Phoenix's historic theaters

Today's Valdemar A. Cordova Municipal Court Building occupies the site of young Phoenix's first major theater, the Patton Grand, which opened in 1898. The new motion-picture industry was just getting started, so the theater hosted a variety of events such as plays and concerts.

It was also a point of pride in a town with a population of 5,544, which had made it through the national financial panics and local droughts and floods that characterized that decade. The theater sat 1,200 people. It also boasted hefty backstage spaces, based on the photo above, with room for curtains, lighting, and scenery.

E.M. Dorris, of the prominent merchant family, bought the theater at the end of 1899. It became the Dorris Opera House, the name by which most old Phoenicians and history buffs know it. Until the completion of the Phoenix Union High School Auditorium, the Dorris was the heartbeat of civic events, from traveling musicians, plays, and speakers, to political and union gatherings. It then settled in as a movie theater.

But, at Third Avenue and Washington, it was only one of many movie houses within walking distance of the city center or the streetcars. Let's take a stroll to some of them (click on photo for a larger image).

At the corner of First and Adams streets was the Arizona Theater, later the Savoy. Here we see it on a rainy day in 1915 (McCulloch Bros Collection/ASU Archives).

The Lamara at 9 E. Washington Street. "The Narrow Trail" starring William S. Hart was a silent movie released in 1917 (McCulloch Bros Collection/ASU Archives).

The Columbia Theater at 108 W. Adams in 1917 with a handsome touring car out front (McCulloch Bros Collection/ASU Archives).

The Phoenix Theater in 1936, Fourth Avenue and Washington, with an Eddie Cantor film headlining the modern marquee. Air conditioning made its debut in the city's theaters (McCulloch Bros Collection/ASU Archives).

The Rialto opened in the 1920s. Behind it is the new Luhrs Building (McCulloch Bros Collection/ASU Archives).

The Rialto on Washington at Central. The fare is attuned to 1944, with World War II still being fought (McCulloch Bros Collection/ASU Archives).

Another feature pair at the Rialto in 1944 (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

Nearby is the Studio Theater, nestled in a dense block of businesses and shops (below) (McCulloch Bros Collection/ASU Archives).

The Strand was on Washington between First and Second avenues. The this shot is from 1928. Below are photos from several decades, ending in the 1960s (McCulloch Bros Collection/ASU Archives).

The Ramona on Washington Street. Small theater, big set of movies (and A-1 Beer).

The Vista on Central Avenue north of Monroe Street, 1957.

Another shot of the Vista during a parade in 1955. It was demolished in the 1960s (City of Phoenix photo).

Below are photos showing Phoenix's finest movie palace, the Fox, at First Street and Washington. It was demolished in 1975. It opened in 1931, designed in a "zig-zag moderne" style by architect S. Charles Lee:

When I was growing up, I went to movies at the Fox, the Paramount, and the Palms, a lovely Lescher & Mahoney creation on Central just north of Virginia. It opened in 1945 and was lost in the 1980s. The last time I took my ailing mother to the movies was to the Palms, in 1977 in our old neighborhood. Imagine the art house it would make in today's reviving Midtown:

Of all the central-city theaters only the Orpheum was saved. Also designed by Lescher & Mahoney, it hosted the national Orpheum vaudeville circuit when it opened in 1929. Paramount Pictures purchased it in the 1940s and renamed it the Paramount. Then it became Palace West run by Felix Corona, showing Spanish-language films. The city bought it in 1984 and resorted it to its original beauty.

As always I am indebted to the ASU Archives for their priceless McCulloch Bros. photo collection, as well as those from Brad Hall and the Library of Congress.

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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.

Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[soleri]

Any compilation of old photographs will make me tear up at the reminder that Phoenix was once a nice city before it became an automotive wasteland. You didn't need to ask why you loved your hometown because there was enough love in its building stock to tell you. Patriotism that is divorced from this emotional connection is abstract and hollow. It's why America is failing in so many ways. There is simply not enough character in our built environment to remind us who we are. We gave all that up for the empty pleasure of driving from one end of nowhere to the other.

[Cal Lash]

There's maybe a chance for the mesquites, Paradise Mall is on its way to becoming a wasteland. As is Fiesta and Metrocenter.

[Cal Lash]

Thanks Jon. Gloria and I and a bunch of other OLD Arizona residents really enjoy this sorta stuff. We did our time in some of these Theatres. Particularly in the balconies.

[Ed Dravo]

Every Saturday I rode the bus with Bucky Nelson from Hayward and Central to the Fox for the Matinee and hijinks by Lew King and his Rangers. Dawn O'Day would sing if we were lucky. Then Bucky and I would go across the street to the drug store and wait for his mom to get off work and drive us home. Pretty adventurous for 6 year olds.

[Cal Lash]

Cine Capri now gone from 2300 East Camelback was designed by Phoenix Architect Ralph Haver son of a bricklayer.

