The second Princess/Kickapoo Theatre opened in 1917. I see that the 1944 Kickapoo grand opening ad rivest266 just posted gives the address as 315 E. Commercial Street. An October 13, 1956 Boxoffice item announcing the launch of an art movie series at the Kickapoo said that the house was operated by Fox Midwest Theatres.
Although the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists the original Princess Theatre at 408 E. Commercial, the web page I cited in an earlier comment says that it was on the south side of Commercial two doors east of Benton Avenue, which puts it in the modern 500 E. block. Currently the second door east of Benton is occupied by Ruthie’s C Street Bar, at 504 E. Commercial. It is a very old building, and if the original Princess was there it is still standing.
Addresses in Springfield are very weird. In the middle of the block of Commercial between Booneville Avenue and Campbell Avenue the numbers instantly jump from the 200 E. block to the 300 W. block. I have no idea how to account for the three missing blocks. Perhaps they are the site of the Missouri branch of Hogwarts Academy.
The Roxy was advertised in the May 23, 1933 issue of the Harrisburg Evening News. An adult ticket was fifteen cents, and kids got in for a dime. On that night, you could see the 1931 drama Street Scene, starring Sylvia Sydney.
The April 6, 1939 issue of Motion Picture Daily said that the Tenefly Theatre, formerly the Bergen, would reopen on April 8. This theater switched back and forth between the names Bergen and Tenafly more than once, as there are references to it as the Tenafly in 1928 and as the Bergen in 1956. An April, 1927 Exhibitors Daily Review item said that the remodeled Tenafly Theatre had recently reopened as the Bergen. The 1926 FDY lists it as the Tenafly. The July 7, 1958 Motion Picture Daily calls it the New Bergen.
The January 5, 1940 issue of The Film Daily had this item:
“Canton, 0. — New Park Theater, owned and under the personal management of George S. Ellis, has been opened at nearby North Canton. House is included in a building estimated to have cost $60,000, erected by M. M. and J. B. Mohler. An innovation is ‘love seats’ advertised as ‘cozy as your own couch.’”
I’m puzzled by this item in the July 2, 1927 issue of Moving Picture World:
“One of the oldest theatres in Cincinnati, namely, Keith’s, is to be razed, and with its passing Cincinnati will be minus the two-a-day policy which has been in vogue here for many years, according to a statement issued personally by E. F. Albee, on a recent visit to the city. In place of the present theatre an elaborate new structure will be erected to the city. In place of the present theatre an elaborate new structure will be erected to house a continuous policy of vaudeville and pictures, similar to the Palace Theatre, another Cincinnati Keith house, established nine years ago.”
If Keith’s Theatre was rebuilt in 1921, why would there have been plans to rebuild it again in 1927?
St. Joseph Memory Lane has a clipping from the March 8, 1950 issue of the St. Joseph News-Press with a photo of the demolition of the Crystal Theatre, then underway. The caption says the house opened on October 30, 1906 as the Curd Theatre, owned by Isaac Curd. It was leased to the Crystal vaudeville circuit, who renamed it the Crystal Theatre. The Crystal circuit, later taken over by Alexander Pantages, operated a chain of ten-cent theaters in Colorado and Missouri.
An item datelined Central City, Neb. in the July 1, 1916 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[a] moving picture theater will occupy the lower floor of a building which S. A. Danielson will erect on Main Street.” The August 26 issue of the same journal said that “[t]he new moving picture theater here, which will be managed by D. L. Donelson, will be known as the Donelson theater.”
Main Street turns out to be an aka for G Avenue, also now known as Highway 30, though in the past it has been called Broad Street and Stitzer Avenue. It is also part of the Lincoln Highway. The Donelson Theatre was somewhere on the north side of G Avenue, between C and D Streets, but I’ve been unable to find the exact address.
The March 30, 1910 issue of the Reynoldsville Star made reference to “the opening play” at the Adelphi Theatre, which was to take place April 7. Other sources confirm April 7, 1910 as the opening date. The names Adelphi and Adelphia seem to have been used interchangeably in the house’s early years, with stage publications such as the Cahn guide and Hill’s directory usually using the former and the movie trade journals most often using the latter.
The Stuart Theatre was in Stuart’s old Masonic Temple Building, built in 1894. I’ve been unable to find the theater’s years of operation, or its exact address, but the building itself (now called the Clocktower) is at 111 NW 2nd Street. It has a Facebook page, but I see no historical information or photos on it.
A photo caption in an issue of The Gazette, the local paper, says that “…the Delphus Theater… opened on Aug. 15, 1907, in the south store room of Marion’s Masonic Temple. It operated until about 1911.” The Masonic Temple Building, built in 1895, is still standing, though extensively remodeled, and has a Facebook page. The theater’s space, at 660 10th Street, is now occupied by a retail store.
