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| 1904-1930 Sanborn Insurance Map, Click to enlarge - Source |
Cincinnati Times-Star September 1, 1925
“FINEST THEATER IN THE WORLD” FOR CINCINNATI
That Is the Word That Comes From New York.
NEGOTIATIONS CONCLUDED
Office and Commercial Buildings Along With Movie Palace
By J. M. Allison
NEW YORK, N.Y. – September 1
The long pending negotiations looking
to the acquirement by the Keith Albee interests and their allies of what has
been known as the Famous Players Lasky theater site on Fifth and on Vine streets
in Cincinnati, were brought to a definite and final conclusion yesterday at a
meeting at which E. F. Albee, Ben L. Heldingsfeld and representatives of the
Famous Players Lasky organization effected the transfer of the property to a
special corporation of which Mr. Albee is president and Mr. Heldingsfeld is
secretary.
Because of the close and intimate
connection and the friendly relations existing between the parties, it had been
practically assured for some weeks that this deal would be made. In fact, Rapp
& Rapp, the Chicago architects, are well along with their work of preparing
the plans for a theater to be erected on this site which will cost a million
and one-half dollars.
To those who know that his means, it is enough
to say that it will be an Albee theater. That is, it will have all the
magnificent and artistic beauty of the Albee theaters in Brooklyn and
Cleveland, which are distinctive as the finest theatrical structures in the
world. The realty was taken over on a basis of nearly $2,000,000, so the total
investment will be $3,500,000, and Cincinnati will have the finest moving
picture house in the world.
Though the theater will be used, for
some time as least, for the showing of Greater Moving pictures, it will have a
full stage with complete equipment, all necessary dressing rooms and the same
marvelous backstage arrangement, which exist at present only in the two Albee
theaters already built. The individuals and companies interested in the project
are: Mr. Albee, personally; the B.F. Keith Connecticut company, Senator John T.
Harris of Pittsburgh, I. Libson and Ben I. Heldingsfeld of Cincinnati, Edwin J.
Lauder of the Keith organization, Senator J. Henry Walters and former
Congressman J. L. Rhinock.
The work of wrecking the present
building will begin as soon as the plans are completed and the theater will be
finished in 1926. The plot on which the theater is to be constructed has a
frontage of 120 feet on Vine street, below Fifth (the old Stag hotel location),
and runs back 200 feet to an alley. It also has a frontage of 46 ½ feet on
Fifth street and here the main entrance of the theater will be located.
There will be a large commercial
building on Vine street and also an office building over the entrance on Fifth
street. The theater will be very large, but its exact seating capacity can not
be given until the architects have finished their work. The negotiations for
the sale of the property were made and completed through Walter S. Schmidt of
the F. A. Schmidt Company of Cincinnati.
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| Sheraton-Gibson Hotel with the Albee Theater to the right, present day US Bank - Source |
Cincinnati Post and Times-Star, May 26, 1960
Hotel Seeks to Buy Albee
by Si Cornell
The Sheraton Corp. wants to buy the
RKO Albee Theater and turn it into a convention hall, which would be connected
with the corporation’s Sheraton-Gibson. The rear of the Gibson and the side of
the Albee are separated only by the narrow Carew place. If the sales goes
through, plans are to connect the hotel and theater by ramps on upper stories.
Negotiations have been going on for
five months. RKO’s asking price for the theater isn’t known, but estimates
place it anywhere from $2 million on up. If the hotel does buy the theater,
some interior changes would be made so that huge banquets could be held there
as well as conventions.
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| Cincinnati Post and Times-Star, May 26, 1960 |
Cincinnati Post, October 13, 1974
The Albee war: an urban love story
by Richard Gibeau
The Albee Theater, dark and brooding
behind its boarded-up doors, is a central figure in love story that will be playing
tomorrow before the City Planning Commisson.
Another is Frances Vitali, a slight,
gentle woman who, in her self-effecting way, has challenged City Council,
planners, developers and assorted movers and shakers. The commission’s hearing
on the Albee’s qualifications to be protected as a Listed Property comes after
an almost three-year sequence of events. It all began in January 1972 with the
revelation that Unit, Inc., newly transplanted from Dallas, planned to erect a
high-rise office building with shopping arcade at the southeast corner of Fifth
and Vine streets.
