Assessor information for the addresses 1224-1230 N. Vine St. gives a construction date of 1993 for the building on this property. I checked the information for the adjacent properties (in case of address migration) and they both have modern construction too. It looks as though the Filmarte is closed/demolished rather than just closed.
Cinemark advertises the whole complex as a single operation called Century Stadium 14 Sacramento, and I don’t know of any open theatres listed on Cinema Treasures that aren’t listed under their current operating name (unless they’ve not yet been updated, of course.) I don’t know of any open theatres operating as single complex that are listed on two separate CT pages (except by accident) either.
I guess the mods will have to decide what their policy will be about this complex and its peculiar arrangement. I’d be inclined to just list it under its current name and then have a single paragraph describing the situation of its orphaned building. But right now this page is like a tail wagging its dog.
Edwards Irvine Spectrum 21 was designed by the architectural firm of Perkowitz + Ruth. It was the first entertainment center the firm had designed. Perkowitz + Ruth would go on to design many cinemas for Edwards and other exhibitors.
The El Rey has reopened with live performances, but on a very limited schedule. It’s being booked by JMax Productions. Henry Rollins did a spoken word show November 3 (the reopening event, as far as I know), and a couple of bands are scheduled for December dates. The venue has not yet been added to the Chico News & Review’s local nightlife grid, though. When (and if) it shows up there, we’ll know the revival is probably going to succeed.
This is the Assessor information for the addresses 2615 through 2625 W. Temple Street, plus 304 N. Benton Way: Parcel of @ 10,118 Sq. ft.; Building area 12,452 sq. ft.; Built in 1924; Current use, Studio (Movie/Radio/TV Studio).
Sounds like the thetre, so I’d say it’s probably not been demolished.
The Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin has posted an article about Deposit’s State Theatre on their website. (The article is dated November 1, 2007, and the site apparently keeps articles on display for only seven days before they go into the pay-to-view archive.)
The story tells about the collapse of the theatre’s roof two hours after the audience had departed on a snowy night in February of 1985; the formation of a local group which purchased and rebuilt the theatre; the reopening in 1988; the fire in September, 1994, which destroyed everything but the facade and marquee; the successful rebuilding of the theatre a second time, and its reopening less than a year after the fire; the flooding of the Delaware River in June of 2006, which inundated the theatre’s stage and every row of seats; how more seats were acquired from another theatre and sufficient repairs made to reopen the State once again in September of 2006.
The article also quotes a spokesperson for the State who describes the theatre’s current condition: “Some flood damage still needs repair, we need to work on the stage curtain, the marquee needs some work, and our vintage 1937 popcorn machine broke down!”
The State’s own website appears to be defunct, but the theatre has a brief page at the Deposit Chamber of Commerce site. No events are currently listed, so I do hope the theatre hasn’t suffered another disaster since the publication of the newspaper article two days ago.
Puzzling, indeed. However, the Department of Neighborhoods site does give the theatre’s opening date as December 3, 1920, more than an month after the organ’s installation. That would have been sufficient time for the name to have been changed. Maybe there’s someone around who has access to Seattle city directories from the era, or newspaper ads for the theatre, and could look up both names to see which was used when?
I did also find this 2003 article from the Seattle Times which also gives Winter Garden as the opening name. Newspaper articles about things that happened decades earlier than their publication date are not always reliable, but this particular article was by Paul Dorpat, a writer who had been doing a “Seattle now and then” feature since 1982. He might be a reliable source.
Unfortunately the most recent photo with a confirmed date I can find of the Winter Garden is the one from 1932 on the PSTOS page. The night shot just below it looks earlier (note the five-globed streetlight standards, as opposed to the three-light standards in the 1932 shot), but that photo has no other clues as to its date.
The Department of Neighborhoods page doesn’t specifically cite a source for their claim that the big Winter Garden vertical sign was part of the original plans. Neither does PSTOS cite a specific source for the information about the organist playing at the Progressive Theatre in 1927, but there’s The Silent Era’s page which cites Film Daily’s 1926 Yearbook (published in 1925) as listing the theatre as the Winter Garden. One or the other must be wrong.
And, for what it’s worth, the Seattle Historic Resources Survey appears to be doing pretty good research, even if much of the work is being done by volunteers. Some of the photos could be better, though.
Here is a page about the Winter Garden Theatre, full of information dug up by the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods for their historic buildings inventory.
They name the architect of record for the Winter Garden as Frank H. Fowler, but indicate that B. Marcus Priteca, for whom Fowler may have once worked, “…appears to have had some limited role in this project.”
