Worcester’s Royal Theatre is mentioned in the June 7, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“The Royal Theatre, seating 800, admission 10 and 15 cents, is a downtown house, under the management of O. S. Reiseroff. He uses Paramount, Select, Triangle, Vitagraph and Universal. Business is fair here.”
This web page has a photo of the entrance of the Park Theatre taken around 1955. An earlier Park Theatre in downtown Worcester was probably gone by the time this house opened in 1937.
National Amusements (Redstone Theatres) took over this house and modernized it in the early 1960s. One source said that it was called Cinema One for a while before being twinned and renamed Webster Square Cinemas.
The Strand Theatre was built by Moe and Mitchel Mark. Their company’s intention to build at Worcester was noted in an item in the April 3, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World. The company had the Strand Theatre at Lynn, Massachusetts, under construction at the time, and the Worcester house was to be about the same size. The item noted that the Lynn Strand had been designed by Thomas Lamb, who was also the architect of the Mark Strand Theatre in Manhattan. Although the item didn’t say so, it is very likely that the Worcester Strand was also designed by Lamb.
A brief piece about Worcester’s theaters in the June 7, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World has a few lines about the Rialto and indicates that it was built in 1918:
“Worcester is another New England town in very good shape; there are about twelve theatres in town doing business, among them being the Bijou, seating 600, admission 6 and 10 cents, and the Rialto, seating 1,200, admission 11 cents. The latter house was erected about one year ago at a cost of $75,000. It is up to date, has a three-piece orchestra and is owned and operated by James J. Greeko, who has made a success in the motion picture business as an exhibitor. I asked Mr. Greeko if he uses newspapers and he informed me that he employs a paper which reaches the working men in his neighborhood.”
This description of the A-Muse-U Theatre from History of Muscatine County, Iowa, by Irving Berdine Richman, was published in 1911, and says that the A-Muse-U opened in February that year, contradicting the 1940 Journal & News-Tribune article I cited in my previous comment which said it opened in 1908:
“The A-Muse-U is a theater given over exclusively to high-class motion pictures. The building, on Sycamore, between Second and Front streets, was opened in February, 1911. This place of amusement has scarcely a rival for beauty and convenience in the country. The front is pleasingly designed in stucco and the interior decorations and accessories are modern and entirely to the tastes and comforts of patrons. 600 people can be seated in the opera chairs and face a spacious stage.”
The book notes that Muscatine then had three other movie theaters, plus the Family Theatre presenting vaudeville and movies, and the Grand Opera House for stage productions and concerts.
This web page about Clinton’s builders and architects says that the Orpheum Theatre was built in 1907 and was designed by architect John H. Ladehoff. Ladehoff also designed the Palace Theatre in Muscatine.
Among the previous few months of theater changes noted in the January 15, 1938, issue of The Film Daily were the opening of the Westby Theatre and the dismantling of the Westby Opera House. Presumably the Opera House had been used as a movie theater and was no longer needed.
As the only photo available is dated 1901 and shows the Auditorium Theatre, I’m not positive that the old building was not replaced at some point. The Auditorium looks to have been a frame structure with the entrance on the long side, which faced Lafayette Street. A very awkward configuration. It’s possible that it was rebuilt at some point, but I haven’t found any references to such an event.
I’ve set street view to match as nearly as possible the historic photo, rather than where the Auditorium actually was just down the block. If it was rebuilt, it’s possible that the Robey Theatre didn’t occupy exactly the same footprint. Both the Auditorium and the small City Building next to it have been demolished.
A History of Pleasants County, West Virginia, by Robert L. Pemberton, says that it was in early 1920 that “…the Auditorium was sold by W. C. Dotson to H. H. Robey of Spencer, who made it one of his chain of motion picture theaters.”
Three pages of historic photos of Muscatine theaters, including a 1940 shot of the original Palace, were published in Muscatine Magazine, issue of Winter, 2012.
I can’t find a direct link to the exact page the article starts on. It only opens to the cover of the magazine. Click the arrow to the right of the cover to turn the page three times to reach the theater article. Click on the image of the magazine itself to enlarge it.