The Albee, the Wiggins building and
other property in the quarter-block segment fronting on Fifth and Vine would be
razed. With that new, Mrs. Vitali took the first tentative steps from the
relative obscurity of the Colonial Laundry that she and her husband Americo
operate in Corryville. She began collecting signatures on a petition protesting
the destruction of the Albee, hoping for 300 names registered in opposition to
this thing they call “progess”. She got 340 names and sent them to then Mayor
Thomas Luken with a letter saying it was “only the beginning of our fight to
save the Albee Theater. “We love our city and must share in its remaking,” she
wrote.
Other opposition to the project soon
emerged, although few, if any, talked so unabashedly and articulately in terms
of love for the city as Mrs. Vitali. The Cincinnati Chapter of the American
Institute of Architects quickly moved to the fore, joined by the local chapters
of landscape architects and planners and by many in the University of
Cincinnati community. Their protests focused on Fountain Square plaza in terms
of traffic congestion and what the overwhelming scale of a 50-story building
would do to the sunlit character of the plaza.
So the plans of B.W. Morris, chairman
of Unit, apparently collapsed temporarily. Morris later indicated, though never
publicly, that his plans had been revived and expanded. He acquired an option
to purchase the Sheraton-Gibson, in addition to options on the Albee and the
other properties. Plans were prepared for a development fronting the entire
length of Fifth from Vine to Walnut, although not rising to the height of the
original tower.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Vitali and others
sharing her convictions formed the Save the Albee Committee and struggled on in
the effort to win support in City Hall. The preservationist movement won an
opening when the listed property ordinance, providing limited protection for
properties of historical or architectural value, was adopted by City Council in
April, 1973. In September, the Miami Purchase Assn. requested inclusion of the
Albee as a listed property. That request has been reinforced by a series of
letter endorsements, secured by Save the Albee, from Gov. John Gilligan,
Charles Sawyer, Cincinnati lawyer and philanthropist, J. Ralph Corbett, Walter
C. Langsam, president emeritus of UC, and others.
With those letters in hand, Mrs.
Vitali will represent Save the Albee tomorrow before the Planning Commission in
the latest round of a 34-month fight that has made her name a City Hall byword.
She sat on Fountain Square Plaza yesterday
and talked about her experiences and the merits of preserving the Albee, not as
a monument, but as a vital cultural instrument.
The turning point in the Albee
campaign came earlier this year, she said, when Mr. and Mrs. John Strader of
Clifton became honorary co-chairpersons and a brochure stating the case for the
albee was prepared. The brochure
documents the unique qualities of the Albee designated as a national landmark
in 1972. But it also argues for a new life for the Albee, as part of an office/hotel
complex, connected to the Skywalk system. Incentive zoning considerations are
proposed to enable a developer to include the Albee in a Fountain Square
development with minimal financial burden.
The case presented in the brochure “has
brought a lot of response from citizens and very little from City Hall,” Mrs.
Vitali said. “City Council has hurt our city. If just three years ago when this
project started, they said, ‘Look, the Albee is a vital part of our city’, then
the developer knows that he has to work with.” She is dismayed that so many in decision-making
roles seem to know little about the Albee, seeing it only as an out-of-fate
movie house now boarded up. “When you talk to the people who have to make this judgment,
they have never been in the Albee Theater, so how can they make this judgment?”
she said. “Why doesn’t the city start on this? Why do they leave all those
loose ends hanging there?”
Mrs. Vitali speaks nostalgically of
the Albee as a part of her youth, but she also is filled with the ferment of
ideas of what it can be in the future. “We’re calling out project Theater on
the Square. It should be going on all season long.” She sees it as a house for
opera, ballet, brown-bag performances at midday, tourist attractions, Christmas
programs, school graduations, educational programs for youth in the daytime,
profit-making in the evening, “the theater could really be an art gallery in
itself.”
“To me this theater has so many uses
that you can’t even begin to count them.”
Much of her discussion of the Albee’s
possibilities is in terms of its potential for young people. “When I started
this, to me it was a very emotional thing because I remembered the Albee in its
heyday, but now I see its value for bringing life back to the square.” “I’m
only working on this actually because I think of the youth of tomorrow. I know
what this meant for me,” she said.
If the Albee’s proponents are
successful in their quest for Listed Property status tomorrow, Mrs. Vitali said
they are counting on steps by the city administration to save the theater. “We
would like to help. We would like to make it feasible for the developer to
incorporate it in his plans, whatever they are,” she said.
