Palace Theatre
1564 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10036
1564 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10036
19 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 225 comments
NYer I agree 100% about the marquee.
Concept boggles the mind.
This makes so much sense when the retail space can go above it instead. Even if this succeeds what are the long term consequences for such an old building? Nobody has any idea. For God’s sake why can’t they leave the theater as it is?
Miserable wretched Ed Koch who did everything he could to destroy the Morosco and Helen Hayes(not to mention the Gaiety, Astor and Bijou)must be dancing a jig in hell.
A very missed Marquee in Times Square. The new “modern” marquee is an epic failure. Would be wondrous if they restored a proper marquee when they renovate.
Current article about expansion plans. Requires an e-mail sign-in to access.
http://newyorkyimby.com/2015/11/palace-theater-to-be-lifted-29-feet-for-expanded-facilities-and-retail.html
I’ll be here Wednesday night for An American in Paris.
Kind of bittersweet…
1920’s photo added courtesy of the What Was There website. Fade from then to Now on website below.
http://www.whatwasthere.com/browse.aspx#!/ll/40.759449,-73.985184/id/19195/info/sv/zoom/14/
1929 photo added courtesy of the Duke University Collection.
1938 photo added courtesy of Al Ponte’s Time Machine – New York Facebook page. B.F. Keith’s Palace marquee.
1953 photo added, photo credit Samuel Gottscho.
1978 photo added courtesy of the NYC 1950 to Present Facebook page.
1953 photo added, photo credit Frank Larson.
102 years old today!
So loved the old marquee. I wish during the renovation they would have kept it.
Uploaded pic of Palace night time view with large waiting crowd for All Star Show
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.