The January 30, 1913 issue of The Loup City Northwestern had an advertisement with this text: “Eugene Perry Offers His Excellent Drama In Four Acts ‘Kidnaped [sic] For a Million’ With The Four Perrys and Company One Night Only, Feb. 5, 1913 Daddow Opera House”
The Daddow Theatre is listed in the 1914 edition of Gus Hill’s Theatrical Directory as a 650-seat, ground floor house. The stage was only 28 feet wide and 22 feet deep. The only house listed at Loup City in the 1912-1913 Cahn guide is called the Gem, which has only 260 seats, also on the ground floor.
A movie house called the Princess Theatre was mentioned in the July 5, 1913 issue of The Nashville News. The most recent mention of the Princess I’ve found in that paper is from December 31, 1921. As we don’t have an address for the Princess, is it possible that it became the Liberty, which opened in 1922?
The April 4, 1939 issue of The Film Daily had an article about the recent expansion of the K. Lee Williams Theatres circuit, which had just added seven houses to the chain. This paragraph concerns the theaters in Nashville:
“Also purchased was the New theater at Nashville, Ark., from H. H. Baker of Emerson, Ark. Baker had been operating the house under a lease agreement with R. V. McGinnis. Williams theaters secured a closed town by also purchasing the Liberty and Gem theaters at Nashville, Ark., from R. B. Hardy. The Gem will be closed for complete remodeling. Temporary manager for Nashville is O. P. Peachey.”
It has occurred to me that the “New theater” mentioned in the article could have been the Howard, which actually was a new theater at the time. The house might have actually operated under the name New Theatre for a while before Williams took it over, or maybe Film Daily was just careless with the capitalization and meant only to indicate that it was a new theater. One can never be sure with these hastily-assembled trade journals.
I just had a belated thought. It seems quite possible that the New Theatre that H. H. Baker had been leasing for an unspecified period of time before April, 1939 (perhaps for only a few months) was the house that K. Lee Williams began operating in 1939 as the Howard. It actually was a new theater at that time.
rebeldj: 1946-48 would make more sense for the Elberta’s construction date than the 1943 I’ve seen cited in several places on the Internet. Permission to build new theaters during the war was often granted to builders in towns that had large military bases or war-related manufacturing facilities nearby, but I haven’t found references to any such facilities near Nashville. It seems very unlikely that permission to build a large, new theater in Nashville would have been given in 1942 or 1943, especially since it already had two (possibly three) functioning movie houses.
Our new description for the Gem puzzles me though. The Film Daily item I cited says that the Gem and Liberty had been operated by R. B. Hardy and that the New had been operated under lease from owner R. V. McGinnis by H. H. Baker. Unless the Daily had gotten the information terribly garbled (which is always a possibility) I don’t see how New Theatre could have been only an aka for the remodeled Gem. In the article it sounds like all three were already in operation when K. Lee Williams took them over around the beginning of April, 1939.
A timeline history of Robertson’s Department Store says that the store moved to the former site of the Auditorium Theatre in 1923.
The book South Bend in Vintage Postcards (Google books preview) says that the Auditorium was built in 1898 by the Studebaker family, and seated 1,635. It suffered major damage in a fire in December, 1920, and though rebuilt for movies did not last long before being demolished for the department store project.
A Gem Theatre at Clinton, North Carolina, was mentioned in the March 10, 1923 issue of The Moving Picture World, but since no address was given I don’t know if it was the Gem that was at 109 N. Wall Street from the 1930s to the 1950s or not.
The September 23, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that the K. Lee Williams Theatres circuit had begun construction of a 350-car drive-in on the Murfreesboro Highway a mile north of Nashville, Arkansas.
The caption of This photo of the Howard Theatre uploaded by dallasmovietheatres says that the Howard, 118 N. Main St., was formerly the Gem. The walking tour I cited in my previous comment also lists the buildings at 114-122 Main and says that by 1919 there was a movie theater in one of them. An item in the July 1, 1922 issue of The Film Daily says that the Liberty Theatre in Nashville had just opened, which was close to the 1923 opening date for the bank at 103 N. Main. Could it be that the theater behind the bank was the Liberty? dallasamovietheatres doesn’t cite the source for the claim that the Gem was the house at 118 Main, but given that their contributions are typically well researched and accurate, it does seem possible that it was.
Also perhaps pertinent, an April 4, 1939 Film Daily article about recent expansion by the K. Lee Williams theater circuit of Oklahoma had this paragraph mentioning theaters in Nashville:
“Also purchased was the New theater at Nashville, Ark., from H. H. Baker of Emerson, Ark. Baker had been operating the house under a lease agreement with R. V. McGinnis. Williams theaters secured a closed town by also purchasing the Liberty and Gem theaters at Nashville, Ark., from R. B. Hardy. The Gem will be closed for complete remodeling. Temporary manager for Nashville is O. P. Peachey.”