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| View from the Albee Stage - Source |
Champions Of Albee Get Some Bad News; Council Can’t Help
Cincinnati Enquirer, November 16, 1974
Advocates of preserving the Albee
Theater as an historic landmark under the city’s “listed property” controls got
a double doses of sad news at the Cincinnati City Planning Commission meeting.
First, Morton Rabkin, assistant city
solicitor, held in an opinion that the Commission has sole authority to
designated landmarks for preservation, under the City Charter. City Council,
Rabkin said, is unable to override the commission or initiate legislation in
this area.
Last week, the commission refused by a
3-3 tie to recommend to council that the Albee be protected as a “listed
property.” The proponents, asking what they could do, were told by Councilman
Charles P. Taft they could ask a member of council to introduce an ordinance to
make the theater a “listed property.”
Rabkin Friday submitted to the
commission a formal opinion stating council could not preserve property as a
landmark without first getting a recommendation from the commission.
City Manager E. Robert Turner provided
the second bit of bad news for the Save-the-Albee group. He was not on hand for
last week’s commission vote on making the Albee a “listed property.” But Friday
he said that had he been at the prior meeting, he would have cast a negative
vote, as had been speculated in the Enquirer. That would have made the vote 4-3
against.
But while council might not be able to
initiate an ordinance to make the Albee a “listed property,” it is nevertheless
inquiring in that connection as a result of a motion and resolution at Thursday’s
meeting by Councilman David Mann. The motion, referred to the city manager and
Planning Commission, asks them to report how making the theater a “listed
property” would jeopardize redevelopment of the surrounding half block, as
charged by opponents of Albee preservation.
The resolution which was adopted urges
owners of the Albee to permit members of council and the commission to tour the
building to aid them with a decision. The Planning Commission authorized a
$25,000 contract with the Miami Purchase Association for a survey and ranking of
Cincinnati’s historic sites and building. The information will aid the
commission in reviewing National Register nominations, listed property and
other requests for preservation of landmarks, it was explained. …
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| Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1976 |
Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1976
Fans Gather For Last Look
by Barbara Murphy, Enquirer Reporter
Old and young roamed about aimlessly. Some
wanted mementoes of a place once packed for stag shows, others just wanted to
take a last look at what some consider to be one of the world’s most beautiful
pieces of architecture and design.
“All the people here want a piece of
the theater,” said Clem Long, president, National Content Liquidators, which is
handling the sale of all the contents in the 50-year-old movie palace. The
Albee had some of its glamour intact Friday. Price tags hung from almost all
items, and empty spaces dotted the auditorium where some of the theater seats
had been picked up and sold. Hundreds of theater seats were bought for about
$20, balcony seats sold for $15.
“I bought three prisms,” said a
Pleasant Ridge woman. She was not sure what she would do with them, but she
added she was sad to see the loss of the theater. The single-cut glass prisms,
taken from the chandeliers, were selling for up to $10. A Western Hills
resident carried away three white milk-glass letters selling for $3 apiece. “I
just wanted to get my initials,” she said. “I have strong feeling about the
closing of the theater,” she added.
Just about every article was tagged
and ready to sell. The electrically raised orchestra pit was selling for $1000,
and the stage drape for $350. An $150 settee was outside of the auditorium and
downstairs in the lounges $350 Louis XIV chairs waited to be bought. Bannisters,
lamps, chandeliers, paneling, fountains, even toilets and sinks are all in line
to be sold. Drew Diamond, cashier for National Content Liquidators said that
many articles had been sold by Friday afternoon. “A lot of small items are
going real good,” he said.
As Cincinnatians fingered the
artifacts, many felt indifferent yet many felt disappointed. Mrs. Thomas L.
Eckert, Kenwood, was looking for some of the eight inch milk-glass letters to
decorate the side of their barn with. “I thought it was worthwhile to come and
see the Albee again,” she said. Mrs. Eckert, originally from Australia, said
that the Albee reminded her of Europe. Caroline Wellage, actress, has plans to
decorate a wall of her home with the glass letters. She also plans to add the
years 1927-1976 in glass, to commemorate the Albee’s 50 years of life. “It
breaks my heart,” she said about the theater closing.
