Wow, did you work for WTVJ and/or the Capitol? How do you know so much about this theater?
Your description for photo #11 including that the floor for Studio A was built above what had been the floor containing orchestra seating explains why in the video I mention in my previous comment the studio floor is only one step above what had been the balcony. (They go to what had been the balcony, but not “up” to get there.)
What was under the floor that supported Studio A in the space between that floor and what had been the theater‘s floor?
I never got to see the outside of the Capitol/WTVJ cause I never had a “reason” to walk down that street before it was demolished. Also from the Metromover on my way to Bayside and such the glimpse I could get of the block didn’t look like much to me at the time in the 90‘s, then it was gone.
Yeah I forgot to mention that Andrew was in 1992 since here in Miami anyone concerned “already knows” that, while Cinema Treasures is worldwide.
Btw, the Wolfson Archives website has some of their collection of Miami produced programming online, and sometimes local events to attend. I believe the Archives has a lot of WTVJ’s broadcasts in their vaults.
In the 25th anniversary version I saw last week of the tv special “Hurricane Andrew As It Happened” Tony Segreto says the place where he, Bryan Norcross, and Kelly Craig famously took shelter to continue broadcasting and advising the public during the storm as WTVJ remained on the air was the balcony of the former theater.
Click here for a Youtube video from the Wolfson Archives showing them relocating from the broadcast desk to what I guess is the balcony stairs. Towards the end Tony has the camera pan around to show some equipment and their surroundings.
Fremont Street is now a pedestrian only/closed to vehicles entertainment district called the Fremont Street Experience covered by the “Viva Vision” canopy video screen, three stages with live bands, some street performers, and a zip line called “Slotzilla” you can ride on between the street and the screen.
When I was there on August 19th and 20th of 2017 during my first trip to Vegas, I enjoyed the Linkin Park and Tiesto performances on the screen, the different live local bands, the people watching, and the neon lights on the remaining casinos with the feeling that there is still some history left. I liked it a lot more than The Strip.
I’ve since watched Youtube videos of what Vegas used to look like that left me feeling like I missed something that is now gone. I also would have liked to have seen Fremont Street when the cinemas were still operating.
The vertical El Portal sign might be the one now in the “Neon Boneyard” at the Neon Museum. (See my August 29th, 2017 comment in the comments section.)
The vertical El Portal sign might be the one now in the “Neon Boneyard” at the Neon Museum. (See my August 29th, 2017 comment in the comments section.)
On August 20th during what I called my “Vegas Strip Side Trip 2017” I took the “Neon Boneyard” Tour at the interesting Neon Museum a few blocks from Fremont Street.
The Boneyard is an outdoor lot of historic neon signs from defunct Vegas casinos and businesses. A few are lit up at night. One laying on its side unlit formed the words “El Portal”. I asked the tour guide who told me it is most likely from the theater.
There are some photos of the sign in the Boneyard if you do a Google images search using the terms “Neon Boneyard El Portal”.
To me it looks like it could be the sign in the photos section in these older photos: one, two.
That could mean the similar looking sign on what is now an Indian/Native gift shop is a reproduction or a separate remainder still intact from its days as a theater?
Ripshin, whatever familiarity I have with the Gables begins in the early 90’s and I’m not a restaurant person, so I’m not sure. In recent years the only reason I go to the Gables anymore is to visit the places I mention in my previous comment.
The Gable Plaza I think you’re talking I only remember as a parking garage before, if we’re thinking of the same place.
Caffe Abbracci is in a building that has been a restaurant back before the early 90’s and is next to a parking lot. The Globe (which may have had a blue light at one time by a wooden door and I think has had jazz and Cuban performances) on Alhambra is another that goes back years. There’s also some old buildings with a parking lot next to them (behind the bank where the Dream Theatre had been) on Giralda between Salzedo and Ponce. Look all these up using Google Street View. Also in Street View if you click on the orange dots on the Abbracci and Globe locations you get a photo of the inside.
