Beverly Theater
111 Church Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11218
111 Church Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11218
3 people
favorited this theater
The Beverly Theater was opened on January 17, 1920. It another small house that was once run by United Artists and then the Golden Theater chain. It was a dollar theater before being twinned in January 1976, and going first-run.
It closed in September 1981, with the lobby turned into retail use and the theater becoming a yeshiva. A few years back, the auditorium was completely demolished to become a Public School of the City of New York. The former front of the theatre and lobby are retained in retail use.
Contributed by
philipgoldberg
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Recent comments (view all 38 comments)
AHHHH the Beverly—the closest theater to my house. a free walk and $1 in the later years when you were broke – great. I also remember the xxx and the picketing in the 70’s. And who can forget the Ape marathon i believe that was also when the cost was $1 so you saw 5 ape pix all in one day for a dollar. I remember going in at noon on a saturday and making it through 3 before i couldnt take any more. Your feet always stuck to the floor. People I knew swore the place had fleas cause they’d say they were itchy after going there. So of course after that, I’d go see a movie and imagine i was itchy. Does anyone remember the stain on the screen?
1930 photo: View link
My Dad owned N.E. Tell’s bakery, a block from the Beverly, on Church between E.@nd and E.3rd. Anyone knew it? When I was quite little my Dad took me into the pool hall by the Beverly to watch Kennedy ride down Church Ave. waving in a motorcade. Lived on E. 2nd between Ave. C and Cortelyou Rd., by P.S.179. I don’t even know what this site is, I just wandered in here.
Great photo JF Lundy, but wow, the street looks like a bomb went off! Perhaps it was ripped up from when they were building a subway?
The street work in progress may be for preliminary stage of subway station construction on the City owned Independent Subway project. The Church Avenue station was the terminus of the IND from 1936 until the 50’s when it was tied into the Culver Line EL to Coney Island.
I used to go to this theater in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They tended to play second run movies. I remember seeing Zombies there, in the balcony. The place was pretty much empty.
I walked by today, and it isn’t a 99 cent store anymore, but a T-Mobile store (not sure if that’s a step up or down!)
Here’s a shot of it now:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aonghais/4120001463/
The building in the Google Maps view and in the 11/20/09 photo above are obviously the same, but which is the most recent? I would guess the one showing a T-Mobile store. Many of the Google views are proving to be outdated.
I don’t believe this theater should be listed as “demolished”, it doesn’t appear to have been demolished, but just gutted and turned into the school, within the shell of the former theater, similarly to who the RKO Bushwick was made into a school, the DeKalb Theater, and currently the Loews Pitkin. See here for a historic aerial showing the theater in 1980, and the building still exists, although with windows poked into it’s sides when you look at the current aerials.
Click Here for 1980 View
Click Here for Current View
I walked past there today, and it pretty much looks the same as the way it looked when I took the photo in 2009. That 99 cent store in the Google Street View is gone, has been for a few years.
I saw a number of movies at the Beverly in the 70s, when I was living in Prospect Park South. I definitely saw “The Eyes of Laura Mars,” “The China Syndrome,” and “The Awakening” there, amongst others. I don’t think there was a balcony, but wasn’t the auditorium large-ish? At least, I remember it as kind of big.