5th Avenue Cinema
66 Fifth Avenue,
New York,
NY
10011
66 Fifth Avenue,
New York,
NY
10011
3 people
favorited this theater
A premiere art house in the Greenwich Village area of New York for many decades where the offerings were always synonymous with high quality. Satyajit Ray’s PATHER PANCHALI was introduced to New York moviegoers in this small venue. Pasolini’s ACCATTONE had its first commercial run here. The theatre building is now part of the New School for Social Research.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
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Recent comments (view all 30 comments)
I was also surprised to see Thomas W. Lamb as the architect. If anyone is interested in seeing the c/o with Lamb’s name on it I would be happy to email it to them. I’m still wondering if this was a movie theater in 1925 or did it open as a vaudeville theater and switch to movies in 1926.
Thomas Lamb had a large company with many architects working under him. Lamb himself was often not the actual achitect of projects that have been credited to his company.
This Rugoff coffee house cinema always had creative double bills, insuring packed audiences. A memorable pair were “The Girl With the Green Eyes” & “Billy Liar”. Apart from the Hirschfield mural, a rather plain venue, but the features were truly memorable. Is Parsons still using the space as an auditorium?
An article about pioneer “art” theatres in a 2005 issue of Film History Magazine claims that this was a “legit” playhouse prior to opening as a cinema in late 1926. Michael Mindlin, who’d been a stage producer, received encouragement from the then powerful National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, which had its headquarters in the building next door. The first program consisted of an educational one-reeler from Germany, “The Parasol Ant”; Chaplin’s three-reel comedy, “A Dog’s Life”; a short about early French cinema, and a revival of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”
An elephant at the Fifth Avenue Cinema in 1954.
It was called 5th Avenue Playhouse, according to Kristin Thompson!
The name varied over the years between “Cinema” and “Playhouse.” And more often than not, “Fifth” was used instead of “5th.”
This stopped showing films in 1973.
Renewing link.
I lived @ FIFTH AVENUE CINEMA mid-1960s-70s. Living 4 blocks south, at the Hotel Marlton 5 West 8th St., it was the movie theater of choice—-the Art and the 8th St.Playhouse were for the fairies & débutantes at NYU and the bridge-&-tunnel mutts who got off on “Rocky Horror Show” [hawk-ptoo]. I saw a double-bill here that can’t be beat—–“L'Aventura” / “Last Year At Marienbad”. Saw them again recently—-after all the jokes, these two are among the very few from the ‘60s to have survived, their power intact. The snapper here is that not only has Parson School Of Design taken over the 5th Ave. for an auditorium, they’ve taken over my old home, the Hotel Marlton for dorms !!! Am I to be spared nothing ??