Excerpts of items published in the Centennial edition of the Muscatine Journal & News-Tribune, May 31, 1940, includes this information about the A-Muse-U Theatre:
“The A-Muse-U theater was first opened by E. M. Henle in 1908, in a new building erected by Adam Van Dresky at 103 Sycamore street.
“Mr. Henle had previously operated the bijou on West Second street, which was the first moving picture theater in Muscatine. He ran the A-Muse-U until 1914 when he built the Palace theater and sold the former to Ludy Bosten and George Neipert, who had previously operated the Princess theater on East Second street.
“Later Mr. Neipert dropped out of the business, and Mr. Bosten continued to run the A-Muse-U until October of 1931, when he sold out to C. J. Jamison, the present proprietor.”
A section about the A-Muse-U Theatre on this web page says that E. M. Henley built the Palace Theatre in 1914. The Palace Theatre was listed at 212 Sycamore Street in the 1916 Muscatine city directory.
An item about the Uptown Theatre on this web page says that the Princess Theatre opened on May 30, 1912. The page says that partners Ludy Bosten and George Niebert ran the Princess for about ten years, but another source says that it had closed by 1919. An inventory of historic buildings prepared for the State Historical Society (PDF here) says of the property at 227 E. Second Street:
“From 1913 to 1916 the Princess Theater, an early motion picture theater was here. The Princess Theater was opened by George Neibert and Ludy Bosten. An ad article from the Annual Edition of the 1913 Muscatine Journal claims ‘they have connections with the best of Film Companies in the business and they have shown a very keen business management by introducing pictures that are so poplar in all the larger cities through the United States.’ The article shows an elaborate arched recessed entrance to the theater and indicates ‘with an airy, well ventilated clean play house these two young men have built up a reputation among the movie goers of this city during their career in Muscatine. With their variety of quality films, and well balanced programs and with the best and latest projecting devices will sure mean another successful year to the young proprietors of the well known theatre.’ (Muscatine Journal Annual Edition, December 13, 1913, pages unnumbered). Unfortunately, their business did not last with the Princess Theatre out of business by 1919.”
The Gayety Theatre was listed at 303 E. Second Street in 1919. I’ve found it mentioned in the local newspaper as early as October, 1916, and as late as 1920.
The Crystal Theatre is listed with 300 seats in FDY’s from 1926 through 1932, vanishes in 1933 and 1934, and reappears in 1935 with 400 seats. It is last listed in 1947.
This house was last known as the Riviera Theatre. Compare the photo of the Uptown above with these photos of the Riviera at the time of its demolition. Same building, same marquee, different name.
Our page for the Riviera Theatre might or might not be a duplication. Its description says that it was once the Majestic Theatre, and reopened as the Riviera in 1929. If that’s the case, then it must have closed soon after being renamed, if it ever existed. I haven’t found the name Riviera Theatre mentioned in any Muscatine newspaper items until after the Uptown had been renamed Riviera.
A comment on this forum page at Topix says that this house was the Uptown from the 1930s until the late 1960s or early 1970s, then became the Bosten Cinema until finally being renamed the Riviera.
This web page cites items from a 1940 issue of the Muscatine Journal & Neww-Tribune, and the part about the Uptown Theatre says that it opened on November 4, 1931. !940 being closer to the event than the 1962 Boxoffice article I cited in my earlier comment, I’d say that 1931 is probably the correct opening year.
This page at Quad Cities Online cites a newspaper item from August 2, 1929: “The remodeled Riviera Theater, formerly the Majestic, reopened today.”
The newspaper was probably the Rock Island Argus, since merged with the Moline Dispatch, but the page doesn’t say. I can’t find evidence that any of the other Quad Cities had a Riviera Theatre.
The May 25, 1945, issue of the Muscatine Journal said that the new Palace Theatre would open on May 29. One courtesy advertisement congratulated the Bosten family on their new theater, so they were the owners even then.
The October 24, 1914, issue of The New York Clipper said that I. Berman was building a moving picture theater at 1 S. High Street in Baltimore. The architect for the project was John Freund, Jr..
The July 4, 1917, issue of The American Contractor said that W. H. McElfatrick was drawing plans for the Stratford Theatre at Poughkeepsie. The house was to be 55 x 134 feet, and was owned by the Elgar Company. The March 23, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Stratford had opened on January 21. The 1,500-seat house had cost $100,000.