This Moab Times article about one man’s recollections of this cinema says this theater was originally the Ides and was renamed Hollywood in the 1960’s by new owners after it was sold by the Clark family:
Page 79 of the book “Moab and Grand County (Images of America)” by Travis Schenck and Museum of Moab shows a photo of the Ides with some text about its history, saying “The Ides Theater on Main Street brought cinema to Moab” when it opened in the mid-30’s, was named after the Ides of March as it opened on a windy rainy day, used phonograph recordings of actors’ voices during the talkie era, and that the Clark family that originally owned it sold it during the uranium boom.
I discovered the book in August of 2017 during my “Moab – Red Rocks Trip” and just viewed the page using the Look Inside function on the book’s Amazon listing and typing in the search term “Ides”.
I asked the woman at the front desk of the Museum of Moab who described the theater’s former location as being the parking lot shown in the Street View image above, which is next to a Wells Fargo as mentioned in the article of the man‘s recollections.
The building next to the Ides in the photo looks like it may have been an ice cream parlor and the building next to today’s parking lot which is now a t-shirt shop still had a defunct lunch counter inside when I was there.
An archive of articles spanning decades of the Ides Theatre’s life in this and its previous location at Woodmen Hall:
I visited Sedona in the Summer of 2008. Mentioning the amount of movies that had been filmed in the area reminds me of my encounter with the “Sedona Movie Museum”. I stopped in hoping to learn something but the young guy that approached me as a staff member quickly turned out to be an aggressive time share salesman. He wouldn’t let me steer the “conversation” back to filmmaking history so I walked out in mid sales pitch, with the photocopy of the list of the films made in the area that he first handed me. I would have liked to have spent some time with the photos and items in the museum but I dared not return. Comments on the museum’s Trip Advisor page say it was still like this as of 2015.
That Flicker Shack looks cool btw. :) Wish it was still there when I was.
In Google Street View the Olde Sedona Bar & Grill has a sign that to me resembles the marquee in the Boxoffice article but I otherwise can’t tell if it’s the same building.
I remember seeing “Return of the Jedi” here during the film’s opening weekend in 1983. (I just realized I may be accidentally posting this almost exactly 34 years later.) I arrived early for my chosen show time… and was startled as I was driven past on Montauk Highway and into the parking lot to see a line outside that I then had to wait in for the duration of the screening to thankfully get in to the next one. The sky was overcast, and it drizzled for the last twenty minutes of the wait. I joked to the fellow kid behind me about our dedication, and we conversed to pass the remaining time. I then sat with him during the show, and he used his fingers to somehow help his eyes squint because he had recently lost his glasses.
I sort of recollect maybe a lot of dark red in the lobby’s décor. Yes the auditoriums were narrow enough that I felt subconsciously prompted to sit closer to the screen.
I also saw the original “Ghostbusters“ here, and another film I can‘t recall.
When part of the front of the theater became a Blockbuster Video I thought that was ironic: the theater is gone but you can still consume films by renting them from there, including perhaps some older ones that had played at the theater.
The former entrance and lobby of the theater/former Blockbuster and F.Y.E. music store is now Davis Visionworks. The rest of the theater structure is now a GNC, a Weight Watchers, and a Carter’s kids clothing store.
In pre-2015 Google Street View images there are two vertical blue steel beams in front of the building at the corner of Montauk Hwy and Brookvale Avenue that I believe held up the marquee if memory serves. They have been replaced by a sign showing what businesses are in the Great South Bay Shopping Center.
My late father once told me there had been a pond upon which he used to ice skate as a kid during winters in the 1930’s, that was filled in and replaced by the A&S (Abraham & Strauss) department store (now National Wholesale Liquidators) in the corner of the shopping center at the time the property was developed. When visiting the place while growing up I’d contemplate that – my father at my age, and a more rural version of Long Island I hadn’t experienced.
