Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre
707 Seventh Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
707 Seventh Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
26 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 951 comments found
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?.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
That is exactly what I meant.
saps – LOL!
I think Al meant that while there was straight porn on the screen, the all-male patrons themselves were not.
Al,
I can only assure you that they WERE NOT running “gay porn” when I worked at the Variety Photoplay theatre, that must have come (no pun intended) later. Now the Gaiety is another story. When I worked there, they ran 16 & 35mm porno and had live stage shows in between. They filmed “The Night They Raided Minsky’s” at the Gaiety when I worked there.
The old Rialto was replaced in 1935. The Variety Photoplays was a gay porn theatre for many years. As to what what projected on the screen, you will need to take their patrons word on that issue.
As for your original question as you have framed it, I think the Regent is indeed the answer.
Hello Again-
many thanks for my fellow posters replies to my inquiry. the first Rialto was torn down in 1932? and the Regent while in good shape as been renovated/refurbished etc….. many times for its use as a church. so what either theater looked like when they first opened is anyone’s guess. i hedging the bet the reason
they were considered “movie palaces” is they were larger and more ornate then any other movie theater in Manhattan at the time of their openings.
as the Streetscapes article reiterates many of the first movie theaters in the first 10 years 1896-1906 were simply converted store fronts, retail spaces, music halls or stage theaters. therefore considering how popular movies became after their April 1896 debut i can’t believe there weren’t any movie theaters built from the ground up specifically as movie theaters until the Bunny and Regent of 1913.
also i greatly enjoy reading the Streetscapes column every Sunday in the NY Times but in the older column posted i believe Gray made a mistake. i have been going into the Union Square and East Village areas since i was in college and i never remember the Variety Photoplays ever showing gay porn. before being torn down a few years ago it was unused for a few years and before that it had been converted to an off Broadway theater like 25? years ago. now before that it showed straight porn not gay. the long gone Pocket Theater two blocks down 3rd Ave. showed gay porn.
No. I did not see them because I am not 100 years old.
I did see the Variety and the Nova (Bunny) and I think that it is what Bigjoe really wants to know.
Al,
Did you ever see some of those “100 theaters built for movies”? I thought Bigjoe was talking about “movie palaces”….of which virtually all have been demolished….or are churches. New York has no feeling for REAL landmarks, only the junk that Bloomberg thinks is “art”.
I think the item that best addresses bigjoe’s query is:
“By the early 1910’s, perhaps 100 theaters built for movies had gone up in New York City.”
Al, that’s a very interesting article, but it doesn’t reveal anything I didn’t really know before. Certainly there were movie theatres BEFORE Marcus Loew built the State. In fact, it was “the other theatres” that Loew operated around NY (amd other places) that funded the construction of the State. There was a movie palace in Brighton Beach Brooklyn before the State, but again, It’s the area between 14th Street up to about 86th Street that I’m talking about. There were very few REAL movie palaces until the “real movie palaces” were built from about 1928 through 1933 (the heart of the depression-lol).
btw- I worked at the Variety Photoplay theatre, as well as the Murray Schwartz Theatre on 12th St. & 2nd Ave (aka-The Gaeity and The Eden (where Oh Calcutta premiered).
saps posted this on the Variety Photoplays pages in 2006:
saps on March 23, 2006 at 4:23 am
Here is the text of J.P. Valensi’s excellent post:
STREETSCAPES: Variety Photo Plays Theater; Marquee’s Lights Are Dark on 1914 ‘Nickelodeon’
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY Published: September 3, 1989
IT’S hard to put your finger on what was special about it. Perhaps it was the aura of the early days of the movies, but the 1914 Variety Photo Plays Theater at 110 Third Avenue was unforgettable when it was in operation.
Now the theater’s distinctive lightbulb marquee is dark, the property is vacant and being shown to potential buyers and, according to Michael Lerner, the leasing agent, a final decision – to sell, net lease or demolish the building – will come on Sept. 12.
The earliest movie theaters were just ad hoc alterations of spaces of opportunity, like a saloon or a storefront. According to the theater historian Michael R. Miller, these turn-of-the-century nickelodeons, where admission was usually nickel, were not superseded by specifically built movie theaters until 1908, when the Nicholand and Prospect Pleasure Palace went up in the Bronx.
By the early 1910’s, perhaps 100 theaters built for movies had gone up in New York City. They were good businesses and clustered near high-traffic sites. In 1914, one promoter, Jacob Valensi, secured a 15-year lease on a plot on the west side of Third Avenue, just south of the 14th Street stop of the elevated. There he built a two-story theater, according to Mr. Miller’s research, on a site previously occupied by a theater operation. Although filed as a new building, the theater actually used some of the perimeter walls of an older structure; the theater could in some ways be considered to pre-date 1914.
