An article about the newly renovated Regent Theatre appeared in Boxoffice of September 10, 1955. It noted that the house had originally opened in 1926 with D. W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm.
When the house was being renovated in 1955, operators Florida State Theatres ran a contest through the local newspaper asking for patrons to suggest a new name for the theater. Public sentiment turned out to be overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the old name, so when the theater reopened it was as the New Regent Theatre.
Published references to a New Royal Theatre at Versailles in 1932 suggest an earlier opening date than 1935 for this house. This item from the March 22, 1931 issue of The Seadlia Democrat makes it even more likely: “J. T. Goshen, owner of the Royal Theatre at Versailles, is to erect a new moving picture theatre building. He has secured a long lease on property on the west side of the square there for the structure.” The Royal is indeed on the west side of the square.
SethG’s suggestion that the first Royal Theatre might have been the former Krauss Opera House seems a definite possibility. The latest mentions of the Opera House I’ve seen in Versaille’s newspaper, the Morgan County Republican, are from 1911, and the earliest mentions of the Royal Theatre are from 1913. As there is no overlap, a name change is certainly possible.
An early 20th century vaudeville organization’s journal called The Player has in its issue of July 25, 1913 a list of theaters in Crockett (there were four!) and one of them is the Columbia.
The Citadel Theatre opened on December 26, 1921 with the D.W. Griffith film Way Down East. The November 8, 1968 issue of Boxoffice reported that the Citadel Theatre in Bloomfield had been gutted by a fire while undergoing renovation. Presumably repaired, as it was still open in 1989.
The NRHP nomination form for the Delavan Downtown Commercial Historic District says that the Delavan Theatre was designed by Milwaukee architect John Wolf. The twinning took place in 1978, and the stage house the theater originally sported was demolished at that time.
Neither a Black Cat nor a Solax Theatre is listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It might have been overlooked, or it might have been inactive at the time the Directory was compiled. No other theater is listed at this house’s address, either, but there is a house called the Carrollton Theatre, listed at 1203-05 W. Baltimore Street, which must have been directly across the street.
Broan’s discovery that John Eberson and the firm of Fugard & Knapp were both connected with the Centennial Theatre project is interesting. Cinema Treasures' page for the Paramount (originally the Majestic, 1915) Theatre in Austin, Texas, attributes that theater’s design to Eberson, but Emporis attributes it to Fugard & Knapp. The two firms were associated on more than one project around that time, then.
The Centennial was completed before the end of 1916, as it’s recent opening was noted in the December 23 issue of Moving Picture World.
Further digging has revealed that the 1948 vote was not the first time Sioux Center had rejected a movies, nor was the Legion Theater of that period the first movie house operated there by the town’s American Legionnaires. This item is from the July 2, 1938 issue of Boxoffice:
“Sioux Center Again Bars Sunday Films
“Sioux Center, Ia. — This is still ‘the town without movies,’ and the voters appear to like it that way. They rolled up the largest vote in the town’s history last week when the question, ‘Shall the town license a theatre or movie house’ was submitted. The count showed 429 opposed to shows and 343 in favor.
“The council, according to Mayor Anthony Te Paske, can decide to allow shows despite the election result, but no one expects it to do this, not even Garret Wanscheer who proposed to build a $15,000 theatre building. ‘Well, it looks like we’re licked again,’ Wanscheer remarked after the ballots were counted.
“Two years ago the same proposition came up and the voters turned thumbs down on it then, too.
“Sioux Center isn’t the only town in the state without a picture house, but it is probably the largest. The population is 1,650. Once the town did have photoplays when the American Legion post operated a theatre from 1916 to 1927. The Legion went out of business with the advent of talking pictures and no one has been able to get a permit since.
“Opposition to films is led by two ministers in the town who allege the shows are detrimental to morals and the spiritual life.
“Of course, for those who want their photoplays there’s a theatre at Orange City, Ia.”
A brief item dateline Hopkins in the July 23, 1949 issue of Boxoffice said that “Ralph White opened his 430-seat Roxy early this month.” A December 11, 1948 item had announced the start of construction, but said that the house would be called the Rex and would seat 350. That item also said that Ralph White and his sons had started the project. Since the item about the opening doesn’t mention the sons, I’m assuming that Mr. White disowned them and spent their inheritance on space for 80 more seats and an additional letter for his theater’s name.