I believe this house went back to its original name in its last years. An article in the March 1, 1965, issue of the Amsterdam, New York Evening Recorder said that the Fort Plain Theatre, which had been closed for some months, had been bought by the Fort Plain Merchants Association, and title had been conveyed to the Village Board so that the building could be demolished to make way for a public parking lot.
The house probably closed in the latter part of 1964, and the building was demolished in 1965.
The Strand Theatre has been demolished. There are what appears to be five two-story buildings along the section of the square where the theater once stood, but if you look at the back of the structure from SW 1st Street you can see that it is one long, modern building.
In 1919, 2501 Lagrange Street was the location of a 733-seat house called the Savoy Theatre. Later, the name Savoy was moved to a smaller house on Lagrange. I don’t know what then became of the Orpheum/Savoy. Richard Abel says the Orpheum on Lagrange opened in 1910.
According to John Phelan’s Motion Pictures As a Phase of Commercial Amusement in Toledo, Ohio, in 1919 the Superior Street Orpheum had 664 seats and twenty employees, eight male and twelve female. That was not only a fairly high employee-to-seat ratio, but a very high female-to-male ratio. It makes me wonder if the Orpheum could have been a burlesque house at the time.
The March 6, 1915, issue of The Construction News said that Davenport architectural firm Clausen & Cruse had been hired to draw plans for the expansion and remodeling of the Family Theatre.
Richard Abel’s Americanizing the Movies and Movie-Mad Audiences, 1910-1914 mentions the Hart Theatre showing several Éclair features in December, 1912. But the theater might have been open a few years by then. It was owned by the Hart family, and the obituary of Harvey Hart in the October 6, 1946, issue of The Billboard (Google Books scan) said that in 1908 the family had theaters in Toledo, Marion, and Columbus, Ohio. The family moved to California in 1916 and operated a dramatic stock company in Long Beach. From 1926 to 1930, Harvey Hart presented the Hart Players in Pasadena. In later years he was a theater manager, working last for the Edwards circuit.
For some reason, the 1926 and 1927 editions of Film Daily Yearbook list the Hart Theatre at 650 Summit Street, but there are a lot of reminiscences on the Internet that suggest that the house never moved. Most likely 605 was the correct address, and FDY just repeated the wrong address year after year. From 1928 through 1931 it lists 650 Summit as the address of the 650-seat Summit Theatre. The house might have been renamed, but nobody in Toledo seems to remember that. Newspaper articles from years later mentioning the theater always call it the Hart.
One of those articles is a column in the June 9, 1953, issue of The Toledo Blade which features an interview with band leader Ted Lewis. Lewis got his start in show business at the Hart Theatre in the 1910s, and the article devotes a few brief paragraphs to his experience there. Google News has it, but won’t provide a link to the article itself. This link will display an adjacent article. Just scroll across the page to the right to the column headed “Mitch Woodbury Reports” to read it.
This page from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis says that St. Louis architects Harry G. Clymer and Francis Drischler designed the Shubert Theatre in Denver.
The entry for the Colorado-Yule Marble Company in the 1913 edition of Sweet’s Catalog of Building Construction lists the Shubert Theatre Building in Denver among recent projects using the company’s products, and that list also attributes the design to Clymer & Drischler.
Interestingly, the Princess Theatre in St. Louis, also designed by Clymer & Drischler, was built by an outfit called the McClure Construction Company. A Frank P. McClure Construction company was operating in Kansas City around this time, and I suspect that the Denver Public Library, whose photo of the Denham Building is the most likely source for our current attribution of this theater to McClure, mistook the contractor on the project for the architect.
This page from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis has a brief biography of architect Harry G. Clymer who, with partner Francis Drischler, designed the Princess Theatre. At the bottom of the page is a longitudinal section of the theater. The page notes that Clymer & Drischler also designed the Shubert Theatre in Denver.
Rochester’s Downtown, by Donovan A. Shilling (Google Books preview) says that this house opened as the National Theatre on May 18, 1903. However, the January 3, 1903, issue of the Lockport Journal mentioned a play that had opened at the National on New Year’s Day. I don’t know if that means the house opened earlier, or if Rochester had an earlier theater of the same name.
The July 15, 1902, issue of The Plumbers' Trade Journal said that the construction contract for the National Theatre called for completion of the structure by October 1. If that goal was met, and assuming at least another month for outfitting and decorating, the National Theatre could have opened as early as November, 1902.