An April 28 Daily item mentioned air conditioning being installed in Williams' Gem and Liberty Theatres at Nashville. I’m also wondering if the “New theatre” mentioned in the article could have been the Elberta? Most Internet sources say that the Elberta opened around 1943, but given the severe wartime limits on new construction imposed by the Federal government in early 1942, it seems likely the house was built earlier. Perhaps the New Theatre was renamed Elberta in 1943.
The Delmar Garden Theatre was listed at 505 St. Louis Street in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The second Princess/Kickapoo Theatre opened in 1917. I see that the 1944 Kickapoo grand opening ad rivest266 just posted gives the address as 315 E. Commercial Street. An October 13, 1956 Boxoffice item announcing the launch of an art movie series at the Kickapoo said that the house was operated by Fox Midwest Theatres.
Although the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists the original Princess Theatre at 408 E. Commercial, the web page I cited in an earlier comment says that it was on the south side of Commercial two doors east of Benton Avenue, which puts it in the modern 500 E. block. Currently the second door east of Benton is occupied by Ruthie’s C Street Bar, at 504 E. Commercial. It is a very old building, and if the original Princess was there it is still standing.
Addresses in Springfield are very weird. In the middle of the block of Commercial between Booneville Avenue and Campbell Avenue the numbers instantly jump from the 200 E. block to the 300 W. block. I have no idea how to account for the three missing blocks. Perhaps they are the site of the Missouri branch of Hogwarts Academy.
The Roxy was advertised in the May 23, 1933 issue of the Harrisburg Evening News. An adult ticket was fifteen cents, and kids got in for a dime. On that night, you could see the 1931 drama Street Scene, starring Sylvia Sydney.
The April 6, 1939 issue of Motion Picture Daily said that the Tenefly Theatre, formerly the Bergen, would reopen on April 8. This theater switched back and forth between the names Bergen and Tenafly more than once, as there are references to it as the Tenafly in 1928 and as the Bergen in 1956. An April, 1927 Exhibitors Daily Review item said that the remodeled Tenafly Theatre had recently reopened as the Bergen. The 1926 FDY lists it as the Tenafly. The July 7, 1958 Motion Picture Daily calls it the New Bergen.
The clipping rivest266 linked to says that the Park Royal Twin Theatres were designed by architect Ross Ritchie of Townley, Matheson & Associates.
The January 5, 1940 issue of The Film Daily had this item:
I’m puzzled by this item in the July 2, 1927 issue of Moving Picture World:
If Keith’s Theatre was rebuilt in 1921, why would there have been plans to rebuild it again in 1927?The Lake Theatre was gutted by a fire on May 5, 1969, and never reopened. It was soon demolished.
St. Joseph Memory Lane has a clipping from the March 8, 1950 issue of the St. Joseph News-Press with a photo of the demolition of the Crystal Theatre, then underway. The caption says the house opened on October 30, 1906 as the Curd Theatre, owned by Isaac Curd. It was leased to the Crystal vaudeville circuit, who renamed it the Crystal Theatre. The Crystal circuit, later taken over by Alexander Pantages, operated a chain of ten-cent theaters in Colorado and Missouri.
St. Joseph Memory Lane lists the Colonial Theatre at 111 N. 7th Street. It notes that the building was demolished as part of an urban renewal project.
An item datelined Central City, Neb. in the July 1, 1916 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[a] moving picture theater will occupy the lower floor of a building which S. A. Danielson will erect on Main Street.” The August 26 issue of the same journal said that “[t]he new moving picture theater here, which will be managed by D. L. Donelson, will be known as the Donelson theater.”
Main Street turns out to be an aka for G Avenue, also now known as Highway 30, though in the past it has been called Broad Street and Stitzer Avenue. It is also part of the Lincoln Highway. The Donelson Theatre was somewhere on the north side of G Avenue, between C and D Streets, but I’ve been unable to find the exact address.
The March 30, 1910 issue of the Reynoldsville Star made reference to “the opening play” at the Adelphi Theatre, which was to take place April 7. Other sources confirm April 7, 1910 as the opening date. The names Adelphi and Adelphia seem to have been used interchangeably in the house’s early years, with stage publications such as the Cahn guide and Hill’s directory usually using the former and the movie trade journals most often using the latter.
The Stuart Theatre was in Stuart’s old Masonic Temple Building, built in 1894. I’ve been unable to find the theater’s years of operation, or its exact address, but the building itself (now called the Clocktower) is at 111 NW 2nd Street. It has a Facebook page, but I see no historical information or photos on it.
A photo caption in an issue of The Gazette, the local paper, says that “…the Delphus Theater… opened on Aug. 15, 1907, in the south store room of Marion’s Masonic Temple. It operated until about 1911.” The Masonic Temple Building, built in 1895, is still standing, though extensively remodeled, and has a Facebook page. The theater’s space, at 660 10th Street, is now occupied by a retail store.
