The August 10, 1955 issue of The Portsmouth Times of Portsmouth, Ohio, reported that the stage of the Virginia Theatre at Wellston had partly collapsed during a storm the previous Sunday. Mrs. L. P. Guilfoile, owner of the building, had been ordered by the State Fire Marshall to have the remaining walls of the stage demolished. The item did not say whether the theater had still been in operation at the time of the collapse.
The Virginia Theatre was mentioned in the February 8, 1919 issue of the coal industry journal The Black Diamond, which said that the 1,000-seat house had the largest auditorium in the county.
The June, 1904 issue of Th Oho Architect and Builder had this item which might have been about the house that became the Virginia Theatre:
“Architect F. W. Elliott is preparing plans for a theater to be built for W. O. Yard at Wellston. Ohio, at a cost of $30,000. It will be a pressed brick structure, having a frontage of 60 feet and a depth of 120. The seating capacity will be 1,000.”
W. O. Yard was operating a theater in Wellston called the Grand Opera House at least as early as 1894. The 1909-1910 Cahn guide lists the New Virginia Theatre, W. O. Yard, proprietor, as a 1,200 seat, ground floor house. Yard was noted as manager of the Grand Opera House at Jackson, Ohio, that same year.
The Idle Hour is the only theater listed at Salisbury in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Mr. Carl A. Barnert had bought a theater at Salisbury, according to the April 18, 1916 issue of The Moving Picture World, though the item did not give the theater’s name.
I noticed that in the photo of the tornado damage the name of the house on the marquee is Cinema. I suspect that it was twinned while being repaired after the tornado, since that was 1974 and a lot of old theaters were being twinned around that time.
This web page has two small, early 1940s photos (about halfway down the long page) showing the Strand Theatre in the background. It was a two-story building with a trapezoidal marquee. After a few more illustrations, the page has the line “[t]he theater ceased operations in the 1960s and was subsequently demolished.” The single-story building in the photos we currently display, with what looks to have been two large show windows flanking a rather narrow two-door entrance, was not the Strand.
I’ve found Friday and Saturday movies advertised at the Grand as late as September 5, 1957. The next issue of the Review available online, from October 24, lists only the Sparks Theatre.
The May 1, 1926 issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Grand Theatre in Cooper was one of three Texas houses to have recently installed a “Celestam De Luxe organ.” The name was a typo.
“New Seeburg Celesta De Luxe Player Pipe Organ Creates Wide Attention” was the headline of an article in The Music Trade Review of June 26, 1926. The organ-piano hybrid was designed for use in small town theaters that couldn’t afford a full-sized organ or a full-time organist. The self-contained unit could be played automatically using music rolls, or manually from its single keyboard.
It also looks like Henry Sparks eventually reopened the Grand after closing it for a while on completion of the Sparks Theatre. Some capsule movie reviews published by Motion Picture Herald in January, 1953 were signed “Henry Sparks, Sparks and Grand Theatres, Cooper, Texas.” The December 4, 1953 issue of the Cooper Review advertises Sparks Theatres, and shows the Grand open on Friday and Saturday only, showing the 1948 western movie “Black Bart” with Dan Duryea and Yvonne De Carlo.
The Monroe Theatre’s Facebook page continues to be active, with a post from March 12 outlining the progress that has been made in preparing plans for the eventual renovation of the house by project architect Lauren Burge. One passage in the article cites Ms. Burge’s observation that “…the Monroe Theatre’s most unique feature from an architectural standpoint is the lack of corners anywhere in the interior of the original building; this is characteristic of the streamlined architecture of the 1930s.” The page also has links to three videos about the theater.
If that’s the case then the 1915 rebuilding project as a two-story theater must not have been carried out. I checked David and Noelle Soren’s list of Boller theaters and they list it as “Electric (Majestic) Theatre – 1915, 1926, 1946-47” so it’s still a Boller design, but they worked on it three times; probably a scaled down remodeling of the original 1910 Majestic in 1915, a rebuilding in 1926, and another remodeling or renovation in 1946-47. I wonder if they kept the lower parts of the original walls in the 1926 project?
SethG: Good catch. The Majestic was expended to become the Electric in 1915, and those cars parked in front of the smaller theater are from considerably later than 1915, so it can’t be the old Majestic.
In 1936 The Robstown Record was advertising a house called the New Palace Theatre. I wonder if that was a different theater or just an earlier aka for the Gulf?