The magazine also noted that the National Theatre had been designed (not surprisingly) by Rochester’s own noted theater architects, Leon H. Lempert & Son.
This circa 1908 photo of Main Street shows that the National Theatre was fronted by a building that, judging from its architectural style, was probably built in the 1850s or 1860s. A new auditorium was most likely built behind the existing commercial building, though it’s also possible that the existing building was gutted and its interior rebuilt as a theater.
The July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item that was probably about this theater:
“Middlesboro, Ky. — The Brown Amusement Company has let contracts to R. L. Brown, of Middlesboro, for the construction of the new theater building to be used as a combined theater and business block. R. F. Graf & Son, of Knoxville, Tenn., are the architects. Prices have been asked on seats, indirect fixtures, four art doors, etc. The house will cost about $15,000.”
This photo of the Brownie Theatre shows a two-story building with a separate door for upstairs offices, and it’s about the right size to have cost $15,000 in 1916.
The theater at 4813-4819 N. Broad Street was also known as the Logan Theatre, according to this page at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. The page suggests that the name was changed to Broad Theatre around 1928, but it was probably 1924, when the new (and much larger) Logan Theatre was opened nearby.
PA&B attributes the original design of this theater to the firm of Stuckert & Sloan, citing an item in the the February 5, 1913, issue of Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide which said that contracts for the project had been let. An item in the April 5, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World also attributes the design to Stuckert & Sloan:
“Philadelphia, Pa. — Plans are being prepared by architects Stuckert & Sloan, Crozer Building, for a one-story brick moving picture theater at Broad and Louden Streets for the Logan Amusement Co. The building will measure 34 x 109, be finished in terra cotta, have tile and slag roofing and equipped with electric lighting and steam heat.”
However, there appears to have been a delay of almost two years before the project actually got underway, and the January 9, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item:
“Theater: 1 sty. & bas. $15M. 4819 N. Broad st. Archt. M. Haupt, Drexel bldg. Owner Logan Amusement Co., care archt. Archt. ready for bids abt. Jan. 11. Brk., Ind. limestone, conc, slag rf., galv. iron cornice, struct. iron.”
Although another page at PA&B attributes the design of the project to Anderson & Haupt, the site also says that that firm was dissolved in 1914. I think it is also significant that the 1915 American Contractor notice mentions only Haupt.
The fact that Max Haupt was the engineer in the firm (and in later years appears as an engineer on a number of other projects) suggests to me that, when the Logan Theatre project was resumed in early 1915, Haupt alone was brought in to supervise construction of the design made by Stuckert & Sloan in 1913, and to make any changes in the plans that might have been needed during construction. This is much more likely than that the Logan Amusement Company would have had entirely new plans prepared. The firm of Stuckert & Sloan was itself dissolved in 1915, and their impending dissolution might have been what prevented them from resuming work the project themselves.
The April 2, 1913, issue of The American Architect said that Philadelphia architects Stuckert & Sloan had filed plans for alterations to a five-story moving picture theater on Broadway at 31st Street in New York City. The project was budgeted at $15,000 and the client was the Joseph Weschler estate.
Excerpts of items published in the Centennial edition of the Muscatine Journal & News-Tribune, May 31, 1940, includes this information about the A-Muse-U Theatre:
A section about the A-Muse-U Theatre on this web page says that E. M. Henley built the Palace Theatre in 1914. The Palace Theatre was listed at 212 Sycamore Street in the 1916 Muscatine city directory.
An item about the Uptown Theatre on this web page says that the Princess Theatre opened on May 30, 1912. The page says that partners Ludy Bosten and George Niebert ran the Princess for about ten years, but another source says that it had closed by 1919. An inventory of historic buildings prepared for the State Historical Society (PDF here) says of the property at 227 E. Second Street:
The Gayety Theatre was listed at 303 E. Second Street in 1919. I’ve found it mentioned in the local newspaper as early as October, 1916, and as late as 1920.
The Crystal Theatre is listed with 300 seats in FDY’s from 1926 through 1932, vanishes in 1933 and 1934, and reappears in 1935 with 400 seats. It is last listed in 1947.
This house was last known as the Riviera Theatre. Compare the photo of the Uptown above with these photos of the Riviera at the time of its demolition. Same building, same marquee, different name.
