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. By 1950, it had been taken over by the Brandt Theatres chain.
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 1,019 comments)
bigjoe59- “….what was the state of the Candler Theater? was it in such bad shape they decided to demolish it or was it in perfectly renovatable shape but no one wanted to spend the money so it was razed.”
It’s interesting you should ask about the Candler building, since the union I was in, the projectionists Local 306, was located in the Candler building. The only reason they were FORCED to move was because of the demolition. The building was certainly NOT in bad shape. In fact, like so many of the older buildings that have been razed, it was a building that was built for the ages. Like comparing the Empire State Building to the World Trade Center, which building would you select to be in if were going to be hit by a plane?
All this makes me think about the Beacon Theatre, where I worked a number of times back in the early 1970’s when Brandt was still operating it as a movie theatre. It was, for all practical purposes, A DUMP. Yet, if you look at this fabulous theatre (a smaller sister to the big Roxy theatre**) today after its renovation, the thought of this theatre getting demolished is criminal.
**-The reason I say the “Big Roxy” (6000 seats) is because of the smaller Roxy (3500 seats) that was originally part of the Rockefeller Center complex. They were sued by the then owners of the big Roxy and forced to rename the small Roxy the “Center Theatre, or RKO Center Theatre. To date, it is the ONLY building in the complex to be demolished. When I was young, I remember going there to see the Milton Berle Show, which used the Center Theatre as a broadcast studio. With the size of cameras back then, I can tell you first hand that you could see better at home on the TV. The cameras blocked EVERYTHING.
I don’t know if we will ever get an honest answer as to why each theatre was treated as it was. There were political machinations behind the scenes including the legit theatre owners wanting to limit competition, multiplex operators in financial straits, and the 42nd street redevelopment people trying to make room for large new tenants like Madame Tussauds and Ripleys.
AlAlvarez on April 12-“Without tourists and day trippers there would be no Times square. I live in Hell’s Kitchen in an area I would never venture into at night before 1999.”
While there have always been some “bad blocks” in the Hell’s Kitchen area that you really wouldn’t want to walk down late at night if you could avoid it, it sounds worse than it actually was. Most of the violence in the area was mostly between competing gangs (which I would guess are still around there “somewhere”. If it is “safe” today, the main reason would be that along with Disney taking over 42nd St., it has also because property values and rents have skyrocketed, driving out most the people you might have not wanted to run into late at night. The same thing has happened to Harlem. As you drive out poor people with “gentrification”, you drive up rents and property values. While it might be good for the people buying up the property, it’s not so great for the displaced people that have lived there their whole life. If Rudolph Giuliani remained as King…I mean Mayor, he probably would have had the poor and homeless people exiled to another country (Although uncle Mike isn’t much better).
AlAlvarez on April 12,–“I don’t know if we will ever get an honest answer as to why each theatre was treated as it was”
Truer words were never spoken. We will NEVER know the truth, only the result.
There are no “bad blocks” in Hell’s Kitchen anymore. Without cleaning up 42nd street, nothing else would have happened and the area would still be a slum today. Giuliani didn’t cause the Disney effect, that pre-dated him, but he made sure his friends had first dibs on prime real estate.
While you might have called the area where Lincoln Center was built a “slum”, I don’t think that the area from 8th to 10th Avenue from 42nd through 57th Street could ever have been classified as a “slum”. The buildings don’t fall into that category. In fact, most are still there today….only the cost for an apartment or value of the property has changed. I guess driving out the area’s indigenous residents changes it from a slum to a whatever?
39th Street to 36th Street wet of 9th Avenue to eleventh was mostly brothels and crack houses. Most of the area west of ninth avenue from 36th Street to 54th Street was full of street walkers and drug dealers. The locals stayed indoors after dark while the Westies gang ran their trade. Since the locals rented and never owned, they were the first to go when the slum lords sold out.
“Since the locals rented and never owned, they were the first to go when the slum lords sold out.”
SAD, BUT TRUE.
However, you’ll note that I never referred to anything below 42nd Street. And, 11th Avenue was in a class by itself….and I doubt that there were many people that would go down there alone at night.
When “On the Waterfront” was filmed, my father was a Custom’s Agent on the docks and I watched some of the filming there. In fact, one of the goons in the film who was a friend of my father’s was a Longshoremen that worked on the docks and who they hired for the film.
The politicians have made it sound bad enough so they could rape this city, please don’t make it sound worse then it actually was.-LOL
techaman707, it was pretty bad, as I witnessed myself. Although hookers and drug dealers don’t bother me (they still exist here), I would not have moved here back then when they were in control.
Today the West Side in the upper thirties is a great area to walk the dog. Pier 84 is no longer a great place to dump dead bodies but a great fishing area, water taxi, boat ride, restaurant and dog park.
Al, Still, some things are best left alone. When you attempt to rid crime in one area, it just pops up somewhere else. The same goes for the people who have been pushed out of Hell’s Kitchen. Where are we hiding them now? That will be the next up and coming neighborhood for real estate investors.-LOL