The address and theater name are not mentioned, but items in May, 1913 issues of The American Contractor must be about the Isis, given the descriptions. The project was a building 120x132 feet, with a 600-seat picture theater and five storefronts, fitting the historic photos of the Isis, which the Kokomo Tribune article I previously cited says was built in 1913. The architect for the project was R. L. Young (Robert Lincoln Young, according to another Tribune article.) The owner of the building was F. D. Miller, a very active local real estate developer.
The latest Google street view shows that the Harrison Theatre building has been demolished, along with its neighbor to the east. The buildings were standing but appeared vacant in the August, 2019 street view, but were gone in the most recent view, from April, 2023, which shows them as a construction site. I’ve been unable to discover the date of demolition, or the purpose of the new construction.
Also gone is the building that once housed the Rialto Theatre just down the block, at 17 E. Gay Street, but it had already been replaced by a new building in the earliest street view available, from August, 2007.
Ads that have been uploaded to the Rialto’s photo page indicate that the house was opened at least by 1916, and probably by 1915. This timing makes it likely that the Rialto was the project for a theater and dance hall to cost $30,000 that was noted in the April 28, 1915 issue of The American Architect. The project was deigned by Wilmington, Delaware architect Roscoe C. Tindall.
It turns out that Center is an aka for the Orpheum. The July 18, 1941 issue of Film Daily had the story: “At Ionia, the 350-seat Orpheum, closed for eight years, is being remodeled and modernized and renamed the Center, to be a companion in Butterfield’s 1,000-seat Ionia, only other theater in town.”
The Orpheum was probably closed longer than eight years, though, as its last appearance in the FDY was 1931. The item’s claim of a seating capacity of 350 for the Orpheum is almost certainly an exaggeration. Its last listing in the FDY gave it only 230 seats. It was likely expanded when remodeled as the Center, but not to 350.
The Lyric was the only theater listed at Strawberry Point in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It was mentioned in the trade journals a number of times, and was listed in the FDY’s editions from 1926 through 1931.
A 300-seat house called the Orpheum is first listed at Strawberry Point in the 1932 FDY. Prior to that, the only house listed for the town was the 200-seat Lyric. The Orpheum probably replaced the Lyric sometime during 1931, the last year the Lyric was listed. The Orpheum still operated in 1951, when the January 13 issue of Boxoffice reported that Robert Fridley had recently sold the house, which he had bought in late 1949.
The April 24, 1914 issue of American Contractor noted the letting of contracts for a new Elks lodge and theater in Mahanoy City. The three-story, 42x125 foot building had been designed by Reading, Pennsylvania architect Edward Z. Scholl. A couple of sources say that the lodge was dedicated in 1916, but I haven’t found an opening date for the theater.
An article about the new Balboa Theatre in the March 31, 1923 issue of Motion Picture News said that the house had been deigned by Reid Bros., who made it a “…‘rambling’ structure, suggestive of some early California mission….” to fit into its predominantly residential neighborhood. The Balboa was owned by Samuel H. Levin, who operated a number of neighborhood houses in the city, including the Coliseum and the Haight.
The March 24, 1923 issue of Motion Picture Newshad this item about the new Madison Theatre:
“A number of Chicago and Milwaukee exchange men journeyed to Madison, Wisconsin, last Thursday night to attend the opening of Frank Fischer’s new Madison Theatre in that city. They found the theatre fine in architecture and magnificently equipped, and were unanimous in congratulating Manager Fischer on his splendid new cinema palace.”
I’ve found a 1918 Sanborn map of Statesville, and the only theater it shows is the Crescent. 117 Broad street was at that time occupied by a wholesale grocer. The 1911 reference to the Broadway I found (but have now lost track of) must have been to a different Broadway theatre, perhaps some short-lived storefront nickelodeon. The earliest reference to the Broadway I can find now is from the July 2, 1921 issue of Exhibitors Herald, which is one of several capsule movie reviews submitted to the magazine that year by the Broadway’s manager W. D. Van Derbergh. [sic] The description should be altered to say the house was in operation by 1921.
News of the Broadway’s 1923 remodeling appears in the March 10 issue of Motion Picture News, which ran this item:
“Broadway, Statesville, N.C., Being Remodeled
“K. E. Spencer, formerly of Monroe, N. C, has purchased the Broadway, Statesville, N. C, from W. D. Vanderberg. [sic] Mr. Spencer immediately closed the house for extensive alterations. The screen formerly in the front will be put in the rear, and the entire seating plan rearranged to give one hundred more seats.”
I don’t know which spelling of Van Derbergh Mr. Vanderberg (or vice-versa) actually used, but since he probably submitted the capsule reviews to EH in his own hand, and surely could have had any errors he saw in print corrected in later issues, I think Van Derbergh is, though unconventional, more likely correct.