Two photos of Schine’s Milford Theatre illustrate this advertisement for Heywood-Wakefield seating in the September 17, 1949, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review.
The Lyric Theatre in Osceola, Iowa, is mentioned in The Moving Picture World of August 24, 1918. If it was in the same building as the theater in the photo above then it must have been remodeled in the 1930s. It’s also possible that the Lyric got a new building in 1934. The September 8 issue of Motion Picture Herald said “JOHN WALLER is erecting a modern picture theatre in Osceola, Iowa. House will open in early fall.”
The theater description needs correction. This house was opened by Ludy Bosten as the Uptown Theatre on November 4, 1931. The January 7, 1971, issue of the Muscatine Journal said that the Uptown would be renamed Bosten Cinema within two weeks, and that the house was to be extensively remodeled. I haven’t found when it was renamed the Riviera, but it was still called the Bosten Cinema at least as late as November, 1977.
An article in the December 14, 2005, issue of The St. Mary’s Oracle mentions in passing “…the old Auditorium Theater (1902), later Robey Theater.”
The fourth photo on this web page shows the Auditorium Theatre behind the tiny City Building on the corner of Lafayette and Second Streets. The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists the Auditorium as a ground floor house with 290 seats on the main floor, 132 in the balcony, 225 in the gallery and 16 in the boxes. Presumably the gallery and boxes were abandoned when it was converted for movies.
The text accompanying the photo says: “The theatre was in use until about 1953 when the Illar family built a new theatre on the other side of the street at the other end of the same block to the right.” The new theater, called the Center, was actually opened by 1949, when it was featured in the the August 20 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review.
According to the town’s web site, its name is styled St. Marys, without an apostrophe.
This web page, which has the date 7/28/04 at the bottom, has three thumbnails of the demolition of the Rand Theatre, but the full-sized pictures don’t open. A comment by Larry Chapman on the page has this information about the theater:
“…the Rand was built for Kibler R. Roberts and J. Henry Davidson and opened its doors on January 22, 1937. These two gentlemen also owned a second Rand Theatre located in Lynchburg. Greenfield’s Rand was remodeled in 1947.”
As can be seen in the second of the photos kencmcintyre linked to, dated 1983, the Rand Theatre was on the west side of Washington Street adjacent to the alley south of Lafayette Street. The theater’s site is now partly occupied by a drive-through portico for the a single-story brick building on the southwest corner of Lafayette.
Google’s camera car didn’t photograph the location of the Lyric Theatre on its way through Greenfield, Ohio, but here is a bird’s-eye view from Bing Maps. There is still a painted sign on the corner of the building reading “Lyric, Always Good.”
The State Theatre was on the west side of Greenfield’s Courthouse Square. As I have no address for it, it might have been in one of the two surviving commercial buildings on the block, or it might have been under the footprint of Greenfield’s modern City Hall or the small parking lot next to it.
A brief history of Greenfield’s theaters can be found on this web page. When the Weil Theatre opened on November 1, 1946, Greenfield had two other theaters in operation: the State, which closed in 1948, and the Riley, which closed in 1953.
Allen and Linda Strahl, now operators of Greenfield’s nine-screen Legacy Cinema, should be credited with donating this theater for public use.
Bartstar: The new front of the Egyptian Theatre was installed in either late 1949 or early 1950. An article about the remodeling appeared in the March 4, 1950, issue of Boxoffice (first page and second page.) You might also be interested in the Egyptian Theatre street view timeline at Historic Hollywood Theatres.
My subscription to comments on this page got canceled when the site was redesigned a few years ago, so this is the first I’ve seen of the comments from JCL and Ian377.
The El Rey was gone by the time I first visited Paradise in the mid-1970s and had been replaced by the Pine Ridge Theatre on Foster Road, which is now a feed and pet supply store. The Drive-In was still there but had been converted into a swap meet (the remains have since been demolished and a health club has been built on the site.)
