President Theatre
827 Westchester Ave.,
Bronx,
NY
827 Westchester Ave.,
Bronx,
NY
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This theatre opened as the Arcadia Theatre and seated 1050 people. It would later be known as the President Theatre and it’s seating reduced to 975 people.
Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
This seems to me to be the theater I remember as “El Presidente” under the El and around corner from the more elegant Prospect Theater. These were the weekend entertainment staples for the local Latino community, showing Spanish language films, mostly from Mexico. Between the Mexican wrestler / horror schlock films at the Prospect and the very first wave of imported Hong Kong kung-fu flicks at the President (when it switched to English-language, dubbed or otherwise) in the 70s (I saw Five Fingers of Death at the President, as well as all the Bruce Lee movies as they were first released) I received a very Quentin Tarantino-esque “education” in classic 70s exploitation genres! All this was balanced fairly well by trips uptown to the Loew’s Paradise and the RKO Fordham for more wholesome fare, and in retrospect I wouldn’t trade any of it. But if only I’d grown up to exploit the exploitation era as successfully as Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have!
What was unique about this theater was it’s very primitiveness. No balcony, and I distinctly remember seeing a crisscross of wooden beams high above in the gloom. I remember wondering why it didn’t have all the architectural detailing the other theaters had. While the Paradise was a palace, this was the other end of the scale, like a big barn, which was kind of interesting in its own way.
Here is a photo of the President Theater. Notice the spelling of “Presidente” on the marquee. Could that have been its final name?
This is a new link for the photo of the President (Presidente) Theater.