As a boy being dragged along on a shopping trip, I was sometimes rewarded with a box of chocolate from Loft's. After waiting for my mother as she looked through endless racks of clothing at Hess's, we would take the escalator to the fifth floor and have the parking ticket validated. Before walking back to the modern parking deck at 10th street, we would detour to 8th, and buy the candy.
That's 8th Street, right? What theater is that on the left?
ReplyDeleteVOR
he theater was originally the strand, and the former lobby area is still there, now a tax service. if the theater was called the strand in the 50's, i'm not sure. in the late 1970's when the space was divided into two store fronts, i operated Allentown Photographic there, sharing the marque with the other store, My Cin. at that time the theater portion was still there and was used by Farr Shoes as a warehouse.
ReplyDeleteHi Mike,
ReplyDeleteThat's the Earle Theatre on the left, one of the many center city theaters my brother Barry and I went to in the early 1940's.You can see the word "Earle' on the sign above the marquee.
fernhill@7:04, earle was my hunch, and i certainly remember going to the earle, however, although i enlarged the photo, the name earle wasn't clear to me. furthermore, somewhere along the line, i recall hearing that the earl occupied the parking lot north of the that theater.
ReplyDeletethe vertical sign seems to say earle, which is two buildings away. there is a horizontal sign attached to the top of the marquee, but it seems to say perhaps central. the original name, strand, is engraved in the cement at the top of the marquee building, which is only two stories tall, at that point.
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteWhen we went there, it was definitely the Earle. Look closely at the vertical sign and you can read the name. Love the old pix of Allentown you put up.My personal nostalgia for a long gone town.
Best,
Arnold Fein
Mike,
ReplyDeleteThe horizontal sign seems to say "Cinema".
Arnold Fein
Something else. I'm pretty sure the word Cinema was not there in the early 1940's. All the movie houses,The Transit, the Midway, the Rialto, Colonial etc. were called theaters or movie houses. The word Cinema was not in vogue then.
ReplyDeleteArnold Fein
great photo
ReplyDeleteHi, this reminded me of another movie theater we kids would go to in the 1950's. It had triple feature horror movies and you could get in for just 25 cents, or you could donate a can of soup. This may have been in the vicinity of 6th & Gordon.
ReplyDelete