Palace Theatre
1564 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10036
1564 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10036
17 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 251 comments
Happy Birthday, Palace Theatre….at least what’s left of it….and the air space that WAS above it.
Today, Sunday, March 24, 2013, marks the Centennial anniversary of New York’s PALACE Theatre.
The really beautiful marquee on the Palace was replaced MANY years ago. Although it was still an “RKO” type marquee that used translucent letters on black squares, it didn’t have that beautiful raised rounded center (sigh). The smaller imitation of the original Paramount marquee has that nice look. I guess plain old SQUARE is cheaper for a replacement.
The building had apartments in the upper floors. It is showcased in the original movie Fame. When they built the hotel the only thing that was left of the Palace was the auditorium. The lobby and enterance with the old beautiful marquee was all torn down.The theater was closed for at least 4-5 years. It was reopened in 1991 with The Will Rogers Follies.
You’re just confirming what I’m saying. However, it wasn’t just the “upper floors”. It started above the top of the Bowery Bank. The window in the picture was added AFTERWARDS. Nederlander had offices up there. When I did the installation in the temporary booth for the 70mm runs of Ben Hur and Mr Chips I looked through the building (including all the dressing rooms).
At some point, the old building on the corner had some of its upper floors removed. That’s where the destruction wall came from. And of course the theater would have to have been been wider than the office building, in order to accommodate so many seats. A comparatively narrow building for a theater’s entrance and a wider lot behind for the auditorium was common in neighborhoods such as Midtown, where frontage on the Avenues was very expensive and land on the side streets was considerably cheaper.
Here is this photo http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/6635/photos/6862
They ripped off part of the builing. If you look at the picture you can see the raw bricks that were left exposed. When I worked at the DeMille, I would come out of the office builing on 47th St and walk across to the Bowery Savings Bank to deposit my check. I looked at the ugly unfinished wall above the bank.
In any event, the 3 window width was only the lobby lead in to the theatre, which further back is STILL WIDER.
Do you believe that the “theatre itself” is the 3 window width?
In the 1948 photo, the advertisement for Buitoni spaghetti covers the facade of the same seven story building that is seen in the 1920 photo. The 1948 Gillette razor ad is on the same corner building that is seen in the 1920 photo. The triple-bay of the Keith-Albee office tower rises higher than the advertising signs of the adjacent buildings.
In this 1962 photo, the corner building is still there, the framework for the advertising sign still atop it, but the sign itself is gone. It’s the same building that was there in 1920. Mike, bigjoe59, and I are not the ones being fooled by the false facades. The Keith-Albee building is three bays wide in every picture except the one in the 1928 souvenir booklet. The logical conclusion is that the additional bays shown in that picture were drawn in, but were never built.
I think you’re being fooled by the false facade. If you look to the left and right, the rest of the building is being covered up from all the signage.
Wikipedia has this photo of the Palace dated circa 1920, and the building is certainly narrower than it is in the picture in the 1928 Souvenir booklet.
The extra bays are also missing from the building in this 1948 photo. My guess would be that the addition of the side wings was proposed, but the expansion was never carried out. Vaudeville began to decline soon after the arrival of talking pictures, and that event was soon followed by the depression, further reducing the demand for live performers. The building housed the booking offices of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville circuit, and a rapidly shrinking staff would have needed no additional space.
I believe the picture of the NY Palace on the Historic-Memphis website is correct. They put some kind of covering to the left and right of the marquee that went to the top of the marquee wall., so it appeared that it was only 3 windows wide, however, it was in fact wider. The corner section was torn down and for years it looked like they ripped off the side of the theatre. I would see it every time I came out of the DeMille theatre’s office building on 47th street.
Hello-
i most certainly second Mike’s thought that the “Palace-NYC” photo is in fact an artists rendering of what the proposed building might look like. i use the TKTS booth on a regular basis so i know from 1st hand experience what the Palace looks like. the front office building part was NEVER that wide.
There’s something off about that photo, Gill (which I saved in the Photos section for closer examination.) The Palace was only three windows wide, with shorter buildings on each side, but that 1928 photo is seven windows wide. And wasn’t the verticle blade facing sideways rather than forward?
Perhaps that photo was an archtect’s model of what the proposed building would look like. Anyone..?
There’s an excellent 1928 photo of The Palace on the Historic-Memphis.com website’s Theatre page. Here’s a link to the page.
Yes, Bill. Not only did Miami have “negro theatres”, we also had a negro phone book back then. (sigh)
On the bright side, Miami-Dade voted overwhelmingly for Obama on both elections.
On the day after the USA re-elected a black president, see how different things were back in 1959 and look for the listings for the 5 “Negro Theaters” in Miami, at the bottom left corner of the “Anne Frank” ad page.
Regarding the “light comedy” ad for The Diary of Anne Frank: it may sound strange to anyone who hasn’t seen it, but there are a lot of funny moments in that film, just as there was in the actual diary. It’s a beautiful film in every way, and it’s too bad the public rejected it the way they did.
I think that is an error on IBDB. APPLAUSE closed in May.
Frenzy had its NY premiere on June 21, 1972; accoring to IBDB, Applause played at the Palace until July 27, 1972.
Clarification needed.
According to Internet Broadway Database it seems that Sweet Charity in January 1966 was the theater’s re-launch by the Nederlanders as a legitimate house. But people here remember seeing movies at the Palace after that date, so it must have alternated between film and live productions.
“FRENZY” ran in 1972 after “CHIPS”.
Hello Again-
i have been under the impression for years that “Goodbye Mr. Chips” was the Palace’s last film. and that after the film’s roadshow run the Palace reverted to a legit theater and has stayed that way since the spring of 1970.
I saw Hitchcok’s Frenzy at the Palace in the early 70s. Was this before or after Mr. Chips? I am not sure, but they went back to legit soon after with Lauren Bacall in Applause.
Hello-
during the many times the Palace operated as as movie theater the only times i remember going there to see a film was the June 1969 roadshow re-release of “Ben-Hur” and the Nov. 1969 roadshow engagement of “Goodbye Mr. Chips”. while its not considered one of the great musicals i enjoyed GMC. i don’t know how long the film’s roadshow engagement lasted at the Palace but it was the last film to ever play the Palace. i wonder how soon after GMC’s run ended that they dismantled the film projecting equipment etc……