The section of the page devoted to describing the original appearance of the theatre includes this line:
“A very elaborate electrified 520 sq. ft steel and glass marquee and a monumental, vertically-hung neon and bulb-light sign for the ‘Winter Garden’ were part of the original design.”
This contradicts the claim above, and at the PSTOS Winter Garden page, that the house opened under the name Progressive Theatre. Elsewhere on the Department of Neighborhoods' page it does say that the stock company which financed the project was originally called the Progressive Company, before its name was changed to Winter Garden Company. I’m not sure which (if either) of the websites has the story right. It seems possible that the theatre’s organ was ordered under the company’s original name, and this name would have been on the Wurlitzer company records from which PSTOS probably got the information.
I remember Aladdin Theaters. They ran a number of drive-ins, too. Their logo, as I recall, was a lamp with a chubby genie rising from it. In fact I think the Floral may have been one of their drive-ins for a while. Ron Pierce says the Anaheim Drive-in was built by Aladdin. I also have a vague recollection of the Aladdin logo on the Vineland when it was first opened (I was about ten years old, I think, so it’s hazy.)
Some of the original plans, sections and detail drawings for this theatre, from the office of the architectural firm William Riseman Associates, are now part of the J. Evan Miller Collection of cinema plans, which is held by the special collections department at Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Plans for this very early twin cinema were done by the Boston architectural firm of William Riseman Associates. The plans are dated 1962. The original name of the theatre was apparently Charlottetown Twin Cinemas. Some of the firms plans and drawings for the project are now part of the J. Evan Miller Collection of cinema plans, which is held by the special collections department at Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
The architectural firm which designed the 1965 revamp of the Circle Theatre for Sumner Redstone’s Showcase Cinemas was William Riseman Associates, of Boston. Many floor plans, sections, sight-line diagrams, and seating plans from the project are now part of the J. Evan Miller Collection of cinema plans which is held by the special collections department at Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
This multiplex opened in December, 1995, and will close before the end of 2007 and be demolished to make way for an office complex. From debut to doom in a dozen years. I wonder if that’s a record?
LM: It’s most likely that only the street name would have changed, so if the Ivy’s building still existed it would probably be at 3937 Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles. That would be on the north side of Whittier near Ditman Avenue.
On the 1944 map, the little red flag on the block at the northeast corner of Euclid and Whittier indicates that the Euclid Theater either shared the block with a school at that time, or had already been obliterated by an earlier incarnation of the school that occupies the whole block now.
Oh, and Stephenson Avenue isn’t gone (I don’t know why I didn’t notice this immediately.) The name was changed to… Whittier Boulevard! And, if the Ivy was at 3937 (I’m now pretty sure that’s the number the directory gives), then it should be listed in East Los Angeles rather than Los Angeles, as the 3900 block is a bit east of Indiana Street, the city limits.
Also, this probably means that we can bulldoze both of the Jewel Theaters in Los Angeles, since they apparently both duplicate the Jewel Theater in East Los Angeles, at 3817 Whittier Boulevard.
Stephenson Street was renamed Whittier Boulevard sometime before 1925. At 3021, the Euclid Theatre would have been just a few doors east of Euclid Avenue. That whole block has been razed for some large project that looks (on TerraServer) like it might be a school.
This theatre is now a triplex. Metropolitan’s website has gone back to calling it the Fairview Theatre. The website of Thorpe Associates, the architectural firm that designed the renovation, describes the project as “…3-screen, 484 seat multi-theatre complex addition and remodel….” It is all stadium seating. The site also displays a couple of renderings of the building.
The Astor Theatre building is still there. Though Ken’s photos from June 29 do not show the address 4821 displayed on any of the buildings depicted, the city’s zoning information system provides a report on the addresses 4819 through 4821-½. It looks as though the address 4819 has migrated over the years and is now in the building south of the original theatre building.
A combination of zoning information reports and a TerraServer satellite view of the block have convinced me that the white building in Ken’s photo was the location of the Astor Theatre. The zoning information report reveals that this building was built in 1914. The Astor Theatre was listed at 4821 S. Vermont in the 1921 Los Angeles City Directory (the earliest available on the Internet.)
This is a duplicate listing. It’s already here as the Alcazar:
/theaters/3126
Assessor information for the addresses 1224-1230 N. Vine St. gives a construction date of 1993 for the building on this property. I checked the information for the adjacent properties (in case of address migration) and they both have modern construction too. It looks as though the Filmarte is closed/demolished rather than just closed.
