Neighborhood theaters and Drive-in Movies

[BlueTrain]

This could go in the thread about things that have disappeared in your lifetime. But I think it deserves its own thread, that is, if there isn't one already.

Once upon a time in America, there were motion picture theaters everywhere. In town, that is. Even in small towns, there was very likely to be one. My hometown of something like 8,000 or 9,000 people, could boast of two. They were right across the street from one another. I think there had been another one in a different part of town, that area down near the train station. That part of town was already dead when I was living there. I have no idea where there may have been a movie theater there.

I think the two theaters may have been owned by the same people but that didn't matter. one had a balcony, the other didn't. One had a long hall from the front door to the lobby, because there were businesses on either side in the same building. It was remodeled and renamed sometime in the 1950s, not so far back that I don't remember. It used to be named the Royal. Then it became the "LaVon." The owners of the building were named Von Court. I went to both theaters and I don't recall any particular difference in what each theater showed. One sometimes had a Saturday morning show.

A town might be too small for a movie theater and apparently there were some, because some towns were little more than a wide spot in the road, as people would say, with a population of a few hundred. But there might be a drive-in movie theater or an outdoor theater. There were two in my hometown, one on either side of town. They were only open in nice weather, of course, but we still managed to go quite a bit. Naturally you had to go with someone who had a car, although one actually had outdoor seating. It wasn't that far out of town, unlike the other one, about five miles away.

They're all gone now, sadly. One of the drive-ins is a huge car dealership but I think the other one still stands, only it isn't open. Of the two in-town movie theaters, one was demolished for a parking lot, which is no longer needed, and the other is a store-front church. One nearby town had a movie theater in a Quonset hut no less and it, too, is gone. Yet another small town had one that like most of the other businesses in town is boarded up.

It's true in the suburbs where I live now. The neighborhood theaters with one screen are long gone. There once was a drive-in near our first house. There's a multi-plex theater there now. Another one was replaced by a shopping center but there is another indoor theater now in the same shopping center. So it is actually possible to still go to the movies. And after all, movies are better than ever.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've spent a big chunk of my life around theatres -- I first walked into a projection booth when I was five years old, and I've been around them on and off ever since. I've worked in nabes, I've worked in drive-ins, but I've never worked in a multiplex -- and to this day going into such places doesn't feel like "a theatre" to me, it feels like when, in school, they'd have us all sit in the hallway and they'd wheel out a TV set on a stand to show us a space shot or something.

The city where I now live once had three movie houses, two of which survived into the 1960s. Both were owned and managed by the same family as part of the M&P chain, the New England arm of Paramount. There was also a drive-in, run by Graphic Theatres, an independent New England chain, which also ran the two theatres where I spent the most time growing up. My uncle was a projectionist for Graphic starting in the early 1950s, and worked in all of these places, and those houses are where I learned to project.

Drive-ins were still big here well into the 1980s, but only a couple survive to the present day. Our local drive-in was replaced in the late '80s by a plant nursery, which remains on that lot to the present, its showroom and office in the old concession building.

Most single-screen neighborhood houses today -- if they survive at all -- can survive only by becoming multi-event venues combining films, music concerts, and "alternative content" like the Met Opera, National Theatre Live, and the Bolshoi Ballet, and by being owned and administered by a non-profit board which essentially turns the thing into a fundraising organization that happens to have a theatre attached to it, rather than a theatre that happens to do fundraising. It's impossible under current market conditions for a privately-owned single-screen neighborhood theatre to survive without such an arrangement.

 

[Fading Fast]

Growing up in the late '60s / '70s I saw both worlds, the new multiplexes - which were four or six screen venues then, not the 20+ ones of today - and the still-extant, in-town, one-screen old ones.

As a kid, I had no real idea of the history of these old places or the economics that was engendering the multi-screen places, but as opposed to my friends - who like the multiplexes for the extra movie choices, newness and (usually) more snack options - the old places felt more comfortable and more special to me - like seeing a movie was an event.

The old ones around me were, as expected, in the older towns - right in the downtown - and were of the old movie-palace style but on a small-town scale. Some were pretty run down and some well maintained, but they all had that vibe, that feel of a "palace," a special place that the multiplexes didn't.

Once I started dating, I always chose the old-style theaters as they felt more intimate and, as noted, more like an event. With very limited funds, of course I wanted the most event-like feel and intimate atmosphere I could round up for the price of two tickets. Norms, technology, economics, societal preferences all change over time - and have driven the change in the movie-theater construct, I'm just glad I was able to see the old theaters while they were still around.

