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 266 comments)
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.
I remember Loew’s 175th from 1951 and it was still a theater in 1957. The “Big Three” railroad-car style diner was across 175th Street, there was a photo studio across Broadway. My cousin worked as an usher there while in high school.
Here’s a 1980s tax view of the entire block, with marquee and entrance at the right side of the photo: lunaimaging
How depressing! I think I saw “Giant” with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor there in an early February, there was a heavy snowfall.
Guarina, if you’re talking about the original release of “Giant” in 1956, you couldn’t have seen it at Loew’s 175th Street because it didn’t play there. If you saw it in its first run in the Washington Heights area, that would have been at the RKO Coliseum. Prior to that, you could have seen it in Manhattan only at the Roxy, where “Giant” played its exclusive NYC premiere engagement.
Tinseltoes, Then it must have been the RKO Coliseum. I remember Broadway was blocked by the snow, it was February 1st, we took a taxi coming out of the theater, but the driver stopped in front of the Presbyterian Medical Center and told us to get off, he couldn’t go on.