It was actually a long time before JCL arrived that the part of The Skyway north of the modern Neal Road intersection was part of Neal Road, but that’s how it is named on old maps. The Skyway from Neal Road to Chico wasn’t built until the early 1950s, and that’s when the section of Neal Road above the current intersection was renamed Skyway.
I’m not sure exactly where the old bowling alley on Skyway was. By the time I arrived the only bowling alley in town was on Clark Road north of Wagstaff, and that building is now gone (its roof collapsed after a heavy snowfall in the late 1980s) and the bowling alley has moved to a new building a few miles farther down Clark.
The old center of town runs from a short way south of Pearson Road northward to Elliott Road. I’m not sure if any of the buildings in that area could be the El Rey’s building remodeled beyond recognition or not. The chances that it is still standing are pretty slim, though.
The October 9, 1909, issue of The Film Index had this description of the Yorkville Hippodrome Theatre:
“YORKVILLE HIPPODROME.
“Handsome picture theatre owned by Alfred Weiss, located at 1499 First avenue, New York City. The
Hippodrome was opened in January, 1909, and cos $21,000 to build. The dimensions are 22 feet 6 inches
front, by 102 feet deep, with an ‘L’ in the rear which gives a width of 39 feet. The auditorium includes a balcony which affords ample seating capacity. There is a commodious stage with a 20-foot opening, with all drops and scenery necessary for vaudeville acts. The lobby is 12 feet deep and brilliantly illuminated. Every possible means of fireproofing the Hippodrome was employed in its construction. The ceiling and walls are of steel and cost $1,600. During the exhibition of pictures the auditorium is made comparatively light by the use of green lamps and shades. Uniformed help add to the general attractiveness of the place. The Hippodrome can be numbered among the best of the modern picture houses.”
A history of Winnebago and Hancock Counties published in 1917 has a brief biography of Forest Secor which says he returned to the town of his birth (his father, Eugene Secor, was the first mayor of Forest City when it incorporated in 1878) in 1916 after having conducted a real estate business in Minnesota for some time, and bought the Forest Theatre.
The “Changes Over Iowa” column of The Moving Picture World, November 3, 1917, had this item:
“Forest City, Ia. — Forest Secor has sold the Forest theater in Forest City to J. P. Weist.”
I don’t know if this item from the February 3 issue of the same publication is about a second theater or if Mr. Secor changed the name of the house he bought after returning in 1916: “FOREST CITY, IA. — Park theater is now being conducted by Secor & Hewitt.”
Forest City had an opera house which the February 26, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World reported had recently been destroyed by a fire. The 350-seat Forest City Opera House was on a list of theaters published in the September 5, 1908,issue of The Billboard. The Forest Theatre might have been built to replace the opera house after it burned, though in 1912 the MPW had reported on plans for another theater that might have been the house that became the Forest: “Forest City, Ia. — J. M. Simmons will open a motion picture theater here.”
John H. Phillips, architect of the Bellevue Theatre, also designed the original building of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.
Worcester’s Royal Theatre is mentioned in the June 7, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World:
This web page has a photo of the entrance of the Park Theatre taken around 1955. An earlier Park Theatre in downtown Worcester was probably gone by the time this house opened in 1937.
National Amusements (Redstone Theatres) took over this house and modernized it in the early 1960s. One source said that it was called Cinema One for a while before being twinned and renamed Webster Square Cinemas.
The Strand Theatre was built by Moe and Mitchel Mark. Their company’s intention to build at Worcester was noted in an item in the April 3, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World. The company had the Strand Theatre at Lynn, Massachusetts, under construction at the time, and the Worcester house was to be about the same size. The item noted that the Lynn Strand had been designed by Thomas Lamb, who was also the architect of the Mark Strand Theatre in Manhattan. Although the item didn’t say so, it is very likely that the Worcester Strand was also designed by Lamb.
