Best Buy Theater
1515 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10036
1515 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10036
21 people
favorited this theater
New York’s Astor Plaza housed one of the largest screens in the city.
Opened on June 26, 1974 in Times Square (just west of Broadway), this enormous single screen theater was actually built entirely underground, three stories beneath the Minskoff Theatre. Moviegoers entered the theater from an entrance on 44th Street, taking an especially long escalator down to the theater and concession area.
Astor Plaza Theatre was known as THE place to see event films (like “Star Wars” or “The Matrix”). Because of its large size, the Astor Plaza Theatre drew large, opening night crowds—crowds who really knew how to enjoy a movie.
The Astor Plaza Theatre was home to a number of box office hits; including “Superman”, the remake of “King Kong”, and “When Harry Met Sally”. As a tribute to this fact, the theater’s escalator was lined with posters of its most successful films.
The Astor Plaza Theatre was closed on August 1, 2004 with “Spiderman 2”. It was converted into a 2,100-seat concert venue, the Nokia Theatre Times Square, which opened in October 2005. In September 2010, it was renamed Best Buy Theater.
Contributed by
Cinema Treasures
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Recent comments (view all 527 comments)
Purists will say that the original cinema wasn’t a “theater” in the true sense of the word because it lacked facilities to present stage productions. In fact, I don’t think it even had a stage, but just a shallow platform supporting the screen.
I have always been told that a place with a stage and fly loft was a ‘theater’ A cinema without staging capabilities was a ‘theatre’.
The alternate spellings (theatre/theater) are a stylistic matter. Some users choose “theatre” for a building and “theater” for the stage industry, others the reverse. For example, CT uses “theater” for buildings, while Theatre Historical Society of America does not. CT uses the “re” ending only in cases where a specific building spelled it that way (such as NYC’s Roxy Theatre).
When I first started working in the movie theatre industry in 1974 it was very clear. Legit use was ‘theater’ and cinema use was ‘theatre’, even in cases where the same company owned both types of venues. Whether there was a stage or never a consideration.
Ed, in reference to “using the most recent name” is a decision that was made for consistency. Many theaters had several names, and sometimes it’s latest name is it’s most popular. Sometimes, it’s old name was the most popular, sometimes some name it had in the middle. For consistency’s sake, they chose to title theaters by their most recent name. For every theater that may have suffered by having it’s “most recent name” as the current heading name, there are others that benefited from it. It makes sense for consistency, and otherwise subjective things would have to be used to title a theater.
By the way, the search feature on the site searches current AND former names. If you search “Astor Plaza” for this theater in the search box above….one theater comes up. The Best Buy Theater. So if you are searching theaters by their “most famous name”, even if the name is now some other name, the theater will come up in search.
There are some odd wrinkles here and there, however, Bway. You can still find the old Rivoli Theatre under its original name, rather than the awful and generic “UA Twin,” as the grand old theater was known in its final years. And thank heaven for that!
Unfortunately there are a number of listings set up as, for example, UA Twin,without a clue as to where they are. But current CT logic gives you many ways of tracking down a theatre/theater.
I think the policy is that if a theater is currently in operation, even if it has been converted into a live venue and isn’t showing movies, it will be listed by its current name, and have its movie house names as AKAs.
In the case of theaters that are gone, such as the Rivoli, if they operated under one name for most of their history and under a later name for a fairly short time, it makes sense to use the name by which the greatest number of people visiting the site would probably remember it.
Incidentally, if you want to find the Rivoli under its final name, you have to search CT with the full name United Artists Twin. Nine other currently listed houses called UA Twin can be found only under the abbreviated name. Wikipedia-style redirects would be useful.
Yes, I believe that is because the UA Twin is no longer in operation, so the best known name is used. If however the Rivoli was currently open, it would be titled the UA Twin.