Hippodrome Theater

When it came to movies at the Hippodrome most were second run even in the days before the Palace or Warner or Liberty while the Park Theater was a first Run house up to the mid 1940’s when it could no longer compete with the Palace, State, Pareamount or Warner.

Gentlemen, first thank you for your interest in Youngstown’s theatrical history. The entrance to the Hippodrome was inside the Hippodrome Arcade, half way between Federal and Commerce Streets. There were numerous stores inside the Arcade so it was like a mini-mall. The Dome Theatre was two doors west of Hazel Street on the North Side of the Street. The Liberty Theatre was nearby, and across the street was the Orpheum Theatre at the site that the State Theatre sat on. As to the Esquire/Family Theatre, it was located on South Champion Street acros the street from the Park Theatre and was also known as the Princess Theatre. This theatre was primarily a vaudeville/burlesque house that alo showed movies. This theatre started its life as the Family Theater, changing to Princess later on and keeping that name till tht early 1930’s when it became known as the Grand Theatre specializing in Burlesque strip tease shows until the late 40’s when burlesque moved over to the Park Theatre and its'name was changed once again to the Esquire Theatre and dropped the live shows. By mid 1950 this small theater was demolished. As to the Park heatre, it would be demolished in the mid 1960’s because of Urban Renewal. The Regent Theater on the lower East end of Federal was also demolished in the mid 1960’s for the same reason.

Ron, the stage of the Hippodrome backed up to Commerce Street, but the theater entrance was through an arcade opening on Federal Street.

Here are some postcard views of the Hippodrome from the West Federal Street side which was the main entrance. The sign with the elephant was the original sign.

View link

Sorry that I don’t have any clear photographs of the views but will try to get some from the library.

I see that the October 27 Vindicator article includes a plan of the main floor of the building, making it much easier to understand the scope of the disaster. It also makes it easier to picture how catastrophic the collapse could have been had it happened not during construction but after the building had been completed and the theater opened. There might have been a large crowd of patrons in the arcade, either exiting from or waiting to enter the theater.

I got the date of the partial collapse of the Hippodrome building wrong in my previous comment. It was October 26, 1914, not October 6.

There is another photo of the collapse at the Hippodrome in the November, 1914, issue of trade union journal The Bricklayer, Mason and Plasterer. The item quotes a Youngstown Vindicator article of October 27, 1914. The collapse was apparently confined to the arcade portion of the building, and the theater’s auditorium was not affected.

Construction of Youngstown’s Hippodrome was well along in the fall of 1914. On the afternoon of October 6, part of the structure failed while concrete forms were being removed, causing a partial collapse of the building. Three workmen were killed and three others injured.

The December 2, 1914, issue of trade journal Engineering and Contracting published a letter from Edward Godfrey, a leading structural engineer of the period and a long-time critic of what were then the standard methods used in reinforced concrete construction. The letter discusses the failure, and is accompanied by two photographs of the collapsed structure.

The Youngstown Vindicator must have had articles about the event, but unfortunately the issues that most likely carried them (October 7, 1914, and probably some later issues) are not available from the Google News Archive.

Thanks for the info wolfgirl500.