Loew's Lexington Theatre
571 Lexington Avenue,
New York,
NY
10022
571 Lexington Avenue,
New York,
NY
10022
5 people
favorited this theater
Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 30 comments)
Here’s a new link to a vintage exterior that shows the long, narrow entrance/lobby that connected to the auditorium:
View link
Here is a 1916 ad for the Lexington operating as the Biltmore.
View link
Here is an excerpt from a NYT article dated 8/28/59:
The 70-year-old manager of Loew’s Lexington Theatre at 571 Lexington Avenue was pistol-whipped with a revolver and robbed of $1850 last night, police reported today.
Crime in NYC? I’m shocked to hear that. Luckily the manager survived.
Free preview from the NY Times March 5, 1927
MOVIE FIRE ROUTS AUDIENCE OF 2,500; Loew’s Lexington Theatre Is Quickly Emptied During Blaze in Radio Room.
Loew’s Lexington Theatre, at 571 Lexington Avenue, between Fiftieth and Fifty-first Streets, one of the largest motion picture theatres on the east side, was emptied of more than 2,500 patrons, many of them women and children, at 5:30 o'clock last evening when a fire started on the second floor of the building and smoke drifted into the auditorium.
Loew’s Lexington closed on April 3, 1960.
Nice old picture, first time I have heard of this theatre.
Hammerstein never sold this theatre to his friend Marcus Loew.
Hammerstein’s theatre was foreclosed in 1915. In January 1916 it was leased to a sponsor who changed the policy to movies and renamed it the Biltmore with hopes of becoming the east side version of the Broadway Strand. It was a short-lived experiment.
After much deliberation the bank auctioned it off in March, 1918. The buyer, Manhattan Life Insurance, promptly resold it a month later. The theatre changed hands again several times until Marcus Loew took it over in late 1923 and put movies back in, four years after Hammerstein’s death.
I corrected the view to show the current hotel on the ground site. What happened to the introduction contributed by William Gabel? Status of Loew’s Lexington Theatre should be changed from “Closed” to “Demolished.”
More than a year later, I’m raising the same question. What happened to the introduction? The Lexington was one of the most important of all the Loew’s neighborhood theatres in Manhattan, and also drew patronage from nearby sections of Queens.