Cinemark advertises the whole complex as a single operation called Century Stadium 14 Sacramento, and I don’t know of any open theatres listed on Cinema Treasures that aren’t listed under their current operating name (unless they’ve not yet been updated, of course.) I don’t know of any open theatres operating as single complex that are listed on two separate CT pages (except by accident) either.
I guess the mods will have to decide what their policy will be about this complex and its peculiar arrangement. I’d be inclined to just list it under its current name and then have a single paragraph describing the situation of its orphaned building. But right now this page is like a tail wagging its dog.
Edwards Irvine Spectrum 21 was designed by the architectural firm of Perkowitz + Ruth. It was the first entertainment center the firm had designed. Perkowitz + Ruth would go on to design many cinemas for Edwards and other exhibitors.
It’s the same theatre. The page needs to be updated.
Century Stadium 14 Sacramento
The correct address and telephone number:
1590 Ethan Way
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 922-4241
The number of screens is 14, of course.
It is now owned by Cinemark, which swallowed up most of the Century chain.
And of course we can add Scott Neff’s information that the architect was Vincent G. Raney.
The El Rey has reopened with live performances, but on a very limited schedule. It’s being booked by JMax Productions. Henry Rollins did a spoken word show November 3 (the reopening event, as far as I know), and a couple of bands are scheduled for December dates. The venue has not yet been added to the Chico News & Review’s local nightlife grid, though. When (and if) it shows up there, we’ll know the revival is probably going to succeed.
From ZIMAS:
This is the Assessor information for the addresses 2615 through 2625 W. Temple Street, plus 304 N. Benton Way: Parcel of @ 10,118 Sq. ft.; Building area 12,452 sq. ft.; Built in 1924; Current use, Studio (Movie/Radio/TV Studio).
Sounds like the thetre, so I’d say it’s probably not been demolished.
Listed in the Los Angeles Times of February 10, 1971, as an independent theatre, located at Palo Verde Avenue and Spring Street.
The Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin has posted an article about Deposit’s State Theatre on their website. (The article is dated November 1, 2007, and the site apparently keeps articles on display for only seven days before they go into the pay-to-view archive.)
The story tells about the collapse of the theatre’s roof two hours after the audience had departed on a snowy night in February of 1985; the formation of a local group which purchased and rebuilt the theatre; the reopening in 1988; the fire in September, 1994, which destroyed everything but the facade and marquee; the successful rebuilding of the theatre a second time, and its reopening less than a year after the fire; the flooding of the Delaware River in June of 2006, which inundated the theatre’s stage and every row of seats; how more seats were acquired from another theatre and sufficient repairs made to reopen the State once again in September of 2006.
The article also quotes a spokesperson for the State who describes the theatre’s current condition: “Some flood damage still needs repair, we need to work on the stage curtain, the marquee needs some work, and our vintage 1937 popcorn machine broke down!”
The State’s own website appears to be defunct, but the theatre has a brief page at the Deposit Chamber of Commerce site. No events are currently listed, so I do hope the theatre hasn’t suffered another disaster since the publication of the newspaper article two days ago.
Is this theatre located between Poplar and Juniper Streets? If so, then it must have been designed by Lee & Thaete Associates.
Puzzling, indeed. However, the Department of Neighborhoods site does give the theatre’s opening date as December 3, 1920, more than an month after the organ’s installation. That would have been sufficient time for the name to have been changed. Maybe there’s someone around who has access to Seattle city directories from the era, or newspaper ads for the theatre, and could look up both names to see which was used when?
I did also find this 2003 article from the Seattle Times which also gives Winter Garden as the opening name. Newspaper articles about things that happened decades earlier than their publication date are not always reliable, but this particular article was by Paul Dorpat, a writer who had been doing a “Seattle now and then” feature since 1982. He might be a reliable source.
Unfortunately the most recent photo with a confirmed date I can find of the Winter Garden is the one from 1932 on the PSTOS page. The night shot just below it looks earlier (note the five-globed streetlight standards, as opposed to the three-light standards in the 1932 shot), but that photo has no other clues as to its date.
The Department of Neighborhoods page doesn’t specifically cite a source for their claim that the big Winter Garden vertical sign was part of the original plans. Neither does PSTOS cite a specific source for the information about the organist playing at the Progressive Theatre in 1927, but there’s The Silent Era’s page which cites Film Daily’s 1926 Yearbook (published in 1925) as listing the theatre as the Winter Garden. One or the other must be wrong.
And, for what it’s worth, the Seattle Historic Resources Survey appears to be doing pretty good research, even if much of the work is being done by volunteers. Some of the photos could be better, though.
