Mar 11
Perry, NY's First Theater!
Mar 11
~The THEATORIUM at 15 North Main Street, Perry, NY 14530~
Someone recently posted a photo from the early 1900's on the Facebook group 'I Grew Up In Perry-dise' that included the West side of Main Street. It was a postcard, and the photo was much like the one below:
Credit: Digital Collection, Perry Public Library. "West Side of Main from Covington." New York Heritage Digital Collections. Accessed March 2, 2024.
Note the second business from the right: the Theatorium.
One person wanted to know more about this place, and I decided to investigate. Here is what I found.
First, let's talk about the history of motion film.
One of the first 'moving pictures' was created in 1878 showing a horse in full gallop, and was shown to an enthralled San Francisco audience in 1879-1880 via a 'sequential photo projector' called a zoogyroscope. These moving pictures simulated movement, but they relied on images created with multiple cameras.
In 1888, a French photographer named Louis Le Prince patented his Single-lens Cine Camera, the first device to record and reproduce pure motion — arguably the first movie camera. In October that year, he used the groundbreaking device to shoot what is widely believed to be the oldest film in existence: Roundhay Garden Scene in Leeds, England. The resulting film could be called one of the earliest examples of slow cinema: Four people walk in circles in front of a camera for 2.11 seconds. Sadly, before he could demonstrate his inventions to the public, Le Prince disappeared on September 16, 1890, after boarding a train in Dijon, France. He was never seen again!
It wouldn't be til the mid to late 1890's when moving picture films would come to theatres and auditoriums everywhere.
For Perry, sources said that the Theatorium was the first motion picture house here when it opened on Friday, March 22, 1907 at 15 North Main Street, Perry, NY. That address, which is shown in the photo above, is the same place many Perry-ites would remember as the former Villa Capri Restaurant, and most recently the home of Loch Life, which closed its doors on Dec 31, 2023 (but still maintains on online presence).
Source: Page 1 Perry Herald March 21st, 1907
I love that a Miss Maude Jenks has been employed as the piano player, a very important job. Even though moving pictures were called 'silent film', piano players played the music to go along with the drama seen in the film, playing music to match scenes that were happy, sad, suspenseful, etc, much like music affects how we watch movies today. Live performers were often time employed by adding lip-synced dialogue during the film, giving an even richer experience to the moving pictures.
While the Theatorium was the first motion picture house in Perry dedicated to mainly showing silent films, the Town Hall, built in 1898, housed an auditorium where plays, lectures, local and traveling entertainment, etc were held, like the big event advertised below in 1907:
Source: Page 10 Perry Herald Dec 19, 1907
But the Town Hall also hosted traveling companies that provided moving picture shows such as the famous Hadley Moving Pictures:
Source: Page 1 Perry Herald April 18th, 1907
The Theatorium regularly advertised their line up of films in the Perry Herald. Here are a few from various years, some of which can be found online in different places, including Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, found on YouTube here.
Source: Page 8 Perry Herald April 18, 1907
Source: Page 1 Perry Semi Weekly Herald October 1st, 1909
Source: Page 1 Perry Semi Weekly Herald Sept 24, 1909
A new moving picture theatre came to town exactly two years after the Theatorium opened. Can you imagine Perry having TWO movie theaters??!
Source: Page 3 Perry Semi Weekly Herald Mar 16, 1909
The Alhambra announced in 1912 that they added additional seating:
Source: Page 1 Perry Semi Weekly Herald July 2, 1912
The Alhambra was still advertising thrilling movies in 1914:
Source: Page 8 Perry Herald Oct 28, 1914
The Alhambra was purchased in 1916 and became the home of the Perry Herald, and eventually served as the office for the Perry Shopper.
In June of 1908, the Theatorium announced that they added vaudeville to the entertainment:
Source: Page 1 Perry Herald June 4th, 1908
Then, a year later, they announced they were discontinuing it for the summer:
Source: Page 1 Perry Semi Weekly Herald June 4th, 1909
The Theatorium was proud to announce that they would only show licensed films from the Pittsburg Calcium Light Co in order to provide high grade moving pictures:
Source: Page 1 Perry Semi Weekly Herald Nov 16, 1909
The last mention of the Theatorium in the Perry Herald was in 1909, and I could not find any reference of it closing. Many of the old digitized Perry Heralds are difficult to research via OCR as the text is not clear, so perhaps someday I'll come across a reference for it.
Even if the Theatorium did close due to the competition of the Alhamdra, silent films were still all the rage and at the Town Hall auditorium as well!
The Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a US motion picture studio. It was founded in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1907, it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films.
The auditorium had quite a line up of Vitagraph films in 1914, and you could even go on a weekday:
Source: Page 8 Perry Herald Oct 28, 1914
The first feature-length movie originally presented as a 'Talking Picture', or a 'Talkie' was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. By the 1930's, the talking motion film industry was booming, and silent films faded into obscurity. But until then, the Theatorium and the other theatres in Perry provided our community with plenty of entertainment that must have been a happy experience after a long day's work!