A brief piece about Worcester’s theaters in the June 7, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World has a few lines about the Rialto and indicates that it was built in 1918:
This description of the A-Muse-U Theatre from History of Muscatine County, Iowa, by Irving Berdine Richman, was published in 1911, and says that the A-Muse-U opened in February that year, contradicting the 1940 Journal & News-Tribune article I cited in my previous comment which said it opened in 1908:
The book notes that Muscatine then had three other movie theaters, plus the Family Theatre presenting vaudeville and movies, and the Grand Opera House for stage productions and concerts.This item from the July 19, 1913, issue of The American Contractor is probably about the Palace Theatre, which was originally owned by E. M. Henle:
Architect John H. Ladehoff also designed the Orpheum Theatre in Clinton, built in 1907.This web page about Clinton’s builders and architects says that the Orpheum Theatre was built in 1907 and was designed by architect John H. Ladehoff. Ladehoff also designed the Palace Theatre in Muscatine.
Among the previous few months of theater changes noted in the January 15, 1938, issue of The Film Daily were the opening of the Westby Theatre and the dismantling of the Westby Opera House. Presumably the Opera House had been used as a movie theater and was no longer needed.
As the only photo available is dated 1901 and shows the Auditorium Theatre, I’m not positive that the old building was not replaced at some point. The Auditorium looks to have been a frame structure with the entrance on the long side, which faced Lafayette Street. A very awkward configuration. It’s possible that it was rebuilt at some point, but I haven’t found any references to such an event.
I’ve set street view to match as nearly as possible the historic photo, rather than where the Auditorium actually was just down the block. If it was rebuilt, it’s possible that the Robey Theatre didn’t occupy exactly the same footprint. Both the Auditorium and the small City Building next to it have been demolished.
A History of Pleasants County, West Virginia, by Robert L. Pemberton, says that it was in early 1920 that “…the Auditorium was sold by W. C. Dotson to H. H. Robey of Spencer, who made it one of his chain of motion picture theaters.”
Three pages of historic photos of Muscatine theaters, including a 1940 shot of the original Palace, were published in Muscatine Magazine, issue of Winter, 2012.
I can’t find a direct link to the exact page the article starts on. It only opens to the cover of the magazine. Click the arrow to the right of the cover to turn the page three times to reach the theater article. Click on the image of the magazine itself to enlarge it.
Two photos of Schine’s Milford Theatre illustrate this advertisement for Heywood-Wakefield seating in the September 17, 1949, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review.
The Lyric Theatre in Osceola, Iowa, is mentioned in The Moving Picture World of August 24, 1918. If it was in the same building as the theater in the photo above then it must have been remodeled in the 1930s. It’s also possible that the Lyric got a new building in 1934. The September 8 issue of Motion Picture Herald said “JOHN WALLER is erecting a modern picture theatre in Osceola, Iowa. House will open in early fall.”
The theater description needs correction. This house was opened by Ludy Bosten as the Uptown Theatre on November 4, 1931. The January 7, 1971, issue of the Muscatine Journal said that the Uptown would be renamed Bosten Cinema within two weeks, and that the house was to be extensively remodeled. I haven’t found when it was renamed the Riviera, but it was still called the Bosten Cinema at least as late as November, 1977.
An article in the December 14, 2005, issue of The St. Mary’s Oracle mentions in passing “…the old Auditorium Theater (1902), later Robey Theater.”
The fourth photo on this web page shows the Auditorium Theatre behind the tiny City Building on the corner of Lafayette and Second Streets. The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists the Auditorium as a ground floor house with 290 seats on the main floor, 132 in the balcony, 225 in the gallery and 16 in the boxes. Presumably the gallery and boxes were abandoned when it was converted for movies.
The text accompanying the photo says: “The theatre was in use until about 1953 when the Illar family built a new theatre on the other side of the street at the other end of the same block to the right.” The new theater, called the Center, was actually opened by 1949, when it was featured in the the August 20 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review.
According to the town’s web site, its name is styled St. Marys, without an apostrophe.
This page of Showmen’s Trade Review for August 20, 1949, features six photos of the Miracle Theatre.
This page from Showmen’s Trade Review of August 20, 1949, features five photos of the RKO Orpheum Theatre in Marshalltown.