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide lists the Empire Theatre as a ground floor house with 392 seats on the main floor, 238 in the balcony, and 10 in boxes. The stage was 35 feet from footlights to back wall, and 44 feet between the side walls.
Here is an item from the September 21, 1923 issue of The Moving Picture World which might, or might not, be about the Avenue Theatre:
“PITTSBURGH, PA.— Majestic Theatre Corporation has plans by Rubin & Ve Shancey, Union Arcade, for one-story brick moving picture theatre to be erected on Fifth avenue, near Magee street, to cost $75,000.”
Whether or not this item was in fact about the Pearl/Avenue, the Avenue Theatre that had the fire in 1903 was a different house, and probably not on the same site. A November, 1903 fire at Harry Davis' Avenue Theatre in Pittsburgh is mentioned in the end notes of The Perils of Moviegoing in America: 1896-1950, by Gary D. Rhodes, as well as in Charles Musser’s The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907.
Other sources reveal that Davis operated his Avenue Theatre at least as early as 1896, and that it burned down in 1905, whereupon Davis and his partner John P. Harris opened the famous Nickelodeon. While Davis' Avenue Theatre was on Fifth Avenue, I’ve been unable to find an address for it, and it’s possible, maybe even likely, that it was not at 1108 Fifth.
Actually, the aerial photo currently displayed above does show the theater entrance at Roosevelt and Opal. This is an older photo, late 1940s, taken before Wilson Street was cut through. The theater was later expanded a bit, and its back rows extended up onto the Wilson Street property that is now occupied by the Hampton Inn. It looks like this drive-in opened as the Phillips 66, then was renamed the Plains Drive-In, probably not too long after. The entrance is still at Roosevelt and Opal in a 1969 aerial photo.
A comment by jwmovies on the Tri-City Drive-In page says that the Plains Drive-In was at 1415 W. Wilson St., and this is confirmed by NYozoner, who says the Plains was still listed in the 1969 theater catalog. It was the older Phillips 66 Drive-In that was at Roosevelt and Opal Street.
The May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald has this brief item:
“F. A. Lambert contemplates the erection of a new theatre in Princeton, Mo., to replace a structure recently destroyed by fire.”
This turned out not to be the last fire in the Lambert’s history. The August 17, 1965 issue of the Jefferson City Daily Capital News reported that Princeton’s only movie theater, the Lambert, had been destroyed by a fire following the previous Sunday’s matinée. The two-story brick building had recently been rewired, and it was thought a fault in the wiring had caused the blaze. The adjacent Farmers State Bank and Lowry-Miller Lumber Company buildings suffered only smoke damage.
The Lambert was not located on Washington Street but in the 700 block of W. Hickland Street. The Farmers State Bank building on the corner of Washington and Hickland is still there, now occupied by a branch of U.S. Bank, which has built an addition on the theater’s site. The lumber company building, which had also been rebuilt following the 1936 fire, is also still there, but blocked by a big truck in Google’s street view so I don’t know what is in it.
The Past Times in Princeton Missouri Facebook page has this photo showing the corner of the square with the Lambert Theatre down the block, sometime around 1950.
This item is from the April 6, 1940 issue of Boxoffice:
“‘66’ and Phillips Did Not Open Same Day
“Phillips, Tex. — It is pointed out that the Griffith ‘66’ Theatre and the Phillips, owned by Smith and Bearden, did not open on the same day, as was reported March 23. The source says the ‘66’ opened on Friday, March 8, and that the Phillips opened Sunday, March 10.”
The web site I cited in my first comment says that the rival Phillips Theatre closed following a fire in 1940. It doesn’t say that the house ever reopened, and notes that when it closed in 1949 the 66 Theatre was the only movie house in the town.
The town of Phillips is now a ghost town. After reaching a peak population of 4,250 in 1947 it gradually declined. A refinery explosion in 1980 led further declines, and the Phillips Petroleum company, the major employer, bought the land it ha leased for its facilities and the land the town’s businesses and homeowners had leased individually from the same lessors, and forced the population out.
It’s impossible to be absolutely certain of the location of the theater by judging from historic aerial photos, but the town’s small commercial district appears to have been concentrated along a short stretch of Whitenburg Avenue. In a 1951 aerial shot the shadow of a building on the south side of Whitenburg just west of C Avenue has the shape of the theater building’s upper section as it appears in the vintage photo, so my guess would be that’s where it most likely was.