When the Legionnaires began sponsoring movies in Sioux Center, then a town of less than 2000, it was not without controversy. In fact, the controversy was so intense (and by that late date so unusual) that Life Magazine featured an article about it in their issue of April 19, 1948.
One of the images in the Life article is a reproduction of part of an ad placed in the local newspaper by the anti-movie forces who had engineered a referendum on the issue, giving reasons why they believed citizens should cast their votes to reject movies. Signed by 450 local farmers, who lived outside city limits and thus were not eligible to vote, the ad said in part (I won’t reproduce their ALL CAPS shout:
“We are opposed to marring the city of Sioux Center with a theater which as Satan’s tool we believe to be a spiritual and moral detriment to our people”
The anti-movie forces prevailed in the election, 488 to 427, but a newly elected city council ignored the advisory result and voted to renew the American legion’s license to operate the movie theater in Town Hall. Those citizens of Sioux Center and vicinity who were inclined to such wickedness were thus able to enjoy movies locally for five more years before a force apparently more powerful than the group of ministers who led the fight against them, television, finally closed the theater.
Sioux Center’s midcentury flirtation with evil does not seem to have harmed the town, which, unlike many similar small towns in the nation’s agricultural regions, has continued to grow and prosper. Today it has a population of over 7,000, and supports a five-screen tool of Satan… I mean multiplex… operated by Fridley Theatres.
The last events at the Lynn Theatre posted on their Facebook page were movie showings on June 12, 13, and 14, 2020. If those showings did take place (there have been no posts to the page since June 12) then this house closed on June 14, 2020 with a showing of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The “About” section at the top of the Facebook page now says “Permanently Closed.”
The minutes of the April 23, 2018 meeting of the Gonzales Economic Development Corporation reveal that, at that time at least, the Lynn was owned by the city’s EDC, and I have found no evidence that this has changed. If the Lynn Theatre has a future, it is in the hands of the City of Gonzales.
The September 1, 1923 issue of Moving Picture World said that the new Capitol Theatre in Danbury had opened August 11 with the Goldwyn production “Three Wise Fools” as the feature attraction. The wording of the article makes it clear that the house, which was owned by the Taylor estate, was entirely new and had not been seem by the public before.
The appearance of the name Taylor Theatre at the Capitol’s address in the 1923 city directory was likely the result of the fact that the directory went to press while the theater was still in the planning stage or under construction and the name Capitol had not yet been chosen, so the publisher used the name of the owners of the project. There’s no evidence that the house ever operated under the name Taylor Theatre.
Work had begun on alterations and a 16x50 foot addition to the Empire Theatre in Portland, according to an item the March 10, 1917 issue of The American Contractor. The Portland firm of Brown & Berry had drawn the plans for the project.
Finn’s Opera House was one of many buildings in Jewett City, and throughout New England, that were destroyed by the Hurricane of 1938. About three o'clock in the afternoon of September 21, the roof was ripped off, the balcony collapsed, and the brick back wall was blown in, covering the stage and the front of the seating area with rubble. Recognizable bits of the building were found up to a mile away in the aftermath of the storm.
The 1899-1900 Cahn guide lists Jewett City’s Finn Opera House as an upstairs theater with 700 seats, operated by J.H. Finn. Other sources indicate that the house remained in its original configuration throughout its history. A biographical sketch of James H. Finn published in 1905 said that he had completed the Finn Building, housing the Opera House, the Post Office, three stores, and office spaces, in 1898.
This web page has an article from the March 3, 2005 issue of the local Tribune newspaper with a brief history of the Geyer Performing Arts Center. It notes that from its renovation in the late 1980s until 2005 the house was known as the Showtime Theatre. It reopened under new management as the Geyer Performing Arts Center on March 5, 2005. The Strand had closed as a movie house in 1969.
Here is a bit of confusion provided by the January 12, 1918 issue of Exhibitors Herald:
“Tulsa, Okla.— W. M. Smith will remodel the present Empress Theatre for a moving picture house to be known as The Rialto. A contract has been let for the installation of a $14,000 pipe organ. Frank H. Cassil is manager.”
One explanation I can think of is that the first Rialto could have opened in 1918 and snatched the name before Smith could slap it on the remodeled Empress, so he settled for calling it the New Empress. But our page for the first Rialto doesn’t give its opening date, so I can’t prove that surmise.
The Empress is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, so it was most likely still exclusively a vaudeville house at that time. Does anyone know if it was a Sullivan & Considine operation? Empress was that circuit’s favorite theater name.
