Two different theaters are currently conflated on this page. The house at 712 W. Ninth Street was an African-American house opened in 1922 as the Nesbitt Theatre. In 1923 it became the Plaza Theater, and in 1934 it was renamed the Metropolitan. It finally became the Gem in 1936, and operated under that name until closing in 1968.
We need another page for the earlier Gem Theatre, which opened on September 5, 1910, at 113 W. Third Street. It was a ten cent silent movie house that burned down in February, 1929.
Opened on April 2, 1906, the Majestic billed itself as “the home of classy vaudeville” It was still advertising vaudeville in January, 1914, but was also listed that year in the American Motion Picture Directory.
A history of Little Rock’s movie houses on this web page says that the Princess opened at 122 W. Markham Street on March 18, 1909. It also says the house closed a few months later following a fire and “apparently never reopened,” but that can’t be right, as the Princess is listed at 120 W. Markham in the 1914-1915 AMPD. An ad for the theater said that it was located in the Old City Hall building. The municipal government moved into a new City Hall in April, 1908, freeing up the 1867 building at 120-122 Markham for conversion.
Little Rock’s Palace Theatre was designed by architect S. C. P. Vosper. Samuel Charles Phelps Vosper, after attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, had apprenticed in several New York City architectural firms, and studied theater design under Theodore Van Crua, designer of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
In 1913, he joined the Famous Players-Lasky company and spent the next seven years traveling around the country designing movie theaters, the Palace having been one of his earliest projects for the chain, if not the first. Many of the architects with whom he had studied in New York had been graduates of the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, and the influence of that institution’s program was certainly on full display in the splendid Palace.
If this house was still in operation in the 1920s, then it had to have been a replacement for the original Capital. The Capital is the first house shown on this web page about Little Rock’s theater history, and it says that the Capital opened as a legitimate house on September 11, 1883 and was burned down on February 11, 1913. The page doesn’t mention any rebuilding or later history.
This web page has a list of historic businesses in Johnstown. It places the Park Theatre at 425 Main Street. It also lists the Knights of Pythias Temple at 427 Main Street. This is significant due to this item from the October 27, 1917 issue of Motography:
“Enlarging Johnstown House
“The firm of Sherer & Kelly has taken a lease from the Pythian Temple Association of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on the theater on the first floor of the Pythian Temple building. Work has been started to enlarge the theater from its present seating capacity of 500 to 1,000. It is planned to throw the new Temple Theater, as it is to be called, open to the public about the first of the year.”
I’ve been unable to discover if this house ever operated under the proposed name of Temple Theatre, nor have I discovered the name of the predecessor theater in the same building, but I have seen a photo (Facebook) of the Park Theatre confirming that it was indeed on the ground floor of the Pythian Temple Building.
The November 8, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions a Casino Theatre at McPherson. It was operated by an A. E. Oelrich. The October 15, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon said that “Will Strahan will open a new moving picture show at McPherson.”
Howard Collins was noted as the proprietor of the Isis Theatre in the March 8, 1912 issue of the McPherson Weekly Republican.
I don’t know that any of these items had to do with the theater in the Capitol Block, but I’ll leave them here just in case.
If the State Theatre was in the middle building in the photo above, then its address was either 215 or 217 N. State Street. The State, part of the Frisina Amusement Company chain, was listed with 450 seats in FDYs from 1940 to 1948, but in every edition I’ve checked it was listed as closed. I haven’t found any mentions of the State in trade journals, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter. CinemaTour lists it, without an address and, oddly, lists a Royal Theatre (with the aka Millers Theater) at 215 No. State. I haven’t found the names Royal or Millers in connection with Litchfield anywhere else.
A 1910 Sanborn map shows “Moving Pictures” in the building at 211 N. State, but by 1925, the date of the next Sanborn available online, the only theater shown is the Gem/Capitol. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists only a house called the Grand at Litchfield, which might have been the theater at 211 State. CinemaTour doesn’t list the Grand, but does list a house (without an address) called the Lyric operating from 1911 to 1919. The Lyric at least is mentioned in the July 10, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World.
A centennial history of Litchfield published in 1953 has this paragraph: “In 1938 the Frisina Amusement Company built the Ritz Theatre, a 400 seat house on State Street. It has been the policy of the Ritz Theatre to run only the finest in motion pictures, each picture playing a week’s engagement.”
The history has very little about Litchfield’s movie houses, mentioning only the Capitol, the Ritz, the Sky View Drive-In, and a Nickelodeon theater that once operated at the corner of Ryder and Madison. That intersection also hosted Snell’s Opera House, a large venue that burned in 1924.
