Hobart Theatre
51-06 31st Avenue,
Woodside,
NY
11377
51-06 31st Avenue,
Woodside,
NY
11377
No one has favorited this theater yet
Showing 1 - 25 of 42 comments found
I lived in the Woodside Houses 1954-1986. Hobart was a great little theatre. Frances ran the candy counter and a mother/daughter duo were the matrons. I remember the rest rooms upstairs had a big wide hallway. Films I remember there were ‘The Last Voyage’ and ‘Peyton Place.’ People walked up the avenue to the pizza place opposite Bryant High School…juke box was cool. They even gave out free dishes! There was a luncheonette on one corner and a bar on the other..also a jewerly store and vegetable store. Charlotte Pollock dance studio shared a space on an upper level of the bldg…a dentist too.
cont…laser disc and dvd prints and i rode that fear out by grasping onto the arms of the seat and dug my heels into the floor!
i know now that this was a ripp-off of ray harryhausen’s “7th voyage of sinbad with some of the same lead actors and inferior stop-motion animation models but it holds a special place in my heart to this day!
another great day at the hobart theatre!
1963?
jack the giant killer and dr. no
wow, the movie-going experience of my young life!
i am seven years-old and my dear sister, mary shea took me to see this double-feature and i was stunned by the colors that were dripping off the screen~gorgeous hues of red,purple and blue,ect.. when the flying witc attacked the viking ship,i remember the daylight sky turning black as night, not like the reddish color seen on the
laser disk or dvd printsas
Continued—
I remember when “Stagecoach” was playing at the Hobart and my mother MADE me take my two much younger brothers with me (Oh, the humiliation!) I needed another nickle for admission, so I had to agree. Unfortunately, both my brothers got so antsy and noisy the theater’s matron (white dress, gloves, cap and a flashlight) made me take them out. I didn’t get to see the end of “Stagecoach” until several years later.
We use to see 2 features, a action serial, one or sometimes 2 shorts, Movietone News and a couple of cartoons. All for 15 cents admission.
I went to PS 151 just down the block from the Hobart Theater. I lived on 48th St between Northern Blvd and Broadway. To get to the theater I went past my high school, Wm. C. Bryant HS (“Out the door in ‘54”), then past 151.
Cardboard posters were in almost every store window in the area with logos and stars names and movie titles and dates adorning them, along with the Hobart Theater’s summertime motto, “Beat the heat in a Hobart seat” because it was one of the first to have air-conditioning. We tough kids used to parody the motto as, “Beat your meat in a Hobart seat.”
Not being from Queens I never visited the theatre . But my cousin did all the time and that is where he contracted ringworm.
Here is an item from Boxoffice magazine, January 1963:
NEW YORK-Arthur Marks, assistant manager of the Plaza Theater, Manhattan art house playing “David and Lisa”, has leased the 600-seat Hobart Theater, Woodside, L.I. (sic) starting January 6. The theater will continue a policy of playing art and foreign films.
Here are new links to previously posted press coverage of the Hobart Theatre’s grand opening:
View link
View link
It does seem that the majority of evidence suggests that 51-06 is correct, so I’ve updated the address. Should the balance sway towards 51-05, we can always change it back.
Thanks to Ed, Lost Memory, and Warren for putting some serious effort into getting the correct address.
Next time, though, please remember that the right answer can sometimes be fuzzy, and it’s ok to have a difference of opinion about something. ;)
As Ed wrote above: “Warren… Do you even read the posts that you attack so viciously”. The address is on the deed to this property. Read it!
This is a very simple problem to solve. We will use the new and improved Warren G. Harris method of addressing. The Hobart theater was located SOMEWHERE on 31st Avenue. If that method of addressing is good enough for the RKO Keith’s Theater in Flushing, it is good enough for the Hobart. The correct address has been given for this theater. If the people operating this site choose not to use that address, that is their prerogative. Have a nice day.
The 31st Avenue side of the building is a block-wide, and had (from the beginning) stores on both sides of the entrance to the Hobart Theatre. Each of those businesses, including the theatre, had a different numbered address. What is your proof that the Hobart Theatre was actually 51-06? If you look at the original architect’s sketch of the building, as well as a photo that I took only yesterday, the Hobart’s entrance in that block is at 51-10 31st Avenue. You can still see the decorative columns and three windows above the space where the Hobart’s marquee used to be.
