Babylon Cinemas
34 West Main Street,
Babylon,
NY
11702
34 West Main Street,
Babylon,
NY
11702
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Located on W. Main Street, just west of Deer Park Avenue. Originally built and operated by Prudential Theatres. Later operated by United Artists, currently Clearview. It is now a first run triplex.
Contributed by
Robertr
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Recent comments (view all 41 comments)
My only experience at this theatre was a performance of Rocky. Although I don’t usually see movies first run this was an exception and, as a result, I had to stand on line. I couldn’t believe the audience got so worked up during the big fight scene that they were out of their seats cheering. Talk about a movie grabbing you.
Also, somebody mentioned the last theatre with a vertical. What about the Fantasy. And, in recent years they added one to the Greeport when they split up the old auditorium into a handful of theatres. As far as the simple neon style I believe the old Cambria and Laurelton had these. The big guns of, course were the Queens, Floral, Triboro, Valencia, Astoria, etc.etc,
Here’s a photo of the Babylon in 1983. It really hasn’t changed all that much.
View link
The mid-1950s rebuilding of the Babylon Theatre was designed by architect Maurice D. Sornick. A few photos appeared in an ad for Heywood-Wakefield seats in Boxoffice of January 7, 1956.
A photo of the auditorium was on the cover of Boxoffice, June 2, 1956. The Babylon was operated by Associated Prudential Theatres.
I misspelled the architect’s surname in my previous comment (as did the Heywood-Wakefield ad.) It should be Sornik.
It’s rather amazing how many years they got out of those Heywood-Wakefield seats that were in those auditoriums. When UA sold that theater in the mid-nineties, it still had those old HW seats, though I know they were re-covered and painted many times. I really liked the “finger” design that HW used on the seat pans: it made them really easy to remove from the floor standard for service (didn’t need a wrench). The HW achilles' heel was the use of springs below the cushions for support, and the use of springs for the pan riser function (the better seats of today are “gravity risers”, hence no springs to break). The riser springs would fatigue and break, and the seat pan would then flop down; but I guess that was better than a malfunctioning cushion spring that would pop through the seat upholstery and snag a patron’s clothes. An argument could be made that if the seats weren’t used in excess of their normal service life (I don’t know, perhaps 20 years or so?), these malfunctions probably wouldn’t happen. All this being said, when you look at old pictures of auditoriums from the 50’s and 60’s, chances have it that the seats were Heywood-Wakefield. I can’t even imagine what HW’s market share was in their peak years!
Who will pick up the Clearview Theatres? Any ideas..
New link to the 1956 cover photo cited above by Joe Vogel: boxoffice
Ahhh, the good ‘ole Babylon Theatre. This theatre and I go way back…way back to 1982. The first movie I saw here was “Conan: The Barbarian”. Back then the theatre was a HUGE single curved screen with a gorgeous proscenium arch. The theatre had a balcony too. In the lobby there was a huge art deco type chandelier and a beautiful stairway up to the balcony (which already had partial stadium seating). That same year (1982) “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” was released to this theatre. This was the first movie I viewed multiple times here. While E.T. is in my top 3 favorite movie list, the first time seeing it at Babylon was perhaps the single best theatre experience I ever had.
Then in 1984/5 tragedy struck the Babylon and it was divided two three screens. The large auditorium was divided into two and the balcony became the third screen. Much of the beautiful ornamentation in the theatre was gone. The chandelier still remained though. Gone was the large curved screen and it’s beautiful proscenium. Instead you had just simple rectangular screens on a simple black background.
The first movie I saw after the conversion was “Cocoon” (1985). It was shown on the balcony screen. However, the conversion wasn’t completed and the air condition wasn’t running yet…it was mid summer! Needless to say, my first viewing after the new conversion wasn’t a pleasant one.
Afterwards I have seen many more movies at this theatre which include: “Alien 3”, “Back To the Future II & III”, and many others. The balcony screen is the best of the three.
When the movie theatre changed hands from UA to Clearview, I pretty much stopped going there.
As Bway pointed out above, the outside of the theatre hasn’t changed much since 1983 despite the drastic changes inside. One major plus though, is that the theatre has retained it’s large neon vertical sign on the front.
For those visiting the theatre, there is a small parking lot to the right of the building, but it fills up fast. Street parking is metered, so you would have to use a municipal lot across the street, behind the Main St. buildings.
It is still a good visit to check out, but it definitely has lost quite a bit of it’s luster from when it was a single screen. I only enjoyed this large screen for 3 years, but still to this day the single screen version of this theatre was my favorite.
The link Bway posted is bad. Here is what the auditorium of the Babylon used to look like:
http://www.boxoffice.com/the_vault/issue_page?issue_id=1956-6-2&page_no=1#page_start
Even though not in color, you can see how impressive this theatre was.
I also have to point out that the theatre had side curtains that moved in and out so that it could handle a wide variety of aspect ratios.
It is a pity that we had to loose the beautiful large screens such as this. I really do miss this screen very much.