J. A. Woolam was operating a theater in Walters as early as 1916, when a letter fromhim was published in the April 8 issue of The Moving Picture World. The letter doesn’t give the name of the theater. The only theater listed at Walters in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Gem.
J. A. Woolam and A. M. VanCleef of Walters purchased the Empress Theatre in Waurika, Oklahoma, in 1914, as noted in the May 22 issue of the Waurika News-Democrat. Both were experienced theater men, the item said, and VanCleef would be moving to Waurika to manage their new acquisition.
The web site of the Cotton County Museum, which is housed in the former Grand Theatre building, says that the Grand and Thompson were across the street from each other. The Grand was at 116 N. Broadway.
The former Grand Theatre building, at 116 N. Broadway, is now the home of the Cotton County Museum. Here is their web site which, unfortunately, has no photos and little other information about the town’s theaters except to say that the Thomson and the Grand were across the street from each other and that locals called the Grand the “little show” and the Thompson the “big show.”
Manta says that Sapphire Cineplex was established in 2007, but that is probably the year the business was incorporated, and the theater might or might not have been opened that year. The December 16, 2016 issue of Eastern Arizona Courier says that Robert E. Hollis had bought the Sapphire Cineplex from John and Marty Gray on December 4. Hollis’s sale of the Sapphire to Allen Theatres on December 1, 2017, is noted on the web site Gila Valley Central, so Hollis Cinemas only operated the house for a little over a year.
The 1908-1909 Cahn guide lists the 950-seat Passaic Opera House, managed by W. Whitehead, so I’d guess it’s the same theater as Whitehead’s Opera House. CinemaTour lists the house at 217 Washington Place. A 1910 city directory gives that address as the location of the Opera House Hotel, so the theater might have been entered through the hotel lobby. William Whitehead owned the hotel, and earlier had operated a theater called the Lyceum.
Whitehead’s Opera House was dedicated on February 1, 1892, according the Theatrical Chronology in the 1893 edition of The New York Clipper Annual. The Passaic Opera House was destroyed by a fire on January 19, 1916, along with several other buildings, an event widely reported in newspapers a the time and noted in the January 26 issue of The Insurance Press.
The Warner is now the home of Blink Fitness, a gym. Most of the wall and ceiling decor in lobby and auditorium is intact, and even nicely restored. Some sort of piping has been suspended from the ceiling, which prevents a full view of it from any given spot on the ground floor, but there’s a good view of the ceiling from the former balcony. The locker rooms are in the former stage area.
The floors have been leveled, of course, including that of the balcony which is now two terraces. It looks like they were just built over, though, rather than ripped out. The mezzanine lounge has somewhat more alteration, but its ceiling is still partly visible. It looks like the projection booth is still there, too, but closed off.
I never went to this theater but if it was like the Warner Beverly it would have had an ornate lounge and rest rooms in the basement, but I can’t find any photos of them, so I don’t know what they are being used for (if they exist.) The terrazzo out front looks pretty good, as does the ornate soffit of the marquee. The box office is gone.
While this project probably increased to cost of any future plans to return the building to theatrical use, it could have been way worse. The building was not gutted, and most of the Art Deco detailing is intact. I don’t know how the gym management feels about people coming in just to look at it, but maybe somebody who can get to Huntington Park can talk to someone there about it. They obviously did put a lot of thought into their adaptive reuse, and I would think they might like to show it off a bit to members of the non-exercising general public.
It hasn’t reopened. While some neighborhoods above Paradise survived the fire, as well as scattered houses in the town itself, and some people have moved back in, the current population is insufficient to support a movie theater. A regional supermarket chain reopened its store that is not far from the theater on December 28, but I don’t know how much business they are doing. Extensive reconstruction, if it takes place, will have to wait until the removal of debris is done, and that won’t be compete until much later this year.
The Theatre Historical Society says that the Ritz Theatre had a 2 manual, 5 rank Wurlizter organ, opus 606, installed in November, 1922. The announcement of the theater’s impending construction had been made a year earlier, with plans being prepared by the firm of Margon & Glaser. The Ritz closed on December 3, 1950.
The Theatre Historical Society says that the Kingsbridge Theatre opened on January 26, 1922. The house had a 2 manual, 6 rank Wurlitzer organ, opus 472.