 

[BlueTrain]

The movie theaters in my hometown were not palaces in any way. But the next town ten miles away had one that might be described like that. It was bigger and fancier than the ones in my hometown, with lots of red velvet and draperies.

There was one such neighborhood movie theater next door to a place where I worked in Alexandria, Virginia. It was still open when I started work there about 40 years ago but was demolished. I noticed the interior, which is to say the lobby, was done up in Egyptian style, which I think was somewhat common at one time. The ultimate in that style is on Hollywood Boulevard in L.A. That's also the street where Grauman's Chinese Theater is located. But there are also several other movie theaters on Hollywood Boulevard, most of which are closed and sad-looking.

 

[tonyb]

We already discussed at some length, going back a couple three or four years, the demise of the drive-in theater, but, like many topics, it warrants further examination.

As to the neighborhood theaters ...

It's been a while since I've visited my favorite little neighborhood movie house, in Tacoma. It differs from our friend Liz's place of employment in that it's a single screen nabe that is (or was, last I checked) a for-profit concern, although the manager, with whom I was on a first-name basis, told me that as a practical matter whatever operating profits it realized were put back into the old structure.

In the Ballard district of Seattle is a three-screen multiplex that was built 15 or so years ago on the footprint of a neighborhood single screen that had operated there since the silent era. I suspect it's doing okay financially, as the district has become much more densely populated over the past decade or so, and younger. Those youthful apartment dwellers are the sort to go out to the first-run movies.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Structural issues are the killer. Most theatres in the Era were not well built on a foundational basis -- they were, as they saying goes, "all for show and not for blow." All that fancy ornamentation is cheap plaster molded over chicken wire, over beaverboard sheathing, over second-grade extremely porous bricks. It was built to make an impression, and a fast return on investment, but it was not built for posterity. And if this is true for the big movie palaces -- and let's face it, it was true: The Roxy was a magical wonderland of glamour when it was built, but thirty years later it was a decaying, moldy dump -- how much more true it was of the neighborhood houses.

Our place here is a prime example of this. It was built fast, over a period of about eight weeks in the winter of 1922, and it started to fall apart almost immediately. The answer was to do the minimum maintenance possible to keep it going -- when that beautiful tin ceiling got rusty from the leaky roof, they just threw a Celotex drop ceiling up to cover it. When the brickwork started to crumble, they threw up some porcelain gas-station siding along the broad outer wall, and slapped coat after coat of the cheapest outdoor red paint onto the rest. When the time came to restore the building, it was discovered there was very little of the original structure that could be salvaged -- basically the building we have now is a reconstruction, not a restoration, with only the original concrete foundation, the seats, and part of the proscenium actually preserved from the original.

And even with the restoration, as visually pleasing as it is, when you live in the building for eleven years like I have, the sham shortcuts and inadequacies become glaringly obvious -- the cheap masonite "woodwork," the low-bid flooring, the gypsum fire doors that pull off their hinges, the peeling veneers, the discontinued-before-it-was-installed lobby lighting system, the plumbing that makes no sense at all, and on and on and on. It's all an illusion. It's like Wilson Mizner once said -- "Look beyond Hollywood's phony tinsel and you'll find the real tinsel underneath." That's true of every single aspect of the movie business.

 

[tonyb]

,^^^^
Pretty much my feelings about so much modern finishing material.

When we went house shopping a year and a half ago one of the places we looked at had essentially every interior surface replaced -- new flooring, new cabinets, new bathroom and kitchen fixtures, new counters, new doors, etc. And it was all crap. Just junk that would look like the crap it is within a year or so.

I'm thrifty, but I ain't cheap. If hardwood floors cost two or three times as much as laminate, I'll live with the existing floors until I can afford the floors that will outlast me.

These suburban multiplexes are structurally sound, I'd imagine, although the stuff that shows is all for show.

A notable anomaly is that three-screen place I alluded to a couple posts back. The owner spent big on finishes. Quality materials throughout. Indeed, the place is somewhat known for that.

 

[Shibumi]

More than worthy of a quick look at these photos....


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...ating-images-reveal-glory-days-drive-ins.html

 

[Fading Fast]

,^^^^
Pretty much my feelings about so much modern finishing material.

When we went house shopping a year and a half ago one of the places we looked at had essentially every interior surface replaced -- new flooring, new cabinets, new bathroom and kitchen fixtures, new counters, new doors, etc. And it was all crap. Just junk that would look like the crap it is within a year or so.

I'm thrifty, but I ain't cheap. If hardwood floors cost two or three times as much as laminate, I'll live with the existing floors until I can afford the floors that will outlast me.

