Towne Theatre

327 Washington Street,
Brooklyn, NY 11201

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Additional Info

Previous Names: Crystal Theatre

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Towne Theatre

The Crystal Theatre opened in late 1925 (too late to be listed in the 1926 edition of Film Daily Yearbook) and was located on Washington Street in the Brooklyn Heights district of Brooklyn. (This street no longer exists but it was one block east of Court Street and Myrtle Avenue and one block west of Adams Street. In 1927 the address is given as Washington Street near Fulton Place).

In early 1940 it was re-named the Towne Theatre, but had disappeared from listings by 1957.

Contributed by KenRoe

Recent comments (view all 6 comments)

jflundy
jflundy on December 22, 2007 at 1:56 pm

As of 1937 it was still the Crystal Theater. TRIANGLE 5-6651 was the phone number.

jflundy
jflundy on July 31, 2009 at 8:15 am

The Towne was closed by January 1951, how much earlier I don’t know.I have a photo of the marquee from March 5, 1951 showing “Closed for Alterations” displayed with the letters i and o missing.

johndereszewski
johndereszewski on February 20, 2010 at 8:27 am

Attached is the 1951 picture of the Towne that JF referred to in the previous comment. It was the subject of some recent discussion on the Tivoli Theatre page where I, for one, initially mistakenly identified it as the Tivoli. But it is definitely the Towne.

This photo provides a snapshot of a brief era that occurred after the Fulton St. el had been razed but before this whole community was demolished and converted into the extremely banal Brooklyn Civic Center, as best typified by the uniquely ugly Supreme Court building.

The Towne was also situated in the immediate vicinity of the old, and long forgotten, Brooklyn Eagle Building.

View link

Ed Solero
Ed Solero on September 7, 2012 at 4:42 am

I know this block no longer exists, but the street view places the theater’s location right on the Manhattan Bridge lower roadway! If it could be managed, I’m sure a more suitable view would be from the point where Court Street becomes Cadman Plaza West, facing east across the park, just north of Borough Hall. Based on the pic posted above by johndereszewski, that would be a decent approximation.

johndereszewski
johndereszewski on September 23, 2012 at 6:55 am

Great picture TT. The whole streetscape is great, especially ths Nedicks, which was apparently situated right across the street from Brooklyn’s Borough Hall …… In looking at the great picture at the top of this page, you can date it to 1926 – or 1927 at the latest. The earlier date was the year when “Desert Valley” a silent oater about competing water rights and starring Buck Jones – one of my mother’s favorites – was released …….. Finally, Ed you are so right about the idiotic placement of the Towne on the street view. I guess when streets are radically altered, as was the case with Washington St.,the technology behind street view just cannot cope with the changes. (I have always wondered why the powers that be decided to rename the entire southern portion of Washington St. – named, after all, for one of our greatest Presidents – into the sterile Cadman Plaza East, especially since the location of the roadbed hardly changed. As it is, the only remaning portion of Washington St. is situated – at least until the development of Dumbo – in a desolate middle of nowhere.)

HomecrestGuy
HomecrestGuy on December 8, 2018 at 11:25 pm

I posted a photo from the NYC Tax Photo archive project, 1939 to 1941. Unfortunately, it’s only one side of the theater and not clear, but this is to be expected after almost 80 years. These photos were digitized, and released in Nov. 2018.

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