In 1914, celebrants marked the anniversary of the founding of Belleville, Illinois, by observing the progress the city had made since it was established a hundred years before. In that time, it had become a regional hub for surrounding communities, with robust commercial, manufacturing, coal-mining, and agricultural sectors. Over the next century, the automobile, wars, economic depression, and technological innovation transformed daily life in ways unimaginable to those citizens of 1914. Bellevilleans' civic volunteerism would serve the city well as Belleville approached its bicentennial. In 2011, the National Civic League designated it an All-American City.

Depicts the early history of East St. Louis, which was officially established in 1861.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Beyond the Movie Theater excavates the history of non-theatrical cinema before 1920, exploring where and how moving pictures of the 1910s were used in ways distinct from and often alternative to typical theatrical cinema. Unlike commercial cinema, non-theatrical cinema was multi-purpose in its uses and multi-sited in where it could be shown, targeted at particular audiences and, in some manner, sponsored. Relying on contemporary print sources and ephemera of the era to articulate how non-theatrical cinema was practiced and understood in the US during the 1910s, historian Gregory A. Waller charts a heterogeneous, fragmentary, and rich field that cannot be explained in terms of a master narrative concerning origin or institutionalization, progress or decline. Uncovering how and where films were put to use beyond the movie theater, this book complicates and expands our understanding of the history of American cinema, underscoring the myriad roles and everyday presence of moving pictures during the early twentieth century.

Winner of the Ontario Historical Society’s Fred Landon Award for Best Regional History. Belleville, on the shores of the Bay of Quinte, traces its beginnings to the arrival of the United Empire Loyalists. For 30 years the centre of the present city was reserved for the Mississauga First Nation. White settlers who built dwellings and businesses on the land paid annual rent to them until the land was "surrendered" and a town plot laid out in 1816. The new town quickly became an important lumbering, farming, and manufacturing centre. Early influences include the Marmora Iron Works of the 1820s, the first railway in 1856, Ontario’s first gold rush in 1866, and prominent citizens such as noted pioneer author Susanna Moodie and Sir Mackenzie Bowell, Canada’s fifth prime minister. This is a personal history of Belleville, based on Gerry Boyce’s half-century of research. Embedded throughout are interesting and obscure stories about scandals, murders, and hauntings — the underbelly of the growth of a city.