The 1914 edition of Gus Hill’s theatrical guide lists four motion picture theaters at Rockford, including a 200-seat, five cent house called the Lyric, operated by an Albin G. Hoof. The house is also listed in the 1914-1915 AMPD.
An item datelined Little Rock in the March 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon says that “[t]he Jo Jo Moving Picture theater, 222 Main street, has been enlarged and fitted up with new chairs. J. E. England is manager.”
One source says this house opened around 1930 as the Little Roxy Theatre. It was one of the smallest theaters downtown, but was much admired as Little Rock’s leading house for fans of western movies. It closed around 1955, at the dawn of the wide screen era.
The Crystal Theatre was listed at 118 W. 2nd Street in the 1914-1915 AMPD, but later that year the building at that address became the home of the Crescent Theatre, and the Crystal decamped, apparently to 723 S. Main Street, a building which became the Rialto Theatre in 1924. I believe that the photo I’m seeing above does indeed depict the house at 118 2nd, and should be moved to the Crescent Theatre page. This page is, I fear, now redundant, and the venerable name Crystal Theatre, dating back in Little Rock as far as 1908, must be reduced to mere aka’s on the Crescent and Rialto pages. Alas, poor Crystal, we hardly knew ye!
This house might have become the Lyric as early as 1908. The house at 118 W. 2nd Street that became the Crescent Theatre in 1914 had previously housed the Crystal Theatre since 1908, and prior to that had been the location of a Lyric Theatre. I don’t have proof that the Lyric listed at 511 Main in the 1914-1915 AMPD was the same Lyric that had operated at 118 W. 2nd until 1908, but it’s definitely a possibility.
Prior to the November, 1914 opening of the Crescent Theatre, the building at 118 W. 2nd Street had been occupied since 1908 by the Crystal Theatre, which moved to another location I haven’t been able to discover.
According to a history of Little Rock’s downtown theaters on this web page, even earlier the building had housed the Lyric Theatre, which by 1914 had moved to 511 Main Street (presumably in 1908, when the Crystal opened at 118.)
As for the Crescent, it closed on January 21, 1956. Most likely it was another victim of the cost (and spatial needs) of converting theaters to present wide-screen processes.
Two different theaters are currently conflated on this page. The house at 712 W. Ninth Street was an African-American house opened in 1922 as the Nesbitt Theatre. In 1923 it became the Plaza Theater, and in 1934 it was renamed the Metropolitan. It finally became the Gem in 1936, and operated under that name until closing in 1968.
We need another page for the earlier Gem Theatre, which opened on September 5, 1910, at 113 W. Third Street. It was a ten cent silent movie house that burned down in February, 1929.
Opened on April 2, 1906, the Majestic billed itself as “the home of classy vaudeville” It was still advertising vaudeville in January, 1914, but was also listed that year in the American Motion Picture Directory.
A history of Little Rock’s movie houses on this web page says that the Princess opened at 122 W. Markham Street on March 18, 1909. It also says the house closed a few months later following a fire and “apparently never reopened,” but that can’t be right, as the Princess is listed at 120 W. Markham in the 1914-1915 AMPD. An ad for the theater said that it was located in the Old City Hall building. The municipal government moved into a new City Hall in April, 1908, freeing up the 1867 building at 120-122 Markham for conversion.
Little Rock’s Palace Theatre was designed by architect S. C. P. Vosper. Samuel Charles Phelps Vosper, after attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, had apprenticed in several New York City architectural firms, and studied theater design under Theodore Van Crua, designer of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
In 1913, he joined the Famous Players-Lasky company and spent the next seven years traveling around the country designing movie theaters, the Palace having been one of his earliest projects for the chain, if not the first. Many of the architects with whom he had studied in New York had been graduates of the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, and the influence of that institution’s program was certainly on full display in the splendid Palace.
If this house was still in operation in the 1920s, then it had to have been a replacement for the original Capital. The Capital is the first house shown on this web page about Little Rock’s theater history, and it says that the Capital opened as a legitimate house on September 11, 1883 and was burned down on February 11, 1913. The page doesn’t mention any rebuilding or later history.
This web page has a list of historic businesses in Johnstown. It places the Park Theatre at 425 Main Street. It also lists the Knights of Pythias Temple at 427 Main Street. This is significant due to this item from the October 27, 1917 issue of Motography:
“Enlarging Johnstown House
“The firm of Sherer & Kelly has taken a lease from the Pythian Temple Association of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on the theater on the first floor of the Pythian Temple building. Work has been started to enlarge the theater from its present seating capacity of 500 to 1,000. It is planned to throw the new Temple Theater, as it is to be called, open to the public about the first of the year.”
