Part 724: The Temple Theatre in Rochester, 1909
Sosman & Landis delivered stock scenery, an asbestos curtain and a drop curtain to the Temple Theatre in Rochester, New York, in 1909. The Temple Theater was located just across the street from the popular Lyceum Theatre on Clinton Street. This was the same year that they also delivered Masonic scenery to Scottish Rite theaters in Winona, Minnesota, Kansas City, Kansas, Dallas, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, and Memphis, Tennessee.
On September 22, 1909, and advertisement for the Cook Opera House was placed in the “Rochester Democrat and Chronicle,” noting that it was “to be succeeded in November by the Temple Theatre as Rochester’s Home of International Vaudeville” (page 16). As the Cook Theatre, it was the present home of “J. H. Moore Vaudeville” (Democrat and Chronical, 14 March 1909, page 24).
There were venues known as “Temple Theatres” across the country, many managed by the Knights of Pythias. There were many other Temple Theatres in 1909, including those in Alton, Illinois, Youngstown, Ohio, New Orleans, Louisiana, Palestine, Texas, and Detroit, Michigan, to name a few.
In regard to the new Temple Theatre in Rochester, he “Democrat and Chronicle” reported, “[the Temple Theatre] will have the most complete vaudeville house on the American continent” (25 October 1909, page 10). Architect Leon H. Lempert drew the plans and supervised the construction of the theater. Of the installation, the article continued,
“The stage scenery is from the studios of Sosman & Landis of Chicago, and a carload of scenery will arrive in the city next week, several other cars of scenery following rapidly. The asbestos, or fire curtain, will be the first to be placed so as to avoid wrinkling and the beautiful drop curtain will be the last thing.
This drop curtain will be a picture of Marie Antoinette receiving Louis XVI at Versailles. The scenic equipment itself is perhaps the most elaborately ever placed in a vaudeville theater in the world, and the subjects as well as the designs of the interior scenes were carefully selected at a conference of the artists, the owners and the architect. J. H. Moore gave carte blanche for this work. And the cost of the decorations and scenery alone is more than the cost of the average theatre.”
Of the other elaborate decorations in the new Temple Theater in Rochester included fresco work was completed by Charles S. Allen of New York. The article noted that he worked on the ceiling with “a dozen Italian artists” who were brought to this country to decorate the home of Charles M. Schwab, the steel magnate. Furthermore. The mural paintings on the soundboard above he proscenium arch were painted by Raphael Beck, an artist from Buffalo, New York. Beck had exhibited his work at the Pan-American Exposition.”
To be continued…