Thomas Kneass, who is buried in Chillicothe, adapted an old German melody to the 1840s poem “Ben Bolt” by Thomas Dunn English. The song was used in a play called “The Battle of Buena Vista” which was first staged during the war with Mexico.
The August 10, 1955 issue of The Portsmouth Times of Portsmouth, Ohio, reported that the stage of the Virginia Theatre at Wellston had partly collapsed during a storm the previous Sunday. Mrs. L. P. Guilfoile, owner of the building, had been ordered by the State Fire Marshall to have the remaining walls of the stage demolished. The item did not say whether the theater had still been in operation at the time of the collapse.
The Virginia Theatre was mentioned in the February 8, 1919 issue of the coal industry journal The Black Diamond, which said that the 1,000-seat house had the largest auditorium in the county.
The June, 1904 issue of Th Oho Architect and Builder had this item which might have been about the house that became the Virginia Theatre:
W. O. Yard was operating a theater in Wellston called the Grand Opera House at least as early as 1894. The 1909-1910 Cahn guide lists the New Virginia Theatre, W. O. Yard, proprietor, as a 1,200 seat, ground floor house. Yard was noted as manager of the Grand Opera House at Jackson, Ohio, that same year.The Idle Hour is the only theater listed at Salisbury in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Mr. Carl A. Barnert had bought a theater at Salisbury, according to the April 18, 1916 issue of The Moving Picture World, though the item did not give the theater’s name.
I noticed that in the photo of the tornado damage the name of the house on the marquee is Cinema. I suspect that it was twinned while being repaired after the tornado, since that was 1974 and a lot of old theaters were being twinned around that time.
This web page has two small, early 1940s photos (about halfway down the long page) showing the Strand Theatre in the background. It was a two-story building with a trapezoidal marquee. After a few more illustrations, the page has the line “[t]he theater ceased operations in the 1960s and was subsequently demolished.” The single-story building in the photos we currently display, with what looks to have been two large show windows flanking a rather narrow two-door entrance, was not the Strand.
I’ve found Friday and Saturday movies advertised at the Grand as late as September 5, 1957. The next issue of the Review available online, from October 24, lists only the Sparks Theatre.
The May 1, 1926 issue of The Moving Picture World reported that the Grand Theatre in Cooper was one of three Texas houses to have recently installed a “Celestam De Luxe organ.” The name was a typo.
“New Seeburg Celesta De Luxe Player Pipe Organ Creates Wide Attention” was the headline of an article in The Music Trade Review of June 26, 1926. The organ-piano hybrid was designed for use in small town theaters that couldn’t afford a full-sized organ or a full-time organist. The self-contained unit could be played automatically using music rolls, or manually from its single keyboard.
It also looks like Henry Sparks eventually reopened the Grand after closing it for a while on completion of the Sparks Theatre. Some capsule movie reviews published by Motion Picture Herald in January, 1953 were signed “Henry Sparks, Sparks and Grand Theatres, Cooper, Texas.” The December 4, 1953 issue of the Cooper Review advertises Sparks Theatres, and shows the Grand open on Friday and Saturday only, showing the 1948 western movie “Black Bart” with Dan Duryea and Yvonne De Carlo.
The Monroe Theatre’s Facebook page continues to be active, with a post from March 12 outlining the progress that has been made in preparing plans for the eventual renovation of the house by project architect Lauren Burge. One passage in the article cites Ms. Burge’s observation that “…the Monroe Theatre’s most unique feature from an architectural standpoint is the lack of corners anywhere in the interior of the original building; this is characteristic of the streamlined architecture of the 1930s.” The page also has links to three videos about the theater.
If that’s the case then the 1915 rebuilding project as a two-story theater must not have been carried out. I checked David and Noelle Soren’s list of Boller theaters and they list it as “Electric (Majestic) Theatre – 1915, 1926, 1946-47” so it’s still a Boller design, but they worked on it three times; probably a scaled down remodeling of the original 1910 Majestic in 1915, a rebuilding in 1926, and another remodeling or renovation in 1946-47. I wonder if they kept the lower parts of the original walls in the 1926 project?
SethG: Good catch. The Majestic was expended to become the Electric in 1915, and those cars parked in front of the smaller theater are from considerably later than 1915, so it can’t be the old Majestic.
St. Joseph Memory lane says the Fox East Hills Theatre opened on August 19, 1965 and closed on November 11, 1990. It had 712 seats.
In 1936 The Robstown Record was advertising a house called the New Palace Theatre. I wonder if that was a different theater or just an earlier aka for the Gulf?