This web page says that a style 110 Wurlitzer organ, opus 421, was installed in the Hub Theatre in 1921. It was replaced by a style E Wurlitzer, opus 1101, in 1925. The Hub was most likely this project noted in the June 11, 1921 issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide:
“Irving Margon, 355 East 149th st, has completed plans for a 1-sty brick moving picture theatre, 50x151x50x122 ft. on the south side of Westchester av, 128 ft south of Bergen av, for A. Santini, 441 East 149th st. owner. Cost, $70,000.”
The Pantheon Theatre was designed by architects Margon & Glaser (Irving Margon and Charles Glaser.) It was extensively remodeled in 1928, and
was renamed the Kelton Theatre in July of that year. It was closed around 1930.
The July 3, 1909 issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide ran this brief item about an expansion of the Unique Theatre:
“ 14TH ST, Nos. 134-136 East, l-sty brick rear extension, 46x32, girders to 4-sty brick theatre; cost, $15,000; owner. S. Schinasi. 1 West 95th st; architect, S. S. Sugar, 113 East 19th st. Plan No. 1555.”
S. S. Sugar would soon move his office to 42nd Street.
There are three photos and a floor plan of Loew’s Seventh Avenue Theatre on pages 354 and 355 of the October, 1910 issue of Architects' and Builders' Magazine (scan at Google Books.)
The Schine circuit took over operation of the Strand in 1944, according to a March 21, 2015 article in the Cumberland Times-News. The Strand’s last day of Operation was September 4, 1972.
The March, 1912 issue of Architecture & Building has several photos and drawings of Loew’s Greeley Square Theatre starting on page 134 (Google Books scan.)
A Reproduco organ had recently been installed in the Maple Heights Theatre at Maple Heights, Ohio, according to an ad for the Reproduco company in the July 7, 1928 issue of Exhibitors Herald The house and its manager, Charles Pelcnik, were also mentioned in the November 3, 1928 issue of Universal Weekly. The October 20, 1956 issue of Motion Picture Herald ran this item:
“Selected Theatres Circuit has sold the Maple Heights theatre building consisting of the 1600-seat theatre, two stores and an upstairs suite to Anna and Jerry Hridel of the Janda Furniture Co., who will convert the property into another furniture store.”
The New Family Theatre was still operating under that name in 1925, when it was mentioned in several issues of The Moving Picture World in March and April. One item said that the new owners, Fitzpatrick and McElroy, were planning to remodel the house. As the name of the house was New Family in the December 4, 1915 item I noted in my previous comment any move from 31 N. Main to 114 N. Main probably took place before then.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists only the New Family Theatre (with no adress) and the Maple City Theatre as 31 S. Main Street.
This article from the August 22, 2014 issue of the Hiawatha World says that the Arrow Theatre originally opened in 1973. The house closed in 2014 due to the high cost of conversion to digital projection.
The July 24, 1964 issue of the Morgantown Post ran an article about the 40th Anniversary show at the Metropolitan Theatre, to take place that evening with a presentation of the 1924 silent movie “Blood and Sand.” A piano would substitute for the organ, dismantled in the early 1940s, which had accompanied the movies in the theater’s early years. The Metropolitan had regularly featured Keith-Orpheum vaudeville acts in its early years, and the house survived being gutted by a fire in the early 1930s
There were two houses called the Swisher Theatre in Morgantown, but I’ve been unable to discover if they were on the same or different sites. Swisher’s Theatre, a 700-seat, second-floor house, was listed in the 1901-1902 Cahn guide. In the 1909-1910 guide the Swisher Theatre is listed as a ground floor house with 1,350 seats.
The second Swisher was built in 1904-1906 according to a 1912 book, Genealogical and Personal History of the Upper Monongahela Valley, West Virginia, by Bernard L. Butcher. Howard L. Swisher was the owner of the theaters, and active in their management for a number of years.
As the Cahn guide lists the Walnut Street Theatre as a 700-seat, second floor theater, it is possible that it was the house built in 1895 as part of the Odd Fellows Lodge building, at the corner of Walnut and High Street.
Here is a bit of information about the first Palace Theatre from the March 11, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review:“The old Star Theatre at Sheppton, Pa., run for years by Michael Dromboski, manager of the Herseker Theatre at West Hazleton, Pa., has been re-christened the Palace by the new owner, Angelo Bott, who also holds the Liberty Theatre at Nuremberg, Pa.”Sheppton also once had a house called the Rex Theatre, the remodeling of which was noted in a couple of trade journals in April, 1941.
