St. Marks Cinema
133 2nd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
133 2nd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
6 people
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Functions: Office Space, Retail
Previous Names: Astor Theatre, St. Marks Theatre
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News About This Theater
- Nov 3, 2008 — Non-Digital marquees in NYC
Listed in the American Motion Picture Directory:1914-1915 edition as the Astor Theatre. By the time the 1926 edition of Film Daily Yearbook was published it had changed its name to St. Marks Theatre.
Later, this was a second-run theatre in Manhattan’s East Village on the northwest corner of St. Marks Place and 2nd Avenue. In the 1980’s it was a second run theatre offering films at a discount compared to what other films in Manhattan charged. They would run double bills and sometimes independent films. I believed they had midnight screenings each night of classic films. A Gap (since closed) replaced the theatre. By 2019 it was in use as a Verizon phone store and office space.
Contributed by
Christopher Heaney
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Recent comments (view all 30 comments)
The St. Marks can be seen in Paul Mazursky’s “Moscow on the Hudson”. The two films on the marquee were “Exposed” and “An Unmarried Woman”. I’m not familiar with the first, but the second was also a Mazursky film.
Circa 1930’s photo added, Ottendorfer Branch of the NYPL. Photo credit Victor Volnar/NYPL
1963 photo added. Peter Falk in a scene from TV’s “Naked City” Photo courtesy of Bob Greenhouse. St. Marks marquee in the background.
Phyllis Nagy, who wrote the screenplay for Carol, just gave a shoutout to this theater in her NYFCC award acceptance speech.
Saw a midnight screening of ‘The Shining’ here in ‘81 and thought it was awesome. Always wondered where this place disappeared into.
Loved the double bills and the midnight shows. I saw the original Blade Runner (with narration) here several times.
June 25, 1934 photo added, photo credit Percy Loomis Sperr.
This thread has been dormant a few years, but if anyone still getting notifications remembers the theater, did the auditorium have a balcony? I’ve been trying to figure out the cinema where my dad took me to see a triple feature of Magical Mystery Tour, One Plus One, and An American Band around New Years of 1978/79. I remember it being a downtown theater and also remember we sat up in an actual balcony (not a raised loge at the rear).
Ed, on December 24 and 25, 1978 the Cinema Village was showing two other made for TV Beatles movies (“BEATLES AROUND THE WORLD” and “WHAT’S HAPPENING! THE BEATLES IN THE USA”) at 2:55pm only.
Ed, I won’t claim that my recollection is perfect, but I believe that you walked into the theater in a straight line from the street (i.e.: heading West) with the screen in front of you, and that once in the theater you could turn around and ascend a couple of steps to a small, slightly elevated “smoking” section behind you (not a balcony, because not suspended above other seats) or walk forward into the “regular” seats.
It is also possible that there was no such section behind the entrance level and that I’m thinking of some other (also long-gone) theater.