This might have been the same house that was operating as the Wonderland Theater when it was mentioned in the March 25, 1911 issue of The Nickelodeon: “The Wonderland Theater of Cottonwood Falls, formerly operated by P. H. Tallman, has been purchased by Harry Grogan, who will conduct an up-to-date house and make every effort to please his patrons.”
A photographer name Patricia DuBose Duncan made this photo at some point (perhaps 1998) when the wooden panel covering the original front of the theater in the KHRI photo was taken down. The photo is titled as Lyric Opera House, but I’ve found no evidence that the theater was ever actually called that or served that function. The columns and steps seen in Duncan’s photo are identical to those on the building in the KHRI photo, so I’m sure it’s the same place.
This Facebook post has a couple of photos of the original Marion City Auditorium. The caption notes that the building was destroyed by a fire in 1918.
A November 13, 1915 Moving Picture World item noted that H. K. Rogers, then operating the Auditorium Theatre, was also the proprietor of the Garden Theatre.
The Auditorium was still in operation at least as a late as 1916, when the July 8 Motion Picture News ran this item: “Another instance of the power of the serial, ‘Peg o’ the Ring,‘ is the case of
the Auditorium theatre, Marion, Kansas, owned by Harry K. Rogers. The Kansas rivers have flooded the town four times in the last two weeks. This worked destruction to Mr. Rogers’ patronage, but when the day for the serial came around the house was crowded. The people came through water to see the picture.”
The September 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon reported that LeRoy Tudor, operator of the Star Theatre in Marion, had bought the Princess Theatre on West Fourth Street and would operate both houses after renaming the Princess the Starette. Mr. Tudor did not retain ownership of the theaters long, and that year the November 1 issue of the same journal said that he had sold his Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Lyric Amusement Company of South Bend.
The house remained the Starette at least into 1912, when the March 15 issue of the Goshen Democrat reported that Lerner and Walters of South Bend had sold their Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Mecca Amusement Company.
The Mecca Theatre in Marion was mentioned in the December 17, 1915 issue of the Gas City Journal. It was in an ad for a tailor named John Ford, who had his shop next door.
The Clinton Community Historical Society says that the Gem Theatre was opened around 1920 by Floyd Barrus and Walter Bassett. The Gem Theater at Clinton, managed by Barrus & Bassett, is listed in the 1921 Cahn-Hill theatrical guide. Barrus became the sole owner at some point. The theater was never converted for sound.
The August 26, 1916 issue of Motion Picture News published this announcement about the new Lyric Theatre in Marion: “The Lyric theatre, Marion’s new $45,000 photoplay and vaudeville theatre, will open Labor Day. The theatre is being built by the Washington Theatre Company, and will be managed by Ora O. Parks, formerly connected with the Indiana and Royal Grand theatres at Marion and the Genette theatre at Richmond. The house will seat 700 comfortably all seats being located on the main floor. The theatre is being built with plenty of room between the rows for the comfort of patrons.”
The Rath Theatre became the Cozy Theater in 1921, as noted in the September 10 issue of Moving Picture World that year: “W. H. Harpole, who recently purchased the Rath Theatre, Dodge City, Kas., from the Souder Brothers, has changed its name to the Cozy Theatre.”
A graph-style timeline of businesses that have occupied quarters in the Star Block at the bottom of this web page shows the Cozy Theater operating into what appears to be 1922.
Here is a slightly belated announcement from the September 10, 1921 Moving Picture World: “Construction on the new theatre that the Strand Amusement Company is building at Osage City, Kas., is rapidly nearing completing and will be ready to open about September 1.”
An ad for the American Seating Company in the August 20, 1927 issue of Movie Age listed a “Horton, Horton, Kansas” among a few dozen theaters that had installed the company’s seats, but I think this might have been the Liberty. A blurb praising the movie “Passion Play” from “Liberty, Horton, Kas.” was published in the November 12 issue of the same journal that year. As the Colonial is not listed in the 1927 FDY, the year the Liberty first appears, it is likely that the former was closed and the latter opened before the 1927 edition was compiled, so a late 1926 opening for the Liberty is possible.
A 300-seat Maxton Theatre is listed in the 1926 FDY, but this was probably at a different location. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists two houses at Maxton: the Theato, no location given, and the Gem, located on Main Street, which was the former name of today’s McKaskill Avenue. Only one theater appears on the 1919 Sanborn map of Maxton, on Main Street at what would be approximately the modern address 250 McKaskill Avenue. This was more likely the Gem, and probably became the first Maxton Theatre. The building, which had offices and a lodge hall on the upper floor, has been demolished.
I don’t know why Apple maps can’t find this address, but Google does, and provides this street view from April, 2023. The front of the building was still standing at that time, but it didn’t look like it would be around much longer.