J. A. Woolam was operating a theater in Walters as early as 1916, when a letter fromhim was published in the April 8 issue of The Moving Picture World. The letter doesn’t give the name of the theater. The only theater listed at Walters in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Gem.
J. A. Woolam and A. M. VanCleef of Walters purchased the Empress Theatre in Waurika, Oklahoma, in 1914, as noted in the May 22 issue of the Waurika News-Democrat. Both were experienced theater men, the item said, and VanCleef would be moving to Waurika to manage their new acquisition.
The web site of the Cotton County Museum, which is housed in the former Grand Theatre building, says that the Grand and Thompson were across the street from each other. The Grand was at 116 N. Broadway.
The former Grand Theatre building, at 116 N. Broadway, is now the home of the Cotton County Museum. Here is their web site which, unfortunately, has no photos and little other information about the town’s theaters except to say that the Thomson and the Grand were across the street from each other and that locals called the Grand the “little show” and the Thompson the “big show.”
Manta says that Sapphire Cineplex was established in 2007, but that is probably the year the business was incorporated, and the theater might or might not have been opened that year. The December 16, 2016 issue of Eastern Arizona Courier says that Robert E. Hollis had bought the Sapphire Cineplex from John and Marty Gray on December 4. Hollis’s sale of the Sapphire to Allen Theatres on December 1, 2017, is noted on the web site Gila Valley Central, so Hollis Cinemas only operated the house for a little over a year.
The 1908-1909 Cahn guide lists the 950-seat Passaic Opera House, managed by W. Whitehead, so I’d guess it’s the same theater as Whitehead’s Opera House. CinemaTour lists the house at 217 Washington Place. A 1910 city directory gives that address as the location of the Opera House Hotel, so the theater might have been entered through the hotel lobby. William Whitehead owned the hotel, and earlier had operated a theater called the Lyceum.
Whitehead’s Opera House was dedicated on February 1, 1892, according the Theatrical Chronology in the 1893 edition of The New York Clipper Annual. The Passaic Opera House was destroyed by a fire on January 19, 1916, along with several other buildings, an event widely reported in newspapers a the time and noted in the January 26 issue of The Insurance Press.
The Warner is now the home of Blink Fitness, a gym. Most of the wall and ceiling decor in lobby and auditorium is intact, and even nicely restored. Some sort of piping has been suspended from the ceiling, which prevents a full view of it from any given spot on the ground floor, but there’s a good view of the ceiling from the former balcony. The locker rooms are in the former stage area.
The floors have been leveled, of course, including that of the balcony which is now two terraces. It looks like they were just built over, though, rather than ripped out. The mezzanine lounge has somewhat more alteration, but its ceiling is still partly visible. It looks like the projection booth is still there, too, but closed off.
I never went to this theater but if it was like the Warner Beverly it would have had an ornate lounge and rest rooms in the basement, but I can’t find any photos of them, so I don’t know what they are being used for (if they exist.) The terrazzo out front looks pretty good, as does the ornate soffit of the marquee. The box office is gone.
While this project probably increased to cost of any future plans to return the building to theatrical use, it could have been way worse. The building was not gutted, and most of the Art Deco detailing is intact. I don’t know how the gym management feels about people coming in just to look at it, but maybe somebody who can get to Huntington Park can talk to someone there about it. They obviously did put a lot of thought into their adaptive reuse, and I would think they might like to show it off a bit to members of the non-exercising general public.
Google has lots of interior photos (you can move around in them just like in stret views.)
The New Beverly Cinema reopened on December 1, 2018.
It hasn’t reopened. While some neighborhoods above Paradise survived the fire, as well as scattered houses in the town itself, and some people have moved back in, the current population is insufficient to support a movie theater. A regional supermarket chain reopened its store that is not far from the theater on December 28, but I don’t know how much business they are doing. Extensive reconstruction, if it takes place, will have to wait until the removal of debris is done, and that won’t be compete until much later this year.
The Theatre Historical Society says that the Ritz Theatre had a 2 manual, 5 rank Wurlizter organ, opus 606, installed in November, 1922. The announcement of the theater’s impending construction had been made a year earlier, with plans being prepared by the firm of Margon & Glaser. The Ritz closed on December 3, 1950.