The Organ Historical Society’s Pipe Organ Database says that a 2-manuel instrument made by the Robert-Morton company was installed in the Crescent Theatre at Statesville in 1920. Its fate is unknown.
The current opening line of the description is inaccurate. Construction of the Playhouse began in 1926 and the theater opened on February 19, 1927. Although the opening attraction at the fully-equipped house was a stage play, the theater was also equipped to show movies from the beginning, and was one of the four houses listed at Statesville in the 1928 FDY.
The Texas Theatre first appears in the FDY in 1932, a new rival to the town’s 300-seat Astor Theatre. The May 12, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times said: “The Texas will be the name of a new house in Rusk, Texas, put in by Rau & Hughes in opposition to H. C. Houston operating the Astor. Rusk has between 3,000 and 4,000 population.”
A item in a later issue of the same journal says that J. T. Hughes had ordered “…500 beautiful upholstered chairs” for his new theater at Rusk (not quite the 575 seats the 1932 Year Book claimed the house had.) I haven’t found the opening date, but “J. T. Hughes, of the Texas at Rusk, was a recent visitor to the Dallas market and at the TIMES office” according to the December 22, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times.
I’ve been unable to find any references to the Crescent in theater industry trade journals before 1926, when the March 20 issue of Exhibitor Herald reported that its owner, H. A. Gilliland, was having the house remodeled. However, the hand-lettered caption “Home of Mutual Movies” on the vintage photo of the theater shows that it had to have been operating earlier.
The Mutual studio (1913-1918) was absorbed by a company called Robinson-Cole in 1919, which in turn became Film Booking Offices of America (FBO Pictures) in 1922. R-C did use the Mutual name on some releases after taking over the studio in 1919, but I’ve been unable to discover for how long. Still, the photo must have been made before 1922, and is most likely a few years earlier.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory has four listings for Manchester, but two appear to be duplicates: there is a house called the Idle Theatre and a listing for McCormick & Thorpe Idle Theatre. A third listing is for the Model Theatre, which is accounted for.
The name of the house at the Plaza’s eventual address in 1913 must have been either the Idle, for which no location is given, or the fourth listing in the directory, the Lyric Theatre, which was listed on Franklin Street. Whatever its name was in 1915, it was already being called the Plaza in the 1926 FDY, when it was the only theater listed at Manchester.
According to the NRHP registration form for downtown Elkader’s historic district, Harold and Belma Hall, owners and operators of the Rivola Theatre at 119 N. Main Street since 1927, opened the Elkader Theatre in September, 1941 in a commercial building that had been built in 1901. The Elkader and Rivola both continued to be listed in the FDY for several years, with the Rivola listed as closed, but the Year Book listed both with 250 seats, though the Elkader apparently had 400 from the beginning.
The NRHP form says that the Rivola, opened in 1921, was the first movie theater in Elkader, but they missed something. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two houses in the town: The Crystal, located on Main Street, and the Majestic, no location noted. A history of Clayton County published in 1916 says that John L. Flanagan opened the Majestic in 1910. There is a possibility that the Majestic was an aka for the Elkader Opera House, which opened in 1903 at 207 N. Main Street, but I’ve been unable to confirm this.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two theaters at Guttenberg: the Lyric, at 1st and Herder Street, and the Elite, no address provided. Polk’s 1912 Iowa directory lists only one theater at Guttenberg, that being called the Delight.
In 1926, proprietors of the Princess, Hunstad and Becker, were providing capsule movie reviews for Exhibitors Herald.
The 1960 FDY lists the Princess in Guttenberg as one of the 24 houses operated by the Iowa United Theatres chain.
Internet gives this as the address of a chiropractic clinic (Dr. Scott Scherer, DC). I hoped Bing Maps might have a better street view, as they sometimes do, but they don’t have any at all for this location.
The Cozy is the only theater listed at Dyersville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory and is occasionally mentioned, along with the Plaza Theatre, in early trade journal items from the 1910s and 1920s. The only other theater name I’ve found associated with Dyersville is the Nemo, mentioned in issues of Moving Picture World in November and December, 1916, when it was operated by a Mr. A. E. Bennett.
The April 6, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World mentions “J. E. Lippert, of the Plaza theater, Dyersville….” The name Lippert had appeared in that journal before, in the April 17, 1909 issue, which said “Henry and Anthony Lippert have opened a five and ten-cent theater in the Lippert Building.” I’ve been unable to discover if the house opened in 1909 was in fact the Plaza or a different theater. The only theater listed at Dyersville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was the Cozy, but that publication’s listings were frequently incomplete.
The November 7, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News said that H. Lippert was remodeling the Plaza, and had spent $1,500 on new equipment from Exhibitors Supply Company of Des Moines.
