RKO Jefferson Theatre
214 E. 14th Street,
New York,
NY
10003
214 E. 14th Street,
New York,
NY
10003
3 people
favorited this theater
The old Jefferson Theatre opened in 1913 as a B.F. Keith’s vaudeville theater in what is now known as the edge of the East Village. Later the RKO Jefferson, this theater was located at 214 E. 14th Street near Third Avenue. The entrance was a narrow space between two tenement houses with the bulk of the theatre (auditorium) located in 13th Street. The Jefferson operated at least into the 1970’s and was demolished in 2000. Today, the site is filled with bricks and debris from the demolition and the old Jefferson as passed on.
Contributed by
John Chappell
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Recent comments (view all 85 comments)
I live in Oregon now but I spent a lot of my youth in that theater, even seeing numerous vaudeville shows which I enormously enjoyed, sitting right by the orchestra pit. I’d be fascinated to know what was the year the last vaudeville show was performed as I might have been right there. I know it was just on weekends.
Tinseltoes, you mentioned they were still doing vaudeville into the 1950’s. Maybe someone can come up with an actual last year.
Thanks.
Joe, RKO stopped advertising Vaudeville in the NYT here in early 1950.
Thanks AlAlvarez. Do you have a link for that?
Sorry, I don’t have a link. I have the ads themselves.
Do you have an actual date for the ad?
Thanks.
Joe, I found some more. The last mention is Sunday, February 25, 1951. The show included the features “The Glass Menagerie” and “Grounds for Marriage” plus ‘Vaudeville All Day’.
Wow! I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I was there. How do you get this information and is there anyway you could send me a digital photo these ads?
It’s a significant part of my early life and it’s leading me to try and produce some vaudeville shows as I remember them.
Thanks for any help you can offer in this.
Joe, the ads are New York Times RKO directories and do not include any details about the Vaudeville acts themselves. I am not sure this will help you much.
But the ads mention that the they had vaudeville acts at a certain time and date, don’t they? This would just confirm how old I must have been when seeing them. The details would be helpful but I have the general vaudeville productions in my memory. I can see in my mind the pianist who served as the band director conducting the performers on stage and the musicians in the pit. It was a small band of some five to six pieces but they were excellent, enormously dynamic.
The NYT ad would be only an inspiring memento as I work on possible vaudeville productions on the Oregon Coast. I could make a poster collage of varied vaudeville ads.
Anyway, that’s kind of my imaginative game that I would really enjoy. I do produce many shows out here but vaudeville has been in the back of my mind for decades, all because of the wonderful experiences I had at the Jefferson Theater and occasionally at the Academy of Music a block further west on 14th St.
Thanks for any mementos I might receive. Thanks to anyone who can provide newspaper clippings or posters of Jefferson Theater vaudeville.
On this night only in 1948, the RKO Jefferson presented five acts of vaudeville (no specific names listed) in addition to MGM’s B&W epic “Green Dolphin Street” and UA’s “Fabulous Joe” (a Hal Roach “streamliner” in Cinecolor). The films were second-run for the area, having played two weeks earlier at Loew’s Commodore.