United Palace
4140 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10033
4140 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10033
27 people
favorited this theater
The fifth and last of the Loew’s “Wonder Theatres” to be built in New York, Loew’s 175th Street Theatre was thought to be the most elaborate of architect Thomas Lamb’s endeavors. The walls of the auditorium were embellished with Indo-Chinese decoration and the foyer featured a palatial staircase leading to a grandiose, aurora borealis headed by a goddess decoration. It facade was decorated in a blocky, stylized version of the Mayan style. It was opened in February 1930, and closed in March 1969.
Currently the theater is home to Christ United Church, founded by the late evangelist Reverend Ike, and is known as The Palace Cathedral for church services. In recent years it has also been used as a concert venue and is known as the United Palace when booked for such events.
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Recent comments (view all 261 comments)
Here’s a link to Riedel’s article.
View link
If the “Tony” event does take place (I’ve heard that it’s not a done deal yet), let us literally pray that no physical harm is done to the theatre, which has been exceptionally well-maintained by the church over the years and retains its “original” look. Please spare it from desecration by network TV technicians who might want to break through walls and/or ceilings.
I’m not at all worried about any Tony “threats” to the theater. Let’s remind ourselves that the Tony’s have been housed in one of the world’s greatest movie palaces for many years: Radio City!
In addition, many acts have played the United Palace whose fans I feared had the potential to damage the theater much more than the performers. But my fears were not warranted. The United Palace has maintained the theater beautifully and I have no reason to think that it will change anytime soon.
I’m not surprised about this move, considering…in January 2010, the Allman Brothers Band, which held a 40-year relationship with the Beacon Theatre, was forced to move its legendary annual NYC concerts from that venue to the United Palace (breaking a 20-year, 190-show string) because – you guessed it – Beacon management booked a Cirque du Soleil production on an extended run!
It’s great that a Loew’s “Wonder Theatre” gets such an honor bestowed upon it, and that Broadway is actually celebrated ON Broadway…but 175th Street? Is it impossible today in NYC to find a theatre that’s both on Broadway AND boasts comparable capacity, quality, aesthetics or amenities, either in or closer to Midtown Manhattan?
What about the Upper West Side? The recently restored 2894-seat Beacon Theatre is magnificent! Want even more “spread-out” space for red carpet, crowds, traffic and parking? Go a few blocks down to the newly renovated Lincoln Center and its 3800-seat Metropolitan Opera House – it may not represent the authentic “classic” theatrical setting that we desire, but it’s classy, prestigious and celeb-friendly (for those of you with short memories, the MTV Video Music Awards ceremony was held there in September of 1999 and 2001).
Radio City was never built as a movie palace. The Roxy (Center) was the failed movie palace. Radio City was built as a Music Hall and settled for movies when music shows failed.
Yes Al, you are correct that Radio City was not specifically built as a movie palace but a movie palace it most definitely is. That is how it was used for a majority of its life and how it is remembered by most.
I still think that the Tony committee made a brilliant move in scheduling the Tony ceremony at Loew’s 175th Street Theatre. It will focus attention on one of the nation’s most magnificent movie palaces while at the same time letting people everywhere know that not everything happens in midtown Manhattan. There is a wealth of architectural splendor throughout the boroughs and this will highlight it.
As I suspected above on 7/14/10, the deal to present the next Tony Awards at the United Palace fell through. The telecast will be held instead at the Beacon Theatre, which is about 100 blocks to the south of Washington Heights and probably seems safer and more convenient for members of the elite group that presents the Tony Awards.
Yes, Tinseltoes, the Tony"s will be at the Beacon. While I am extremely disappointed that the country will not be exposed to this gem of a theater there is no better other theater to host the Tony’s than the Beacon as Alto so eloquently pointed out. The theater is actually on Broadway and was recently renovated. It will still reflect very well on New York, but it would have been very nice to have really gone outside the box for a change.
Loew’s 175th Street is prominently mentioned in this Wall Street Journal article by Will Friedwald about uptown theatres that have found God: wsj.com
Thanks for the Link Tinseltoes.