I suspect that the Orpheum was the house originally called the Thomas Theatre. The Orpheum’s long address in the “Theatres” listings of the 1919 Sharon directory overlaps the address we have for the Thomas. I’ve been unable to find references to the house under either name later than 1919.
A 1919 Sharon city directory does not list the Thomas Theatre, but it does list an Orpheum Theatre with the address 24-34-40 Shenango. Given the overlap, Orpheum might have been an aka for the Thomas Theatre. The September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Thomas theater was being closed for remodeling.
Here’s something rather odd. The April 24, 1920, issue of The American Contractor had a notice about a theater to be built in Sharon, and all the particulars- architects, builder, owner- were the same as the Liberty as described in the Billboard item Ken cited, but the location was given as State Street and Porter Street, which is roughly the location of the Columbia Theatre:
“Theater (M. P.): $225,000. 107x 145. State & Porter sts., Sharon, Pa. Archt. Simons, Brittain & English, 335 4th av., Pittsburgh. Owner Strand Amusement Co., Mr. Gable, pres., Sharon. Gen. contr. let to Wishart Sons Co., Sharon. Htg. & plmg. to Sempell Co., Sharon. Elec. wiring to Morganstern Elec. o., 325 2d av., Pittsburgh. Excav.”
I don’t know if the magazine made a mistake about the location, or if Mr. Gable lost the location to the rival company that later built the Columbia, and had to find another location for the Liberty project.
Charles Gable, incidentally, was the uncle of actor Clark Gable, and also owned a house in Sharon called the Family Theatre in the 1910s. I don’t know if the Family is the same house that later was called the Gable Theatre or not, but it was called Gable’s Family Theatre for awhile.
Architect E. E. Clepper’s full name was Edgar Ellis Clepper. He also designed the Luna Theatre and the Alpha Theatre in Sharon, both also in operation by 1912. A biographical sketch published in 1908 also credits him with the Lewis Opera House, but I’ve been unable to discover where that theater was located.
The Luna Theatre’s auditorium originally featured a center aisle, as seen in the photo I linked to in my previous comment, so it must have been reconfigured at some point. The facade was certainly altered from Edgar E. Clepper’s original ornate design, though the five windows on the upper floor in the more recent photo are placed and sized exactly as they were in the 1912 photo. The facade and auditorium were probably remodeled at the same time, and that was probably when the name was changed to Nuluna Theatre.
The Vocal Group Hall of Fame Foundation has a web site with pages about the history of the Columbia Theatre and about the restoration work (“The Museum” link) that is still underway.
Google’s snippet view of Showtime, by Cynthia Farah Haines, says that the Eureka Theatre opened on May 31, 1913, and adds the aka Iris Theatre. Additionally, CinemaTour adds the aka’s Isis Theatre and Chaputlepec Theatre. Presumably it ran Spanish language movies later in its history.
The March 13, 1915, issue of The Construction News had an item that was about the Strand Theatre, though it had not yet been named. It said that plans were being drawn by local architects Parkinson & Dockindorf for a 450-seat moving picture near the corner of 12th (now West Avenue) and Jackson Streets. A.E. Parkinson, the architect, was also the owner of the theater.
Mr. Parkinson was involved in a lawsuit over the theater’s management a few years later, and the record of the suit revels that the Strand opened about Thanksgiving Day, 1915 (November.) It also reveals that Parkinson also owned a house called the Casino Theatre in La Crosse.
The District Police Report for the year ending October 31, 1913, lists Charles L. Higginbotham as the operator of the Globe Theatre. A Charles S. Higginbotham was listed as operator of the Suffolk Theatre. One midle initial or the other might have been an error.
The District Police Report for the year ending October 31, 1916, listed the Globe Theatre in Holyoke as being operated by Alexander Cameron. Cameron had also opened the Strand Theatre around the end of the previous year.
The Grand Theatre was listed in the District Police Report for the year ending October 31, 1917, but not in the following year’s report, or any later report I’ve seen. so it must have closed by the fall of 1918.