“I wish I weren’t here,” said writer
J.J. Todd. “Sitting in one of the boxes reminds me of what our kids will miss,”
he said. “This shouldn’t be able to happen. Progress is one thing, but heritage
is another,” he added. “They could have saved it if they wanted to,” said Jeff
Fecon, sixth year architecture student at the University of Cincinnati. “Any
city can build new buildings,” he said. “It would have been no problem to
restore, but it will cost $3 million to tear down. The main goal is not really
save the Albee, but to bring back life to downtown Cincinnati. This liquidation
sale cheapens everything. It’s a shame to know that money and power rule, and
not people,” he said.
John Bassette and his wife were
browsing through some of the lounges. Bassette feels that the loss of the
theater is tragic. “I’ve studied it but there is no other feasible way to keep
it. It’s in a lot worse shape than I thought.” Mervin Clark, Walnut Hills, came
in to get a last look at the building. “People cannot grasp the detail that was
put into these plaster casts,” he said. Karl Topie, retired cellist with the
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was on the Albee stage the night it opened in
December of 1927. “It’s terrible to see it go,” said Topie. “It’s the most
beautiful theater ever built.” Matt Macleid, Walnut Hills, tried to add a little
humor to the idea of tearing down structures. “Europe has wars,” he said. “But
we’ve got urban renewal.”
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| Fountain Square Hotel, east side of Vine between 4th and 5th Streets - Source |
Cincinnati Post, December 17, 1976
City buys Albee Theater
by Ellen Schmitz
The City of Cincinnati has bought the
Albee Theater on Fifth Street from the RKO-Stanley Warner Theaters, Inc., of
New York for $2 Million.
The Albee and the Fountain Square
Hotel, which was part of the purchase deal, are the first portions of the Fifth
Street block to be purchased by the city for the Fountain Square South
development. Richard Melfi, head of the city’s real estate division, said
yesterday that he expects to have a contract on the other properties. If the
city cannot reach agreement with the other property owners on a purchase price
by the end of the year, Melfi said, he hopes to have the matters in court by
the end of the year.
The city expects to spend a total of
about $7 million for purchasing the parcels on the Fifth Street block between
Vine and Walnut Streets. Another $700,000 is expected to be spent on demolition
of the old structures, which is scheduled to begin on March 1.
Many citizens tried in vain to prevent
the city from tearing down the old theater. But the city and the developer, the
John W. Galbreath Co. of Columbus, said it was not feasible to include the Albee
in the plans for the $60 million office-hotel-retail complex.
The joint development agreement
between the city and Galbreath requires the city to acquire and clear the
property and to build a three level underground garage. Nell Surber, director
of the city’s department of development, said the city portion of the
development will cost about $6 million (not including acquisition and
demolition costs). She explained that the underground construction will being
next summer and that the office-hotel-retail complex should be completed by the
end of 1979.
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| Source |
The Death Of The Albee
Cincinnati Enquirer, March 19, 1977
Management billed it the world’s
finest theater. Gloria Swanson, Harold Lloyd and Norma Talmadge were amount the
movie greats to wire best wishes. And Clara Bow, the “It Girl,” starred in “Get
Your Man” to open the ornate theatrical palace – the E.F. Albee – on Christmas
Eve, 1927.
That was a great year for the movies.
Talking pictures had made their debut. The Wall Street crash was still months
away. The ‘20’s were still roaring and no more so than in the rush to motion
picture houses. Thus was the temp as Albee owners received the telegrams and
unloaded the flowers that flowed their way on the eve of Christmas Eve.
“Cincinnati attains world’s leadership
in another important field through the new E.F. Albee theater which opens today
at 11a.n.,” trumpeted an advertisement in The Enquirer that December 24.
Tickets for 4000 seats were advertised at prices ranging from 35 cents in the
balcony to 75 cents in boxes. And the “Albertina Rasch Girls” were among the
opening stage acts.
The Albee, of course, was more than a
film theater. Live entertainment thrived on its stage. Actors talked
enthusiastically of the elevator that took them to their dressing room – a “first”
for the Albee (performers had long complained of having to walk up long flights
of stairs to dressing rooms in American theaters). Moreover, the new Cincinnati
cinema also boasted a pool for aquatic acts.
