Town Theater

Closed or stopped placing ads in 1969.

I find the first mention of the Alcazar on April 17th, 1913. It was owned by Beechers, Inc. from the late 1910’s to early 1930’s. It reopened as the Roosevelt theatre on September 23rd, 1933. Its now Brewhaus.

I do remember The Town. The photo shown above is indeed one of where the therater had it’s incarnation as a neighborhood movie house. We ALL went ther on Saturday afternoons, to watch their double features. The lady, who’s husband owner the place had a very bushy mustache, that she kept neatly trimmed. Her husband wouyld often stop the show, to stalk down the asiles in a rant, effort to get us kids to keep quiet. Speaking of WestSide neighborhood theaters. I have been searching, without much success, for photos of an old theater that was closed prior to 1952. It was called The State Theater, and it was located on the NorthWest corner of Stocking and Second Street, in Grand Rapids MI. I used to live on Stocking, and remember looking throught the sctatches on the black paint that they used to block out the door-windows, to see inside of of the closed building. It may be possible that it was never used for movies, before it was closed. Perhaps it was strictly Vaudeville, or Theatre. Also, there is one errant photo of The Clique Bowling Lanes building, with someone saying that tTHAT building was the old State. That statement is not true. I for remember the buildings and store-fronts that occupied the space that was demoloished to build the Clique. The State was indeed a building on the corner of Second and Stocking. Does ANYONE have any photos of this long forgotten venue?

A brief biography of Edward N. Brown says that he was the partner of George Budde in the opening of the Alcazar Theatre. Brown sold his interest in the project to Budde after about eight months, and then built the Fulton Theatre. In 1916, he opened the Stocking Avenue Theatre. The biography doesn’t give dates for the opening of the Alcazar or the Fulton, but as Brown operated the Fulton for four years, the Alcazar could have been opened as early as 1911, and was probably in operation within a year or two of that at most.

The previous comment is correct. The Town Theatre building is still standing. Its current occupant is a religious institution (possibly a church— the Internet isn’t saying) called the Jesus Evangelistic Center.

Pivot Street View 180 degrees for a view of the building.

There was an Alcazar Theatre in Grand Rapids as early as 1918, when it was mentioned in the February 26 issue of Michigan Film Review. I don’t know if it was this theater or an earlier house of the same name, but the style of the theater’s building was certainly in vogue during the late 1910s.