Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre
707 Seventh Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
707 Seventh Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
26 people
favorited this theater
Originally opened on January 10th, 1910 as the Columbia Theatre at the northeast corner of 47th Street and Broadway inside an office building. It operated as a burlesque theatre and was designed by noted theatre architect William McElfatrick.
Walter Reade bought the theatre in 1928 and rebuilt it into a movie theatre. A major renovation was undertaken by architect Thomas W. Lamb who removed the two original balconies and place a single balcony in an Art Deco style auditorium. It reopened in October 1930 as the Mayfair Theatre, screening movies, with RKO as the operator.
The name was changed to the DeMille Theatre when road-show, reserved-seat movies were popular during the early-1960’s. World Premiere’s of 70mm movies at the DeMille Theatre included “Spartacus” (October 6th 1960) “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (March 26, 1964) and “Hawaii” (October 10, 1966).
In late-1976, the theatre became the Mark I,II,III. The triplexing was crudely done by putting a wall dividing the balcony down the center, creating a a very narrow tube that inclined upward. One entered near the screen and had to climb very steep steps to reach the seating area.
It became the Embassy 2,3,4 Theatre in December 1977 when Guild Enterprises took it over. (The Embassy 1 Theatre was on Broadway at W. 46th Street, almost adjacent to the Palace Theatre). In 1997, after the Embassy 1 was closed for conversion into the Times Square Visitor Center, this theatre was renamed Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre. The Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre was one of the last Times Square movie houses to close.
It was shuttered for several years, until around 2007, when it was virtually gutted and converted into a Famous Dave’s BBQ Restaurant.
Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 959 comments)
Hello To My Fellow Posters-
i do enjoy reading all your replies especially the witty ones. :–)
two new notes- *regardless of the sexual orientation and gender of the audience members or whatever activity they might have been engaged in am i correct in my statement that in its porn years the Variety Photoplays never showed gay porn only straight porn.
*my original post was about whether the ornate B.F. Moss Regent and the moderate sized Bunny both from 1913 were the 1st theaters built brick by brick from the ground up specifically to show to photoplays or flickers as they were called at the time. i asked this because since movies exploded like fire works after their debut at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in April of 1896 i simply couldn’t believe that no theater built expressly to show movies were built until the Regent and Bunny of 1913. well they say if you search long enough you’ll find what you’re looking for. i had always assumed that the Apollo on 42 St.(which was torn down with its neighbor the Lyric to built the theater now known as the Foxwoods Theater)was built from the get go as a “legit” house to use an old term. well guess what? it was built from the get go to be a combo movie and vaudeville theater. so since it bests the Regent and the Bunny by 3 years it takes the crown as the oldest theater i’ve found to date that was built from the get go to show movies.
Bigjoe59… I fear we’ll never have a definitive date or location of the very first up-from-the-ground purpose-built movie theater in New York City (whether you consider that to mean Manhattan or any of the five boroughs). Given that building records from this period are sketchy at best – particularly in the outer boroughs before 1936-38 (when the department and its building regulations went City-wide) – the identity of that landmark structure may be forever lost to antiquity. It is a worthy pursuit to try and track it down, regardless.
Hello To Ed S.–
you have a point but hey i like searching.:–)
my original post/query was specifically about the first movie theater in Manhattan built brick
by brick from the ground up expressly to show
movies. for the longest period the oldest ones to fit my criteria that i was able to find were the ornate Regent and the moderately sized Bunny both from 1913. yet in the last two days i found out that the late Apollo on 42 St. was in fact built expressly to show films as well as vaudeville in 1910. so it bests the other two theaters by 3 years. hey you never know maybe with a little more searching i might find another Manhattan movie theater that fits my criteria that bests the Apollo.
speaking of the city as a whole(meaning all 5 boroughs) the answer might be The Nicoland Theater in the Bronx one of the very first theaters designed by renowned architect Thomas Lamb. it was at 768 Westchester Avenue and opened at the end of 1908.
one other note. the Westchester Theater at 2319 Westchester Avenue opened according to its page on this website in 1914. i then contacted the Bronx County Historical Society to ask if they had any additional info/photos on the this theater. guess what? the society’s reference librarian sent me an e-mail containing a photo of the Westchester Theater that existed at 2319 Westchester Avenue. the caption states it was owned and operated by George Hoffman. here comes the good part. the Westchester Theater at 2319 Westchester Avenue according to the photo’s caption opened in 1904 10 years before its page on this website said it opened. interesting hey?
