Historic Theaters of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley by Sean T. Posey

Author:Sean T. Posey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2017-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

Part 4

WARREN AND THE ROBINS LEGACY

THE THEATERS OF WARREN

Only eighteen or so miles from Youngstown is the city of Warren, the second largest in the Mahoning Valley. Warren, along with Youngstown, constituted the backbone of local manufacturing might. At one time, more than sixtythree thousand people lived inside the city limits, and a variety of theaters served the hardworking people of Warren—the Robins, Daniel, Ohio and many others lined the streets of the booming downtown. For much of the twentieth century, a vibrant theater culture made Warren second only to Youngstown in terms of motion picture offerings.

The first real venue for live theater and music opened to the public in 1886 on High Street. The Warren Opera House quickly joined its Youngstown counterpart as one of the pillars of entertainment in the Mahoning Valley. Made mostly of brick and Ohio sandstone, the building also displayed touches of terra cotta, often called a construction “wonder material” in the late nineteenth century. A tower with a Far Eastern feel graced the top of the three-story building, and the second floor housed mostly private offices.

The opera house’s stage measured sixty feet wide and thirty-five feet deep; it could handle all requirements for most performances and scene changes. The performers’ dressing rooms were located adjacent to and beneath the stage. Gaslights for the house, which produced large volumes of heat, could be controlled from underneath the stage. A large sun burner connected by a chimney to the outside helped to simultaneously throw a large amount of light while also acting as a ventilator. The house contained eight hundred seats, which included box seats. Within a short period of time, Warren’s opera house had emerged as a popular stop on the vaudeville circuit. After the opera house closed, it became the Harris-Warren Theater.

As the moving picture craze spread throughout the area in the early twentieth century, the first nickelodeons opened in Warren. Initially, a local businessman, R.W. Elliott, screened the very first crude films in the area. By 1907, the opera house began showing moving picture films before live vaudeville performances, something management referred to as “a stunt.”80 The Electric Theater, possibly the first moving picture house to operate in Warren, opened weeks later on Park Avenue. The Electric survived for a brief time, shuttering in the late summer.

A series of nickelodeons soon sprouted, one on the heels of the other. The Edisonia Theater opened at 105 Main Street the same year as the Electric Theater. It was first owned by Kibler and E.C. Porter, the latter of whom also bought Youngstown’s Dreamland Theater, which briefly proved to be extraordinarily popular. And later it passed into the hands of businessman H.H. Andrews. The Theatorium opened before the Edisonia at 112 Main Street; it offered both picture shows and live vaudeville. Owner D.S. Fisher later opened the Grand Theater on Main Street, which offered live music from professional musicians and an expanded stage for vaudeville productions.

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