Playhouse
104 Middle Neck Road,
Great Neck,
NY
11021
104 Middle Neck Road,
Great Neck,
NY
11021
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The Playhouse was located on the main drag in Great Neck, directly across from the Squire Theater.
It was shuttered in the early-1980’s and has since been converted into apartments.
Contributed by
SteveSmith
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Recent comments (view all 48 comments)
thanks
Hey Wally… My email is still . Perhaps you hit a typo. Feel free to try again, but if you have those pics on your computer, you should now be able to post them yourself using the newly restored add-a-photo feature. If you have any troubles with that, definitely send the pics my way and I’d be more than glad to post them for you!
So glad to read that there are fans for the old Playhouse Theater in Great Neck. When it was owned by UA, I worked at both the Playhouse and the Squire across the street. I tried to schedule as often as possible in the Playhouse. The theater was so lovely. It had a great balcony and projection room. Even the upstairs lobby was huge. The programming was more focused on B-movies and second runs which were so much more fun than the A list playing across the street. I had 2 great experiences at the Playhouse—seeing THE EXORCIST for the first time and the original release of HALLOWEEN. These films were just scarier in an old movie palace.
I would not describe the Playhouse as a “movie palace.” As its name implies, it was built for stage plays (replaced by vaudeville on Sundays). The interior decor was conservative and similar to the “legit” houses in NYC. However, the area was under-populated at the time, so the Playhouse had to switch to showing movies to survive.
Calling Wally 75! If you still have some photos of the Playhouse that you’d like to share, please try my email again (see post above) or try your hand at uploading them yourself – it’s quite easy, as long as you have the photos in a folder that’s easy to browse to in your computer!
According to someone from the Great Neck Historical Society the old dressing rooms and cages (!) existed in the basement after the conversion to residential. Never established whether they are still there.
Still puzzles me how the auditorium space could have been converted to residential. There are no windows at all that have been punched through any of the auditorium walls, as you can see from the photos I posted. Not to mention that the upper floor or two doesn’t even connect to the original apartment building that fronts Middle Neck Road. Still wondering exactly what was converted to what, aside from the garage that obviously exists on the ground floor where the foyer and rear orchestra were situated.
The apts. you see on Middle Neck road are the same ones that have been there since 1923…they just fluffed them up and called them condos…Ed that picture you took looking south…has always looked that way…the shorter of the three was back stage entrance that would take you to the dressing rooms and under the stage…more soon
This may be a repeat of something I said but, the area left of the condo sign and to the right of vogue store was an alley that was the area where all the eastside of the Playhouse fire escapes and the apt. fire escapes would come together to take them to the street…under the stairs was a dumpster for apt. and Playhouse..the area was all open then…and store with the black sign 2nd from the left was the Playhouse entrance……more later..
I worked there in its final year, I believe (I recall us showing “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip” and “Four Friends” and “Personal Best”) and even helped with its conversion to a legit live theater again. Helped scrape off old paint on the railings, and loved helping it come alive again. I got to walk on the stage, and up above were old scenic flats!!! Could they have been holdovers from the 1920s when the Marx Bros, some who lived in town, staged “The Cocoanuts”??