Back when the cinema existed the shopping center also included a Woolworth’s store with a diner I had eaten at with my mom, a French restaurant (Le Petite Chateau?) to which my high school French class took a lunch time field trip, and a Chinese restaurant, gone before I was old enough to know of it, where my parents said they had some of their early dates.
The storefront at 139 South Main Street has what looks like a marquee above the door (which says “James' Floors and Interiors” and “Ollie’s Board Shop”). Perhaps this was the Strand?
This CBS Sunday Morning news video about Daryl Hall and John Oates shows how they first met at what was then the Adelphi Ballroom. John visits starting at 2:34:
I recently came across this description, by Susan Perry Redding, of the Riviera Theatre and its interior, including the organ I’d thought I’d heard about, but also claiming the theater opened in 1926, on pages 110-111 in the “South Miami” chapter of the book “Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community”, edited by Becky Roper Matkov:
“The façade of the building had wide terraced steps and three arched entrances. The small archways on either side opened into stores, one occupied by Harold Dorn for his fruit crating and shipping business. The central arch opened into the theater, which had a gently sloping floor down to a cross aisle that led to side exits. The auditorium had padded seats for about 200 people. The exposed ceiling beams were painted in a vine motif. Unique floor tiles depicted various scenes in the story of Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza. The pair appeared in nine oblong tiles and six square ones surrounded by a border of Moorish tiles in conventional design.
At the left of the auditorium, in front of the stage, was an imposing electric organ — the largest south of Atlanta — even larger than the Olympia’s in downtown Miami. Mr. Dorn had advertised for an organist in the northern papers, and the man he selected arrived two days before the opening of the theater. When he sat down to play, people from all over the town crowded the theater to listen. The theater opened on time, September 4th, 1926, with the premier of Universal Studios picture, “Her Big Night”, starring Laura LaPlante. The theater operated for about a year, until the boom went bust and the theater closed because no one could afford a twenty-five cent movie.”
An overhead shot of the “Westlake Theatre” sign above the building establishes the location, though I then can’t tell if the actual interior was also used for filming, but it’s an exciting running combat scene within a classic theater.
The naming of North Miami and Miami Shores is discussed in local history books such as Seth Bramson’s aforementioned “Boulevard of Dreams: A Pictorial History of El Portal, Biscayne Park, Miami Shores and North Miami ” and “Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community”, edited by Becky Roper Matkov, both available in the Miami-Dade Public Library system.
I enjoy being able to use the historic box office, while some other renovated cinemas I’ve visited now have you buy your ticket inside instead while the old box office lies dormant.
I like getting a Cuban coffee for 75 cents at Exquisito’s window directly next door to the theater and observing the street life before seeing a film.
The Tower has been a movie theater again as of a few years ago, showing foreign and independent films, and is one of the Miami International Film Festival venues.
September 30, 2017 article in the Kitsap Sun newspaper:
“At 75, Admiral Poised for Another Big Opening”
Includes many photos from different decades in the Admiral’s life.
Thank you, Cmanni.
Wow, did you work for WTVJ and/or the Capitol? How do you know so much about this theater?
Your description for photo #11 including that the floor for Studio A was built above what had been the floor containing orchestra seating explains why in the video I mention in my previous comment the studio floor is only one step above what had been the balcony. (They go to what had been the balcony, but not “up” to get there.)
What was under the floor that supported Studio A in the space between that floor and what had been the theater‘s floor?
I never got to see the outside of the Capitol/WTVJ cause I never had a “reason” to walk down that street before it was demolished. Also from the Metromover on my way to Bayside and such the glimpse I could get of the block didn’t look like much to me at the time in the 90‘s, then it was gone.
Yeah I forgot to mention that Andrew was in 1992 since here in Miami anyone concerned “already knows” that, while Cinema Treasures is worldwide.