These suburban multiplexes are structurally sound, I'd imagine, although the stuff that shows is all for show.

A notable anomaly is that three-screen place I alluded to a couple posts back. The owner spent big on finishes. Quality materials throughout. Indeed, the place is somewhat known for that.

When we did our restoration / renovation of our 1928 apartment we quickly learned that you have to fight against the cheap stuff, the cheap work, the cheap materials tooth and claw. Everything today is geared toward cheapness.

From fake wood floors to what feels like styrafoam molding, we fought with contractors, sub contractors, suppliers, etc. to use "real" materials like they did in '28.

We won most of the battles, the parts of the moldings we had to replace are real wood - not styrofoam, not particle board and the one door we made is solid wood and heavy as heck. Also, we got reclaimed glass for our cabinets and reclaimed wood for the kitchen floor. All look and feel great.

We also found a company in Chicago that makes tiles as close to original "1920s sanitary movement" tiles as current safety standards allow - and those tiles look and feel great versus the "sheets" of tile they tried to sell us. But I couldn't win the "don't use dry wall" battle and one bathroom ceiling that had to be replaces and a few parts of walls here and there are dry wall not plaster. At some point, you just can't fight anymore even if you're right, even if it's your money, as the time, energy and effort needed work against you

It drives me nuts when I'm cleaning the walls to go from feeling the heavy, solid, dense plaster walls of '28 to the cheap, garbage, "I could push my hand through it" walls made from dry wall - I hate that stuff.

Overall, we won about 80% of the battles and are happy we did as living in the apartment we can tell the difference. But we learned that every thing is oriented today toward cheap quality and quick installation that will look good at first, but won't last. The entire home renovation / restoration industry is so oriented that way - and to be honest, most of the clients want it that way - that we were outliers that "irritated" those who dealt with us.

And, yes, it costs more to do it our way and I assure you, we are not rich, but do believe that - in most cases - the extra money will pay off in the longevity of the materials. And beyond that, as noted, the real stuff looks (most of time) and feels better.

 

[BlueTrain]

It makes you wonder how the Japanese ever lived in houses with paper partitions and floors made of straw.

 

[vitanola]

Structural issues are the killer. Most theatres in the Era were not well built on a foundational basis -- they were, as they saying goes, "all for show and not for blow." All that fancy ornamentation is cheap plaster molded over chicken wire, over beaverboard sheathing, over second-grade extremely porous bricks. It was built to make an impression, and a fast return on investment, but it was not built for posterity. And if this is true for the big movie palaces -- and let's face it, it was true: The Roxy was a magical wonderland of glamour when it was built, but thirty years later it was a decaying, moldy dump -- how much more true it was of the neighborhood houses.

Our place here is a prime example of this. It was built fast, over a period of about eight weeks in the winter of 1922, and it started to fall apart almost immediately. The answer was to do the minimum maintenance possible to keep it going -- when that beautiful tin ceiling got rusty from the leaky roof, they just threw a Celotex drop ceiling up to cover it. When the brickwork started to crumble, they threw up some porcelain gas-station siding along the broad outer wall, and slapped coat after coat of the cheapest outdoor red paint onto the rest. When the time came to restore the building, it was discovered there was very little of the original structure that could be salvaged -- basically the building we have now is a reconstruction, not a restoration, with only the original concrete foundation, the seats, and part of the proscenium actually preserved from the original.

And even with the restoration, as visually pleasing as it is, when you live in the building for eleven years like I have, the sham shortcuts and inadequacies become glaringly obvious -- the cheap masonite "woodwork," the low-bid flooring, the gypsum fire doors that pull off their hinges, the peeling veneers, the discontinued-before-it-was-installed lobby lighting system, the plumbing that makes no sense at all, and on and on and on. It's all an illusion. It's like Wilson Mizner once said -- "Look beyond Hollywood's phony tinsel and you'll find the real tinsel underneath." That's true of every single aspect of the movie business.

I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, which city was once the fifth largest in the country.

Structural issues are the killer. Most theatres in the Era were not well built on a foundational basis -- they were, as they saying goes, "all for show and not for blow." All that fancy ornamentation is cheap plaster molded over chicken wire, over beaverboard sheathing, over second-grade extremely porous bricks. It was built to make an impression, and a fast return on investment, but it was not built for posterity. And if this is true for the big movie palaces -- and let's face it, it was true: The Roxy was a magical wonderland of glamour when it was built, but thirty years later it was a decaying, moldy dump -- how much more true it was of the neighborhood houses.