Two different theaters are currently conflated on this page. The house at 712 W. Ninth Street was an African-American house opened in 1922 as the Nesbitt Theatre. In 1923 it became the Plaza Theater, and in 1934 it was renamed the Metropolitan. It finally became the Gem in 1936, and operated under that name until closing in 1968.
We need another page for the earlier Gem Theatre, which opened on September 5, 1910, at 113 W. Third Street. It was a ten cent silent movie house that burned down in February, 1929.
At the time of its closing in 1977, the Arkansas was the last movie theater operating in downtown Little Rock.
Opened on April 2, 1906, the Majestic billed itself as “the home of classy vaudeville” It was still advertising vaudeville in January, 1914, but was also listed that year in the American Motion Picture Directory.
A history of Little Rock’s movie houses on this web page says that the Princess opened at 122 W. Markham Street on March 18, 1909. It also says the house closed a few months later following a fire and “apparently never reopened,” but that can’t be right, as the Princess is listed at 120 W. Markham in the 1914-1915 AMPD. An ad for the theater said that it was located in the Old City Hall building. The municipal government moved into a new City Hall in April, 1908, freeing up the 1867 building at 120-122 Markham for conversion.
Little Rock’s Palace Theatre was designed by architect S. C. P. Vosper. Samuel Charles Phelps Vosper, after attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, had apprenticed in several New York City architectural firms, and studied theater design under Theodore Van Crua, designer of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
In 1913, he joined the Famous Players-Lasky company and spent the next seven years traveling around the country designing movie theaters, the Palace having been one of his earliest projects for the chain, if not the first. Many of the architects with whom he had studied in New York had been graduates of the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, and the influence of that institution’s program was certainly on full display in the splendid Palace.
If this house was still in operation in the 1920s, then it had to have been a replacement for the original Capital. The Capital is the first house shown on this web page about Little Rock’s theater history, and it says that the Capital opened as a legitimate house on September 11, 1883 and was burned down on February 11, 1913. The page doesn’t mention any rebuilding or later history.
This list of historic businesses in Johnstown styles the house at 434-436 Main Street as the Park View Theatre.
This web page has a list of historic businesses in Johnstown. It places the Park Theatre at 425 Main Street. It also lists the Knights of Pythias Temple at 427 Main Street. This is significant due to this item from the October 27, 1917 issue of Motography:
I’ve been unable to discover if this house ever operated under the proposed name of Temple Theatre, nor have I discovered the name of the predecessor theater in the same building, but I have seen a photo (Facebook) of the Park Theatre confirming that it was indeed on the ground floor of the Pythian Temple Building.The November 8, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions a Casino Theatre at McPherson. It was operated by an A. E. Oelrich. The October 15, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon said that “Will Strahan will open a new moving picture show at McPherson.”
Howard Collins was noted as the proprietor of the Isis Theatre in the March 8, 1912 issue of the McPherson Weekly Republican.
I don’t know that any of these items had to do with the theater in the Capitol Block, but I’ll leave them here just in case.
If the State Theatre was in the middle building in the photo above, then its address was either 215 or 217 N. State Street. The State, part of the Frisina Amusement Company chain, was listed with 450 seats in FDYs from 1940 to 1948, but in every edition I’ve checked it was listed as closed. I haven’t found any mentions of the State in trade journals, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter. CinemaTour lists it, without an address and, oddly, lists a Royal Theatre (with the aka Millers Theater) at 215 No. State. I haven’t found the names Royal or Millers in connection with Litchfield anywhere else.
A 1910 Sanborn map shows “Moving Pictures” in the building at 211 N. State, but by 1925, the date of the next Sanborn available online, the only theater shown is the Gem/Capitol. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists only a house called the Grand at Litchfield, which might have been the theater at 211 State. CinemaTour doesn’t list the Grand, but does list a house (without an address) called the Lyric operating from 1911 to 1919. The Lyric at least is mentioned in the July 10, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World.
A centennial history of Litchfield published in 1953 has this paragraph: “In 1938 the Frisina Amusement Company built the Ritz Theatre, a 400 seat house on State Street. It has been the policy of the Ritz Theatre to run only the finest in motion pictures, each picture playing a week’s engagement.”
The history has very little about Litchfield’s movie houses, mentioning only the Capitol, the Ritz, the Sky View Drive-In, and a Nickelodeon theater that once operated at the corner of Ryder and Madison. That intersection also hosted Snell’s Opera House, a large venue that burned in 1924.
This might have been the same house that was operating as the Wonderland Theater when it was mentioned in the March 25, 1911 issue of The Nickelodeon: “The Wonderland Theater of Cottonwood Falls, formerly operated by P. H. Tallman, has been purchased by Harry Grogan, who will conduct an up-to-date house and make every effort to please his patrons.”