In the 25th anniversary version of “Hurricane Andrew As It Happened” Tony says the Capitol was the first movie theater in Miami, but the book “Historical Sketches And Sidelights Of Miami, Florida” printed in 1925 says the first was Kelly’s Theater in 1906, later named The Arcade, for which I established a page on Cinema Treasures.
Btw, the Wolfson Archives website has some of their collection of Miami produced programming online, and sometimes local events to attend. I believe the Archives has a lot of WTVJ’s broadcasts in their vaults.
In the 25th anniversary version I saw last week of the tv special “Hurricane Andrew As It Happened” Tony Segreto says the place where he, Bryan Norcross, and Kelly Craig famously took shelter to continue broadcasting and advising the public during the storm as WTVJ remained on the air was the balcony of the former theater.
Click here for a Youtube video from the Wolfson Archives showing them relocating from the broadcast desk to what I guess is the balcony stairs. Towards the end Tony has the camera pan around to show some equipment and their surroundings.
I enjoyed sitting at the lobby bar and watching people come to the movies, which you can do whether or not you buy a movie ticket.
Fremont Street is now a pedestrian only/closed to vehicles entertainment district called the Fremont Street Experience covered by the “Viva Vision” canopy video screen, three stages with live bands, some street performers, and a zip line called “Slotzilla” you can ride on between the street and the screen.
When I was there on August 19th and 20th of 2017 during my first trip to Vegas, I enjoyed the Linkin Park and Tiesto performances on the screen, the different live local bands, the people watching, and the neon lights on the remaining casinos with the feeling that there is still some history left. I liked it a lot more than The Strip.
I’ve since watched Youtube videos of what Vegas used to look like that left me feeling like I missed something that is now gone. I also would have liked to have seen Fremont Street when the cinemas were still operating.
The vertical El Portal sign might be the one now in the “Neon Boneyard” at the Neon Museum. (See my August 29th, 2017 comment in the comments section.)
The vertical El Portal sign might be the one now in the “Neon Boneyard” at the Neon Museum. (See my August 29th, 2017 comment in the comments section.)
On August 20th during what I called my “Vegas Strip Side Trip 2017” I took the “Neon Boneyard” Tour at the interesting Neon Museum a few blocks from Fremont Street.
The Boneyard is an outdoor lot of historic neon signs from defunct Vegas casinos and businesses. A few are lit up at night. One laying on its side unlit formed the words “El Portal”. I asked the tour guide who told me it is most likely from the theater.
There are some photos of the sign in the Boneyard if you do a Google images search using the terms “Neon Boneyard El Portal”.
To me it looks like it could be the sign in the photos section in these older photos: one, two.
That could mean the similar looking sign on what is now an Indian/Native gift shop is a reproduction or a separate remainder still intact from its days as a theater?
Ripshin, whatever familiarity I have with the Gables begins in the early 90’s and I’m not a restaurant person, so I’m not sure. In recent years the only reason I go to the Gables anymore is to visit the places I mention in my previous comment.
The Gable Plaza I think you’re talking I only remember as a parking garage before, if we’re thinking of the same place.
Caffe Abbracci is in a building that has been a restaurant back before the early 90’s and is next to a parking lot. The Globe (which may have had a blue light at one time by a wooden door and I think has had jazz and Cuban performances) on Alhambra is another that goes back years. There’s also some old buildings with a parking lot next to them (behind the bank where the Dream Theatre had been) on Giralda between Salzedo and Ponce. Look all these up using Google Street View. Also in Street View if you click on the orange dots on the Abbracci and Globe locations you get a photo of the inside.
This Moab Times article about one man’s recollections of this cinema says this theater was originally the Ides and was renamed Hollywood in the 1960’s by new owners after it was sold by the Clark family:
http://moabtimes.com/bookmark/68257-The-Way-Sam-Remembers-It
Page 79 of the book “Moab and Grand County (Images of America)” by Travis Schenck and Museum of Moab shows a photo of the Ides with some text about its history, saying “The Ides Theater on Main Street brought cinema to Moab” when it opened in the mid-30’s, was named after the Ides of March as it opened on a windy rainy day, used phonograph recordings of actors’ voices during the talkie era, and that the Clark family that originally owned it sold it during the uranium boom.