Th Vogue was one of eight movie theaters listed at Springfield in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
Th Savoy was one of eight movie theaters listed at Springfield in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The Casino was one of eight movie theater listed at Springfield in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The Amuse-U was one of eight movie theaters listed at Springfield in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The 1912-1913 Cahn guide lists the Empire Theatre as a ground floor house with 392 seats on the main floor, 238 in the balcony, and 10 in boxes. The stage was 35 feet from footlights to back wall, and 44 feet between the side walls.
Architect Ricardo A. Nicol.
Here is an item from the September 21, 1923 issue of The Moving Picture World which might, or might not, be about the Avenue Theatre:
Whether or not this item was in fact about the Pearl/Avenue, the Avenue Theatre that had the fire in 1903 was a different house, and probably not on the same site. A November, 1903 fire at Harry Davis' Avenue Theatre in Pittsburgh is mentioned in the end notes of The Perils of Moviegoing in America: 1896-1950, by Gary D. Rhodes, as well as in Charles Musser’s The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907.Other sources reveal that Davis operated his Avenue Theatre at least as early as 1896, and that it burned down in 1905, whereupon Davis and his partner John P. Harris opened the famous Nickelodeon. While Davis' Avenue Theatre was on Fifth Avenue, I’ve been unable to find an address for it, and it’s possible, maybe even likely, that it was not at 1108 Fifth.
A September 28, 2012 article in theMoberly Monitor-Index says that the Amy Lou Theatre building was demolished on September 29, 1962.
Actually, the aerial photo currently displayed above does show the theater entrance at Roosevelt and Opal. This is an older photo, late 1940s, taken before Wilson Street was cut through. The theater was later expanded a bit, and its back rows extended up onto the Wilson Street property that is now occupied by the Hampton Inn. It looks like this drive-in opened as the Phillips 66, then was renamed the Plains Drive-In, probably not too long after. The entrance is still at Roosevelt and Opal in a 1969 aerial photo.
A comment by jwmovies on the Tri-City Drive-In page says that the Plains Drive-In was at 1415 W. Wilson St., and this is confirmed by NYozoner, who says the Plains was still listed in the 1969 theater catalog. It was the older Phillips 66 Drive-In that was at Roosevelt and Opal Street.
Google street view labels it the 700 block of Hickland, but it must actually be the 600 block that he Lambert was in.
The May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald has this brief item:
This turned out not to be the last fire in the Lambert’s history. The August 17, 1965 issue of the Jefferson City Daily Capital News reported that Princeton’s only movie theater, the Lambert, had been destroyed by a fire following the previous Sunday’s matinée. The two-story brick building had recently been rewired, and it was thought a fault in the wiring had caused the blaze. The adjacent Farmers State Bank and Lowry-Miller Lumber Company buildings suffered only smoke damage.The Lambert was not located on Washington Street but in the 700 block of W. Hickland Street. The Farmers State Bank building on the corner of Washington and Hickland is still there, now occupied by a branch of U.S. Bank, which has built an addition on the theater’s site. The lumber company building, which had also been rebuilt following the 1936 fire, is also still there, but blocked by a big truck in Google’s street view so I don’t know what is in it.
The Past Times in Princeton Missouri Facebook page has this photo showing the corner of the square with the Lambert Theatre down the block, sometime around 1950.
This item is from the April 6, 1940 issue of Boxoffice:
The web site I cited in my first comment says that the rival Phillips Theatre closed following a fire in 1940. It doesn’t say that the house ever reopened, and notes that when it closed in 1949 the 66 Theatre was the only movie house in the town.The town of Phillips is now a ghost town. After reaching a peak population of 4,250 in 1947 it gradually declined. A refinery explosion in 1980 led further declines, and the Phillips Petroleum company, the major employer, bought the land it ha leased for its facilities and the land the town’s businesses and homeowners had leased individually from the same lessors, and forced the population out.
It’s impossible to be absolutely certain of the location of the theater by judging from historic aerial photos, but the town’s small commercial district appears to have been concentrated along a short stretch of Whitenburg Avenue. In a 1951 aerial shot the shadow of a building on the south side of Whitenburg just west of C Avenue has the shape of the theater building’s upper section as it appears in the vintage photo, so my guess would be that’s where it most likely was.
Thomas Kneass, who is buried in Chillicothe, adapted an old German melody to the 1840s poem “Ben Bolt” by Thomas Dunn English. The song was used in a play called “The Battle of Buena Vista” which was first staged during the war with Mexico.