The July-December, 1915, edition of Safety Engineering reported that the fire at the Empire Theatre in Holyoke took place on April 22. The fire, which started at the rear of the stage, caused $50,000 damage.
The reason the Olympia Theatre was shown in brown on the Sanborn map that Ron Newman linked to on March 1, 2006, is because it was still under construction at the time the map was drawn. The April 22, 1916, issue of The American contractor reported that architect William Mowll was preparing plans for the Olympia Theatre Company’s new house at Cambridge. The firm of Mowll & Rand also designed the company’s Olympia Theatre at New Bedford, opened the same year.
The Bijou Theatre was in operation by 1913, the year in which it was taken over by Frank Rainault, according to his biography in the Encyclopedia of Massachusetts published in 1916. Shortly before the Encyclopedia was published, Rainault had the Bijou remodeled and expanded. According to items in The American Contractor that year, plans for the project were drawn by Holyoke architect Oscar Beauchemin.
This web page says that the Empire Theatre opened on November 2, 1893. A Springfield Republican article about the event noted that the theater was designed by J. B. McElfatrick & Son, and that the Empire resembled the Court Square Theatre in Springfield, designed by the same firm and opened the previous year.
An 1893 Springfield Republican article about the opening of the Empire Theatre in Holyoke noted that the new house resembled the Court Square Theatre, which had been designed by the same architectural firm, J.B. McElfatrick & Son.
The Empire Theatre was one of two houses listed for Holyoke in the 1906-1907 Cahn guide. It was a ground floor house with 1,050 seats. T. F. Murray was the manager.
The Empire Theatre was listed (without an address) in the District Police Report for the year ending on October 31, 1913. It was one of eight theaters listed for Holyoke.
The January 22, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World carried this item:
“Thomas Murray, whose Empire theater at Holyoke, Mass., burned down several months ago, was in Boston last week and announced that he had secured additional land adjoining the site of the old theater upon which he intends to erect a new structure with a seating capacity of 1,800.”
The only mention of the Star Theatre I’ve found in the trade publications is in the March 18, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, which says that the Star had just been purchased by Oliver Bernest. The seller’s name was not given.
No theater was listed for the address 147 High Street, or any nearby address, in the 1922 New England Business Directory, which had a total of ten theaters listed. If the Star was indeed the theater built on the site of the Empire, and it had 1,600 seats, I can’t imagine why it closed so soon. Maybe Murray’s rebuilding plans fell through and something more modest was built.
A 1982 Reconnaissance Survey Town Report from the Massachusetts Historical Commission gives the construction year of the Strand Theatre at Holyoke as 1915, and gives the name of the architect as G.P.B. Alderman (George Perkins Bissell Alderman.)
The February 26, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World ran an item saying that two new theaters had recently opened in Holyoke. The larger of them, with 900 seats, was the Strand, operated by Alexander Cameron. The Strand was showing Paramount and General Film releases.
The Strand is listed under Public Halls rather than Theatres in the District Police Report for the year ending October 31, 1916.
This weblog post has a 1922 photo of Maple Street with the Strand Theatre at far right.
The Lithia Theatre was operated by Robert Lippert from 1946 until 1951, when it closed as a movie house. It was then refurbished by Angus Bowmer and reopened as a home for his theater group, the Vining Repertory Company. In November, 1952, the Lithia Theatre was destroyed by a fire, prematurely ending the company’s second season.
Here is a 1914 photo of the Vining Theatre’s auditorium.
Here is a 1951 photo with the posters of the Vining Repertory Company’s four productions for that season.
The January 27, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that Robbins and Lumberg opened the Uptown Theatre in Utica on December 29, 1927. An issue of the same publication from early 1927 said that the Rolu (Robbins and Lumberg) Theatre Company’s new house on Genesee Street was being designed by the local architectural firm of Rushmer & Jennison.
