Bogarts

DavidZornig on March 16, 2017 at 9:32 am

Two 1913 photos added courtesy of Jim Robb. Exterior & interior. Source claimed 908 seats originally.

Joe Vogel on March 22, 2011 at 4:33 am

The theater’s name is missing a “d” in the middle. All the sources that I’ve seen, period and modern, call it the Nordland Plaza or Nordland. It was probably located in one of Cincinnati’s old German neighborhoods.

The Nordland Plaza is mentioned in a few publications from the 1910s that are available at Google Books. The most useful is this, from the trade journal Domestic Engineering, issue of November 16, 1912, which indicates a probable early 1913 opening for the Nordland Plaza Theatre, and names the architects:

“One of the latest propositions is the Nordland Plaza, which will be built on Vine Street, near Charlton, several squares from the Columbia, as per plans by Architects Stewart & Stewart. The general contract has just been awarded to Oscar Schroeder and the plumbing to Henry Niemes, of 4112 Hamilton Avenue.”

A slightly earlier issue of another trade journal, The American Architect, also names Stewart & Stewart as the architects, and gives the address of the parcel where the theater was to be built as 2623 Vine Street.

As Bob Jensen noted above, the Nordland Plaza Theatre had a Wurlitzer installed in 1913. The stage end of the auditorium was pictured in an advertisement for the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company in The Moving Picture World, October 25, 1913. The ad says the Nordland’s unit was a Wurlitzer Motion Picture Orchestra.

Although the web site for Bogart’s, the club now occupying the theater, says that the house opened as the Nordland Plaza Nickelodeon, I can’t find any evidence elsewhere on the Internet that Nickelodeon was ever part of the name, or that the house even operated on a five-cent policy. I note that Bogart’s site also gives the year the theater opened as 1890, so I’m inclined to consider it an unreliable source.

kencmcintyre on April 4, 2009 at 5:36 pm

Listed as the Nordland Theater in the 1961 city directory. A current photo can be seen here:
http://tinyurl.com/dhdv9u

Ret. AKC (NAC) CCC Bob Jensen, Manteno, Illinois on March 9, 2008 at 9:17 am

Trying to reconstruct what happened 95 years ago can be sorta confusing and it turns out the organ information I gave above was for two different organs mixed into one which is sota what happened, I think, but let me start all over.

WurliTzer, Opus 22, a 2 Manual/7 Rank was shipped to this theater on June 8, 1913. Additions and/or alterations were made on July 15, 1913.

WurliTzer, Opus 745, a 2/3 was shipped to the Forest Theater in this same town on December 4, 1923. It was reposessed and parts went to this theater on June 1, 1927. Those parts (perhaps the entire organ?)then went on to a private owner in Louisville, Kentucky in 1960.

If you know anything else about what happened to these organs, please email us!

“Gee Dad, it "WAS” a WurliTzer/WurliTzer!"