Interesting, unless it’s merely a typo (1904 vs 1914 only a matter of a single slip on the keyboard). It certainly warrants further investigation. Good luck, and keep us apprised.
Bigjoe and Ed,
I can tell you one thing for sure, I once worked at the Liberty Theatre on 42nd St and I can say for SURE that it WAS NOT built as a movie theatre. The Floors of the balcony were made of all wood.
If I get a chance to look, I’ll try to go through all the documentation I might still have that might shed some light on the “oldest” movie theatre question. Allot of the documentation that I once had was donated to the “Museum of the Moving Image” back in 1989, but I still have some stuff left in the attic.
There were also many stage venues designed for occasional game hunt shows, war footage and/or educational presentations, including film, that we wouldn’t consider cinemas even today. Since full length pictures did not become common until 1914-1915 it would seem the genuine “built for pictures” theatres came after that.
For example, I can’t find records that the Apollo 42nd street showed any film at all from 1914 to 1920. After that it had an occasional run between stage shows for over 15 years amounting to less than six films.
Hello To My Fellow Posters-
2 new notes-
*in 1910 “movies” were at the most 22 mins.long? so i’m guessing they alternated thru out the day with vaudeville acts.how long the Apollo continued to show movies doesn’t matter. my point was that its the oldest theater i have found to date that was built from the ground up expressly to show movies.
*actually of the 12 theaters built on 42 St. between 7th and 8th Avenues two were built with the intend of showcasing “movies”. aside from the Apollo the other was the Candler. it opened in 1914 with the Italian epic “Anthony and Cleopatra”. the original intend didn’t quite take hold and a short while later it became a legit house.
Hello To Ed S.–
you’ve been most helpful with my inquiries. so hopeful indepth knowledge will be of assistance this time as well.
1.in my searching for the oldest movie theater in Manhattan built from scratch as a movie theater i came across something quite fascinating. its been said many times by many people that many of the grand old movie theaters built in the approx. 1913-1941 period were killed off either by the almost effect of t.v. or by neighborhoods “changing”. what i found interesting were the decent number of movie theaters in Manhattan that closed up shop long before anyone ever heard of t.v. or any neighborhoods “changed”. of course the stock market crash of Oct. 1929 didn’t help but a number of theaters closed up shop even before Oct. 1929. and i’m not
necessarily talking about hole in the wall theaters but decent theaters. so what’s your take on this most interesting matter.
2.Thomas Lamb designed many grand old movie theaters in the 1913-1941 period. i always said “damn that man was prolific”. now about a month ago i found out that after he made a name for himself he started up an architectural firm with many architects working under him.
the article therefore implied that some of the grand old movie theaters attributed to Lamb may actually have been designed by other architects in the firm. now if this is true how to we know which movie theaters that have always been attributed to Lamb were actually designed by him?
Bigjoe, Can you name any of these theatres you found in your research? Most theatres that come to mind that were built before 1928 were usually built as a dual purpose theatres and not just as a movie theatres. That said, some of the “best” examples of theatres, built exclusively for movies, were built by William Fox, to exhibit films from his Fox Film Co. in the 1920’s. He built many large pre-1928 theatres that could be classified as “movie only” theatres. One sign of a theatre built for movies only is that they don’t have ANY backstage dressing rooms. An interesting example of this is the “Fortway Theatre” in Brooklyn, built by William Fox in the 20s.
Good point, techman707.
Why would anyone design a purpose built theatre (except a nickelodeon) before 1915 for a product that was quite an insignificant afterthought until THE BIRTH OF A NATION made its appearance in 1915?.