Ridgewood Theatre
55-27 Myrtle Avenue,
Ridgewood,
NY
11385
55-27 Myrtle Avenue,
Ridgewood,
NY
11385
31 people
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Showing 351 - 375 of 2,835 comments
You’re welcome, Panzer65.
Parking is difficult on Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood, but that’s no reason to turn the Ridgewood Theatre into a parking garage.
Thank you fellow CT friends for the interesting postings and sad photos of the former Michigan.
Thanks, Bway and John D. I’ll walk by the Ridgewood the morning of this coming Friday (June 18 2010), observe, and post my usual report both here and on the Ridgewood Theatre page on Bushwick Buddies.
Bway, good to hear from you – and thanks for the pictures. I totally agree that the garage option would mark a truly horrible end to the Ridgewood – wonderfully retained facade or not. We must do all that we can to avoid such a result! (Hopefully it is no longer an option.)
As noted by the pictures, it appears that the old Michigan is doing horrible business even as a parking garage. There is certainly no lack of available parking apaces. So I guess Detroit is in as bad shape as the news reports would lead us to believe.
This photo of the Michigan Theater is particularly sobering. It’s taken from a balcony level, looking down to the top half of the old proscenium, with floors of car parking build below and under:
View link
This photo shows what is left of the old balcony, and behind that the old multi level lobby now opened up into the theater too. You can still see the holes from the projection booth:
View link
The once beautiful lobby:
View link
Compare to the Michagan in happier days:
View link
In any event, the Michigan Theater, an even more beautiful Theater than the Ridgewood didn’t deserve it’s fate, but then again, neither would the Ridgewood.
Thanks Bway.
Good god, conversion to a “garage” would be even worse than the fate of the Madison Theater’s massacre conversion to retail.
Panzer, the theater you are thinking of is the Michigan nTheater in Detroit. Yes, the Ridgewood doesn’t deserve NEAR this sort of descecrtation after being able to survive this long.
Here’s a link to photos of the Michigan Theater, it’s heartbreaking to see:
View link
Here’s also a link to it’s CT page:
/theaters/1963/
Thanks for the update, John D.
Panzer65, I completely agree with you.
I saw a theater somewhere in the US that was converted to a garage, many of the ornate features were retained, but they got very shabby from lack of maintenance. Our beloved Ridgewood does not deserve this kind of conversion.
I was able to visit the Ridgewood yesterday. The “available” sign and the telephone number no longer appear on the marquee. Don’t know what to make of this.
I was also fortunate to run into the site supervisor who confirmed that, due to lack of financing, nothing has, to date, come to fruition. He is just providing basic maintenance to the building. In addition to the catering hall plus movie theater plan that he told me about last June, he noted that another possibility concerned the conversion of the building into an interior garage. I certainly hope that dreadful idea is dead.
So, I guess we still have a long way to go on this.
Thanks Peter for the updates. Since I have been out of the country for nearly three weeks – in very sunny Italy – it was great to be brought up to date. Hopefully, we will soon see some positive action at the old Ridgewood!
Thanks for getting on Cinema Treasures, EveH. Good to read you. Welcome. My St. Brigid School classmate, Charles Labita, lived on your block of Madison Street. We attended St. Brigid from 1961 (first grade) through 1969. Perhaps you knew him.
I’m glad you enjoyed your recent visit to Ridgewood. Rudy’s is the only German bakery left in Ridgewood that I know about. I gave them my regards myself in a summer 2006 or 2007 visit.
You might also enjoy Bushwick Buddies. Here is the link :
http://www.bushwickbuddies.com/
I was born in Ridgewood and grew up at 1663 Madison Street. My grandmother, who lived at 1716 Putnam Avenue, took me to the movies in both the RKO and the Ridgewood. I was back in the old neighborhood last week for the first time in about 40 years, and it was amazing to see the changes. Things had actually gotten nicer than when I was there last, much cleaner, and the trees! Wow! But the only two buildings I recognised were Rudy’s Bakery and the Ridgewood theater. And the Ridgewood was closed. I didn’t know about all of the problems at the time I was there. I was just sorry to see it closed. Now that I’m home, I Googled Ridgewood, and I’ve spent hours scanning through all the posts since 2006! I’m so happy it’s got Landmark status, and I hope that the owner won’t destroy the interior. I intend to keep reading your news and to visit again when I’m back in NY.
EveH
Good observation, Chris. Thanks. I, too, remember the Madison Street fire escape exit side of the Ridgewood Theater always looking unsightly, shabby, and littered with broken glass ans other debris. I wonder how the people who lived on the opposite side of Madison Street between Myrtle and Cypress Avenues felt about that.
The Madison St side of the Ridgewood has looked like that as long as I can remember going back into the 70’s. It was never a nice block on the backside of the Ridgewood Theater. Even when the Ridgewood was still running in full force as a one scree theater in the 70’s, the back side along Madison St always had broken glass all over the sidewalk. But then again, even the parks of the city were strewn in glass in the 70’s. Two things changed that….the changeover of soda containers from glass to plastic, and the bottle refund law in the early 80’s. Glass bottles were no longer left on the streets as they were in the past to smash all over the place. Kids must have thrown them all the time against the back side of the Ridgewood Theater along Madison St, as I remember glass being everywhere there, along with trash in the 70;’s.
Yes. Many television shows were vaudeville, many came from radio.
I can see why, many early TV show seems to reflect the Vaudeville acts of old. “Your Show of Shows”, “The Toast of the Town” etc.
Fred Allen once referred to TV (television) as “tired vaudeville”.
OK, P65, thanks.
Peter,
I simply wanted my friends, like yourself, to see them.
Great shot, Panzer65. But why not post the link on the page of a Manhattan theatre in the Times Square area, as close as you can get to Broadway and 38th Street ?
Hopefully not, Tinseltoes. Thanks for posting the link.
That’s the Madison Street “exit” side of the theatre. I’ll take a look next month when I pass by.
I was not sure which thread to place this stunning photo of an early 1920’s shot of Broadway at 38 st. With the exception of the Winter Garden, none of the other venues that appear are mentioned here at CT. The Knickerbocker, the Casino, and the Maxine Harris, from right to left. My best guess is that these venues are perhaps Vaudeville Houses. It was during this era that these theatres were combining silent films with live stage shows.Later when the talkies arrived, these venues would convert to the more lucrative motion picture on a full time basis. The Casino Theatre intrigues me the most, it has a most unusual facade. And the first generation marquees are also a clue that these indeed are Vaudeville Houses. So I guess the Ridgewood Thread is appropriate. View link
So I guess that means that the Balcony would be made part of the main theater again? They could have the downstairs as a performing arts center, with the three movie screens in the balcony area theaters. Or does the Performing arts center include the balcony being made part of the theater again?
Thanks for the update !