RKO 81st Street Theatre

The theatre was located at 2248 Broadway, and had a reported 2,015 seats. It first opened in 1913 as Keith's 81st Street, with the emphasis on vaudeville and stage plays. The auditorium ceiling was noted for a gorgeous mural, "Music & Dancing," painted on the sounding board above the proscenium. The oval mural was covered by mottled glass that produced a rich, golden glow. The theatre's
interior was renovated several times, in 1926, 1939 and 1951. In 1954, RKO sold the 81st Street to CBS for conversion into a TV studio. All but the facade were demolished in 1986 to make way for an apartment building.

This theater was CBS's first color television studio in New York. It was taken over by CBS in 1954. (In fact, it was the second, but it was the first CBS facility to use RCA color cameras, as opposed to their converted black and white cameras that were used for CBS's own color television system, which was abandoned in 1951.) Probaby the most famous program to originate from this facility, CBS Studio 72, was the live 1957 color broadcast of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella. If you want to know more about the early years of color television, check out this link: http://www.novia.net/~ereitan/index.html

Here are two 1944 images of the RKO Keith's 81st Street, which was the main rival to Loew's 83rd Street in that part of Manhattan's Upper West Side. Both theatres were designed by Thomas W. Lamb. The program at RKO Keith's at the time was "Between Two Worlds" & "Make Your Own Bed," both WB releases. The theatre's auditorium was demolished in 1986 to make way for an apartment building, but portions of the white marble facade on Broadway were retained for retail space:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/127-2710_IMG.jpg
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/127-2712_IMG.jpg

If anyone is interested, below is a desciption of the technical facilities in CBS's (Color) Studio 72.
The description comes from Ed Reitan's website regarding the history of early color television:

Studio 72 (1954)
New York, Broadway and 81st St.
Theater purchased in early 1954.
Two Control Rooms (Color and B&W with TK-11's)
Live Cameras (4 - TK-40A's); Slide, 35mm and 16mm Film Scanners (DuMont 16mm and Philco 35mm). The studio had side by side Monochrome and Color control rooms. Later, 3-vidicon RCA TK-26 Film/Slide chains replaced film scanners in this studio.
This was the first major CBS NTSC color studio. CBS featured a rotating schedule of one-time New York program colorizations including the "Ed Sullivan Show" from Studio 72. The December 25, 1958 "Nutcracker" on "Playhouse 90", the first color video-taped CBS show, originated from this studio. As colorcasting was progressively slowed on CBS during the late 1950's, only the monochrome equipment in this studio was used for origination of a number of black and white telecasts including "The Verdict Is Yours". Harold Deppe worked for CBS at Studio 72. He reported in March, 1997 that between the infrequent CBS colorcasts, none of the color equipment was even regularly powered - so much equipment maintenance had to be done when a rare colorcast was scheduled.

It was not known when Studio 72 was retired. Eventually, only the TK-26 Film Chains from Studio 72 were moved to the Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in the early 60's. Thus, the only CBS East Coast color capability in the early 1960's was from film and video tape.

A great article was in the New York Times on Thomas Lamb. The 81st St is one of the theaters pictured in the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/realestate/05scap.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=thomas%20lamb&st=cse&oref=slogin

Here's a great street view of the old facade of the theater:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=2248+Broadway,+New+York,+NY+United+States&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=40.785099,-73.978911&spn=0.001007,0.002414&z=19&layer=c&cbll=40.784991,-73.978993&panoid=PwUrU3zl72l4rTm3KlPXNw&cbp=12,139.01,,0,-15.1

The last film was "The Robe" in Christmas 1953.