This web page, which has the date 7/28/04 at the bottom, has three thumbnails of the demolition of the Rand Theatre, but the full-sized pictures don’t open. A comment by Larry Chapman on the page has this information about the theater:
As can be seen in the second of the photos kencmcintyre linked to, dated 1983, the Rand Theatre was on the west side of Washington Street adjacent to the alley south of Lafayette Street. The theater’s site is now partly occupied by a drive-through portico for the a single-story brick building on the southwest corner of Lafayette.Google’s camera car didn’t photograph the location of the Lyric Theatre on its way through Greenfield, Ohio, but here is a bird’s-eye view from Bing Maps. There is still a painted sign on the corner of the building reading “Lyric, Always Good.”
The State Theatre was on the west side of Greenfield’s Courthouse Square. As I have no address for it, it might have been in one of the two surviving commercial buildings on the block, or it might have been under the footprint of Greenfield’s modern City Hall or the small parking lot next to it.
A brief history of Greenfield’s theaters can be found on this web page. When the Weil Theatre opened on November 1, 1946, Greenfield had two other theaters in operation: the State, which closed in 1948, and the Riley, which closed in 1953.
Allen and Linda Strahl, now operators of Greenfield’s nine-screen Legacy Cinema, should be credited with donating this theater for public use.
Bartstar: The new front of the Egyptian Theatre was installed in either late 1949 or early 1950. An article about the remodeling appeared in the March 4, 1950, issue of Boxoffice (first page and second page.) You might also be interested in the Egyptian Theatre street view timeline at Historic Hollywood Theatres.
My subscription to comments on this page got canceled when the site was redesigned a few years ago, so this is the first I’ve seen of the comments from JCL and Ian377.
The El Rey was gone by the time I first visited Paradise in the mid-1970s and had been replaced by the Pine Ridge Theatre on Foster Road, which is now a feed and pet supply store. The Drive-In was still there but had been converted into a swap meet (the remains have since been demolished and a health club has been built on the site.)
It was actually a long time before JCL arrived that the part of The Skyway north of the modern Neal Road intersection was part of Neal Road, but that’s how it is named on old maps. The Skyway from Neal Road to Chico wasn’t built until the early 1950s, and that’s when the section of Neal Road above the current intersection was renamed Skyway.
I’m not sure exactly where the old bowling alley on Skyway was. By the time I arrived the only bowling alley in town was on Clark Road north of Wagstaff, and that building is now gone (its roof collapsed after a heavy snowfall in the late 1980s) and the bowling alley has moved to a new building a few miles farther down Clark.
The old center of town runs from a short way south of Pearson Road northward to Elliott Road. I’m not sure if any of the buildings in that area could be the El Rey’s building remodeled beyond recognition or not. The chances that it is still standing are pretty slim, though.
The October 9, 1909, issue of The Film Index had this description of the Yorkville Hippodrome Theatre:
A history of Winnebago and Hancock Counties published in 1917 has a brief biography of Forest Secor which says he returned to the town of his birth (his father, Eugene Secor, was the first mayor of Forest City when it incorporated in 1878) in 1916 after having conducted a real estate business in Minnesota for some time, and bought the Forest Theatre.
The “Changes Over Iowa” column of The Moving Picture World, November 3, 1917, had this item:
I don’t know if this item from the February 3 issue of the same publication is about a second theater or if Mr. Secor changed the name of the house he bought after returning in 1916: “FOREST CITY, IA. — Park theater is now being conducted by Secor & Hewitt.”Forest City had an opera house which the February 26, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World reported had recently been destroyed by a fire. The 350-seat Forest City Opera House was on a list of theaters published in the September 5, 1908,issue of The Billboard. The Forest Theatre might have been built to replace the opera house after it burned, though in 1912 the MPW had reported on plans for another theater that might have been the house that became the Forest: “Forest City, Ia. — J. M. Simmons will open a motion picture theater here.”
John H. Phillips, architect of the Bellevue Theatre, also designed the original building of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.