The July 9, 1949 Boxoffice said that Bert Coughlin’s new Fine Arts Theatre at Maynard had opened on June 29 with the ballet picture “The Red Shoes.” The article gave the seating capacity of the original single-screen house as 425.
The address and theater name are not mentioned, but items in May, 1913 issues of The American Contractor must be about the Isis, given the descriptions. The project was a building 120x132 feet, with a 600-seat picture theater and five storefronts, fitting the historic photos of the Isis, which the Kokomo Tribune article I previously cited says was built in 1913. The architect for the project was R. L. Young (Robert Lincoln Young, according to another Tribune article.) The owner of the building was F. D. Miller, a very active local real estate developer.
The latest Google street view shows that the Harrison Theatre building has been demolished, along with its neighbor to the east. The buildings were standing but appeared vacant in the August, 2019 street view, but were gone in the most recent view, from April, 2023, which shows them as a construction site. I’ve been unable to discover the date of demolition, or the purpose of the new construction.
Also gone is the building that once housed the Rialto Theatre just down the block, at 17 E. Gay Street, but it had already been replaced by a new building in the earliest street view available, from August, 2007.
Ads that have been uploaded to the Rialto’s photo page indicate that the house was opened at least by 1916, and probably by 1915. This timing makes it likely that the Rialto was the project for a theater and dance hall to cost $30,000 that was noted in the April 28, 1915 issue of The American Architect. The project was deigned by Wilmington, Delaware architect Roscoe C. Tindall.
It turns out that Center is an aka for the Orpheum. The July 18, 1941 issue of Film Daily had the story: “At Ionia, the 350-seat Orpheum, closed for eight years, is being remodeled and modernized and renamed the Center, to be a companion in Butterfield’s 1,000-seat Ionia, only other theater in town.”
The Orpheum was probably closed longer than eight years, though, as its last appearance in the FDY was 1931. The item’s claim of a seating capacity of 350 for the Orpheum is almost certainly an exaggeration. Its last listing in the FDY gave it only 230 seats. It was likely expanded when remodeled as the Center, but not to 350.
The Lyric was the only theater listed at Strawberry Point in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It was mentioned in the trade journals a number of times, and was listed in the FDY’s editions from 1926 through 1931.
A 300-seat house called the Orpheum is first listed at Strawberry Point in the 1932 FDY. Prior to that, the only house listed for the town was the 200-seat Lyric. The Orpheum probably replaced the Lyric sometime during 1931, the last year the Lyric was listed. The Orpheum still operated in 1951, when the January 13 issue of Boxoffice reported that Robert Fridley had recently sold the house, which he had bought in late 1949.
The New Britain Opera House opened on November 24, 1881 with a performance of “Faust.”
The April 24, 1914 issue of American Contractor noted the letting of contracts for a new Elks lodge and theater in Mahanoy City. The three-story, 42x125 foot building had been designed by Reading, Pennsylvania architect Edward Z. Scholl. A couple of sources say that the lodge was dedicated in 1916, but I haven’t found an opening date for the theater.
An article about the new Balboa Theatre in the March 31, 1923 issue of Motion Picture News said that the house had been deigned by Reid Bros., who made it a “…‘rambling’ structure, suggestive of some early California mission….” to fit into its predominantly residential neighborhood. The Balboa was owned by Samuel H. Levin, who operated a number of neighborhood houses in the city, including the Coliseum and the Haight.
The March 24, 1923 issue of Motion Picture Newshad this item about the new Madison Theatre:
I’ve found a 1918 Sanborn map of Statesville, and the only theater it shows is the Crescent. 117 Broad street was at that time occupied by a wholesale grocer. The 1911 reference to the Broadway I found (but have now lost track of) must have been to a different Broadway theatre, perhaps some short-lived storefront nickelodeon. The earliest reference to the Broadway I can find now is from the July 2, 1921 issue of Exhibitors Herald, which is one of several capsule movie reviews submitted to the magazine that year by the Broadway’s manager W. D. Van Derbergh. [sic] The description should be altered to say the house was in operation by 1921.
News of the Broadway’s 1923 remodeling appears in the March 10 issue of Motion Picture News, which ran this item:
I don’t know which spelling of Van Derbergh Mr. Vanderberg (or vice-versa) actually used, but since he probably submitted the capsule reviews to EH in his own hand, and surely could have had any errors he saw in print corrected in later issues, I think Van Derbergh is, though unconventional, more likely correct.The Organ Historical Society’s Pipe Organ Database says that a 2-manuel instrument made by the Robert-Morton company was installed in the Crescent Theatre at Statesville in 1920. Its fate is unknown.
The Crescent was the only theater listed at Statesville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The current opening line of the description is inaccurate. Construction of the Playhouse began in 1926 and the theater opened on February 19, 1927. Although the opening attraction at the fully-equipped house was a stage play, the theater was also equipped to show movies from the beginning, and was one of the four houses listed at Statesville in the 1928 FDY.