Our place here is a prime example of this. It was built fast, over a period of about eight weeks in the winter of 1922, and it started to fall apart almost immediately. The answer was to do the minimum maintenance possible to keep it going -- when that beautiful tin ceiling got rusty from the leaky roof, they just threw a Celotex drop ceiling up to cover it. When the brickwork started to crumble, they threw up some porcelain gas-station siding along the broad outer wall, and slapped coat after coat of the cheapest outdoor red paint onto the rest. When the time came to restore the building, it was discovered there was very little of the original structure that could be salvaged -- basically the building we have now is a reconstruction, not a restoration, with only the original concrete foundation, the seats, and part of the proscenium actually preserved from the original.

And even with the restoration, as visually pleasing as it is, when you live in the building for eleven years like I have, the sham shortcuts and inadequacies become glaringly obvious -- the cheap masonite "woodwork," the low-bid flooring, the gypsum fire doors that pull off their hinges, the peeling veneers, the discontinued-before-it-was-installed lobby lighting system, the plumbing that makes no sense at all, and on and on and on. It's all an illusion. It's like Wilson Mizner once said -- "Look beyond Hollywood's phony tinsel and you'll find the real tinsel underneath." That's true of every single aspect of the movie business.

I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, a city which at one time had 139 theaters. Now there were the "Picture Palaces" both down town and in the far outlying neighborhoods. These were generally extremely elaborate, beautifully built houses with large associated office buildings. A group of five such palaces has been restored into the largest performing arts center outside of New York City.

These theaters, which were all built between late 1920 and early 1922 at, comprised the Allen, a 2500 seat moving picture house (no stage house at all) with its associated Buckley Building, a 157,000 square foot, 8 story low-rise building with an indoor shopping arcade with twenty-two store fronts, Lowe's Ohio (a 1388 seat legitimate house) and Lowe's State (a 3400 seat Vaudeville/Picture house), the Hanna (a 1400 seat legitimate house) with an associated office building of 16 stories and 337,000 square feet, and the B. F. Keith Palace, a truly luxurious 3100 seat "Vaude" house with an associated 21 story 250,000 square foot office building. The Palace had fifty-seven dressing rooms in an eight story tower, served with an elevator, tanks and cages for animal acts, a putting green for the use of performers between shows, a four chair barber shop (for performers) , a beauty shop, 137 Czech crystal chandeliers, an acre of Carrera Marble, and interior decoration which included monumental Sevres pieces and a collection of one-hundred eight (second tier) Impressionist, Barbazon, and French Academic paintings. I worked on the restoration of all of these theaters back in the late 1970's and 1980's. They were built well, using the highest quality materials available at the time. There was little sham about them.

There were two secondary theater districts in the city. The principal of which was the intersection of Euclid Avenue and East 105th street, five miles east of downtown. There were another five houses there; The Alhambra, a 1600 seat picture house which was fitted with a (used church) organ in 1908, and may have been the first picture house to be so fitted, the 1975 seat Hoffman (later Circle) Theater, an independent "Vaude" of little pretension, The University Theater, a cheap, 900 seat picture house built in 1920, and B. F. Keith's 105th Street Theater, a first class Vaudeville house with 2800 seats. On the West side, at West 117th Street and Detroit Avenue, there was the Granada, a 1928 vintage Atmosphereic picture house seating 2,165, and the Variety, a 1922 vintage Vaude house which seated 1970.

Then we come to the neighborhood houses. Of the 139 closed theaters in Cleveland the great majority were neighborhood houses. Of these, about half were first generation Nickelodeons which opened before 1907 and closed before the advent of sound. these were generally either cheap and nasty purpose built buildings or were cheap conversions of vacant retail space. The second generation Neighborhood nickelodeons, which generally seated between 300 and 600, were both better built and better laid out. The city had inaugurated a Building Department in 1909, and the increased construction costs mandated by the new safety code mitigated against poorly planned spaces. Many, if not most, of these second generation Nickelodeon theaters survived the transition to sound and soldiered on until the big shake-out in the 1950's. The more successful of these houses were replaced by more modern houses of slightly larger capacity in the early days of talkies.

 

[ChrisB]

When I first started working in Princeton, there were a few people who remembered going to the Trenton Drive In in Robbinsville, where they encountered a young employee by the name of Ernie Kovacs.

In my home town, Washington NJ, the theater built in 1926 sits empty, and is in danger of becoming a parking lot. There have been several attempts at reviving it, so far without success. The main obstacle is the necessary repairs, estimated at $50,000 to fix the roof.

