County Theater

It’s Originally Called “County Theatre” Until Its Renamed County Theater In An Unknown Year.

To expand with 3rd auditorium & more lobby space- http://patch.com/pennsylvania/doylestown/county-theater-purchase-poor-richards-expansion

Philadelphia Architects and Buildings says that the Strand Theatre in Doylestown was built in 1921. At least one other source makes the same claim, but other sources say it was built in 1925.

I have found the Strand Theatre mentioned as early as 1921, but The Gleaner, an annual publication of the National Farm School, located near Doylestown, has courtesy advertisements from a Doylestown house called the New Strand Theatre in its 1925, 1926, and 1927 editions. By 1928, the ads are simply from the Strand Theatre. My guess would be that there was an earlier Strand Theatre, perhaps opened in 1921, that was replaced by the New Strand Theatre in 1925.

The County has completed its digital conversion. Philadelphia Inquirer story here.

Featured on Huffington Post list of 10 beautiful movie theaters in US,
http://cinematreasures.org/news/24968_0_1_0_M/

Here is a September 2007 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/6lspl3

The June 1999 Philadelphia Magazine rated the County a very high “4” on a 1 to 5 scale, with comment “Bucks County’s answer to the Ritz. Best Bucks art-house choice.” Highest possible ratings were achieved in the categories of Cleanliness and Service, and very high rating for Seating. For movie Selection, whereas Ritz and Roxy theaters in Philadelphia were specified as “Art-house and indie” the County was stated as “Highbrow fare”

I will add that the movie selection is always top of the line arthouse.

Here are excerpts from an article in the Doylestown Intelligencer dated 3/2/97. I can’t reproduce the pictures here. There’s no right answer if the building was destroyed and rebuilt, obviously.

Film buffs still flock to County Theater

In 1928, the Strand opened its door to entertain area residents with silent films. A fire damaged the Strand, and it was remodeled and reopened as the County Theater, shown here in 1938 (Photos)

I remember that the late Doylestown Mayor Daniel D. Atkinson used to tell me that the first movies in Doylestown were shown early in the 1900s in a room in a pool or billiard parlor in a building on South Main Street where the County Linen Center now stands. Edward V. Hellyer snowed the first movies in Doylestown. The admission was a nickel.

Researching in the Bucks County Historical Society Mercer Museum Library, I learned that the Strand Theater (I prefer Strand to County) was opened in January 1925. Before the Strand, the movies were shown in a large auditorium on the second floor in Lenape Hall, the more than a century old brick building at State and Main streets. I can remember when the Strand had two stores, a gift shop and the Palace of Sweets off the entrance lobby. The Strand had two apartments on its second floor front. Doylestown Theater
Guild used to present its plays in the Strand until the talkies emerged in 1927. Because of its sensitive sound projection equipment backstage, the live performers moved to a high school auditorium stage. (A fire damaged the Strand and it was remodeled and reopened as the County Theater.)

Bucks County President Judge Hiram H Keller spoke at the opening of the County Theater in September of 1938. The County Theater was modernized and improved at a cost of $75,000. The seating capacity was increased to 700 persons. The first names on the marquee were Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy in “Test Pilot”. Doylestown got its first Sunday movies Nov. 17, 1940. Only the Catholic and Episcopal churches did not formally campaign against Sunday movies.

The marquee was replaced in 2000:

County Theater replaces marquee

The County Theater’s marquee, which has displayed movie titles since the days of “Gone with the Wind,” is ready for another century of celluloid. A new facade, consisting of a three-sided aluminum light box with plexiglass front panels, was attached Tuesday to a frame
extending above the entrance of the East State Street movie house
The marquee replacement completes the $89,500 restoration of the Art Deco exterior of the 1938 theater, said John Toner, executive
director of Closely Watched Films, a local nonprofit group that owns
the building and operates the independent theater.

“The exterior is an extraordinary example of a small-town Art Deco theater,” Toner said. “Doylestown is real lucky to still have its theater”. Closely Watched Films bought the building in 1997 for $325,000 and spent another $500,000 to overhaul the theater from top to bottom. Restoration of the facade was a separate project, funded in part by a $42,900 Keystone Historic Preservation Grant, a $15,000 grant from the Grundy Foundation and two $1,500 grants from the Doylestown Revitalization Board, according to Toner. The theater raised the rest of the $89,500 from its supporters.

The 18-foot-high tower, which spells out “County” in yellow neon letters on a blue background, was replaced in 1998 at a cost of $36,000. Toner said both the original tower and marquee facade were too deteriorated to restore, but the replicas are identical. Some original stainless steel strips were reused. “The marquee itself will look exactly the same as it did when it came down,” he said.

The marquee restoration, which cost $53,500, also included replacing rotten wood in the frame, reinforcing the roof and the underside of the marquee, and putting in new wiring. Bartush Signs of Orwigsburg, Schuylkill County, the same company that remade the letter tower, also rebuilt the marquee panels. Each of the three sides consists of an aluminum box with fluorescent lights that illuminate a plexiglass sheet on which movable letters spell out movie titles.

The restored marquee has blue neon lights along the outer edge and red neon lights on the underside. Neon lighting was part of the original marquee but had not worked for years. Jim Sanders, director of development for the theater, said workers will finish wiring and
installing the marquee by Friday. To accommodate the work, the theater will not show matinees today and Friday.

In the 80s, before the renovation, the County had midnight shows of Rocky Horror. People dressed as the characters would be on the stage acting along with the movie.

They just sold a bunch of their old movie posters.

You can buy a print of the theater at this link:
http://www.georgerothacker.com/ga1.detail.2.html

After AMC pulled out and closed the theatre it sat dark for awhile.
It re opened for a short time but closed again. The two aud. were shortened to build apts. where the stage and screen were located. The theatre is now run by a non profit group which also operates the Ambler theatre in Ambler, Pa. At one time both theatres were operated by Budco theaters.

related website:
http://www.countytheater.com/