Actors and actresses who graced its
stage read like a “Who’s Who” of entertainment. Fred Astaire and Grace Hayes,
mother of Peter Lind Hayes, were there. So were Smith and Dale, the original “Sunshine
Boys,” and Ray Henderson, pianist-author of such greats as “Sonny Boy,” “Birth
of the Blues,” and “Sunnyside Up,” Jackie Gleason, Ben Burnie and Jack Benny
were among stars there.
The Albee did its World War II bit
with what must have been one of the nation’s top star-studded bond sales. It
came as no surprise, then, when it went on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1972. The shower of shows, the Albee, itself, was a showpiece of the
first order.
Victim now of the wrecker’s ball, it
will be missed. But if indeed the Albee had to die (its last movie, “Big Bad
Mama” in 1974, apparently was one of its worst), all signs suggest Fountain
Square South – the marvel set for its place – will mark a Cincinnati advance
more notable, even, than the one which excited the city that long-ago December
day.
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| Ohio Theater, Columbus, Ohio - Source |
Ohio Theater Has Familiar Surroundings
Cincinnati Enquirer, November 19, 1978
by Paul Lugannani, Enquirer Travel Editor
It is not surprising that a lifelong
Cincinnatian should have the I’ve-been-here-before feeling when he, for the
first time, steps through the heavy, ornate brass doors of Ohio’s official
theater in Columbus.
It is called Ohio Theater and is
located directly south and across the street from the Capitol building. The
feeling of familiarity is bona fide. Those beautiful doors once graced Cincinnati’s
late, lamented Albee Theater, which was zapped from Fountain Square in the name
of progress. Additionally, inside near the doors are two heavy brass “ticket
posts” in which ticket-takers place stubs. Those, too, came from the Albee.
There is more. In the upstairs foyer are two ornate, wrought-iron benches with
brilliant red velvet seats – also from Cincinnati’s historical showhouse.
“All of those things came here from
Cincinnati after the last showing at the Albee,” explained Don Streibig, the
busy and vigorous manager of the Columbus theater. “You might add, too, that I
also came from Cincinnati – Western Hills High School, Class of 1944.”
Streibig was happy to report that Ohio
Theater, unlike the ill-fated Albee, barely escaped the same ball of
destruction in the name of urban renewal. Columbus city planners had designs on
the property as the site for building the new 28-story State Office Building. Fortunately, for theater-lovers, a strong
Columbus Association for the Performing Arts won a long battle for
preservation.
Streibig cheerfully conducted a tour
of the fully renovated “luxurious palace of splendor.” Being a person who
cannot pass a drinking fountain, I stopped at an ornate porcelain one mounted
in a wall of the second-floor foyer. “Oh, yes,” Streibig chimed in, “that came
from the Albee, too.” That gave me a funny feeling because I recalled I had
taken many drinks from that same fountain over past years in the Albee.
“Let’s sit down here and talk a bit,”
the manager suggested, indicating seats in the rear of the house. The seats in
the loge were all new, thickly cushioned and covered with brilliant red velour.
“We also added an inch more space between the rows for greater convenience of
theatergoers,” Streibig noted. Seating capacity of the house is 2837, he said.
Looking around the vast interior, I
again sensed the similarity between it and the old Albee. Bas relief
floor-to-ceiling, triumphal arches stand over the forward box seats. Overhead
is a vaulted ornate ceiling. And gold leaf gives a lustrous background
throughout. Red and yellow curtain are graciously draped over the wide stage,
with an organ visible on the left side.
Streibig proudly recalled that former
President Gerald Ford and entertainer Bob Hope headed the celebrities list last
December 3 at the theater’s golden jubilee anniversary. Ford presented a plaque
from the U.S. Department of the Interior designating the building a National
Historical Landmark. At that time, also, the Ohio Legislature passed a joint
resolution proclaiming the edifice the Official Ohio Theater. The plaque now is
mounted on the front of the building. …
So magnificent is the restoration of
the Ohio that renovators of other old theaters around the country use the
Columbus experience as an example, Streibig said with pride. …
Author's Note - The Ohio Theater in Columbus has a wonderful summer movie schedule. I got to enjoy "Gone With The Wind" last summer on a big screen in a classic theater. It is something to experience and worth the trip. Here is this summer's line-up: 2012 CAPA Summer Movie Series. It would be wonderful if a local theater such as the Emery or the Taft could do something similar in Cincinnati.
My Grandmother went to the liquidation sale, and saved several of the crystals from the main chandler. We have used them as Christmas ornaments every year on our tree.
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