In its name – Valensi’s Variety Photo Plays – it sought an association with legitimate theater endeavors, of which 14th Street had been a center since the 1850’s.
Designed by Louis Sheinart, the exterior of Variety Photo Plays was in plain brick, generally unornamented except for arcaded piers projecting above a sloping tiled false roof. Mr. Miller called Sheinart ‘'a minor, minor architect of many, many theaters’‘ in this period.
Inside, the auditorium was fairly plain, but did have a slightly pitched floor and fixed seats, still novel touches in an industry that had started only recently with plain benches and sheets hung on a wall.
It is not clear if the walls have lost some architectural effect – they are now mostly patched plaster – but the ceiling is covered with modestly patterned pressed tin. Four large Tiffany-type half-globe lighting fixtures have somehow survived, and the simple fixed seats bear a ‘'V’‘ on the end panels.
There are rooftop louvered vents, still remote-controlled with chains that hang down in the middle of the theater, and a great square panel in the center, perhaps 30 feet across, is what remains of a sliding roof used in the days before air-conditioning.
Variety Photo Plays originally seated 450 and, according to Mr. Miller, probably first presented groups of two-reelers, collections of individual features, each 15 or 20 minutes long. This was at a period when the feature-length film was still uncommon and films in general were generally considered low-culture – ‘'photo plays’‘ or not.
By the early 1920’s, nickelodeons like the Variety Photo Plays were being supplanted by larger houses seating one or two thousand, and if the Variety was ever a first-rank theater, it surely must have begun a downward slide at that time.
In 1923, a marquee was added, designed by Julius Eckman. In 1930, a balcony seating 150 and a new lobby were installed by the architects Boak & Paris, who also made over the 1923 marquee. The lobby is nondescript neo-Renaissance and it is the marquee that has made the theater special, at least to modern eyes. Boak & Paris did not change the Eckman marquee’s underside, a coffered field with regularly spaced bulbs, but did add a zigzag Art Deco fascia in enameled metal and neon lighting. The fascia gives the theater’s, rather than the show’s, name and recalls the period when movies were more of a generic product. The lights buzzing on the underside of the marquee, when they were on, enveloped the passerby in a warm, glowing field. People going past the theater, even in the daytime, got a whiff of vintage celluloid, and at night it was intoxicating.
HE film fare over the last 30 years gradually shifted from B-grade to raunchy to naughty to pornographic, and added a slightly forbidden, Coney Island spice to the building. A 10-year-old schoolboy who somehow found himself on lower Third Avenue would walk straight by but keep his eyes glued to the pictures on the billboards outside the ticket booth.
Earlier this year the Department of Health closed the Variety Photo Plays, which was operating as a gay movie theater. Now it is still and musty inside, its 1940’s candy machine empty, its projection booth a small museum of antique apparatus – carbon arc projection lighting was discontinued only a few years ago. The owner, the 110-112 Third Avenue Realty Corporation, includes members of the same families who owned it since the 1920’s. In their hands lies the fate of a institution that will live on at least in the memories of many New Yorkers.
Bigjoe, I never worked at B.F. Moss' Regent, however, being at 135th Street wouldn’t even count in my mind. Also, not having worked there, I don’t know if it would qualify as a “movie palace” even if it was built as a “movie theatre”. Many theatres that are “assumed” to have always been movie theatres weren’t actually built for movies.
The year the Regency was built, 1913, is interesting because the “Moving Picture Machine Operators Union Local 306, I.A.T.S.E.” was chartered in 1913. The union (or what’s left of it) will be celebrating its “Centennial Birthday” in 2013.
Hello Again-
i thank AlAlvarez and techman707 for replying to mu question. unfortunately the Loew’s State didn’t open till August of 1921. this would place it 8 years after B.F. Moss' Regent(the 1st “movie palace” built in Manhattan)and 5 years after the first Rialto(the first “movie palace” built in the Times Square area).
now no offense meant toward nickelodeons but i was always of the impression they were decent sized storefronts/retail spaces etc.. . that were renovated to show films but were not theaters as we use the term today. so between the movies debut at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in April of 1896 and the opening of B.F. Moss' Regent in 1913 there had to been at least one or two more moderate sized edifices built specifically to show movies. i can’t believe the Regent was the first purpose built movie theater whether large,medium or small built in Manhattan.
bigjoe, As far as I know, when it comes to theatres that could be considered a “movie palace” and built to “run movies”, I believe that Loew’s State was the first in Manhattan, when it was built by Marcus Loew and also served as their headquarters.
bigjoe, I think you are talking about short-lived storefront nickelodeons.