Clickable link to the KHRI page.
A photographer name Patricia DuBose Duncan made this photo at some point (perhaps 1998) when the wooden panel covering the original front of the theater in the KHRI photo was taken down. The photo is titled as Lyric Opera House, but I’ve found no evidence that the theater was ever actually called that or served that function. The columns and steps seen in Duncan’s photo are identical to those on the building in the KHRI photo, so I’m sure it’s the same place.
This Facebook post has a couple of photos of the original Marion City Auditorium. The caption notes that the building was destroyed by a fire in 1918.
A November 13, 1915 Moving Picture World item noted that H. K. Rogers, then operating the Auditorium Theatre, was also the proprietor of the Garden Theatre.
The Auditorium was still in operation at least as a late as 1916, when the July 8 Motion Picture News ran this item: “Another instance of the power of the serial, ‘Peg o’ the Ring,‘ is the case of the Auditorium theatre, Marion, Kansas, owned by Harry K. Rogers. The Kansas rivers have flooded the town four times in the last two weeks. This worked destruction to Mr. Rogers’ patronage, but when the day for the serial came around the house was crowded. The people came through water to see the picture.”
The September 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon reported that LeRoy Tudor, operator of the Star Theatre in Marion, had bought the Princess Theatre on West Fourth Street and would operate both houses after renaming the Princess the Starette. Mr. Tudor did not retain ownership of the theaters long, and that year the November 1 issue of the same journal said that he had sold his Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Lyric Amusement Company of South Bend.
The house remained the Starette at least into 1912, when the March 15 issue of the Goshen Democrat reported that Lerner and Walters of South Bend had sold their Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Mecca Amusement Company.
The Mecca Theatre in Marion was mentioned in the December 17, 1915 issue of the Gas City Journal. It was in an ad for a tailor named John Ford, who had his shop next door.
The Clinton Community Historical Society says that the Clinton Theatre operated from 1937 to 1959.
The Clinton Community Historical Society says that the Gem Theatre was opened around 1920 by Floyd Barrus and Walter Bassett. The Gem Theater at Clinton, managed by Barrus & Bassett, is listed in the 1921 Cahn-Hill theatrical guide. Barrus became the sole owner at some point. The theater was never converted for sound.
The August 26, 1916 issue of Motion Picture News published this announcement about the new Lyric Theatre in Marion: “The Lyric theatre, Marion’s new $45,000 photoplay and vaudeville theatre, will open Labor Day. The theatre is being built by the Washington Theatre Company, and will be managed by Ora O. Parks, formerly connected with the Indiana and Royal Grand theatres at Marion and the Genette theatre at Richmond. The house will seat 700 comfortably all seats being located on the main floor. The theatre is being built with plenty of room between the rows for the comfort of patrons.”
The Rath Theatre became the Cozy Theater in 1921, as noted in the September 10 issue of Moving Picture World that year: “W. H. Harpole, who recently purchased the Rath Theatre, Dodge City, Kas., from the Souder Brothers, has changed its name to the Cozy Theatre.”
A graph-style timeline of businesses that have occupied quarters in the Star Block at the bottom of this web page shows the Cozy Theater operating into what appears to be 1922.
Here is a slightly belated announcement from the September 10, 1921 Moving Picture World: “Construction on the new theatre that the Strand Amusement Company is building at Osage City, Kas., is rapidly nearing completing and will be ready to open about September 1.”
An ad for the American Seating Company in the August 20, 1927 issue of Movie Age listed a “Horton, Horton, Kansas” among a few dozen theaters that had installed the company’s seats, but I think this might have been the Liberty. A blurb praising the movie “Passion Play” from “Liberty, Horton, Kas.” was published in the November 12 issue of the same journal that year. As the Colonial is not listed in the 1927 FDY, the year the Liberty first appears, it is likely that the former was closed and the latter opened before the 1927 edition was compiled, so a late 1926 opening for the Liberty is possible.
A 300-seat Maxton Theatre is listed in the 1926 FDY, but this was probably at a different location. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists two houses at Maxton: the Theato, no location given, and the Gem, located on Main Street, which was the former name of today’s McKaskill Avenue. Only one theater appears on the 1919 Sanborn map of Maxton, on Main Street at what would be approximately the modern address 250 McKaskill Avenue. This was more likely the Gem, and probably became the first Maxton Theatre. The building, which had offices and a lodge hall on the upper floor, has been demolished.
I don’t know why Apple maps can’t find this address, but Google does, and provides this street view from April, 2023. The front of the building was still standing at that time, but it didn’t look like it would be around much longer.