Herbert D. Rushmer was the senior partner of the firm, and he and Albert H. Jennison had been partners in a firm with noted Utica architect Jacob Agne Jr. from 1900 until Agne’s death in 1918.
I believe that the Cinema I & II is the house listed by CinemaTour as the Sherwood Plaza Cinemas, at 5757 Pacific Avenue. The Cinema Theatre was listed at that address with “No. 17” appended in a directory of the period.
It was originally one of the Henry George Greene-designed single-screen houses built by ABC in the late 1960s-early 1970s. According to its entry on the Stockton Theatres page from Wright Realtors, it was twinned in the 1980s.
Both CinemaTour and Wright Realtors have this listed as a General Cinema Corporation house, but I believe they might have conflated it with the Sherwood Theatre, which was a General Cinema house, and which was located in a different shopping center nearby called Sherwood Mall. The confusion over the shopping center names may be why Sherwood Plaza was eventually renamed Stonecreek Village. The name Sherwood Plaza has since been taken over by a small strip mall nearby.
The finding aid to the Interstate Theatre Collection (Interstate was an ABC-Paramount affiliate) at the Dallas Public Library lists a box containing records of feature film receipts from ABC’s theaters from 1960-1969, and there is a listing for the “Sherwood (Stockton, Calif) Aug. 1968 – Nov. 1969.” That must have been this house, and I think we can take August, 1968, as the likely month the house opened.
A complication arises from a plan of Sherwood Plaza from its leasing corporation (PDF here) which shows the theater space and labels it as “General Cinema Theater.” Unfortunately, the plan has no date on it. Perhaps General Cinema did take over the house eventually, but it was still being operated by ABC successor Plitt Theatres in the early 1980s. In fact I’ve come across one reference calling it the Plitt Sherwood Theatre in 1983.
There is a lot of conflation of these two houses on the Internet, but the photos show that they were indeed two different theaters. I wish their operators (and the developers of Stockton’s shopping centers) had shown more imagination in naming their various projects.
The New Empire was apparently an “old” Empire itself. Bygone Binghamton, by Jack Edward Shay, mentions a later Empire Theatre located at 120 Washington Street, but doesn’t give its years of operation.
I suspect that the Orpheum was the house originally called the Thomas Theatre. The Orpheum’s long address in the “Theatres” listings of the 1919 Sharon directory overlaps the address we have for the Thomas. I’ve been unable to find references to the house under either name later than 1919.
A 1919 Sharon city directory does not list the Thomas Theatre, but it does list an Orpheum Theatre with the address 24-34-40 Shenango. Given the overlap, Orpheum might have been an aka for the Thomas Theatre. The September 4, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Thomas theater was being closed for remodeling.
Here’s something rather odd. The April 24, 1920, issue of The American Contractor had a notice about a theater to be built in Sharon, and all the particulars- architects, builder, owner- were the same as the Liberty as described in the Billboard item Ken cited, but the location was given as State Street and Porter Street, which is roughly the location of the Columbia Theatre:
I don’t know if the magazine made a mistake about the location, or if Mr. Gable lost the location to the rival company that later built the Columbia, and had to find another location for the Liberty project.Charles Gable, incidentally, was the uncle of actor Clark Gable, and also owned a house in Sharon called the Family Theatre in the 1910s. I don’t know if the Family is the same house that later was called the Gable Theatre or not, but it was called Gable’s Family Theatre for awhile.
Architect E. E. Clepper’s full name was Edgar Ellis Clepper. He also designed the Luna Theatre and the Alpha Theatre in Sharon, both also in operation by 1912. A biographical sketch published in 1908 also credits him with the Lewis Opera House, but I’ve been unable to discover where that theater was located.
The Luna Theatre’s auditorium originally featured a center aisle, as seen in the photo I linked to in my previous comment, so it must have been reconfigured at some point. The facade was certainly altered from Edgar E. Clepper’s original ornate design, though the five windows on the upper floor in the more recent photo are placed and sized exactly as they were in the 1912 photo. The facade and auditorium were probably remodeled at the same time, and that was probably when the name was changed to Nuluna Theatre.
