Loew's Pitkin Theatre
1501 Pitkin Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11212
1501 Pitkin Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11212
18 people
favorited this theater
The Loew’s Pitkin Theatre opened on November 23, 1929 with Elliot Nugent in “So This is College”, plus on-stage “Cafe de Paree” (originally created for the Capitol Theatre in Manhattan). Initially operating as a premier movie/stage show venue that eventually went to movies only. Multi-tiered theatre with Greek statuary adorning the side walls and proscenium area. It had a Robert Morton 3 Manual, 14 Rank theatre organ too.
Unfortunately the neighborhood went down and the theatre’s fortunes went south as well. Closed in the late-1960’s.
It had a long stint as a church, but the congregation eventually moved out. The entry lobby was converted into retail space (later used as storage), but the theater auditorium itself stood behind a fake wall that was installed in the foyer. Over the 40 years of neglect and dereliction the building gradually became a wreck.
In the Summer of 2010, the building was being prepared to be converted into a school and retail use, which was completed in September 2012.
Contributed by
philipgoldberg
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 340 comments)
This photograph of the Loew’s Pitkin Theatre was taken in 1930 by George Mann of the comedy dance team, Barto and Mann.
Thanks again Brad.
Marcus Loew was born on this date in 1870.
Today at 11am marks the 82nd anniversary of the grand opening of Loew’s Pitkin. “Feast your eyes on this newest Loew wonder-theatre— a Castilian castle of surpassing beauty,” said an ad in The New York Times. On screen was MGM’s all-talking “So This Is College.” The stage presentation, originally created for the Capitol Theatre in midtown Manhattan, was “Cafe de Paree,” with music played by the Pitkin’s resident Symphony Orchestra…The opening date in this listing’s introduction needs to be corrected.
Here’s a 1980s tax photo of the dilapidated exterior: lunaimaging
I lived across the street from the Loew’s Pitkin. 1947 until 1963. Fond memories of saturday movies. 5 cartoons, a serial and a “double” feature. I even got to see Jerry lewis live on stage. the ceiling used to have stars and a moon that would slowly cross from one side to the other. Looking back, the theater was the most beautiful of theaters I have ever seen…to this day. It’s a shame to hear how run-down it has become.
Two-page 1929 trade article starts here: archive
From NY.Curbed.com Thursday, September 6, 2012, by Jessica Dailey
When we visited the Loew’s Pitkin Theater in 2010, the movie palace, closed for 40 years, was falling apart and pretty creepy-looking. But no more! POKO Partners sent along a press release announcing the completion of their $43 million adaptive reuse of the structure, transforming the historic ruins into a mixed-used building featuring a charter school and retail space. Brownsville Ascend Charter School occupies 130,000-square-feet on seven of the building’s eight floors, with a discount store anchoring the street-level retail space along Pitkin Avenue.
The renovation, lead by architecture firm Kitchen & Associates, restored the historic building’s exterior neo-classical and Art Deco features while retrofitting the interior to accommodate the school. Along with classrooms for K-12 students, the school has a gymnasium, auditorium, science labs, and art rooms. The official ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held next Thursday, September 13.
How far was the Loew’s Pitkin to Loew’s Kings? I didn’t realize Brooklyn was so large. 1929 was sure an important year for the Loew’s chain wasn’t it? If only they could see the depression around the corner, these pleasure palaces might never have been built.
Bobby S: Enlarge each Google map accompanying each theater on the respective pages; if you use the Prospect Park Parade Ground as a point of reference, you will see that they were not all that close to each other; as you noted, Brooklyn is pretty big.
Actually, the big downtown palaces fared reasonably well in the Depression, due to the relatively inexpensive tickets and did well into the 1940’s, though architectural tastes changed, and combination programs of live acts and movie programming became less frequent, eliminating the need for elaborate, fully-equipped stages. Yes, some chain owners like William Fox went bankrupt and some theaters did close and fewer were built.
But there were three major factors that really doomed both the existing and any planned palaces, and all of them occurred after the Great Depression: the 1948 Paramount Consent Decree that forced the major studios to divest themselves of their theater chains, the coming of television, and the exodus of so many people to the suburbs. There was, especially in the 1960’s a relatively brief flowering of large, single screen theaters that might be regarded as sort of second generation palaces, but the arrival of multiplexes eventually doomed many of these or resulted in their being subdivided, in many cases atrociously.