton Frackman and his local partners, A.W. Castro and Gerald Abreu.
Among other changes to the theater, a small shelf balcony had been enlarged into a full balcony, increasing the theater’s total seating capacity from a little over 600 to 825. The article did not give a name for an architect of the remodeling, but the decoration was by Eugene Vitanza, of Miami. An interesting sidelight mentioned int he article is that Ernest Hemingway occasionally attended this theater when he lived in Key West.
The last of the partners who had operated the San Carlos since the early 1950s, Gerald Abreu, gave over the operation to Marshall & Rode Theatres of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in 1968, according to Boxoffice of April 15 that year. That’s the last mention of the San Carlos I’ve found in Boxoffice, and I’ve been unable to find the house mentioned under its later name of Cinema II at all.
The DeRay’s vertical and marquee can be seen in this 1941 photo of Joplin’s Main Street. The theater also had a large rooftop sign at this time, but it is facing the other direction. The vertical signs of the Fox and Paramount can also be seen, down the street on the left side.
This theater should be listed under its final name, the Lux Theatre. It also had at least one name between Lyric and Lux. From the 1930s until 1952 it was the DeRay Theatre.
The Lyric Theatre opened after 1900 and was in operation at least as early as 1906 when it was shown on the Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Joplin. Though it was a narrow house it had a fairly deep stage, and may have presented legitimate stage productions, though it was not the town’s largest theater. The Lyric was more likely a vaudeville house before movies became popular.
I’ve been unable to find out anything about the house between the 1900s and the 1930s, but at least as early as 1937 it was being operated as the DeRay Theatre by the Fite brothers, whose small regional movie house circuit consisted of five theaters in Kansas and Missouri.
In 1952 the DeRay was acquired by Dickinson Theatres, and was completely remodeled and reopened as the Lux Theatre. Dickinson operated the Lux for two decades, and it appears to have been a first-run house the entire time.
The Lux closed when Dickinson opened their new Northpark I & II Theatres at Northpark Mall in 1972. The Lyric Theatre building has since been demolished, along with everything else on its block.
The January 15, 1979, issue of Boxoffice said that the Eastgate opened as a twin in 1971, and was acquired by Dickinson Theatres in 1974 when the addition of a third auditorium was underway. The Boxoffice item was about Dickinson’s plans to add two more screens to the complex.
As a triplex the Eastgate had provided 861 seats, and the two additional screens would bring the total capacity to 1,463. The alterations were to be substantial, including the addition of a new lobby, a new front and signage, and redesigning the existing parts of the complex to be wheelchair accessible.
The expansion project was designed by Denver architects Mel Glatz & Associates.
Last line of paragraph two in my last comment should start “If it’s the same guy….”
I’ve got typoid fever tonight.
Note: I misspelled Heinemann in my comment above. I can only plead that my computer has a surplus of n’s and wants to get rid of as many as possible.
If it’s the same Peter Heinemann, he’s become a fairly well-known artist and a number of his paintings, often featuring images of cats and birds (as in this one), can be seen at various web sites. The painter Peter Heinemann was born in 1931 and would have been about 23 years old when the Clearwater Carib was built. I believe he is still living. It it’s the same guy, maybe he’ll find this page and tell us about the murals.
I’ve been unable to find out who created the very similar but more elaborate mural on the facade of the Miami Carib, but if it wasn’t Cohen and Heinemann (or at least Cohen, as Heinemann would have been about 19 in 1950) then the Clearwater mural was a pretty blatant imitation. I’d be inclined to blame the owners of the project. They must have had a case of mural envy. Interestingly, the name of the company they formed to build the Clearwater theater is from the initials of their surnames, N and V, but spelled out as En Vee, Inc. Freudian, perhaps?
The Carib Theatre in Clearwater opened in 1954, and was the subject of an article in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of March 6 that year. Considerably smaller than the Miami Beach house of the same name, it had 1,194 seats on opening, and was the first Florida theater built to accommodate a CinemaScope screen from its opening day.
Despite any similarities it may have with the Miami Beach Carib, which was designed by architect Michael DeAngelis, the Clearwater Carib was designed by architect James E. Casale. The murals in the auditorium and on the theater’s facade were the work of artists Peter Cohen and Peter Heinnemann.
The Carib was originally operated under lease by the Bay-Lan Theatre Corporation of Tampa (the Miami Beach Carib was a Wometco house), though the building was owned by two men who had winter homes in Clearwater; Anast Notopoulos, the head of a Pennsylvania theater circuit, and Philip Voulis of Chicago.
Boxoffice article here.