Sayville Theater
103 Railroad Avenue,
Sayville,
NY
11782
103 Railroad Avenue,
Sayville,
NY
11782
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Opened in the late-1920’s or early-1930’s when it had 500 seats, the Sayville Theater on Railroad Avenue in downtown Sayville was closed in the late-1940’s.
A new theater was built adjacent, designed by architects John Eberson and Drew Eberson opened in April 1951. It is one of the surviving downtown theaters. Nicely maintained, the theater brings you back to a simpler time before the multiplexes.
I don’t know too much on the history of the Sayville Theatre, however, at some point it was divided into four screens.
It’s one of the few theaters nowadays where for $12 you can get the movie ticket, a medium popcorn, and a drink all included.
Contributed by
Bway Chris
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Recent comments (view all 62 comments)
Am I correct that these same persons also designed the Brookhaven in Port Jefferson Station. From the exterior they looked identical.
Yes, the Sayville and Brookhaven theaters were both designed by John and Drew Eberson.
These two have a large number of theatres to their credit. Were they exclusively LI, NY, east coast?
The Ebersons were based in New York, and the majority of their work was in the east, but they designed theaters as far away as South America and Australia. Their papers are in the Wolfsonian collection in Florida. Click this link to see the basic information about the collection, and from that page you can download the PDF file of the Finding Aid for a list of their work. It includes biographical information.
I forgot to mention the Project Index at the Wolfsonian. It’s an Excel spreadsheet program, and contains the names and locations of all their projects, including work other than theaters.
To amend my most recent comment, I should say the spreadsheet has all those of their projects that are represented in the Wolfsonian’s archive collection. You can see from the spreadsheet’s “job number” column that many of their projects didn’t make it into the archive.
This picture of the Sayville entrance appeared on the cover of the Modern Theatre section of Boxoffice magazine, March 7, 1953:
View link
ANYONE KNOW WHO OWNS IT NOW?
I worked at the Sayville Theatre from September of 1974 to February of 1976. At that time, it was one screen. You could see the screen from the lobby. The auditorium was large and the theatre had a balcony which, I suspect, has been converted for one of the four existing screens. Also, on the back wall of the lobby was a painting of some fish that reminded me of the “Nutcracker Suite” sequence from “Fantasia” with the fish swimming around in a kind of underwater ballet. I remember very well the time we showed a movie called “Brother of the Wind” – a G-Rated film about nature that was heavily promoted on TV the week before we showed it. It was a Saturday matinee. We didn’t know what was in store for us. A line started forming down Railroad Avenue and by the time we opened the box office it was bedlam. The cashier was selling tickets so fast that she was throwing the money on the floor. Showtime was 40 minutes late and we had a sold out audience made up entirely of kids. What a nightmare! We also showed a lot of off-beat things. I think UA, who operated the theatre at the time, used it as a kind of dumping ground for the, shall we say, less than mainstream movies. We showed both “Last House On The Left” and “the Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in their original releases – before they achieved their infamous reputation.
CBDebill..When you worked there was Dotty MGR.?