I’ve been unable to discover if this house ever operated under the proposed name of Temple Theatre, nor have I discovered the name of the predecessor theater in the same building, but I have seen a photo (Facebook) of the Park Theatre confirming that it was indeed on the ground floor of the Pythian Temple Building.
The November 8, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions a Casino Theatre at McPherson. It was operated by an A. E. Oelrich. The October 15, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon said that “Will Strahan will open a new moving picture show at McPherson.”
Howard Collins was noted as the proprietor of the Isis Theatre in the March 8, 1912 issue of the McPherson Weekly Republican.
I don’t know that any of these items had to do with the theater in the Capitol Block, but I’ll leave them here just in case.
If the State Theatre was in the middle building in the photo above, then its address was either 215 or 217 N. State Street. The State, part of the Frisina Amusement Company chain, was listed with 450 seats in FDYs from 1940 to 1948, but in every edition I’ve checked it was listed as closed. I haven’t found any mentions of the State in trade journals, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter. CinemaTour lists it, without an address and, oddly, lists a Royal Theatre (with the aka Millers Theater) at 215 No. State. I haven’t found the names Royal or Millers in connection with Litchfield anywhere else.
A 1910 Sanborn map shows “Moving Pictures” in the building at 211 N. State, but by 1925, the date of the next Sanborn available online, the only theater shown is the Gem/Capitol. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists only a house called the Grand at Litchfield, which might have been the theater at 211 State. CinemaTour doesn’t list the Grand, but does list a house (without an address) called the Lyric operating from 1911 to 1919. The Lyric at least is mentioned in the July 10, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World.
A centennial history of Litchfield published in 1953 has this paragraph: “In 1938 the Frisina Amusement Company built the Ritz Theatre, a 400 seat house on State Street. It has been the policy of the Ritz Theatre to run only the finest in motion pictures, each picture playing a week’s engagement.”
The history has very little about Litchfield’s movie houses, mentioning only the Capitol, the Ritz, the Sky View Drive-In, and a Nickelodeon theater that once operated at the corner of Ryder and Madison. That intersection also hosted Snell’s Opera House, a large venue that burned in 1924.
This might have been the same house that was operating as the Wonderland Theater when it was mentioned in the March 25, 1911 issue of The Nickelodeon: “The Wonderland Theater of Cottonwood Falls, formerly operated by P. H. Tallman, has been purchased by Harry Grogan, who will conduct an up-to-date house and make every effort to please his patrons.”
A photographer name Patricia DuBose Duncan made this photo at some point (perhaps 1998) when the wooden panel covering the original front of the theater in the KHRI photo was taken down. The photo is titled as Lyric Opera House, but I’ve found no evidence that the theater was ever actually called that or served that function. The columns and steps seen in Duncan’s photo are identical to those on the building in the KHRI photo, so I’m sure it’s the same place.
This Facebook post has a couple of photos of the original Marion City Auditorium. The caption notes that the building was destroyed by a fire in 1918.
A November 13, 1915 Moving Picture World item noted that H. K. Rogers, then operating the Auditorium Theatre, was also the proprietor of the Garden Theatre.
The Auditorium was still in operation at least as a late as 1916, when the July 8 Motion Picture News ran this item: “Another instance of the power of the serial, ‘Peg o’ the Ring,‘ is the case of
the Auditorium theatre, Marion, Kansas, owned by Harry K. Rogers. The Kansas rivers have flooded the town four times in the last two weeks. This worked destruction to Mr. Rogers’ patronage, but when the day for the serial came around the house was crowded. The people came through water to see the picture.”
The September 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon reported that LeRoy Tudor, operator of the Star Theatre in Marion, had bought the Princess Theatre on West Fourth Street and would operate both houses after renaming the Princess the Starette. Mr. Tudor did not retain ownership of the theaters long, and that year the November 1 issue of the same journal said that he had sold his Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Lyric Amusement Company of South Bend.
The house remained the Starette at least into 1912, when the March 15 issue of the Goshen Democrat reported that Lerner and Walters of South Bend had sold their Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Mecca Amusement Company.
The 1914 edition of Gus Hill’s theatrical guide lists four motion picture theaters at Rockford, including a 200-seat, five cent house called the Lyric, operated by an Albin G. Hoof. The house is also listed in the 1914-1915 AMPD.
