Loew's 46th Street Theatre

4515 New Utrecht Avenue,
Brooklyn, NY 11219

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Showing 101 - 125 of 280 comments

PKoch
PKoch on December 28, 2007 at 1:18 pm

I know what you mean, bkj.

boroparkjon
boroparkjon on December 28, 2007 at 11:37 am

Thanks for the link, 55tbird. A nice christmas present. Seeing that photo is sort of like suddenly remembering a dream long forgotten, or seeing a ghost.

PKoch
PKoch on December 26, 2007 at 9:15 am

Yes, 55 TBird, many thanks for posting your photo. From your photo’s balcony viewpoint, it looks like it’s still a theater, with a play taking place on the larger-than-usual stage, a play that makes use of lots of furniture, maybe a play that takes place in the furniture dept. of a large department store.

It looks as much like it’s still a theater as does the RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill, much more so than the former RKO Madison, in which the most prominent former theater feature still visible, is the curve of the front of the balcony, as a change in elevation of the drop ceiling.

ERD
ERD on December 26, 2007 at 8:51 am

I noticed the statues and many of the orniments(Vases, etc.) on the side were gone. The auditorium’s condition looks very sad. As I mentioned in earlier posts,the religous sector who control the neighborhood will never allow this theatre to be restored. Property is very expensive in this area, and I believe they will eventually rip down this building and put something up that will make a profit.
I thank 55 TBird for letting us see this picture.

Five5TBird
Five5TBird on December 26, 2007 at 1:40 am

Here is a wonderful recent photo of auditorium used as a furniture storeroom. It looks relatively intact, minus lower lever seats, definitely looks like it could be restored. The photo is not dated, and doesn’t give a date, hope it will remain on the site a while, after reading the postings about it, I was consumed with curiosity about what it looked like now. Hope you enjoy!

http://reliques.online.fr/civilian06.html

PKoch
PKoch on August 20, 2007 at 1:59 pm

Thanks, Warren. Interesting that it’s 10 to 7 blocks uptown of Claremont Avenue on Broadway, adjacent to CCNY, rather than Columbia.

PKoch
PKoch on August 20, 2007 at 1:40 pm

Thanks, Warren. Would that have been on or near Claremont Avenue, north of 116th Street, between Bway and Riverside Drive, near Columbia University ? Do you recall when the change occurred ? Does the Claremont have its own page on Cinema Treasures ?

PKoch
PKoch on August 20, 2007 at 12:59 pm

Thanks, Warren and ERD. The Bushwick section of Brooklyn most certainly had its share of auto dealerships. I think the one at Bushwick Avenue and Decatur Street had a signboard outside displaying info from World Series baseball games.

I’m not sure about the relationship between car dealerships and theatres, however : if one was ever used as the other.

ERD
ERD on August 20, 2007 at 12:54 pm

The building on 60th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway was made for Rogers car dealership(who first sold Pontiacs). It was never a theatre.

PKoch
PKoch on August 20, 2007 at 10:14 am

I’m no expert on this, but the Queens car dealerships I am most familiar with are the ones at the Ridgewood – Maspeth – Middle Village nexus centered around the intersection of Fresh Pond Road, and Metropolitan and Eliot Avenues, near the Oasis Theater, and Lawrence Chevrolet, formerly Luby Chevrolet, near Queens and Yellowstone Blvds. in Forest Hills, between the Trylon and that “movie complex” that once centered around Queens Blvd, Continental Avenue and Austin Street (Midway, Forest Hills and Continental 1, 2, 3 Cinemas).

My dad remembers car dealerships on Bushwick Avenue from Gates Avenue to Eastern Pkwy. Now, there’s only that used car lot at Bushwick and Eastern Pkwy.

Bway
Bway on August 20, 2007 at 9:50 am

I of course it doesn’t mean that it was ever a theater….however, I can’t believe this building was built for a “car dealership”….

BoxOfficeBill
BoxOfficeBill on August 20, 2007 at 9:29 am

I believe it might have been the B'klyn headquarters of Borden’s Dairy.

Bway
Bway on August 20, 2007 at 8:49 am

I didn’t know where else to post this, but since this theater’s cross street is Fort Hamilton Parkway, I figured I would ask here.
Does anyone know what this building in the link from forgotten NY was before the roller rink? It sure looks like an old theater, but don’t know where to begin to look for it. It is at the intersection of Fort Hamilton Parkway and 60th.

