Mount Eden Theater
50 E. Mount Eden Avenue,
Bronx,
NY
10452
50 E. Mount Eden Avenue,
Bronx,
NY
10452
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I found this theater in the book “Bill Graham Presents” and this theater along with the Zenith Theater, the Loew’s Paradise Theater and the Park Plaza Theater are mentioned in his childhood outings. From page 40 it says, “There were two movie houses that I used to go to besides the Park Plaza Theater, the Zenith Theater at 170th Street and the Mount Eden Theater”.
Contributed by
Dave Bonan
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Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
In December of 1926, a Wurlitzer organ was installed in the Mount Eden Theater. Also, on one of those nostalgic message boards someone posted about going to this theater in the 1940’s. They wrote that it was located on Mt. Eden Avenue about a block from the Surrey Theater.
The Mount Eden Theater is mentioned as being ‘planned or under construction’ in the 1927 edition of Film Daily Yearbook (published in 1926), so a December 1926 opening is feasible. It was a project of Milnat Realty Corp. and had a planned seating capacity of 1,700. Later editions of F.D.Y. give a seating capacity of 1,745.
This was also the theatre in which producer Louis DeRochemont tested the new 3-panel CineMiracle process.
My apartment building was adjacent to the Mount Eden theater. When I was very young, they were still showing serial chapters, e.g. “Atom Man vs. Superman” (Columbia). It was a vey wide theater with no balcony. I have some pictures which show the Mount Eden marquee in the background, circa summer 1952, and it says: “CLOSED FOR THE SUMMER… WILL REOPEN IN THE FALL… VISIT THE SURREY THEATER”. As I recall, the last feature shown there was “High Noon”. Bear in mind that major features reached the nabes way after downtown openings.
By the way, DeRochemont renovated the place for “Windjammer” in the summer of 1957. It was subsequebtly torn down to make way for the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Given its size, its late 1926 opening, and the name of the developer, the Mount Eden Theater had to have been this projected house listed in the January 31, 1926, issue of The Film Daily:
Irving Margon and Charles Glaser’s firm was quite active in the early 1920s, but this is the only reference I’ve found to a theater among their works.Here’s a link to a 1980s tax photo for the address of 50 E. Mt. Eden Avenue. The catering hall could have been a conversion of the theatre, or a replacement building on that site: lunaimaging