We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE MOTION PICTURE NEWS
29
eTheatre ^tstruction Department
WHEN, in a previous issue, I discussed the too free use of ginger-bread decorations, especially for the exterior work, as being too easynests for the dirt flying from the street, some decorators had an idea that I was opposed to plastic ornaments.
I am far from injuring the business of the decorators, as if the exhibitors want to follow the advice given them in these articles, they will build more artistic theatres and the decorators themselves will find more profit, supplying higher class work than a lot of cheap stuff, made by the yard, if I may use such an expression.
The accompanying illustration of the Orpheum theatre of Indianapolis, Ind., is a good example.
This facade has not the amount of cheap ginger-bread decoration making the average photoplay house hideous, but if the quantity is small the quality is far above the general run and the exterior of a four-story building, covered with cheap plastic ornaments, would not pay the decorating bill of the Orpheum theatre. There is more money for the decorators in the heavy cornices of the Orpheum. in the capitals and bases of the columns, in the figures of the arch and in the figures standing between the columns, than there would be if the building was covered with what is generally termed "ginger-bread decorations."
If the colrmns. the cornices and the figures gather the dirt of the street they are not such bad dust nests as the small plastic relief ornaments, and if even they gather the dirt, they can be more easily cleaned as they offer larger surfaces and not a multitude of small delicate ornaments to break like glass under the brush of the cleaner.
A theatre like the Orpheum is costly, but cheaper in the long run than a theatre that has to be retouched every few months, and is a far better investment, as it improves the neighborhood and is attractive.
In many cases of fire, any loss of life is due. primarily, to the fact that the exit doors cannot be opened at the crucial moment. The terrified people pile themselves in heaps about the exits and the poor unfortunates are trampled to death before the flames even reach them
Concerning Exit Doors
Exit doors have been a matter of consrant difficulties with the fire departments. To leave the doors unfastened and unguarded, is to give a chance to some bad boys to enter the place without paying the admission.
Several devices have been placed on the market and have been highly praised. While these various devices stood the test, they have proven, like many other devices, inadequate in case of an emereencv. In case of a
fire the panic-stricken folks jam against the door and as they do not know of the levers or do not know how to work them, they are in the way of the attendants, who when they arrive cannot come close enough to the doors to work the levers.
I have been caught in such a panic and unable to get to the doors unless brute force was used to get through the crowd.
It was a panic without real cause. The current was furnished by a trolley
THE ORPHEUM THEATEE, INDI ANAPOLIS, 1ST).