Academy of Music

“Jgraif,” you’re talking about the second Academy of Music directly opposite on the south side of 14th Street. This original AOM was long gone by the 1970s. The second AOM has its own listing at CT, which is filled with memories of the rock and roll venue.

in the summer of 1964, i was a college student waitressing at the the donut wagon — a restaurant directly across from the 13th street side of the academy of music. one august afternoon, some rock and roll band was performing there, even though i’m told now that the venue wasn’t used for such events at that time. am i delusional in retrospect or does someone recall performers who appeared at the hall back then? i do recollect that hundreds of teenagers were waiting at the stage door, so perhaps the group was really popular.

Renewing link.

Movies were shown at the Academy of Music as early as 1897, when films of recent boxing matches were projected via the Veriscope system, according to Terry Ramsaye’s “A Million and One Nights,” an industry history published in 1926, the same year that the AOM was demolished. Recalling its original dedication to classical music and drama, Ramsaye wrote that “For many years, the Academy of Music has been a motion picture theatre, a sort of withered crone, flamboyant with garish electric garlands in the tragic gaiety of a desperate old age. The queen, deposed, is a rag picker now.”

The first Academy of Music was the most prestigious theatre for opera in New York prior to the opening of the first Metropolitan Opera House. It’s listed in the 1897-98 edition of the Julius Cahn Official Theatrical Guide. At that time it was under the direction of E.G. Gilmore and Eugene Tompkins. The latter was also director of the Boston Theatre on Washington Street in Boston. Admission prices ranged from 25 cents to $1.50. Seating capacity: Orchestra- 498; Orchestra Circle- 436; Balcony- 508; Second Balcony- 150; Gallery- 518; Total: 2,110. The theatre had both gas and electric illumination. The proscenium opening was 44 feet wide X 40 feet high, and the stage was 66 feet deep. There were 15 in the house orchestra. In Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper of Feb. 21, 1880, there is an interior drawing made during the Masquerade Ball of the Liederkranz. That drawing, showing the very elaborate interior, plus an exterior photo shot around 1865, are in the book “The Liederkranz of New York, 1848-1948” published in NY in 1948.