More Cedar Point Ohio 1922 - Then and Thereafter

 

Guest post by Leroy

Note: you may need to click on some of the photographs to see them to full advantage

Where, exactly, was the ‘Advertise, advertise, advertise’ call given?

In the 1922 IBSA Convention at Cedar Point, Joseph F. Rutherford gave the famous talk in which he made the important declaration “Advertise, advertise, advertise the King and Kingdom!” Even though photographs of the event do exist, few know the exact spot where this talk was given. Next, we can see two historic photos taken during the discourse. The first one is looking towards the stage, and the second one is from the stage towards the audience:

Many collectors and history enthusiasts have tried to locate the place where the above photos were taken. Today, we can discover it by analyzing a few old as well as recent photographs of the buildings that were present at Cedar Point in 1922.

The building in the next photo is identified in old postcards as the “Convention Hall”:

This building was originally known as the Grand Pavilion and it’s the first big structure erected in Cedar Point which is still standing today. The Grand Pavilion was opened during the 1888 season and had a capacity of 4000 people seated (Francis, Cedar Point - the Queen of American Watering Places (AP Books, 1995), 41). However, this was not the place where the iconic speech took place.

A photograph exists of the interior of the Grand Pavilion, in which we can notice that, even though they are similar, it is not the same place as the one we see in the photos taken during Rutherford’s talk.

The Grand Pavilion is an open hall with a very high vaulted ceiling; it has a second floor with an interior balcony, and doesn’t have columns among the audience, contrary to the building we see in the convention pictures. Also, in the photos from the IBSA Convention we see arch-shaped windows, different from the ones in the Grand Pavilion, which are squared. The Grand Pavilion was lit by 24 chandeliers (Francis,26), as opposed to the 1922 Convention auditorium, in which we can see only bare lightbulbs as a means of illumination.Also, the attendance at the 1922 convention was more than 10,000. A bigger place was required to accommodate such an audience during JFR´s talk, so we can conclude the Grand Pavilion was not the place where the talk was given.

Was there another structure capable of holding such a large amount of people? Yes, there was. Soon after the opening of the Breakers hotel in 1905, a new massive structure was erected; this new building would have two floors, the upper being an enormous dance hall, with capacity for 10,000 people. This structure is known as The Coliseum and is also still standing today.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate a photograph taken inside the Coliseum before 1939, the year in which the interior was remodeled into art deco style. However, written accounts of the appearance of the interior of the Coliseum tell us that it did not have a great amount of decoration. The pillars and the ceiling structure didn’t have any cover, and the means of illumination were bare lightbulbs (Francis,106). Despite the remodeling, a few fundamental aspects were preserved and they help us identify the Coliseum as the hall where the famous 1922 speech was given.

Let’s see a photo of the interior of The Coliseum in the beginning of the 1940s:

We can see at the back, the windows with a staggered design, with smaller squares in the upper levels. These same windows are visible in the 1922 photo. Here is a side by side comparison of both photographs:

In the 1922 photo we can see that behind Rutherford, as well as at the back of the audience, there are three arch-shaped windows at the center, followed by two narrower arch-shaped windows, and then the staggered windows. Although this is not seen in the 1940 photograph because the arch-shaped windows are covered by a stage, in other photographs taken from outside the building both styles of windows can clearly be seen.

In the above postcard we can see the arched windows at the center, and if you look closely to the window at the farthest right, you can see the staggered design at the upper part of the window.

This one shows clearly the staggered windows in the wall to the right, and in the wall facing the left of the postcard, we can also see the arched ones.

Finally, in a current photograph of the Coliseum, we can see that the Arch-shaped windows are still there, but the staggered windows have been changed for a different style of new ones.

Now, let’s see a photo side by side comparing the central windows of today’s building with the ones in the 1922 Convention.

As we can see, even today these central windows preserve the same style they had in 1922.

All of this makes clear without a doubt that the building where this famous talk was given is the Coliseum, a building that can still be visited today if one wants to revive those exciting moments in theocratic history.