Our page for the Riviera Theatre might or might not be a duplication. Its description says that it was once the Majestic Theatre, and reopened as the Riviera in 1929. If that’s the case, then it must have closed soon after being renamed, if it ever existed. I haven’t found the name Riviera Theatre mentioned in any Muscatine newspaper items until after the Uptown had been renamed Riviera.
A comment on this forum page at Topix says that this house was the Uptown from the 1930s until the late 1960s or early 1970s, then became the Bosten Cinema until finally being renamed the Riviera.
This web page cites items from a 1940 issue of the Muscatine Journal & Neww-Tribune, and the part about the Uptown Theatre says that it opened on November 4, 1931. !940 being closer to the event than the 1962 Boxoffice article I cited in my earlier comment, I’d say that 1931 is probably the correct opening year.
This page at Quad Cities Online cites a newspaper item from August 2, 1929: “The remodeled Riviera Theater, formerly the Majestic, reopened today.”
The newspaper was probably the Rock Island Argus, since merged with the Moline Dispatch, but the page doesn’t say. I can’t find evidence that any of the other Quad Cities had a Riviera Theatre.
I’ve found references to the Family Theatre at this address as late as 1928.
The May 25, 1945, issue of the Muscatine Journal said that the new Palace Theatre would open on May 29. One courtesy advertisement congratulated the Bosten family on their new theater, so they were the owners even then.
Preservation Idaho has this page with photos of the Key Bank building before, during, and after the restoration project.
The October 24, 1914, issue of The New York Clipper said that I. Berman was building a moving picture theater at 1 S. High Street in Baltimore. The architect for the project was John Freund, Jr..
The July 4, 1917, issue of The American Contractor said that W. H. McElfatrick was drawing plans for the Stratford Theatre at Poughkeepsie. The house was to be 55 x 134 feet, and was owned by the Elgar Company. The March 23, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Stratford had opened on January 21. The 1,500-seat house had cost $100,000.
I believe this house went back to its original name in its last years. An article in the March 1, 1965, issue of the Amsterdam, New York Evening Recorder said that the Fort Plain Theatre, which had been closed for some months, had been bought by the Fort Plain Merchants Association, and title had been conveyed to the Village Board so that the building could be demolished to make way for a public parking lot.
The house probably closed in the latter part of 1964, and the building was demolished in 1965.
An article about the Lake Theatre appeared in Boxoffice of February 3, 1940.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
The house was more Streamline Modern than Art Deco.
The Strand Theatre has been demolished. There are what appears to be five two-story buildings along the section of the square where the theater once stood, but if you look at the back of the structure from SW 1st Street you can see that it is one long, modern building.
A photo of the Village Theatre’s concession stand appeared on the cover of the “Modern Theatre” section of Boxoffice, November 9, 1964.
In 1919, 2501 Lagrange Street was the location of a 733-seat house called the Savoy Theatre. Later, the name Savoy was moved to a smaller house on Lagrange. I don’t know what then became of the Orpheum/Savoy. Richard Abel says the Orpheum on Lagrange opened in 1910.
According to John Phelan’s Motion Pictures As a Phase of Commercial Amusement in Toledo, Ohio, in 1919 the Superior Street Orpheum had 664 seats and twenty employees, eight male and twelve female. That was not only a fairly high employee-to-seat ratio, but a very high female-to-male ratio. It makes me wonder if the Orpheum could have been a burlesque house at the time.
The March 6, 1915, issue of The Construction News said that Davenport architectural firm Clausen & Cruse had been hired to draw plans for the expansion and remodeling of the Family Theatre.
A 250-seat Palm Theatre is at 117 Paine Street on a list of theaters in Toledo that was published in 1919.
Richard Abel’s Americanizing the Movies and Movie-Mad Audiences, 1910-1914 mentions the Hart Theatre showing several Éclair features in December, 1912. But the theater might have been open a few years by then. It was owned by the Hart family, and the obituary of Harvey Hart in the October 6, 1946, issue of The Billboard (Google Books scan) said that in 1908 the family had theaters in Toledo, Marion, and Columbus, Ohio. The family moved to California in 1916 and operated a dramatic stock company in Long Beach. From 1926 to 1930, Harvey Hart presented the Hart Players in Pasadena. In later years he was a theater manager, working last for the Edwards circuit.
