Mayfair Theatre

The Mayfair Theatre was located at 920 Avenue U and it seated 1799 people.

I saw EARTHQUAKE at this theatre. It was in SENSURROUND which had to do with some low frequency sound which sounded like it was coming from the top of the theatre. MIDWAY and ROLLERCOASTER were two other movies to use this fad effect (which would be impossible now with multiplexes).

The Mayfair was odd because it's entrance faced Avenue U instead of the busier Coney Island Avenue. However, the Kingsway a few blocks away also faced Kings Highway and not Coney Island Avenue.

Possibly Coney Island Avenue was not a busy thoroughfare back in the early 1900s?

The Mayfair was anice theatre..b ut it was always second fiddle to the Kingsway.

True. Century never programmed this theater properly. It never booked movies to fill its size. no surprise that during the Century Theater purge of the early '70s, it was one of the first to go.

I grew up just a few blocks from the Mayfair. When Batman and Robin's t.v. series was a big thing in the sixties, the Batman movie was shown at the Mayfair. Batman and Robin rolled up to the theatre in the Batmobile, leaped out and greeted their fans.
After signing some autographs, they ran into the theatre and jumped onto the stage and began answering questions from the kids in the seats. Many years later, about a week before the Mayfair close, I saw the Beatles,"Magical Mystery Tour". A week later, it was very sad, I was walking by and it was being bulldozed while old tickets from the past, began to soar into the air...

I saw my first movie there back in 1966. It was "Born Free" and I was 4 years old.

In 1926, an Austin organ was installed in the Mayfair Theater in Brooklyn. On the organ list, the theater is listed as the Mayfair aka Horneck Theater at the time that the organ was installed. Does anyone know if the Mayfair was also called the Horneck Theater?

As far as I know I was in this theater only once. My older sister and her boyfriend took me to see The Sting there back in '74. I remember it was a pretty big theater. I'm planning to return the favor by giving them the new DVD edition of the movie for Christmas this year.

Thank you for sharing your experiences with us MichaelAnthony. That image of the tickets soaring in the air while the bulldozers did their work would be a great image for a movie in itself! It certainly does seem like a sad memory.

According to NYC records, the architect for the Mayfair Theater was R. Thomas Short.

No pictures of it? How close to 86th street was this theater?

Not close.. This wa sin Gravesend not Bensonhurst...

I remember this theater being demolished. As a child, I was struck by the gaping hole into the enormous cavern of the theater. Even at a young age, I felt there was something very wrong with this being done. Little did I know... the beginning of the end for Brooklyn theaters.

My 86 year old grandmother just told me the story of her first date here with my grandfather in 1938. I would love to get a photo of the place for my personal family tree book. Does anyone know how to obtain one?