The Theatre Historical Society confirms Irving Margon as the architect of the Hub/Rex Theatre, and says that the building was demolished in 1976.
The Theatre Historical Society says that the Kingsbridge Theatre opened on January 26, 1922. The house had a 2 manual, 6 rank Wurlitzer organ, opus 472.
This web page says that a style 110 Wurlitzer organ, opus 421, was installed in the Hub Theatre in 1921. It was replaced by a style E Wurlitzer, opus 1101, in 1925. The Hub was most likely this project noted in the June 11, 1921 issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide:
The Pantheon Theatre was designed by architects Margon & Glaser (Irving Margon and Charles Glaser.) It was extensively remodeled in 1928, and was renamed the Kelton Theatre in July of that year. It was closed around 1930.
The July 3, 1909 issue of Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide ran this brief item about an expansion of the Unique Theatre:
S. S. Sugar would soon move his office to 42nd Street.There are three photos and a floor plan of Loew’s Seventh Avenue Theatre on pages 354 and 355 of the October, 1910 issue of Architects' and Builders' Magazine (scan at Google Books.)
The Schine circuit took over operation of the Strand in 1944, according to a March 21, 2015 article in the Cumberland Times-News. The Strand’s last day of Operation was September 4, 1972.
bamtino’s very first comment on this theater says that it opened on November 18, 1911.
The March, 1912 issue of Architecture & Building has several photos and drawings of Loew’s Greeley Square Theatre starting on page 134 (Google Books scan.)
A Reproduco organ had recently been installed in the Maple Heights Theatre at Maple Heights, Ohio, according to an ad for the Reproduco company in the July 7, 1928 issue of Exhibitors Herald The house and its manager, Charles Pelcnik, were also mentioned in the November 3, 1928 issue of Universal Weekly. The October 20, 1956 issue of Motion Picture Herald ran this item:
The New Family Theatre was still operating under that name in 1925, when it was mentioned in several issues of The Moving Picture World in March and April. One item said that the new owners, Fitzpatrick and McElroy, were planning to remodel the house. As the name of the house was New Family in the December 4, 1915 item I noted in my previous comment any move from 31 N. Main to 114 N. Main probably took place before then.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists only the New Family Theatre (with no adress) and the Maple City Theatre as 31 S. Main Street.
This article from the August 22, 2014 issue of the Hiawatha World says that the Arrow Theatre originally opened in 1973. The house closed in 2014 due to the high cost of conversion to digital projection.
The July 24, 1964 issue of the Morgantown Post ran an article about the 40th Anniversary show at the Metropolitan Theatre, to take place that evening with a presentation of the 1924 silent movie “Blood and Sand.” A piano would substitute for the organ, dismantled in the early 1940s, which had accompanied the movies in the theater’s early years. The Metropolitan had regularly featured Keith-Orpheum vaudeville acts in its early years, and the house survived being gutted by a fire in the early 1930s
There were two houses called the Swisher Theatre in Morgantown, but I’ve been unable to discover if they were on the same or different sites. Swisher’s Theatre, a 700-seat, second-floor house, was listed in the 1901-1902 Cahn guide. In the 1909-1910 guide the Swisher Theatre is listed as a ground floor house with 1,350 seats.
The second Swisher was built in 1904-1906 according to a 1912 book, Genealogical and Personal History of the Upper Monongahela Valley, West Virginia, by Bernard L. Butcher. Howard L. Swisher was the owner of the theaters, and active in their management for a number of years.
As the Cahn guide lists the Walnut Street Theatre as a 700-seat, second floor theater, it is possible that it was the house built in 1895 as part of the Odd Fellows Lodge building, at the corner of Walnut and High Street.
The Warner Theatre opened on June 12, 1931 with the George Arliss film “Millionaire.”
Here is a bit of information about the first Palace Theatre from the March 11, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review:“The old Star Theatre at Sheppton, Pa., run for years by Michael Dromboski, manager of the Herseker Theatre at West Hazleton, Pa., has been re-christened the Palace by the new owner, Angelo Bott, who also holds the Liberty Theatre at Nuremberg, Pa.”Sheppton also once had a house called the Rex Theatre, the remodeling of which was noted in a couple of trade journals in April, 1941.