237-241 Church St. | map |
Opening: It was running by 1909. Sol Lesser was operating something called
The Nickelodium Co. (no, not a typo) at this location in 1909. They were listed in the city
directory that year with a 237 Church address.
The theatre appears with a 241 Church St. address in this detail from a page of the 1914 Sanborn Fire
Insurance Map. Thanks to Art Siegel for locating this in the Library of
Congress collection. Note the second theatre, the Electric, two doors north. The angled street at the top is Market. The horizontal one in the upper right is 14th.
The Lessers are mentioned in "The Lessers Arrive,"
a section of an article on page 400 of the July 15, 1916 issue of
Moving Picture World. It's on Google Books. Later, as the Golden Gate Film Exchange, they had offices at 964
Market, then at 44 Golden Gate Ave. and then moving to 166 Golden Gate Ave.
Closing: Sometime prior to 1919.
Both
this theatre at 237-241 (#33a) and the Electric at 227 (#34) were vacant when this Sanborn Fire Insurance Map was annotated
in 1919. Thanks to Art Sirgel for locating a PDF of this on some Amazon server.
Some of the 1919 notes for the annotated map page.
The theatre had been in a single-story building. The three-story structure in the center of this 1946 image was its replacement on the site. The Municipal Market to the left is the former Electric Theatre with its nickelodeon-style entrance arch filled in.
It's a detail from a shot
taken by Municipal Railway photographer George Fanning that's in the SFMTA Photo Archive, their #D5139. We're looking south from Market St. Thanks to Art Siegel for locating this.
More information: See the page for the Electric Theatre, 227 Church St.
No comments:
Post a Comment