An item datelined Little Rock in the March 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon says that “[t]he Jo Jo Moving Picture theater, 222 Main street, has been enlarged and fitted up with new chairs. J. E. England is manager.”
One history of downtown Little Rock Theaters says the New Theatre was primarily a sub-run and “B” movie house, but it survived into the early 1960s.
One source says this house opened around 1930 as the Little Roxy Theatre. It was one of the smallest theaters downtown, but was much admired as Little Rock’s leading house for fans of western movies. It closed around 1955, at the dawn of the wide screen era.
Wait! I just saw a photo of the Rialto, and it’s the same house in our picture of the Crystal above, so don’t move that photo to the Crescent page.
Drat, I just realized we don’t have a page for the Rialto. I’ll cobble one together with what I know about it and submit it.
The Crystal Theatre was listed at 118 W. 2nd Street in the 1914-1915 AMPD, but later that year the building at that address became the home of the Crescent Theatre, and the Crystal decamped, apparently to 723 S. Main Street, a building which became the Rialto Theatre in 1924. I believe that the photo I’m seeing above does indeed depict the house at 118 2nd, and should be moved to the Crescent Theatre page. This page is, I fear, now redundant, and the venerable name Crystal Theatre, dating back in Little Rock as far as 1908, must be reduced to mere aka’s on the Crescent and Rialto pages. Alas, poor Crystal, we hardly knew ye!
This house might have become the Lyric as early as 1908. The house at 118 W. 2nd Street that became the Crescent Theatre in 1914 had previously housed the Crystal Theatre since 1908, and prior to that had been the location of a Lyric Theatre. I don’t have proof that the Lyric listed at 511 Main in the 1914-1915 AMPD was the same Lyric that had operated at 118 W. 2nd until 1908, but it’s definitely a possibility.
Prior to the November, 1914 opening of the Crescent Theatre, the building at 118 W. 2nd Street had been occupied since 1908 by the Crystal Theatre, which moved to another location I haven’t been able to discover.
According to a history of Little Rock’s downtown theaters on this web page, even earlier the building had housed the Lyric Theatre, which by 1914 had moved to 511 Main Street (presumably in 1908, when the Crystal opened at 118.)
As for the Crescent, it closed on January 21, 1956. Most likely it was another victim of the cost (and spatial needs) of converting theaters to present wide-screen processes.
The Center Theatre closed in 1973 and the building was demolished as recently as 2009.
Two different theaters are currently conflated on this page. The house at 712 W. Ninth Street was an African-American house opened in 1922 as the Nesbitt Theatre. In 1923 it became the Plaza Theater, and in 1934 it was renamed the Metropolitan. It finally became the Gem in 1936, and operated under that name until closing in 1968.
We need another page for the earlier Gem Theatre, which opened on September 5, 1910, at 113 W. Third Street. It was a ten cent silent movie house that burned down in February, 1929.
At the time of its closing in 1977, the Arkansas was the last movie theater operating in downtown Little Rock.
Opened on April 2, 1906, the Majestic billed itself as “the home of classy vaudeville” It was still advertising vaudeville in January, 1914, but was also listed that year in the American Motion Picture Directory.
A history of Little Rock’s movie houses on this web page says that the Princess opened at 122 W. Markham Street on March 18, 1909. It also says the house closed a few months later following a fire and “apparently never reopened,” but that can’t be right, as the Princess is listed at 120 W. Markham in the 1914-1915 AMPD. An ad for the theater said that it was located in the Old City Hall building. The municipal government moved into a new City Hall in April, 1908, freeing up the 1867 building at 120-122 Markham for conversion.
Little Rock’s Palace Theatre was designed by architect S. C. P. Vosper. Samuel Charles Phelps Vosper, after attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, had apprenticed in several New York City architectural firms, and studied theater design under Theodore Van Crua, designer of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
In 1913, he joined the Famous Players-Lasky company and spent the next seven years traveling around the country designing movie theaters, the Palace having been one of his earliest projects for the chain, if not the first. Many of the architects with whom he had studied in New York had been graduates of the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, and the influence of that institution’s program was certainly on full display in the splendid Palace.
If this house was still in operation in the 1920s, then it had to have been a replacement for the original Capital. The Capital is the first house shown on this web page about Little Rock’s theater history, and it says that the Capital opened as a legitimate house on September 11, 1883 and was burned down on February 11, 1913. The page doesn’t mention any rebuilding or later history.