The address above should be 51-06 31st Avenue and Not 51-10 31st Avenue. 51-06 is the address that is on the deed to this property. The deed clearly states: “Said premises being known as 51-06 31st Avenue”. This building has been altered since it was a theater and a supermarket. The entrance was probably moved when the building was converted to its current retail use.
When I suggested that we use the current address of the Christ Tabernacle Church instead of the address that “Warren” provided for the Belvedere Theater on Myrtle Avenue, “Warren” replied: “This is a listing for the Belvedere Theatre and not the Christ Tabernacle”. By the same token this is a listing for the Hobart theater and not the retail store(s) located there today.
“Thanks to Warren G. Harris, you have a more accurate address for the Hobart Theatre”. Was that supposed to be a joke? How about sharing some of the credit for solving this problem with Ed and myself? If questions weren’t asked about the 51-05 address, the correct address would never have been found.
We already deciphered the address fella. Your visit to the site gave you an opportunity to inhale some fresh air. It appears that the fresh air had no effect. EdSolero and lostmemory did the difficult work of finding the correct address before you even considered visiting the former Hobart theatre. You enjoy taking the credit fella how about taking the blame for your mistake in the first place.
Warren… Do you even read the posts that you attack so viciously and – seemingly – with impunity? The whole point that we “Cub Scouts” made in the posts above was to establish a proper address for the Hobart Theater, which, it turns out, is most definitely NOT at 51-05 31st Ave as you seemed to be so vehemently defending. When Lost Memory suggested that the 51-05 address was a city park, you responded with your typical condescension and instigated a good deal of ill-will on this page. The research that Lost and I did (separately but with a common goal) was the first to bear out what your photos and the newspaper clippings you recently posted have verified: that the Hobart was on the south side of 31st Ave at a building whose building lot address is 51-06 31st Avenue on a block bound by 51st and 54th Streets. Why do you persist in being so maddeningly obtuse and offensive? And why do you ridicule anyone else’s efforts to determine some facts here? You yourself have spent plenty of space on this site trying to confirm street addresses and verify that certain theaters never had the word “The” in their names… I mean, really!
Here is an image of the deed for the Hobart building… You can read the property description to verify it discusses the lot between 54th and 51st on the south side of 31st Ave and identifies the “premises being known as 51-06 31st Ave” and you may further note that the “Thirty First Avenue Theater Corp” conveyed the property in 1981. Do I get to graduate to the real Boy Scouts now? Do I get a badge? You know what… don’t even answer. Frankly, starting here and now I’m not going to concern myself further with any of your antagonisms. Except for maybe reporting to Patrick and Ross what a complete ass you are being of late. And if that comment gets me a warning and/or 1 day suspension, I think it would have been well worth it just to make sure for myself that the owners of this site have been made aware of how insidious your comments have become.
And if nothing comes of that? Well, then I guess the lesson for me would be that – just as in other Democracies – justice is not always evenly dispensed on CT.
Thanks to Warren G. Harris, you have a more accurate address for the Hobart Theatre, “mikemovies,” or whatever your real name is. I actually visited the site today to confirm it. What have you done except foam at the mouth?
The original address that you gave fella was incorrect. Thanks to the Cub Scouts of Cinema Treasures we now have a more accurate address for this former theater. An address that places the building on the correct side of the street. Perhaps you could explain to us Cub Scouts the meaning of ‘descredit’. Could that be a Latin word for wrong?
Sorry to disappoint the Cub Scouts who went through ridiculous efforts to descredit my research on the Hobart Theatre, but the building is still there and pretty much as I remembered it from a few years ago. The entire auditorium portion is still a 99 cents bargain store, with an entrance on 51st Street. The theatre’s original entrance on 31st Avenue is currently sub-divided into hair and nails salons, which use the same address of 51-10 31st Avenue. That address is probably the same one used by the Hobart Theatre. Here are two photos that I snapped today. In the first photo, the yellow canopy of the hair/nails salon markes the spot where the Hobart’s marquee used to be. In the interior of the 99 cents store, nothing can be seen of the Hobart’s decor. A false ceiling of celotex blocks is a hold-over from the days when the auditorium was converted into a supermarket, the manager told me. He didn’t know when that happened, but thought it was decades ago. He was surprised, though, when I told him that the building would soon be 70 years ago. The exterior really doesn’t look that old, thanks to Charles Sandblom’s modern design.