The Texas Theatre first appears in the FDY in 1932, a new rival to the town’s 300-seat Astor Theatre. The May 12, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times said: “The Texas will be the name of a new house in Rusk, Texas, put in by Rau & Hughes in opposition to H. C. Houston operating the Astor. Rusk has between 3,000 and 4,000 population.”
A item in a later issue of the same journal says that J. T. Hughes had ordered “…500 beautiful upholstered chairs” for his new theater at Rusk (not quite the 575 seats the 1932 Year Book claimed the house had.) I haven’t found the opening date, but “J. T. Hughes, of the Texas at Rusk, was a recent visitor to the Dallas market and at the TIMES office” according to the December 22, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Times.
I’ve been unable to find any references to the Crescent in theater industry trade journals before 1926, when the March 20 issue of Exhibitor Herald reported that its owner, H. A. Gilliland, was having the house remodeled. However, the hand-lettered caption “Home of Mutual Movies” on the vintage photo of the theater shows that it had to have been operating earlier.
The Mutual studio (1913-1918) was absorbed by a company called Robinson-Cole in 1919, which in turn became Film Booking Offices of America (FBO Pictures) in 1922. R-C did use the Mutual name on some releases after taking over the studio in 1919, but I’ve been unable to discover for how long. Still, the photo must have been made before 1922, and is most likely a few years earlier.
An item about the demolition of the Granada in Boxoffice of November 9, 1957 gave the theater’s seating capacity as 1,274.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory has four listings for Manchester, but two appear to be duplicates: there is a house called the Idle Theatre and a listing for McCormick & Thorpe Idle Theatre. A third listing is for the Model Theatre, which is accounted for.
The name of the house at the Plaza’s eventual address in 1913 must have been either the Idle, for which no location is given, or the fourth listing in the directory, the Lyric Theatre, which was listed on Franklin Street. Whatever its name was in 1915, it was already being called the Plaza in the 1926 FDY, when it was the only theater listed at Manchester.
The Model Theatre survived long enough to be listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
According to the NRHP registration form for downtown Elkader’s historic district, Harold and Belma Hall, owners and operators of the Rivola Theatre at 119 N. Main Street since 1927, opened the Elkader Theatre in September, 1941 in a commercial building that had been built in 1901. The Elkader and Rivola both continued to be listed in the FDY for several years, with the Rivola listed as closed, but the Year Book listed both with 250 seats, though the Elkader apparently had 400 from the beginning.
The NRHP form says that the Rivola, opened in 1921, was the first movie theater in Elkader, but they missed something. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two houses in the town: The Crystal, located on Main Street, and the Majestic, no location noted. A history of Clayton County published in 1916 says that John L. Flanagan opened the Majestic in 1910. There is a possibility that the Majestic was an aka for the Elkader Opera House, which opened in 1903 at 207 N. Main Street, but I’ve been unable to confirm this.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists two theaters at Guttenberg: the Lyric, at 1st and Herder Street, and the Elite, no address provided. Polk’s 1912 Iowa directory lists only one theater at Guttenberg, that being called the Delight.
In 1926, proprietors of the Princess, Hunstad and Becker, were providing capsule movie reviews for Exhibitors Herald.
The 1960 FDY lists the Princess in Guttenberg as one of the 24 houses operated by the Iowa United Theatres chain.
Internet gives this as the address of a chiropractic clinic (Dr. Scott Scherer, DC). I hoped Bing Maps might have a better street view, as they sometimes do, but they don’t have any at all for this location.
The Cozy is the only theater listed at Dyersville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory and is occasionally mentioned, along with the Plaza Theatre, in early trade journal items from the 1910s and 1920s. The only other theater name I’ve found associated with Dyersville is the Nemo, mentioned in issues of Moving Picture World in November and December, 1916, when it was operated by a Mr. A. E. Bennett.
The April 6, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World mentions “J. E. Lippert, of the Plaza theater, Dyersville….” The name Lippert had appeared in that journal before, in the April 17, 1909 issue, which said “Henry and Anthony Lippert have opened a five and ten-cent theater in the Lippert Building.” I’ve been unable to discover if the house opened in 1909 was in fact the Plaza or a different theater. The only theater listed at Dyersville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was the Cozy, but that publication’s listings were frequently incomplete.
The November 7, 1925 issue of Motion Picture News said that H. Lippert was remodeling the Plaza, and had spent $1,500 on new equipment from Exhibitors Supply Company of Des Moines.
The July 9, 1949 Boxoffice said that Bert Coughlin’s new Fine Arts Theatre at Maynard had opened on June 29 with the ballet picture “The Red Shoes.” The article gave the seating capacity of the original single-screen house as 425.