The Vocal Group Hall of Fame Foundation has a web site with pages about the history of the Columbia Theatre and about the restoration work (“The Museum” link) that is still underway.
Google’s snippet view of Showtime, by Cynthia Farah Haines, says that the Eureka Theatre opened on May 31, 1913, and adds the aka Iris Theatre. Additionally, CinemaTour adds the aka’s Isis Theatre and Chaputlepec Theatre. Presumably it ran Spanish language movies later in its history.
To get Google Maps to fetch the location of the Harriet Theatre I think we’ll have to change the address to Upton Avenue S.
The March 13, 1915, issue of The Construction News had an item that was about the Strand Theatre, though it had not yet been named. It said that plans were being drawn by local architects Parkinson & Dockindorf for a 450-seat moving picture near the corner of 12th (now West Avenue) and Jackson Streets. A.E. Parkinson, the architect, was also the owner of the theater.
Mr. Parkinson was involved in a lawsuit over the theater’s management a few years later, and the record of the suit revels that the Strand opened about Thanksgiving Day, 1915 (November.) It also reveals that Parkinson also owned a house called the Casino Theatre in La Crosse.
The District Police Report for the year ending October 31, 1913, lists Charles L. Higginbotham as the operator of the Globe Theatre. A Charles S. Higginbotham was listed as operator of the Suffolk Theatre. One midle initial or the other might have been an error.
The District Police Report for the year ending October 31, 1916, listed the Globe Theatre in Holyoke as being operated by Alexander Cameron. Cameron had also opened the Strand Theatre around the end of the previous year.
The Grand Theatre was listed in the District Police Report for the year ending October 31, 1917, but not in the following year’s report, or any later report I’ve seen. so it must have closed by the fall of 1918.
The July-December, 1915, edition of Safety Engineering reported that the fire at the Empire Theatre in Holyoke took place on April 22. The fire, which started at the rear of the stage, caused $50,000 damage.
The reason the Olympia Theatre was shown in brown on the Sanborn map that Ron Newman linked to on March 1, 2006, is because it was still under construction at the time the map was drawn. The April 22, 1916, issue of The American contractor reported that architect William Mowll was preparing plans for the Olympia Theatre Company’s new house at Cambridge. The firm of Mowll & Rand also designed the company’s Olympia Theatre at New Bedford, opened the same year.
The Bijou Theatre was in operation by 1913, the year in which it was taken over by Frank Rainault, according to his biography in the Encyclopedia of Massachusetts published in 1916. Shortly before the Encyclopedia was published, Rainault had the Bijou remodeled and expanded. According to items in The American Contractor that year, plans for the project were drawn by Holyoke architect Oscar Beauchemin.
This web page says that the Empire Theatre opened on November 2, 1893. A Springfield Republican article about the event noted that the theater was designed by J. B. McElfatrick & Son, and that the Empire resembled the Court Square Theatre in Springfield, designed by the same firm and opened the previous year.
An 1893 Springfield Republican article about the opening of the Empire Theatre in Holyoke noted that the new house resembled the Court Square Theatre, which had been designed by the same architectural firm, J.B. McElfatrick & Son.
The Empire Theatre was one of two houses listed for Holyoke in the 1906-1907 Cahn guide. It was a ground floor house with 1,050 seats. T. F. Murray was the manager.
The Empire Theatre was listed (without an address) in the District Police Report for the year ending on October 31, 1913. It was one of eight theaters listed for Holyoke.
The January 22, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World carried this item:
The only mention of the Star Theatre I’ve found in the trade publications is in the March 18, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World, which says that the Star had just been purchased by Oliver Bernest. The seller’s name was not given.No theater was listed for the address 147 High Street, or any nearby address, in the 1922 New England Business Directory, which had a total of ten theaters listed. If the Star was indeed the theater built on the site of the Empire, and it had 1,600 seats, I can’t imagine why it closed so soon. Maybe Murray’s rebuilding plans fell through and something more modest was built.