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/bartnow1.jpg
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/bartnow2.jpg
I think the image in the newspaper article confirms that we have the right building. I guess there was in fact a tunnel entrance under the peak of the facade on 31st which ran back to the auditorium, which was parallel to 31st, but set further back between 51st and 54th Streets. Decorative elements appear to have been removed and/or altered, losing the streamlined art deco look of the original facade. I’ll have to try and photograph the frontage as it exists today for comparison. So… I imagine the lobby ran straight back towards the auditorium allowing folks to enter at the cross aisle between the raised “smoking loge” on the left and the standard orchestra seating on the right. That would mean the screen wall ran at an angle to the outer wall on 51st, which probably created a vestibule for fire exits behind the screen leading to the street.
Fifty-first Street would be the street with the double yellow line on the right side of this view to the south also posted above.
Here are an image and article from the Long Island Star-Journal of October 31, 1936, the Hobart’s opening day. Just realized that will soon be 70 years ago!
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/hobart01.jpg
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/hobart02.jpg
If the address was 51-05 31st Avenue then the Hobart theatre was razed for the small park shown in the locallive view. Since many of the Google satellite photo’s are at least 4 years of age there could not have been a retail store at 51-05 31st Avenue when this theatre was added. I agree EdSolero that all the evidence leads any rational person to believe the correct address is 51-06 31st Avenue.
Anything-05 would be on the opposite side of 31st Ave. If you look at the first local.live image I posted above, that would be above the triangular Stroppoli Park. If you click and drag the image down, you’ll see that the 54-xx block is actually comprised of a large complex of apartment buildings. If the Hobart had an address on 31st Ave, it was definitely an even numbered one as would be appropriate for the south side of 31st Ave. Lost Memory has alreay found that a company called Thirty First Ave Theater Corp owned the building at 51-06 31st Ave that was later leased to the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (the parent company of A&P supermarkets) in 1966. We have an image of a building at that address that seems to indicate it was a former movie theater. The theater seems to have closed sometime after 1964 (since I have posted an ad from ‘64) and the building we think was the Hobart looks to be occupied by a supermarket. Further, the block front on 31st Ave we are talking about is bounded by both 51st and 54th Streets, so a location of 31st Avenue and 54th street would be consistent with the 51-06 address.
I’d say we have what the judicial system would recognize as a preponderance of evidence supporting the argument that building identified above in the aerial shot at 51-06 31st Avenue is in fact the former Hobart Theater. Unless it is in one’s nature to be a kne-jerk gainsayer, I would presume that most reasonable people would agree with that assessment.
Opening day advertising for the Hobart said that the theatre was situated at 31st Avenue and 54th Street. No specific address was ever given in Film Daily Year Books until the 1949 edition, where it was reported as 51-05 31st Avenue. That address remained through the 1957 edition, which was the last FDYB to carry street addresses for theatres. It seems possible that the first FDYB listing was an error that escaped notice or that no one ever bothered to correct. The actual address might well have been 54-05, since the cross street with 31st Avenue is 54th Street.
EdSolero you are the man of the hour. I am very impressed. 51-05 31st Avenue appears to be a park on the locallive view. Someone must have erred on the initial address.
The Hobart Theatre first opened on October 31st, 1936, with a late-run double bill of “It’s Love Again” & “Ticket to Paradise.” The theatre was situated in a residential area known as Boulevard Gardens, which was considered a part of Woodside. Architect Charles Sandblom used William Rau as interior decorator. Like many of the small Sandblom cinemas, the Hobart had a stadium section at the rear of the auditorium, which in this case was advertised as a “smoking loge.”
Nice work Ed. I don’t want to get too involved with this because you know how wrong NYC (New York City) can be in the eyes of some people, although they were correct about the Park. Here is a quick answer. There was a theater located at 51-06 31st Avenue. The owner was THIRTY FIRST AVE THEATRE CORP. In 1966 the building was leased to the GREAT ATLANTIC & PACIFIC TEA COMPANY INC. The build date of the current building is given as 1936. I didn’t look up its current use.