Starr Theater
233 Knickerbocker Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11237
233 Knickerbocker Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11237
2 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 33 of 33 comments
I’m not totally sure when the Starr opened. The earliest listing I have is 1927. This date would agree with Warren’s information posted above. According to one source the theatre closed in 1968. The Knickerbocker Casino and the Knickerbocker Airdome were both closed for more than a decade when the Starr opened. Don’t think they would have had any influence on the name. I do have a photo taken in the late 60s of a closed and vandalized Starr Theatre.
In 1912, the Hudson Motion Picture Co. is listed at 207 Myrtle Avenue. Most likely this is the Hudson Theatre listed in 1915.So the space may have been in operation a year or two before 1912. The seating capacity is 500. Circa 1920, this became the United. At the end of the 1920s, seating for the United is listed at 1,600. Warren mentions above that the Brooklyn Heights Theaters, Inc. was in the process of building the United in 1926. It would seem likely that this earlier theatre was replaced by a larger structure. In the mid-1930s it is often listed as the New United Theatre. In any case the site was taken over by the NYCHA in July 1942.
While on this subject, in Warren’s message above from Sept 5th, he mentions “Heights Theaters, Inc. ran the Glenwood, Irving, Parthenon, and Wyckoff theatres, and was in the process of building the United and Knickerbocker."
Could the mysterious "Knickerbocker” theater that no one ever heard of and keeps coming up over and over in various theater sections here be the one other mysterious theater at 326 Knickerbocker Ave that keeps coming up? We solved the mysterious Mozart theater was really the Irving, and I even photographed the building the other day that still exists (see the Irving Theater )section. Now it’s time to solve the Knickerbocker.
Interestingly, the Associated Supermarket seen in my photo linked above now on the site uses “229 Knickerbocker Ave” as their mailing address. Actually, also you can see the “scars” of the Starr theater on the side of the building to the left of the Associated from when they tore the theater down.
Here’s a current view of the Starr Theater site taken today.
Click Here for Link
The theater is now demolished, and an Associated supermarket built on it’s site.
The 1927 FDYB is correct as the United theatre opened for a brief period lasting less than a decade. Your approximation to Navy street is close enough. Building the United theatre proved to be a rather large blunder as the deterioration of the area was already in effect.
lostmemory….I frequented the Navy Street area from 1953 to 1957 when I attended Brooklyn Tech and took the Myrtle Avenue elevated line to the Navy Street station. I never saw any theater in the immediate area. If there had been one, I would have been drawn to it like a bee drawn to honey. Actually, the area around the el station was rather depressing, smelly and consisted mainly of run down ancient housing and a few decrepid stores. It was doubtful if the area could support a theater at that time what with the Majestic, Momart, Orpheum, Strand, Fox, Albee and Paramount amongst others a relatively short distance away. I might venture to say that if the United Theater ever opened, it may have been a “negroe” theater because the neighborhood in that vicinity under the el was primarily African American. Also, the theater may have been an early casualty of television and closed before I became familiar with the area.
Does the building still exist?