This might have been the house listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory as the Scottdale Theatre. The other two houses listed (Geyer’s Opera House and the Arcade Theatre) are accounted for.
This must have been the house called the Arcade Theatre. This web page says that “[t]he Arcade Theater (ca. 1908) no longer stands, having been demolished for the redevelopment project that created the small parklet and mall on the north side of Pittsburgh Street from Broadway Street to Spring Street.” The Arcade was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
An article about the newly renovated Regent Theatre appeared in Boxoffice of September 10, 1955. It noted that the house had originally opened in 1926 with D. W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm.
When the house was being renovated in 1955, operators Florida State Theatres ran a contest through the local newspaper asking for patrons to suggest a new name for the theater. Public sentiment turned out to be overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the old name, so when the theater reopened it was as the New Regent Theatre.
Published references to a New Royal Theatre at Versailles in 1932 suggest an earlier opening date than 1935 for this house. This item from the March 22, 1931 issue of The Seadlia Democrat makes it even more likely: “J. T. Goshen, owner of the Royal Theatre at Versailles, is to erect a new moving picture theatre building. He has secured a long lease on property on the west side of the square there for the structure.” The Royal is indeed on the west side of the square.
SethG’s suggestion that the first Royal Theatre might have been the former Krauss Opera House seems a definite possibility. The latest mentions of the Opera House I’ve seen in Versaille’s newspaper, the Morgan County Republican, are from 1911, and the earliest mentions of the Royal Theatre are from 1913. As there is no overlap, a name change is certainly possible.
An early 20th century vaudeville organization’s journal called The Player has in its issue of July 25, 1913 a list of theaters in Crockett (there were four!) and one of them is the Columbia.
The Citadel Theatre opened on December 26, 1921 with the D.W. Griffith film Way Down East. The November 8, 1968 issue of Boxoffice reported that the Citadel Theatre in Bloomfield had been gutted by a fire while undergoing renovation. Presumably repaired, as it was still open in 1989.
The NRHP nomination form for the Delavan Downtown Commercial Historic District says that the Delavan Theatre was designed by Milwaukee architect John Wolf. The twinning took place in 1978, and the stage house the theater originally sported was demolished at that time.
Neither a Black Cat nor a Solax Theatre is listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It might have been overlooked, or it might have been inactive at the time the Directory was compiled. No other theater is listed at this house’s address, either, but there is a house called the Carrollton Theatre, listed at 1203-05 W. Baltimore Street, which must have been directly across the street.
Broan’s discovery that John Eberson and the firm of Fugard & Knapp were both connected with the Centennial Theatre project is interesting. Cinema Treasures' page for the Paramount (originally the Majestic, 1915) Theatre in Austin, Texas, attributes that theater’s design to Eberson, but Emporis attributes it to Fugard & Knapp. The two firms were associated on more than one project around that time, then.
The Centennial was completed before the end of 1916, as it’s recent opening was noted in the December 23 issue of Moving Picture World.
The web site is still available, but Fandango says the house is “temporarily closed.”
Further digging has revealed that the 1948 vote was not the first time Sioux Center had rejected a movies, nor was the Legion Theater of that period the first movie house operated there by the town’s American Legionnaires. This item is from the July 2, 1938 issue of Boxoffice:
A brief item dateline Hopkins in the July 23, 1949 issue of Boxoffice said that “Ralph White opened his 430-seat Roxy early this month.” A December 11, 1948 item had announced the start of construction, but said that the house would be called the Rex and would seat 350. That item also said that Ralph White and his sons had started the project. Since the item about the opening doesn’t mention the sons, I’m assuming that Mr. White disowned them and spent their inheritance on space for 80 more seats and an additional letter for his theater’s name.
When the Legionnaires began sponsoring movies in Sioux Center, then a town of less than 2000, it was not without controversy. In fact, the controversy was so intense (and by that late date so unusual) that Life Magazine featured an article about it in their issue of April 19, 1948.