This list of historic businesses in Johnstown styles the house at 434-436 Main Street as the Park View Theatre.
This web page has a list of historic businesses in Johnstown. It places the Park Theatre at 425 Main Street. It also lists the Knights of Pythias Temple at 427 Main Street. This is significant due to this item from the October 27, 1917 issue of Motography:
I’ve been unable to discover if this house ever operated under the proposed name of Temple Theatre, nor have I discovered the name of the predecessor theater in the same building, but I have seen a photo (Facebook) of the Park Theatre confirming that it was indeed on the ground floor of the Pythian Temple Building.The November 8, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions a Casino Theatre at McPherson. It was operated by an A. E. Oelrich. The October 15, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon said that “Will Strahan will open a new moving picture show at McPherson.”
Howard Collins was noted as the proprietor of the Isis Theatre in the March 8, 1912 issue of the McPherson Weekly Republican.
I don’t know that any of these items had to do with the theater in the Capitol Block, but I’ll leave them here just in case.
If the State Theatre was in the middle building in the photo above, then its address was either 215 or 217 N. State Street. The State, part of the Frisina Amusement Company chain, was listed with 450 seats in FDYs from 1940 to 1948, but in every edition I’ve checked it was listed as closed. I haven’t found any mentions of the State in trade journals, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter. CinemaTour lists it, without an address and, oddly, lists a Royal Theatre (with the aka Millers Theater) at 215 No. State. I haven’t found the names Royal or Millers in connection with Litchfield anywhere else.
A 1910 Sanborn map shows “Moving Pictures” in the building at 211 N. State, but by 1925, the date of the next Sanborn available online, the only theater shown is the Gem/Capitol. The 1914-1915 AMPD lists only a house called the Grand at Litchfield, which might have been the theater at 211 State. CinemaTour doesn’t list the Grand, but does list a house (without an address) called the Lyric operating from 1911 to 1919. The Lyric at least is mentioned in the July 10, 1915 issue of Moving Picture World.
A centennial history of Litchfield published in 1953 has this paragraph: “In 1938 the Frisina Amusement Company built the Ritz Theatre, a 400 seat house on State Street. It has been the policy of the Ritz Theatre to run only the finest in motion pictures, each picture playing a week’s engagement.”
The history has very little about Litchfield’s movie houses, mentioning only the Capitol, the Ritz, the Sky View Drive-In, and a Nickelodeon theater that once operated at the corner of Ryder and Madison. That intersection also hosted Snell’s Opera House, a large venue that burned in 1924.
This might have been the same house that was operating as the Wonderland Theater when it was mentioned in the March 25, 1911 issue of The Nickelodeon: “The Wonderland Theater of Cottonwood Falls, formerly operated by P. H. Tallman, has been purchased by Harry Grogan, who will conduct an up-to-date house and make every effort to please his patrons.”
Clickable link to the KHRI page.
A photographer name Patricia DuBose Duncan made this photo at some point (perhaps 1998) when the wooden panel covering the original front of the theater in the KHRI photo was taken down. The photo is titled as Lyric Opera House, but I’ve found no evidence that the theater was ever actually called that or served that function. The columns and steps seen in Duncan’s photo are identical to those on the building in the KHRI photo, so I’m sure it’s the same place.
This Facebook post has a couple of photos of the original Marion City Auditorium. The caption notes that the building was destroyed by a fire in 1918.
A November 13, 1915 Moving Picture World item noted that H. K. Rogers, then operating the Auditorium Theatre, was also the proprietor of the Garden Theatre.
The Auditorium was still in operation at least as a late as 1916, when the July 8 Motion Picture News ran this item: “Another instance of the power of the serial, ‘Peg o’ the Ring,‘ is the case of the Auditorium theatre, Marion, Kansas, owned by Harry K. Rogers. The Kansas rivers have flooded the town four times in the last two weeks. This worked destruction to Mr. Rogers’ patronage, but when the day for the serial came around the house was crowded. The people came through water to see the picture.”
The September 1, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon reported that LeRoy Tudor, operator of the Star Theatre in Marion, had bought the Princess Theatre on West Fourth Street and would operate both houses after renaming the Princess the Starette. Mr. Tudor did not retain ownership of the theaters long, and that year the November 1 issue of the same journal said that he had sold his Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Lyric Amusement Company of South Bend.
The house remained the Starette at least into 1912, when the March 15 issue of the Goshen Democrat reported that Lerner and Walters of South Bend had sold their Star and Starette theaters at Marion to the Mecca Amusement Company.