 

[tonyb]

... In my home town, Washington NJ, the theater built in 1926 sits empty, and is in danger of becoming a parking lot. There have been several attempts at reviving it, so far without success. The main obstacle is the necessary repairs, estimated at $50,00 to fix the roof.

Which points to a common problem with preserving old buildings, especially ones that have sat vacant and neglected for extended periods.

Who's gonna pay for repairs? And how will the money be recouped?

 

[BlueTrain]

As it happens, the home town I frequently refer to is also named Princeton, coincidentally in Mercer County. But the state is West Virginia.

 

[Fading Fast]

Which points to a common problem with preserving old buildings, especially ones that have sat vacant and neglected for extended periods.

Who's gonna pay for repairs? And how will the money be recouped?

That is the crux of it. The gov't can pass perseveration laws, but the does't really solve the money issue, it just shifts it onto the present owner. For example, all other things equal, a building that gets preservation designation in NYC goes down in value as the owner and all potential future owners now know that they will be restricted with what they can do with their property and know that every renovation will be more expensive as they will have additional preservation red tape (time and money) to deal with and will have to do things in a certain way determined by the preservation commission (which is usually not the least costly way).

I love old buildings, love that we have saved many, but openly acknowledge that there is a cost to do so and it isn't simply fair to present owners to shift all of those costs onto them. There are public and private grants, etc., that can help, but in the end, being designated a historic property (in most cases - not all) hurts the value.

There is, IMHO, no great solution. The fairest way would be for the gov't to buy the property at a market price, then designate is historic and, then, sell it back into the market with all the restrictions fully disclosed. This way the old owner doesn't get "screwed" by having his building designated and the new owner can't complain about it as he bought it at a reduced price fully aware of the preservation restrictions.

The problem is that will cost the taxpayer money - and that is not politically popular.

 

[tonyb]

In Seattle the owners of "landmarked" buildings get huge tax relief. In exchange, what they might do to the buildings, especially the exteriors, is subject to approval by landmarks boards.

 

[emigran]

In 1966 my girlfriend was an usher at the Lowes Theatre in Journal Square Jersey City... usually pronounced Low-eez Thee-ay-tuh... It was HUGE Art Deco hall complete with velvet curtains on stage... she wore a red uniform with gold buttons up and down the front , epaulets and a pill box matching hat... Became an Evangelical meeting house ... and I actually think the Marquee is still there...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Loew's Jersey has been restored to its former glory, and is one of the few carbon-arc 35mm booths left in the Northeast. They also have a Vitaphone projector, although I don't believe it's actually in service.

 

[vitanola]

That is the crux of it. The gov't can pass perseveration laws, but the does't really solve the money issue, it just shifts it onto the present owner. For example, all other things equal, a building that gets preservation designation in NYC goes down in value as the owner and all potential future owners now know that they will be restricted with what they can do with their property and know that every renovation will be more expensive as they will have additional preservation red tape (time and money) to deal with and will have to do things in a certain way determined by the preservation commission (which is usually not the least costly way).

I love old buildings, love that we have saved many, but openly acknowledge that there is a cost to do so and it isn't simply fair to present owners to shift all of those costs onto them. There are public and private grants, etc., that can help, but in the end, being designated a historic property (in most cases - not all) hurts the value.

There is, IMHO, no great solution. The fairest way would be for the gov't to buy the property at a market price, then designate is historic and, then, sell it back into the market with all the restrictions fully disclosed. This way the old owner doesn't get "screwed" by having his building designated and the new owner can't complain about it as he bought it at a reduced price fully aware of the preservation restrictions.

The problem is that will cost the taxpayer money - and that is not politically popular.

The surest way to preserve a building is to figure out a way to make it a profitable investment, isn't it?

Preservation tax credits seem to be very helpful in the long run in making restoration economically practical, at least in the Midwest. Cleveland, for example, is undergoing a renaissance as one after another historically significant high rise buildings of the Twentieth Century (which have column patterns that are unsuited to modern office designs) are being converted to residential use. The tax credits in most cases made the difference between profit and loss for the developer. The redevelopment in the city's downtown has now reached the point that these credits are becoming less important.

For example, THIS:

Has become THIS:

Across the street, this a stunning banking floor, vacant and deteriorating for twenty-five years, has been sensitively renovated into this stunning supermarket:

 

[emigran]

Loew's Jersey has been restored to its former glory, and is one of the few carbon-arc 35mm booths left in the Northeast. They also have a Vitaphone projector, although I don't believe it's actually in service.

How great... didn't know that... thanks Liz