Beach Theatre
1318 Atlantic Avenue,
Atlantic City,
NJ
08401
1318 Atlantic Avenue,
Atlantic City,
NJ
08401
No one has favorited this theater yet
Showing 1 - 25 of 36 comments found
As Roger Katz noted, the building still exists. I used to work a few doors down the street and frequented the stores there… the check cashing place is not connected to the theater… but the bodega and the tiny pizzeria are. Since 2nd floor space in AC is worthless, to my knowledge, only the first floor is utilized. The bodega is run by some Asians, but I can’t remember their names… and if you enter the store, you can see how the floor slopes like the original theater entrance. Also, in the back of the store is a normally closed passageway that when opened, you can see into the theater itself, with its floor sloped down towards the screen.
Looking a the bird’s eye view from Bing that’s definitely a theatre building there. The status of this one should be changed to “Closed.”
Here is another photo:
http://tinyurl.com/ybn8n63
My guess would be that is the same building. The dimensions are too similar, besides no one wants to build anything new on Atlantic Avenue at this point.
The building in Google street view does look like the Beach building in the 1981 photo, with some of the windows sealed up. The Bing Maps bird’s eye view shows that there’s auditorium behind it, too, and it looks quite old. The Beach has not been demolished— or at least hadn’t been at the time the Google and Bing images were made.
New building at 1318 or the same building as in the 1980s photos? What do you think? Take a look at the same brick building to the left in both photos.
http://tinyurl.com/y8qwxs2
Joe I follow it better now and I agree with you on the City Square. This was one of those theatres that went through a multiple identity over the years.
Chuck, you must be right about the address. The Beach must be the theater that was at 1318 Atlantic. But I still think the Beach was once the City Square, one reason being an entry in the 1920 edition of Boyd’s Atlantic City Directory, which lists: “O'Keefe Edw J genl mgr Criterion Theatre Cort Theatre City Square Theatre h 1318 Atlantic.”
A January 6, 1951, Boxoffice item I found said that the Cinema was a former burlesque house taken over by Waxmann in 1940. It was still called the Cinema in 1951, and got the name Shore the next year.
The same item repeated the claim that the then-Shore (this house) had been the City Square, and added that it was once operated by Eddie O'Keefe, and was taken over on a lease by Waxmann in 1945. But the Cinema, at 1831 Atlantic, has to be the last theater to have had the name Shore, so the address currently given on the Shore page is wrong and actually belongs here on the Beach page.
Comparing the 1981 photo of the Beach linked above by Lost Memory with the 1968 Shore photo he linked on the Shore page, they are both seen with their post-1950s names on the marquees. That would indicate that this house, which still had the name Beach in 1981, is the 1911 Embassy which became the City Square in the 1920s and the Shore in 1947 and finally the Beach in 1952. The front must date from the 1947 renovation by Waxmann, which would explain why it doesn’t look like a building from the 1920s (or 1911.)
I hope this can finally unravel the confusion that has prevailed on the various Atlantic City theater pages.
Joe the Cinema was listed at 1831 Atlantic with seating at a little over 1,000. If the Cinema later became the Shore Theatre then that would give us the address for the Shore listed on CT with no address.
From the photos posted by ken mc and LM the Beach/Shore building don’t look like a 1920’s era building.
The address for the Beach/Shore Theatre should be 1318 Atlantic. The Shore theatre listed on CT has the wrong address. I don’t think this was the City Square since the City Square opened in 1920 and was operated by Stanley Theatres.
I was in Ocean City last week but didn’t make it over to AC. I think you will find Atlantic Avenue to be mostly parking lots. Not much left of the town that you and I remember.
Thank you, Ken. My walking and note-taking tour on Wednesday may be tougher than I hoped because I haven’t seen any of these locations since my A.C. years (1955-61), and the surrounding buildings will not be familiar. If they were, they’d help orient me.
As I recall it was between South Carolina and New York avenues, about mid block on the east side of the street.
Can anyone tell me quickly an approximate street address? I’m heading for Atlantic City tomorrow to examine and report on the sites of the old moviehouses.
At least, can you tell me what streets it was between on Atlantic Avenue? Thank you.
Here is a 1981 photo as an adult theater.
The Beach Theatre was the subject of an item in the August, 1984, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The house had been closed since the previous November when a fire had done extensive damage to it and to adjacent buildings. There had been some hope that the Beach could be reopened, but real estate agents handling the building said that the only interest shown in it was from a potential purchaser who wanted to convert it to non-theatrical commercial use.
The item said that the house had opened in 1911 as the Embassy Theatre, had become the Shore Theatre in 1947, and was renamed the Beach Theatre in 1952.
An item in the February 15, 1947, issue of Boxoffice said that the old Embassy Theatre, which had become the City Square Theatre during the silent movie era, was being renovated for the Waxmann chain and would soon reopen as the Shore Theatre.
An April 9, 1952, Boxoffice item said that Henry Waxmann’s Hollywood Circuit had recently moved the Shore Theatre name to the former Cinema, and that the old Shore had then been reopened by an independent operator as the Beach Theatre.
The aka’s Embassy Theatre, City Square Theatre, and Shore Theatre need to be added to this page, and the aka’s currently on the Embassy Theatre page need to be removed. The Embassy, opened about 1942, was the third Atlantic City house of that name, and apparently never operated under any other name.
I was pretty close. This is a 1982 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cfbxdm
Since we have no photos, these are my recollections from 30 years ago:
Large metal marquee with square letters spelling out Beach
Cashier booth on the south side of the entrance
Ticket taker sitting on a stool just inside the entrance
Old candy counter with nothing being sold
Good-sized interior, maybe 400-500 seats
Seats were old and not that comfortable
No curtain
Right, but we’re talking about north/south numbers that get bigger as you go downtown, or south. Since the theater was in the middle of the block, more or less, you wouldn’t be concerned with any east or west numbers starting in the beach block and going westward.
If you were facing the front of the Beach, the ocean was two blocks beyond the rear of the theater.
My school was a couple of blocks south on Pacific and North Carolina and had a 1216 address. I think the Beach would have been between 1200 and 1300, on the east or even side of the street. The Googlemobile skipped AC, it looks like.
Renewing link.
Is this just a parking lot now? Did they replace the theater with another building? Atlantic Avenue today is pretty dismal.
Interesting that, despite its reduced circumstances, this was the last surviving moviehouse from the good old days.