City Cinemas Village East
181 Second Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
181 Second Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
14 people
favorited this theater
City Cinema’s beautifully restored Village East was once the home of Yiddish theater. Legend has it that Walter Matthau began his film career here as a young boy working at the concession counter.
Its past is still evident in the Moorish designs that adorn both the inside and outside of the theater. Yiddish writing outside the lobby and a large star of David in the dome of the main auditorium further infuse atmosphere into the historic building.
Below the original, ornate theater and lobby, six small screening rooms have been erected in order to maximize the theater’s profitability.
With New York City’s lack of a still-operating historic movie palace, the Village East is the closest thing around, especially in the 1,200-seat original main auditorium.
Contributed by
Ross Melnick
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Recent comments (view all 92 comments)
John Averitt, around 1991, drew up plans for City Cinemas for a three-screen cinema to be located on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors of the former Liberty Storage Warehouse building at 43 W. 64th St. (the building that used to have the small Statue of Liberty on the roof). As I recall, 2 of the theatres were to have around 200 seats each and the third was to have around 300 to 350 seats. The name of the project was Liberty Walk. The landlord was intending to put in a passageway through to 65th Street on the ground floor, lined with restaurants and clubs, and the theatre upstairs. I don’t remember what the plan was for the upper floors of the building were. While the landlord was having studies done in regard to altering the buildings structural system to accommodate the theatre, Loews announced they had signed for a substantial number of square feet in a mixed-use high-rise development to be built on the site of a nearby post office. They were planning 10 screens for what they were, at the time, calling Loews Lincoln Metroplex. This announcement effectively put the kabash on City Cinemas 64th Street project, and the drawings just sat in the drawer at the home office for years.
As Ludwig Satz Yiddish Folks Theatre:
View link
The theater facade got a bit of a facelift recently; this article has a picture and a link to another one showing what it looked like before the recent work began: View link
The stonework looks very good. It had been covered with paint long before City Cinemas renovated it into a plex. The question is: How long will it remain unpainted? The lower portions of the building were always a canvas for the local graffiti artists. Before the renovation was complete in 1990, the security shutters on the windows on the n.e. corner and the 3 storefronts on the south end were completely covered with the work of the neighborhood “artists” less than 24 hours after they were installed. At that time the neighborhood was in the process of being yuppified, but is it much better now?
The big theatre here was the most PERFECT location for “Rocky Horror”!! The famous NYC cast made great use of the old boxes flanking the proscenium. I have numerous pics of the Halloween 1996 show, and someday I’ll scan them and post them on the web.
Unfortunately, “Rocky” was usually relegated to one of the teensy houses…
Not for nothin', but isn’t that Rocky stuff getting a little old? Thirty years ago it was sort of an amusing way to spend one or two uneventful Saturday nights, but time marches on and most people grow up. Are the same ‘performers’ still ‘performing’ along with the film? Do their walkers and canes get in the way?
Man this theatre has had a lot of A.K.A. names.
I was just there in the main auditorium to see LEAVES OF GRASS. The place was clean, looked fresh, smelled good and the stars of the picture were doing a talk-back after the show. The main screen retains the decor and feeling of the 1920s while the smaller screens are simple modern screening rooms. I don’t much care for the smaller screens because they don’t have much in the way of character, but I prefer them to any screen at the Angelika—those long shoebox rooms with small screens are unappealing. I very much like going to this theatre—especially if I can sit in the main auditorium. Also the lobby is beautiful.
Advert as the Gayety in 1966.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=E_ZDAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KLAMAAAAIBAJ&pg=2707%2C98720
By the way, the Mayfair theatre listed in the same ad later became the Mayfair Yiddish theatre and is NOT the Embassy 1, 2, 3.