I discovered the book in August of 2017 during my “Moab – Red Rocks Trip” and just viewed the page using the Look Inside function on the book’s Amazon listing and typing in the search term “Ides”.
I asked the woman at the front desk of the Museum of Moab who described the theater’s former location as being the parking lot shown in the Street View image above, which is next to a Wells Fargo as mentioned in the article of the man‘s recollections.
The building next to the Ides in the photo looks like it may have been an ice cream parlor and the building next to today’s parking lot which is now a t-shirt shop still had a defunct lunch counter inside when I was there.
An archive of articles spanning decades of the Ides Theatre’s life in this and its previous location at Woodmen Hall:
http://utahtheaters.info/Theater/News/319/Ides-Theatre
I visited Sedona in the Summer of 2008. Mentioning the amount of movies that had been filmed in the area reminds me of my encounter with the “Sedona Movie Museum”. I stopped in hoping to learn something but the young guy that approached me as a staff member quickly turned out to be an aggressive time share salesman. He wouldn’t let me steer the “conversation” back to filmmaking history so I walked out in mid sales pitch, with the photocopy of the list of the films made in the area that he first handed me. I would have liked to have spent some time with the photos and items in the museum but I dared not return. Comments on the museum’s Trip Advisor page say it was still like this as of 2015.
That Flicker Shack looks cool btw. :) Wish it was still there when I was.
In Google Street View the Olde Sedona Bar & Grill has a sign that to me resembles the marquee in the Boxoffice article but I otherwise can’t tell if it’s the same building.
I remember seeing “Return of the Jedi” here during the film’s opening weekend in 1983. (I just realized I may be accidentally posting this almost exactly 34 years later.) I arrived early for my chosen show time… and was startled as I was driven past on Montauk Highway and into the parking lot to see a line outside that I then had to wait in for the duration of the screening to thankfully get in to the next one. The sky was overcast, and it drizzled for the last twenty minutes of the wait. I joked to the fellow kid behind me about our dedication, and we conversed to pass the remaining time. I then sat with him during the show, and he used his fingers to somehow help his eyes squint because he had recently lost his glasses.
I sort of recollect maybe a lot of dark red in the lobby’s décor. Yes the auditoriums were narrow enough that I felt subconsciously prompted to sit closer to the screen.
I also saw the original “Ghostbusters“ here, and another film I can‘t recall.
When part of the front of the theater became a Blockbuster Video I thought that was ironic: the theater is gone but you can still consume films by renting them from there, including perhaps some older ones that had played at the theater.
The former entrance and lobby of the theater/former Blockbuster and F.Y.E. music store is now Davis Visionworks. The rest of the theater structure is now a GNC, a Weight Watchers, and a Carter’s kids clothing store.
In pre-2015 Google Street View images there are two vertical blue steel beams in front of the building at the corner of Montauk Hwy and Brookvale Avenue that I believe held up the marquee if memory serves. They have been replaced by a sign showing what businesses are in the Great South Bay Shopping Center.
My late father once told me there had been a pond upon which he used to ice skate as a kid during winters in the 1930’s, that was filled in and replaced by the A&S (Abraham & Strauss) department store (now National Wholesale Liquidators) in the corner of the shopping center at the time the property was developed. When visiting the place while growing up I’d contemplate that – my father at my age, and a more rural version of Long Island I hadn’t experienced.
Back when the cinema existed the shopping center also included a Woolworth’s store with a diner I had eaten at with my mom, a French restaurant (Le Petite Chateau?) to which my high school French class took a lunch time field trip, and a Chinese restaurant, gone before I was old enough to know of it, where my parents said they had some of their early dates.
Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper article from May 13th, 2017:
“College’s Closure May Darken Arthouse Mainstay, The Screen”
Then from May 15th:
“The Screen Will Stay Open, Art College Says”
The storefront at 139 South Main Street has what looks like a marquee above the door (which says “James' Floors and Interiors” and “Ollie’s Board Shop”). Perhaps this was the Strand?
This CBS Sunday Morning news video about Daryl Hall and John Oates shows how they first met at what was then the Adelphi Ballroom. John visits starting at 2:34:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/daryl-hall-and-john-oates-no-end-in-sight/
Miami Herald article from 4-24-17:
“Don’t Demolish Historic Grove Playhouse Auditorium, Neighbors Say in Appeal”
Alamogordo News article from 4-25-17:
“Flickinger Receives Generous Donation of $100K”
Newspaper article from 4-25-17:
“Historic Anchorage Theater Deserves State Protection, Advocates Say”
Tacoma News-Tribune articles from April 8th, 2017:
“Good Films, Great People the Secret to 20 Years of The Grand Cinema”
“Behind the Projection Room Door at The Grand Cinema”
I recently came across this description, by Susan Perry Redding, of the Riviera Theatre and its interior, including the organ I’d thought I’d heard about, but also claiming the theater opened in 1926, on pages 110-111 in the “South Miami” chapter of the book “Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community”, edited by Becky Roper Matkov:
“The façade of the building had wide terraced steps and three arched entrances. The small archways on either side opened into stores, one occupied by Harold Dorn for his fruit crating and shipping business. The central arch opened into the theater, which had a gently sloping floor down to a cross aisle that led to side exits. The auditorium had padded seats for about 200 people. The exposed ceiling beams were painted in a vine motif. Unique floor tiles depicted various scenes in the story of Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza. The pair appeared in nine oblong tiles and six square ones surrounded by a border of Moorish tiles in conventional design.
At the left of the auditorium, in front of the stage, was an imposing electric organ — the largest south of Atlanta — even larger than the Olympia’s in downtown Miami. Mr. Dorn had advertised for an organist in the northern papers, and the man he selected arrived two days before the opening of the theater. When he sat down to play, people from all over the town crowded the theater to listen. The theater opened on time, September 4th, 1926, with the premier of Universal Studios picture, “Her Big Night”, starring Laura LaPlante. The theater operated for about a year, until the boom went bust and the theater closed because no one could afford a twenty-five cent movie.”
In the episode titled “Seppuku” of the USA network’s science fiction show “Colony” which aired on March 30th, 2017, the protagonists invade the hideout of the Red Hand anti-alien occupation resistance group which is located in the Westlake Theatre.
An overhead shot of the “Westlake Theatre” sign above the building establishes the location, though I then can’t tell if the actual interior was also used for filming, but it’s an exciting running combat scene within a classic theater.
The naming of North Miami and Miami Shores is discussed in local history books such as Seth Bramson’s aforementioned “Boulevard of Dreams: A Pictorial History of El Portal, Biscayne Park, Miami Shores and North Miami ” and “Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community”, edited by Becky Roper Matkov, both available in the Miami-Dade Public Library system.
It’s also mentioned on North Miami’s Wikipedia page.
I enjoy being able to use the historic box office, while some other renovated cinemas I’ve visited now have you buy your ticket inside instead while the old box office lies dormant.
I like getting a Cuban coffee for 75 cents at Exquisito’s window directly next door to the theater and observing the street life before seeing a film.
And across the street is Azucar, an ice cream shop that sometimes serves “Burn in Hell Fidel” flavor. : )
Status should be “Open (Showing movies)”
The Tower has been a movie theater again as of a few years ago, showing foreign and independent films, and is one of the Miami International Film Festival venues.
Website is http://www.towertheatermiami.com though the one still listed on this page redirects there.
Phone number is 305 237-2463
On March 16th, 2017, the CBS Morning Show aired a story about this theater adding a playground to one of its auditoriums:
“Movie Theater Playgrounds Latest Tactic to Lure Families to Big Screen”