Wagner Theater
110 Wyckoff Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11237
110 Wyckoff Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11237
3 people
favorited this theater
Opened on June 18, 1921 as the Reo Theatre, with 600 seats, it also had an open air roof theatre for use in the summer months. It stood on Wyckoff Avenue in the Ridgewood section of Brooklyn. It was listed in the 1930 edition of Film Daily Yearbook as (Closed).
Later renamed Wagner Theatre, it specialized in screening German films. Closed again in around 1939, due possibly to anti-German sentiments, it reopened again by 1943. In the late-1960’s the Wagner Theatre was operating as an adult movie theatre and in its final days it was showing Spanish language movies, finally closing in 1979.
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philipgoldberg
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Recent comments (view all 71 comments)
Thanks, Lost Memory. No, I don’t know when the Reo / Wagner Theatre opened.
This is interesting. It opened as the Reo in 1921, when a German name was probably still a no no and then only assumed its Teutonic personna when doing so became less of a concern – but before the onset of the Third Reich.
Thanks, John D. Yes, Teutonic names were discouraged in the USA during the World Wars. Hamburg Avenue became Wilson Avenue during WW I, but Hamburg Savings Bank retained its name, of which it was very proud.
Here’s a great photo of the Wagner Theater when it was still the Reo Theater. It is now a health clinic.
View link
Great picture, Bway. It seems as if the entire blockfront has now been replaced with something new. By the way, the health building is a newly constructed structure that replaced the Wagner, which was demolished.
Thanks, Bway. Great pic. “The Clean Heart”, starring Percy Marmont, was released in 1924, according to the IMDb.
Here’s an ad for the new program that opened on October 25th, 1967. I don’t know if 11:30 PM was closing time or just the start of the last complete show: View link
Looks like the Wagner’s adult format was well in swing by the 60’s already.
Below is an ad for “I Am Curious Yellow” which, among many other places, was shown at the Wagner. (Hope the link works.)
Interestingly, the Wagner is listed as a Queens theater. While a number of theaters situated in Queens, particularly the Ridgewood and the Madison, have often been lumped in with the Brooklyn theaters in movie advertisements, due to the old zip code that straddled the two boroughs, this is the first time where I have seen a Brooklyn theater assigned to Queens. (I guess neither borough would really want to claim it.)
Also, the mix of theaters showing this film is interesting. While it does contain the usual porn places – such as the Wagner and the Cinart – this movie was also shown at such mainstream venues as Forest Hills' Midway and Manhattan’s Academy of Music. I guess this was a different time.
View link
I need to correct something I said in my Feb. 22 2009 comment, where I asserted that the entire blockfront, as depicted in Bway’s terrific picture, had been replaced by new buildings. Well, based on my visit there yesterday, the three buildings situated to the right of the old Wagner are, while somewhat altered, still very much in existence. Further down the block, however, is a large, multi-tiered parking facility that certainly disrupts the streetscape.