Park & 86th Street Cinemas
1280-1288 Lexington Avenue,
New York,
NY
10028
1280-1288 Lexington Avenue,
New York,
NY
10028
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I am so confused about the theatres on East 86th street. i was at the street on Saturday November 5. A beautiful day! I took some pics of this theatre which is on 86th street between Third and Second Avenues, on the downtown side of the thoroughfare, closer to Third. I used to go to this theater a lot when I was a kid. The last show I saw here was “Jewel of the Nile” in the 1980s after attending a party with my cousin. We were drunk and decided for some reason to take in a show. Despite being snookered, I remember this was NOT a great movie.
Here are the pics:
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Is this theatre listed under another name? If anyone knows the name this theatre is listed under, I’ll post these on the correct page.
This is the theatre that was twinned at some point a long time ago, I recall going in for some show either in the late 70s or early 80s and seeing right off the bat that a big dividing wall had been erected right in the middle of the formerly large auditorium, creating two narrow theaters. Also i recall this theater went thru some scary times when troublemakers went up and down the aisles beating up patrons at random, usually on weekends.
The HMV has been replaced by Best Buy, and there is a Barnes & Noble and Staples on the Lesington Ave. side.
Since most theatre ads just list the intersection, I can’t say anything with a certainty beyond the fact that numerous Certificates of Occupancy from the early 1990s list the building at 1280 Lexington with 2nd Floor theatres with a capacity of 1133. In other words, the Department of Buildings' designation for the 17-story building in which the theatre (and other retail space) was located is 1280 Lexington.
The building makes up the following addresses: 1280-1290 Lexington, 125-131 East 86th Street, and 114-136 East 87th.
The building presently occupying the site of the old RKO Proctors 86th Street IS the Gimbels building. Gimbels went out of business about 86 or 87. I was still living in the neighborhood and watched as it was stripped down to the frame with only the concrete floors remaining. Some NYC law says when a vacant property is sold the asbestos has to be removed, and apparently this building had lots of it. When the exterior walls were removed you could see into the auditorium and also see the raked floor as though it was a cross-section architectural drawing. Through all this, the RKO marquee remained, all wrapped up in plastic, on the 86th St. side of the building. Once the offending asbestos was removed, the narrow section was built on top of existing frame, and the brick walls and windows installed (Gimbels was windowless) and the interior rebuilt as apartments with the entrance on 87th St. By the time the theatre was getting ready to re-open, Cineplex had taken over. The RKO marquee had been similar to that of the old RKO Warner-Cinerama-Strand on Times Square: a million little light bulbs cascading down the front of it and across the ceiling to the entrance doors. Cineplex re-did it, and of course it had to have the pink neon, and it was only slightly less dull than the way Duane Reade has it now.
I had heard that Clearview did not want to give up this theatre, but when they received the lease renewal it was put aside and forgotten about until it was too late – so the landlord signed Duane Reade.
The address for this location appears to have been 1280 (actually, 1280-1288) Lexington Avenue, New York, NY, 10028.
According to DOB records, the capacity was 861 in 1971, 887 in 1973, and 806 in the late 1980s.
Though the address is identical to that of the RKO 86th Street Theatre, the theatres are properly listed separately, since they existed in different buildings, which existed in different decades, at the same address.
Thanks for the info, I guess I should list this one
The Grande, when I knew it in the 60’s, was an “art house,” and I saw “La Dolce Vita,” “Jules and Jim” and “Last Year at Marienbad” there. It was on the south side of 86th Street, and there was a nearby theater showing German-language films as well.
I just found a 1952 ad for a theatre called the Grande located on 86th St. near Lexington Avenue. Is this the Park & 86 or a different Cinema Treasure?
An exterior shot of the former Park & 86th Street Cinemas in its present incarnation as a Duane Reade pharmacy is featured on page 31 of the June 6, 2005 issue of New York Magazine.
Hi, Robert – to belatedly answer your question (if it’s long-since been answered, apologies), yes, all of those theatres are on this site.
Thanks, are they all on the site?
The 86th Street East and Park & 86th were indeed separate theatres, Robert. I always thought the four main 86th Street theatres of recent vintage, from the 1980s to the present, were (or, obviously in some cases, are): City Cinemas' East 86th Street Cinemas, the Loews Orpheum, the RKO 86th Street East, and the Park & 86th.
Was the 86th St East a different theatre?
this theater always had BIG box office #s
The apartment building that the theatre is/was in was Gimbels Dept. Store, and was built in the 60s. Gimbels went out of business in aprx. 1986, and the building put up for sale. It was stripped down to the steel frame and re-built as an apartment building.
The property that the former Gimbels is sitting on was previously occupied by the RKO Proctors 86th St., a huge palace designed by Thomas Lamb, demolished in the early 60s.
The situation here was similar to that of the Loew’s 72nd St/Loew’s Tower East: the palace replaced by another type of building, which included a tiny cinema as a supposed replacement for the lost palace.
Oops… make that September of 2002; my mistake…
The Park & 86th Street Cinemas closed in September of 1999; its final two offerings were ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ and ‘Road to Perdition’.
Fond memories of this as well…built on the sight of the old RKO 86th St within what was Gimbel’s and now HMV…when it opened in the early 70’s suburban style single ticket booth twins weren’t very common yet in Manhattan…this had a two tone marquee one half white one half orange in keeping with the way RKO was doing it in the suburbs…In the RKO years the product was first run but not brilliant – mostly MGM, Cinerama Releasing, American International some blaxpo and exploitation pictures…Remember seeing The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, Ben, Shaft’s Big Score, a couple of fun horror pictures there, eventually a reissue of American Graffiti around 1977
Cineplex Odeon tarted it up and it had the block to itself for a while in the late 80’s while the Orpheum got torn down and rebuilt as a sevenplex…Saw Tremors, The Hunt for Red October, The War of the Roses