Alvin Theatre

A copy of the photo above is part of a collage of historic Cleveland photos adorning a stone bench that is on the sidewalk next to Quicken Loans Arena on East 6th Street as you walk towards Bolivar Road and Progressive Field (where the Indians play ball).

That copy of the photo has a handwritten caption at the bottom: “Cleveland’s first nickelodeon Ontario St., across from the old market house, 1913 (CP)”.

Wow, the address of where the Alvin had been is nearby the bench (assuming today’s address scheme is the same as 1913) if you make a right from East 6th Street onto Bolivar Road or Eagle Avenue and walk to Ontario Street. (Nothing there now.)

Historic Movie Theaters of Downtown Cleveland, by Alan F. Dutka, gives a bit of the history of the Alvin. It began as a 50-seat nickelodeon, but the owner later rented a space next door formerly occupied by a saloon, demolished the wall, and expanded.

The opening date is not given, but if the Alvin was indeed Cleveland’s first nickelodeon, it must have opened very early in the 20th century. Nickel movie theaters were fairly common even before the word nickelodeon was first applied to them, around the time John P. Harris opened his Nickelodeon in Pittsburgh in June, 1905. Dutka says that the Alvin closed in 1926.

I have an invoice from The People’s Film Exchange stating my grandfather purchased the Alvin Theatre in September of 1908.