Slabtown PDX

#16: Can you name all five historic names for this former Thurman St. movie theater?

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Image of theater. The building is a one-story brick structure. The front facade has an attractive set of three rounded windows framed by a rounded roof line. The side facade had a few windows and a fading ghost sign text "Ideal Theater" This historic theater had five name the first/original name is painted on the brick side wall.

Can you name all five historic names for this former Thurman Street movie theater?

The Ideal Theater Building 2405 NW Thurman. (TLM April 2015)
How Many Names Did This Theater have while operating as a theater? Answer is: FIVE names.

Test your skill…

1912: Ideal Theater was Designed by Emil Schacht and Son (silent movie theater)
owner: Conrad LeBlanc
1927: The Senate (facade remodel)
1929: The Bluebird
1944(45): Elmo (Fire c. 1949)
1951: The Crown
Closed December 1953 was used as a warehouse for years.

Emil Schacht practiced architecture in Oregon for decades and is attributed for introducing the residential English Arts & Crafts style to Portland (Ritz p. 347). His fifteen residential buildings in Willamette Heights neighborhood (1905-1909) are worthy of a Multiple Properties National Register Nomination. The advocates fort the Irvington Historic District have documented and preserved many of his notable residences. He designed Astoria City Hall in 1904 which is still standing and had been adaptively reused as a hotel. The Lewis and Clark Oriental Exhibits Palace Exposition Building (1905) was one of his more famous designs. My person favorite building for its cultural significance to Portland’s Black History and pleasing design is the Golden West Hotel.

The architectural firm Emil Schacht and Son lasted from 1910-1916.

Letter Preserved at the Portland City Archives and Records Office
Every secondary source states that the theater had 300 seats. This document leads me to believe there were four hundred in the peek period of significance.

All historic sources state the theater seated between 300-330 patrons looking at the letter below I’m inclined to think that the theater in the WWII years seated 400 plus. Glad that James Lommasson and Stewart Harvey remodeled this building in 2004. I am often distracted by articles around Portland, OR and censorship in the late teens. Oddly enough in 1920 C.E. Yeager proprietor of the Ideal Theater was fined for having a girl under the age of 18 working in his theater-it must have been a sting because six theater owners were charged.

Book one of our Slabtown Tours and show off your knowledge to our guests & guide.

Fun Facts that go deeper into oddities of the the 1905 Fair:

#76 Trixie The Horse

#50 Nonsensical Concrete

#47 Infant Incubators

#30 The American Inn

#26 Monkey Puzzle Trees

 

Slabtown Fun Facts #11: Who was Myrtle Casper

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Slabtown Fun Facts #11: Who was Myrtle Casper
Image courtesy Mike Ryerson
Photographer Fred DeWolfe

The late Myrtle Casper was a longtime resident of the Slabtown neighborhood in Northwest Portland. Her husband, Ben Casper, owned the Saw Shop, which is now the site of the Northwest Portland Library parking lot. Myrtle enjoyed spending her time shooting pool with the men at the Northwest Tavern & Pool (now McMenamins) on NW 23rd Avenue. After all, what else was there for a lady to do when her husband spent his days sharpening saws?

Myrtle Clara Casper was born in Kansas in 1890. She was married three times and spent much of her early years working as a housekeeper. She passed away in 1974 at the age of 83 in an apartment above her favorite pool hall. Ben died four years later at the age of 93.

A large copy of this photograph of Myrtle is displayed on the wall of McMenamins Tavern & Pool. If the tour group is small your tour guide will take you into the bar that was Myrtle’s home away from home.