Embassy Theatre
280 Main Street,
New Britain,
CT
06051
280 Main Street,
New Britain,
CT
06051
No one has favorited this theater yet
Contributed by
Roger Katz
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 9 comments)
A Robert-Morton organ was installed in the Embassy Theater in 1929.
The Lyceum Theater and the Embassy Theater were one and the same. I was in the Embassy once as a little boy, probably in 1954 or 1955. The Embassy closed and was demolished in the early 1960s, a victim of New Britain’s horribly ill-conceived plan for downtown ‘urban renewal.’ A parking garage sits on the theater site.
Mentioned in Images of America: New Britain, Volume I. Page 128, picture showing 3-sided marquee and a worker under a ladder removing letters for the last time. “As strains of Auld Lang Syne played, movie-goers exited the Embassy Theatre for the last time in the summer of 1964.”
It contained 1300 seats. The owner was John Dabrowski.
Images of America: New Britain, Volume II. Page 110 shows the low marquee and entrance with “Hermie Dressel – Alan Freed” and “Rock, Rock, Rock” on the marquee.
John D. Amato was the assistant manager.
Images of America: New Britain, Volume III. Page 2, long marquee showing “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Page 13, showing “Small Town Girl” (1936 version) with Robert Taylor.
Was originally built in 1893 as The Russwin Lyceum.
See http://www.biblestudents.com/htdbv5/zwt0289.htm at the bottom at 277 Main Street as Russwin Lyceum.
Here is part of an article from the Hartford Courant dated 9/12/64:
Theater Demolition Resumes After Collapse into Store
NEW BRITAIN (Special) — The job of removing huge wooden trusses 70 feet above the stage of the Embassy Theater while avoiding any further collapse of the weakened walls got under way at about 6 p.m. Friday.
Item in Boxoffice magazine, June 23, 1958:
“Stanley Warner booked Italian films into the Cameo, Bristol, and Embassy, New Britain at the regular price scale."
[For those of us interested in places of exhibition of Italian films to ethnic audiences in the U.S.]
Don, if the marquee shows Easy Living with Jean Arthur, then this is more like 1937, the year that film was released.
I remember the Embassy. I remember part of the being demolished fell through the adjoining Rapheal’s department store.
From the 1940s a postcard image of Embassy Theatre in New Britain.