Empress Theater
104 W. 116th Street,
New York,
NY
10026
104 W. 116th Street,
New York,
NY
10026
No one has favorited this theater yet
The Empress Theater is listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. It is not listed in any Film Daily Yearbooks.
Contributed by
Ken Roe / Lost Memory
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater
Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
A 1917 c/o for 104 W 116th St shows a one story building used as a store and factory. A current real estate search lists a one story store building with a build date of 1910. That build date does not come from the Department of Buildings so I don’t know how accurate it is. The building size is 40.00ft x 100.00ft. This must have been a relatively short lived theater that was gone by 1917.
I don’t think it really was a theatre, which is why I never bothered to list it. I suspect that the Empress was just a commercial building that was briefly converted into a place for showing movies until better facilities opened in the area.
Here’s a view from local.live of the block front were the Empress was situated. The address corresponds to the storefronts immediately adjacent to the Temple of Islam building on the corner of Lenox Avenue – which is the big yellow and buff 3-story structure with the large green bulb on top.
The Empress would have been in the low lying building on the Temple’s right – with 1 green storefront and 1 yellow and white upper facade. If, in fact, this is the same structure.
I’m pretty sure that its the same building. The 1917 c/o doesn’t state that the store and factory were a new building and I didn’t see any permits for a new building after 1910. This building is a double width building (40 ft wide) on two lots. They might have built a wall down the center of the building and converted it to two stores.
That’s what I was thinking as well, Lost. Can’t be certain, of course, but it’s a reasonable assumption.
The theatres of Washington Heights.
View link