View link

Here’s the description the forgotten NY site gives:

[i]In my youth I would take hundreds of bus rides on the B16 (Fort Hamilton Pkway) route and would always pass this building on FHP and 60th Street. In the 60s, and prior, it was home to the Rogers car dealership and later, in the 1980s, United Skates of America had a franchise here (Brooklyn’s last roller rink, Bed-Stuy’s Empire, closed in April 2007). Currently, the building houses a couple of wholesalers.
Was the building ever a theater?
[/i]

roots66
roots66 on August 8, 2007 at 5:43 pm

Brief discussion an photos on forgotten-ny.com, with emphasis on its incarnation as the 46th Street Rock Palace.

View link

boroparkjon
boroparkjon on January 30, 2007 at 3:02 pm

All the dreamers (including me) who would like to see the 46th become a theater again, consider that in that neighborhood, from 42nd to 62nd streets, 9th to 20th avenues, there is not ONE dvd/video rental store anymore. The one’s on 8th avenue are chinese languuge DVDs. If there aren’t enough people in the area to support a single dvd store, forget about keeping a theater going, even a yiddish theater. The hasidim are very anti any sort of public entertainment. Even when yiddish was a living language and culture, here and in europe, their feelings towards yiddish theater, culture, etc, were on a level with the puritans who banned shakespeare and public concerts. (This can clearly be seen in the astoundingly negative attitude the manager of the furniture store. Like the very idea of being in an old theatre buidling is somehow treif).
The fact is, this area went through a sea change, culturally,in the mid-sixties, when the types of jobs that had employed people for generations (longshoremen, factories, the army base) all disappeared at the same time. Families moved to where the jobs were, there was suddenly a housing glut, property values sank. The leaders of the hasidic communities in other area saw an opportunity and took it. For non-hasidic jews(like me), and non-jews, especially kids, it was like an invasion. It suddenly wasn’t our neighborhood any more, all our friends were moving away, everything was shutting down. For older members of the community, it was something of a salvation, in that, unlike in other areas, (even as close as sunset park, until new immigrants moved in and renovated it) because of the hasidim, the area didn’t decline physically, and the streets were safe. But boring. Very, very boring.
A quick note regarding the French Connection chase: Though most of the footage does show the 86th street area, as noted, if you watch closely, you see New Utrecth Avenue as far north as 51st street, what used to be a bicycle shop, and a few other quickly glimsped places. I always found it amusing that, because of how the scene was edited, popeye doyle is driving in bensonhurst, then boro park, the bensonhurst, without ever turning around.
Another quick note: I didn’t think anyone else on the planet remebered 13 Ghosts. I also saw it, in 3-d, at that same flatbush theatre. I held on to those 3-d glasses until they disintegrated. Another movie tie-in: that flatbush cemetery mentioned above was shown, briefly, in Arsenic and Old Lace, which took place in that neighborhood.

ERD
ERD on January 20, 2007 at 6:27 am

Under the balcony were ornate glass pannels with blue lights hidden in them- I guess to represent the sky. The theatre was elegant, but unfortuantely not that well maintained by Loew’s throughout the years.

PKoch
PKoch on January 16, 2007 at 12:28 pm

Thanks, Warren.

Bway
Bway on January 16, 2007 at 8:13 am

Why is probably because you can’t get a good idea of what the building would look like without the el in front. I have often seen photos or sketches of the Valencia also without the el. The marquee sketch doesn’t appear to be intricate enough to show a cut out for the el pillar.

PKoch
PKoch on January 16, 2007 at 7:58 am

Warren, do you have any idea why the sketch omitted details of the elevated subway line ? How much of an error is this in accurately portraying the marquee ?

PKoch
PKoch on January 16, 2007 at 7:37 am

Ditto, Warren. Thanks for posting the link to the sketch. The sketch and the color photo seem very similar. A bit hard to tell, because the view in the color photo is so skewed.

Theaterat
Theaterat on January 14, 2007 at 10:26 am

Thank you Warren. Great research.The drawing speaks for itself.

ERD
ERD on January 13, 2007 at 2:59 pm

I think most likely it was scaled down. Thanks for the information, Warren.

ERD
ERD on January 13, 2007 at 10:25 am

The theatre had 725 seats less than the article mentions-according to
Cinema Treasure’s facts.

PKoch
PKoch on December 19, 2006 at 9:29 am

So true, ERD, as this site attests. It’s also true of the NYC subway and el system. We still suffer the lack of the 2nd and 3rd Avenue els in Manhattan, as well as several BMT elevated lines in Brooklyn.