One of the images in the Life article is a reproduction of part of an ad placed in the local newspaper by the anti-movie forces who had engineered a referendum on the issue, giving reasons why they believed citizens should cast their votes to reject movies. Signed by 450 local farmers, who lived outside city limits and thus were not eligible to vote, the ad said in part (I won’t reproduce their ALL CAPS shout:
The anti-movie forces prevailed in the election, 488 to 427, but a newly elected city council ignored the advisory result and voted to renew the American legion’s license to operate the movie theater in Town Hall. Those citizens of Sioux Center and vicinity who were inclined to such wickedness were thus able to enjoy movies locally for five more years before a force apparently more powerful than the group of ministers who led the fight against them, television, finally closed the theater.Sioux Center’s midcentury flirtation with evil does not seem to have harmed the town, which, unlike many similar small towns in the nation’s agricultural regions, has continued to grow and prosper. Today it has a population of over 7,000, and supports a five-screen tool of Satan… I mean multiplex… operated by Fridley Theatres.
The last events at the Lynn Theatre posted on their Facebook page were movie showings on June 12, 13, and 14, 2020. If those showings did take place (there have been no posts to the page since June 12) then this house closed on June 14, 2020 with a showing of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The “About” section at the top of the Facebook page now says “Permanently Closed.”
The minutes of the April 23, 2018 meeting of the Gonzales Economic Development Corporation reveal that, at that time at least, the Lynn was owned by the city’s EDC, and I have found no evidence that this has changed. If the Lynn Theatre has a future, it is in the hands of the City of Gonzales.
The Orpheum Theatre was at 12 Center Street. It was listed as the Orpheum in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The September 1, 1923 issue of Moving Picture World said that the new Capitol Theatre in Danbury had opened August 11 with the Goldwyn production “Three Wise Fools” as the feature attraction. The wording of the article makes it clear that the house, which was owned by the Taylor estate, was entirely new and had not been seem by the public before.
The appearance of the name Taylor Theatre at the Capitol’s address in the 1923 city directory was likely the result of the fact that the directory went to press while the theater was still in the planning stage or under construction and the name Capitol had not yet been chosen, so the publisher used the name of the owners of the project. There’s no evidence that the house ever operated under the name Taylor Theatre.
Work had begun on alterations and a 16x50 foot addition to the Empire Theatre in Portland, according to an item the March 10, 1917 issue of The American Contractor. The Portland firm of Brown & Berry had drawn the plans for the project.
The Empire was one of two movie houses listed at Putnam in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
Yelp reports this place is closed, and I see that the web site link no longer works, so it’s probably not a temporary, pandemic-related closure.
Finn’s Opera House was one of many buildings in Jewett City, and throughout New England, that were destroyed by the Hurricane of 1938. About three o'clock in the afternoon of September 21, the roof was ripped off, the balcony collapsed, and the brick back wall was blown in, covering the stage and the front of the seating area with rubble. Recognizable bits of the building were found up to a mile away in the aftermath of the storm.
The 1899-1900 Cahn guide lists Jewett City’s Finn Opera House as an upstairs theater with 700 seats, operated by J.H. Finn. Other sources indicate that the house remained in its original configuration throughout its history. A biographical sketch of James H. Finn published in 1905 said that he had completed the Finn Building, housing the Opera House, the Post Office, three stores, and office spaces, in 1898.
Also: Official web site.
Oh, and the article says that the seating capacity as of 2005 was 350, which it probably still is.
This web page has an article from the March 3, 2005 issue of the local Tribune newspaper with a brief history of the Geyer Performing Arts Center. It notes that from its renovation in the late 1980s until 2005 the house was known as the Showtime Theatre. It reopened under new management as the Geyer Performing Arts Center on March 5, 2005. The Strand had closed as a movie house in 1969.
Here is a bit of confusion provided by the January 12, 1918 issue of Exhibitors Herald:
One explanation I can think of is that the first Rialto could have opened in 1918 and snatched the name before Smith could slap it on the remodeled Empress, so he settled for calling it the New Empress. But our page for the first Rialto doesn’t give its opening date, so I can’t prove that surmise.The Empress is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, so it was most likely still exclusively a vaudeville house at that time. Does anyone know if it was a Sullivan & Considine operation? Empress was that circuit’s favorite theater name.
The January 12, 1918 issue of Exhibitors Herald had this bit of information about the Lehigh Orpheum Theatre:
Architect Benjamin Rush Stevens practiced in Philadelphia from about 1903 to 1935.This might have been the house listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory as the Scottdale Theatre. The other two houses listed (Geyer’s Opera House and the Arcade Theatre) are accounted for.
This must have been the house called the Arcade Theatre. This web page says that “[t]he Arcade Theater (ca. 1908) no longer stands, having been demolished for the redevelopment project that created the small parklet and mall on the north side of Pittsburgh Street from Broadway Street to Spring Street.” The Arcade was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.