The building is not demolished. It was converted to a tire dealership and remains open as such. That conversion would have entailed a whole lotta concrete, to level out the sloped floor. The “screen” end of the floor was below the water table, and that end of the building tended to flood. A sump pump was brought in to mitigate the problem, but you can imagine how annoyingly loud that would have been during a show.
I worked in the Mayfair, first as an usher, and later as a projectionist, on and off from 1968 through 1978. I spent many an evening climbing up a ladder to change the marquee shown in the photo above.
It opened as a single-screen theatre with 900 seats in 1966, and was twinned in 1979. I think it closed for good in the early ‘80’s.
I was a projectionist at the Community Theatre from 1970 until 1978. “Earthquake” was one of the films that I played, when it played there in 1974; there were special speakers and amplifiers brought in for that run. The theatre did not close as a result of that engagement, but the “Sennsurround” may have weakened the balcony, which was permanently closed soon afterward.
A number of live shows played that theatre during my time there, and I worked as a stagehand for several of them. Most notably, a bill starring the J. Geils Band played two shows one evening around 1972 or so, with a combined attendance of about 700 (in a house that seated 1600). The opening act was a then-unknown piano player from Long Island…named Billy Joel.
The theatre’s air conditioning system failed sometime in the mid-‘70’s, and Walter Reade Theatres deemed it too expensive to repair. The last film that I projected there was “FM”, in the spring of 1978. I subsequently moved out of the area, and it is my understanding that the theatre was closed by the WRO at some point in 1978.
The building is not demolished. It was converted to a tire dealership and remains open as such. That conversion would have entailed a whole lotta concrete, to level out the sloped floor. The “screen” end of the floor was below the water table, and that end of the building tended to flood. A sump pump was brought in to mitigate the problem, but you can imagine how annoyingly loud that would have been during a show. I worked in the Mayfair, first as an usher, and later as a projectionist, on and off from 1968 through 1978. I spent many an evening climbing up a ladder to change the marquee shown in the photo above. It opened as a single-screen theatre with 900 seats in 1966, and was twinned in 1979. I think it closed for good in the early ‘80’s.
I was a projectionist at the Community Theatre from 1970 until 1978. “Earthquake” was one of the films that I played, when it played there in 1974; there were special speakers and amplifiers brought in for that run. The theatre did not close as a result of that engagement, but the “Sennsurround” may have weakened the balcony, which was permanently closed soon afterward. A number of live shows played that theatre during my time there, and I worked as a stagehand for several of them. Most notably, a bill starring the J. Geils Band played two shows one evening around 1972 or so, with a combined attendance of about 700 (in a house that seated 1600). The opening act was a then-unknown piano player from Long Island…named Billy Joel. The theatre’s air conditioning system failed sometime in the mid-‘70’s, and Walter Reade Theatres deemed it too expensive to repair. The last film that I projected there was “FM”, in the spring of 1978. I subsequently moved out of the area, and it is my understanding that the theatre was closed by the WRO at some point in 1978.