A 1982 Reconnaissance Survey Town Report from the Massachusetts Historical Commission gives the construction year of the Strand Theatre at Holyoke as 1915, and gives the name of the architect as G.P.B. Alderman (George Perkins Bissell Alderman.)
The February 26, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World ran an item saying that two new theaters had recently opened in Holyoke. The larger of them, with 900 seats, was the Strand, operated by Alexander Cameron. The Strand was showing Paramount and General Film releases.
The Strand is listed under Public Halls rather than Theatres in the District Police Report for the year ending October 31, 1916.
This weblog post has a 1922 photo of Maple Street with the Strand Theatre at far right.
The Lithia Theatre was operated by Robert Lippert from 1946 until 1951, when it closed as a movie house. It was then refurbished by Angus Bowmer and reopened as a home for his theater group, the Vining Repertory Company. In November, 1952, the Lithia Theatre was destroyed by a fire, prematurely ending the company’s second season.
Here is a 1914 photo of the Vining Theatre’s auditorium.
Here is a 1951 photo with the posters of the Vining Repertory Company’s four productions for that season.
A one-page article about the Ohio Theatre in Lima appeared in the January 7, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News. There is an interior photo.
The January 27, 1928, issue of Motion Picture News said that Robbins and Lumberg opened the Uptown Theatre in Utica on December 29, 1927. An issue of the same publication from early 1927 said that the Rolu (Robbins and Lumberg) Theatre Company’s new house on Genesee Street was being designed by the local architectural firm of Rushmer & Jennison.
Herbert D. Rushmer was the senior partner of the firm, and he and Albert H. Jennison had been partners in a firm with noted Utica architect Jacob Agne Jr. from 1900 until Agne’s death in 1918.
I believe that the Cinema I & II is the house listed by CinemaTour as the Sherwood Plaza Cinemas, at 5757 Pacific Avenue. The Cinema Theatre was listed at that address with “No. 17” appended in a directory of the period.
It was originally one of the Henry George Greene-designed single-screen houses built by ABC in the late 1960s-early 1970s. According to its entry on the Stockton Theatres page from Wright Realtors, it was twinned in the 1980s.
Both CinemaTour and Wright Realtors have this listed as a General Cinema Corporation house, but I believe they might have conflated it with the Sherwood Theatre, which was a General Cinema house, and which was located in a different shopping center nearby called Sherwood Mall. The confusion over the shopping center names may be why Sherwood Plaza was eventually renamed Stonecreek Village. The name Sherwood Plaza has since been taken over by a small strip mall nearby.
The finding aid to the Interstate Theatre Collection (Interstate was an ABC-Paramount affiliate) at the Dallas Public Library lists a box containing records of feature film receipts from ABC’s theaters from 1960-1969, and there is a listing for the “Sherwood (Stockton, Calif) Aug. 1968 – Nov. 1969.” That must have been this house, and I think we can take August, 1968, as the likely month the house opened.
A complication arises from a plan of Sherwood Plaza from its leasing corporation (PDF here) which shows the theater space and labels it as “General Cinema Theater.” Unfortunately, the plan has no date on it. Perhaps General Cinema did take over the house eventually, but it was still being operated by ABC successor Plitt Theatres in the early 1980s. In fact I’ve come across one reference calling it the Plitt Sherwood Theatre in 1983.
There is a lot of conflation of these two houses on the Internet, but the photos show that they were indeed two different theaters. I wish their operators (and the developers of Stockton’s shopping centers) had shown more imagination in naming their various projects.
The intersection of Wadsworth and Bank Streets has been swallowed by the Geneseo campus of the State University of New York.
The New Empire was apparently an “old” Empire itself. Bygone Binghamton, by Jack Edward Shay, mentions a later Empire Theatre located at 120 Washington Street, but doesn’t give its years of operation.