Here is a page about the Winter Garden Theatre, full of information dug up by the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods for their historic buildings inventory.
They name the architect of record for the Winter Garden as Frank H. Fowler, but indicate that B. Marcus Priteca, for whom Fowler may have once worked, “…appears to have had some limited role in this project.”
The section of the page devoted to describing the original appearance of the theatre includes this line:
This contradicts the claim above, and at the PSTOS Winter Garden page, that the house opened under the name Progressive Theatre. Elsewhere on the Department of Neighborhoods' page it does say that the stock company which financed the project was originally called the Progressive Company, before its name was changed to Winter Garden Company. I’m not sure which (if either) of the websites has the story right. It seems possible that the theatre’s organ was ordered under the company’s original name, and this name would have been on the Wurlitzer company records from which PSTOS probably got the information.I remember Aladdin Theaters. They ran a number of drive-ins, too. Their logo, as I recall, was a lamp with a chubby genie rising from it. In fact I think the Floral may have been one of their drive-ins for a while. Ron Pierce says the Anaheim Drive-in was built by Aladdin. I also have a vague recollection of the Aladdin logo on the Vineland when it was first opened (I was about ten years old, I think, so it’s hazy.)
Some of the original plans, sections and detail drawings for this theatre, from the office of the architectural firm William Riseman Associates, are now part of the J. Evan Miller Collection of cinema plans, which is held by the special collections department at Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Plans for this very early twin cinema were done by the Boston architectural firm of William Riseman Associates. The plans are dated 1962. The original name of the theatre was apparently Charlottetown Twin Cinemas. Some of the firms plans and drawings for the project are now part of the J. Evan Miller Collection of cinema plans, which is held by the special collections department at Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
The architectural firm which designed the 1965 revamp of the Circle Theatre for Sumner Redstone’s Showcase Cinemas was William Riseman Associates, of Boston. Many floor plans, sections, sight-line diagrams, and seating plans from the project are now part of the J. Evan Miller Collection of cinema plans which is held by the special collections department at Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Apparently some do still call at least part of it Wyvernwood.
But it now occurs to me for the first time ever that maybe the Vern Theatre on Olympic got its name from Wyvernwood?
This multiplex opened in December, 1995, and will close before the end of 2007 and be demolished to make way for an office complex. From debut to doom in a dozen years. I wonder if that’s a record?
LM: It’s most likely that only the street name would have changed, so if the Ivy’s building still existed it would probably be at 3937 Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles. That would be on the north side of Whittier near Ditman Avenue.
On the 1944 map, the little red flag on the block at the northeast corner of Euclid and Whittier indicates that the Euclid Theater either shared the block with a school at that time, or had already been obliterated by an earlier incarnation of the school that occupies the whole block now.
Oh, and Stephenson Avenue isn’t gone (I don’t know why I didn’t notice this immediately.) The name was changed to… Whittier Boulevard! And, if the Ivy was at 3937 (I’m now pretty sure that’s the number the directory gives), then it should be listed in East Los Angeles rather than Los Angeles, as the 3900 block is a bit east of Indiana Street, the city limits.
Also, this probably means that we can bulldoze both of the Jewel Theaters in Los Angeles, since they apparently both duplicate the Jewel Theater in East Los Angeles, at 3817 Whittier Boulevard.
Stephenson Street was renamed Whittier Boulevard sometime before 1925. At 3021, the Euclid Theatre would have been just a few doors east of Euclid Avenue. That whole block has been razed for some large project that looks (on TerraServer) like it might be a school.
Doesn’t the directory give 3937 Stephenson as the address for the Ivy, or has this monitor finally destroyed my eyes?
This theatre is now a triplex. Metropolitan’s website has gone back to calling it the Fairview Theatre. The website of Thorpe Associates, the architectural firm that designed the renovation, describes the project as “…3-screen, 484 seat multi-theatre complex addition and remodel….” It is all stadium seating. The site also displays a couple of renderings of the building.
The Astor Theatre building is still there. Though Ken’s photos from June 29 do not show the address 4821 displayed on any of the buildings depicted, the city’s zoning information system provides a report on the addresses 4819 through 4821-½. It looks as though the address 4819 has migrated over the years and is now in the building south of the original theatre building.
A combination of zoning information reports and a TerraServer satellite view of the block have convinced me that the white building in Ken’s photo was the location of the Astor Theatre. The zoning information report reveals that this building was built in 1914. The Astor Theatre was listed at 4821 S. Vermont in the 1921 Los Angeles City Directory (the earliest available on the Internet.)