Ed did you run into Gary Peter Klahr?

[ed dravo]

Couldn't avoid Gary, he was up there shilling for Lou way back when.

On my 7th birthday my mom took me and my guests out to Mesa to Jack Adams Alligator Farm! I must have still been doing well in school.

[mark sanchez]

Jon..
I really enjoyed this journey in the Phoenix Way Back Machine: The Fox theater remains the palace I remembered. The lounge area, those giant chandeliers, the painted scenes on the walls are vivid reminders of my younger, simpler life. The Paramount/Palace West (as I knew the place during my life in Phoenix) was equally special, and so was the Palms Theater. I'll always remember my Austin America dropping its entire exhaust system (manifold to tailpipe) onto Central Avenue a block from the theater. Jeanne Delmonico and I just picked up the piece, placed it in the car and went on with our date.
I don't remember the film.. but I'll never forget that moment with Jeanne. Or Jeanne.

[Gary O’Brien]

Thanks for loading up the Time Machine with all these excellent photographs. Such devastating losses.

[Ramjet]

Ah, the memories of old Phoenix.
I remember going,in the late forties, to The Strand and Rialto on Saturday mornings. They usually played two features, three serials, a whole bunch of cartoons and a newsreel. It kept me occupied and out of my Mother's hair most of the day.
I would get 50 cents and walk to Tenth Street, take the trolley downtown and hit the theater.
Imagine letting your eight year old son do that today.
Nostalgia really is a wonderful thing!
Phoenix in the forties was a wonderful place to be a kid.

[Nick Nichols]

1944 thru 1945, I lived at 10th St and Oak. I was I. The 4th and 5th grade. Many Saturdays, my grandmother would give me a quarter to go to the movies. The streetcar ran along 10th street to downtown Phoenix and the fare was a nickel. When I arrived on Washington St., I would choose between the Strand, the Studio and the Phoenix. They all showed a western or another B movie, a cartoon, and, often, a serial. Admission was 10 cents, which left me a nickel for a treat. The Durango Kid, Red Ryder, Lash Larue, Tim Holt, Johnny Mack Brown were the stars. I have very fond memories of those days. Thanks for posting the pictures.

[Joe Schallan]

When I was a kid, we usually went to the Cinema Park Drive-In at 7th Street and Missouri, the nearest place in our neighborhood to see movies. By my time, the helicopter-rotor-propelled misting system was gone, alas.

A real treat was going to the Palms. I saw the Guns of Navarone and The Great Race, among other things, there.

I was only to the Fox once, when neighborhood moms picked me to be a chaperone for the little kids for a showing of Babes in Toyland in 1962. Being an ever-so-sophisticated 12-year-old (after all, I started listening to KRIZ and KRUX that year), I thought the movie was as stupid as heck, but I remember being impressed with the theater.

When I was 15, the Ciné Capri opened in my neighborhood. Decades later, when it was faced with the wrecking ball, Pat McMahon spearheaded a drive to save it as a historical structure but failed. (If a 1965 building is historic, then what am I?) What a great modern movie palace it was! I saw The Godfather there. We had to wait in a queue outside when a big summer dust storm temporarily engulfed us, making both the patrons and the movie gritty.

I never did get taken to see Jack Adams' Alligator Farm but remember how it figured into one of the 1960s urban legends. Story was that a big monsoon-triggered flash flood had washed some gators from Jack Adams' into the canal system. Finding both fish and edible garbage in the waters, plus warm temperatures, the reptiles began to reproduce. The Arizona Canal was within a bike ride from my house. I kept an eye out for them, and wondered if they posed a hazard to the teen-agers who water-skied on the canals in yet another Phoenix-specific urban legend.

[Cal Lash]

The Cinema Park drive in was a sweaty go to passion pit in the summer and a steam up the windows lovers pit in the winter.
Where I saw "The Thing." I went to most of the Valleys Drive ins. Now all gone.

[Cal Lash]

Old things

"When I was little anytime my daddy walked up to a windmill he'd take off his hat and grin up at that fan going around. Just grin like an idiot."
Recollection of a plainsman.

[Bruce Danielson]

I also remember taking the bus down to kids' matinees in the old Fox.

Val Cordova lived just down the street for quite a few years when I was growing up.

[Dollie Palmquist]

Would give anything if they had saved the Palms and Fox theaters - Phoenix has torn down more history than they ever should have - also so many of the stately mansions along Central Ave. When we were dating in the early '50's, we went to the Fox, Paramount and Palms theaters almost every week and they were all so beautiful including the moving clouds on the ceiling! So sad to lose them!!

[Richard Leon]

reading all these stories from a past that only few care to remember, is humbling at the least.
My father reminds me often of his growing up with all these beautiful and interesting buildings.
Thank you Phoenix and thank you to my father