RKO Greenpoint Theatre

Bway, you took the google street view of the Manhattan Ave./Meserole Street intersection, which is in Williamsburg. The old opera house was situated just west of the Manhattan/Meserole Avenue intersection, in Greenpoint. If you take this view from Manhattan Ave. looking west on Meserole, the opera house would have been situated on the right side of the street

Bway, at one time, I thought that the building you referenced might have been the old opera house, but I don’t think this is the case for at least two reasons. First, it is situated at the southwest corner of these two streets while the Index places it at or near the northwest corner. (Not an absolute disqualifier but still pretty significant.) Second – and more importantly – in checking some of the Building Dept. info for this site, I just do not think that the current building is that old.

With that said, I very fondly remember this building as the home of the New Garden Chinese Restaurant. It was, at the time – late 50’s/early 60’s – just about the only restaurant in Greenpoint that was not a diner. While, in retrospect, the quality of the food was pretty poor – their best dish was breaded veal cutlet, which was very tasty – we didn’t know the difference and thought it was a real classy place. The grand staircase leading to this second floor establishment made it seem almost regal!) At one time – before my time but well within my parants memory – this large restaurant hosted dance parties. This proved to be a harbinger for the future, since the place now hosts a Polish nightclub.

I think the old opera house was actually situated between the Greenpoint Y and Manhattan Ave. As a review of the goggle map indicates, nothing of interest currently exists in this area.

It’s amazing when you realize how many RKO and Loew’s theaters there were in so many local neighborhoods and basically they are all gone.

Hard to belive how times have changed.

Wow, TT, this may very well have been the last time that real vaudeville acts appeared at the Greenpoint. By the time I came of cinematic age in the mid-to-late 50’s, vaudeville at the RKO Greenpoint was clearly a thing of the past.

Actually, TT, Greenpoint was named after the green shoreline that the initial Dutch explorers encountered near the south bank of the intersection of the East River and Newtown Creek. There was nothing “Irish” about it.

By the early 1950’s, Greenpoint had hosted a large Irish population for nearly a century. So, the vaudeville act you referenced must have had a wide following.