The January 30, 1913 issue of The Loup City Northwestern had an advertisement with this text: “Eugene Perry Offers His Excellent Drama In Four Acts ‘Kidnaped [sic] For a Million’ With The Four Perrys and Company One Night Only, Feb. 5, 1913 Daddow Opera House”
The Daddow Theatre is listed in the 1914 edition of Gus Hill’s Theatrical Directory as a 650-seat, ground floor house. The stage was only 28 feet wide and 22 feet deep. The only house listed at Loup City in the 1912-1913 Cahn guide is called the Gem, which has only 260 seats, also on the ground floor.
A movie house called the Princess Theatre was mentioned in the July 5, 1913 issue of The Nashville News. The most recent mention of the Princess I’ve found in that paper is from December 31, 1921. As we don’t have an address for the Princess, is it possible that it became the Liberty, which opened in 1922?
The April 4, 1939 issue of The Film Daily had an article about the recent expansion of the K. Lee Williams Theatres circuit, which had just added seven houses to the chain. This paragraph concerns the theaters in Nashville:
It has occurred to me that the “New theater” mentioned in the article could have been the Howard, which actually was a new theater at the time. The house might have actually operated under the name New Theatre for a while before Williams took it over, or maybe Film Daily was just careless with the capitalization and meant only to indicate that it was a new theater. One can never be sure with these hastily-assembled trade journals.I just had a belated thought. It seems quite possible that the New Theatre that H. H. Baker had been leasing for an unspecified period of time before April, 1939 (perhaps for only a few months) was the house that K. Lee Williams began operating in 1939 as the Howard. It actually was a new theater at that time.
rebeldj: 1946-48 would make more sense for the Elberta’s construction date than the 1943 I’ve seen cited in several places on the Internet. Permission to build new theaters during the war was often granted to builders in towns that had large military bases or war-related manufacturing facilities nearby, but I haven’t found references to any such facilities near Nashville. It seems very unlikely that permission to build a large, new theater in Nashville would have been given in 1942 or 1943, especially since it already had two (possibly three) functioning movie houses.
Our new description for the Gem puzzles me though. The Film Daily item I cited says that the Gem and Liberty had been operated by R. B. Hardy and that the New had been operated under lease from owner R. V. McGinnis by H. H. Baker. Unless the Daily had gotten the information terribly garbled (which is always a possibility) I don’t see how New Theatre could have been only an aka for the remodeled Gem. In the article it sounds like all three were already in operation when K. Lee Williams took them over around the beginning of April, 1939.
A timeline history of Robertson’s Department Store says that the store moved to the former site of the Auditorium Theatre in 1923.
The book South Bend in Vintage Postcards (Google books preview) says that the Auditorium was built in 1898 by the Studebaker family, and seated 1,635. It suffered major damage in a fire in December, 1920, and though rebuilt for movies did not last long before being demolished for the department store project.
A Gem Theatre at Clinton, North Carolina, was mentioned in the March 10, 1923 issue of The Moving Picture World, but since no address was given I don’t know if it was the Gem that was at 109 N. Wall Street from the 1930s to the 1950s or not.
The Central Theatre was designed for John Locatelli by architect Frank Bignotti, and opened in November, 1921.
The September 23, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that Jimmie Austin and Roy Rosser would open the Austin Theatre at Clinton,North Carolina, “next week.”
The September 23, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that the K. Lee Williams Theatres circuit had begun construction of a 350-car drive-in on the Murfreesboro Highway a mile north of Nashville, Arkansas.
The caption of This photo of the Howard Theatre uploaded by dallasmovietheatres says that the Howard, 118 N. Main St., was formerly the Gem. The walking tour I cited in my previous comment also lists the buildings at 114-122 Main and says that by 1919 there was a movie theater in one of them. An item in the July 1, 1922 issue of The Film Daily says that the Liberty Theatre in Nashville had just opened, which was close to the 1923 opening date for the bank at 103 N. Main. Could it be that the theater behind the bank was the Liberty? dallasamovietheatres doesn’t cite the source for the claim that the Gem was the house at 118 Main, but given that their contributions are typically well researched and accurate, it does seem possible that it was.
Also perhaps pertinent, an April 4, 1939 Film Daily article about recent expansion by the K. Lee Williams theater circuit of Oklahoma had this paragraph mentioning theaters in Nashville:
An April 28 Daily item mentioned air conditioning being installed in Williams' Gem and Liberty Theatres at Nashville. I’m also wondering if the “New theatre” mentioned in the article could have been the Elberta? Most Internet sources say that the Elberta opened around 1943, but given the severe wartime limits on new construction imposed by the Federal government in early 1942, it seems likely the house was built earlier. Perhaps the New Theatre was renamed Elberta in 1943.