For some reason, the 1926 and 1927 editions of Film Daily Yearbook list the Hart Theatre at 650 Summit Street, but there are a lot of reminiscences on the Internet that suggest that the house never moved. Most likely 605 was the correct address, and FDY just repeated the wrong address year after year. From 1928 through 1931 it lists 650 Summit as the address of the 650-seat Summit Theatre. The house might have been renamed, but nobody in Toledo seems to remember that. Newspaper articles from years later mentioning the theater always call it the Hart.
One of those articles is a column in the June 9, 1953, issue of The Toledo Blade which features an interview with band leader Ted Lewis. Lewis got his start in show business at the Hart Theatre in the 1910s, and the article devotes a few brief paragraphs to his experience there. Google News has it, but won’t provide a link to the article itself. This link will display an adjacent article. Just scroll across the page to the right to the column headed “Mitch Woodbury Reports” to read it.
The Hart Theatre building was demolished in 1967.
This page from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis says that St. Louis architects Harry G. Clymer and Francis Drischler designed the Shubert Theatre in Denver.
The entry for the Colorado-Yule Marble Company in the 1913 edition of Sweet’s Catalog of Building Construction lists the Shubert Theatre Building in Denver among recent projects using the company’s products, and that list also attributes the design to Clymer & Drischler.
Interestingly, the Princess Theatre in St. Louis, also designed by Clymer & Drischler, was built by an outfit called the McClure Construction Company. A Frank P. McClure Construction company was operating in Kansas City around this time, and I suspect that the Denver Public Library, whose photo of the Denham Building is the most likely source for our current attribution of this theater to McClure, mistook the contractor on the project for the architect.
This page from the Landmarks Association of St. Louis has a brief biography of architect Harry G. Clymer who, with partner Francis Drischler, designed the Princess Theatre. At the bottom of the page is a longitudinal section of the theater. The page notes that Clymer & Drischler also designed the Shubert Theatre in Denver.
Rochester’s Downtown, by Donovan A. Shilling (Google Books preview) says that this house opened as the National Theatre on May 18, 1903. However, the January 3, 1903, issue of the Lockport Journal mentioned a play that had opened at the National on New Year’s Day. I don’t know if that means the house opened earlier, or if Rochester had an earlier theater of the same name.
The July 15, 1902, issue of The Plumbers' Trade Journal said that the construction contract for the National Theatre called for completion of the structure by October 1. If that goal was met, and assuming at least another month for outfitting and decorating, the National Theatre could have opened as early as November, 1902.
The magazine also noted that the National Theatre had been designed (not surprisingly) by Rochester’s own noted theater architects, Leon H. Lempert & Son.
This circa 1908 photo of Main Street shows that the National Theatre was fronted by a building that, judging from its architectural style, was probably built in the 1850s or 1860s. A new auditorium was most likely built behind the existing commercial building, though it’s also possible that the existing building was gutted and its interior rebuilt as a theater.
The July 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had an item that was probably about this theater:
This photo of the Brownie Theatre shows a two-story building with a separate door for upstairs offices, and it’s about the right size to have cost $15,000 in 1916.The theater at 4813-4819 N. Broad Street was also known as the Logan Theatre, according to this page at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. The page suggests that the name was changed to Broad Theatre around 1928, but it was probably 1924, when the new (and much larger) Logan Theatre was opened nearby.
PA&B attributes the original design of this theater to the firm of Stuckert & Sloan, citing an item in the the February 5, 1913, issue of Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide which said that contracts for the project had been let. An item in the April 5, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World also attributes the design to Stuckert & Sloan:
However, there appears to have been a delay of almost two years before the project actually got underway, and the January 9, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item:Although another page at PA&B attributes the design of the project to Anderson & Haupt, the site also says that that firm was dissolved in 1914. I think it is also significant that the 1915 American Contractor notice mentions only Haupt.The fact that Max Haupt was the engineer in the firm (and in later years appears as an engineer on a number of other projects) suggests to me that, when the Logan Theatre project was resumed in early 1915, Haupt alone was brought in to supervise construction of the design made by Stuckert & Sloan in 1913, and to make any changes in the plans that might have been needed during construction. This is much more likely than that the Logan Amusement Company would have had entirely new plans prepared. The firm of Stuckert & Sloan was itself dissolved in 1915, and their impending dissolution might have been what prevented them from resuming work the project themselves.
The April 2, 1913, issue of The American Architect said that Philadelphia architects Stuckert & Sloan had filed plans for alterations to a five-story moving picture theater on Broadway at 31st Street in New York City. The project was budgeted at $15,000 and the client was the Joseph Weschler estate.