Bijou Cinema
100 3rd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
100 3rd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
3 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 47 of 47 comments
A 1971 ad from the Jewel days.
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Here is a 1992 ad from a time is was being called Cinema Village 3rd Avenue
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Per RobertR’s comment on 6/7, Pocket Cinema Theatre (and also Pocket Theater) should be listed as a previous name.
In answer to Benjamin’s 1/28 post, the theatre was indeed, an Off Broadway house, showing films on off-nights, in the 1960s.
In 1971 the then Jewel revived the stage and screen policy that had once flourished at the Paramount and Capitol. :) (sorry part of the ad is cut off)
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While I was in NYC in early June 2005, I took a peek into the former Bijou/Jewel Theatre and it has been gutted internally back to bare brick walls.
In June of 1968 this theatre announced it’s reopening as The Pocket Cinema Theatre. The opening attraction was The Royal Shakespeare Company in Peter Brooks “Tell Me Lies”.
A film ignited in the Comet’s projection booth on June 21, 1933, burning the operator, Joesph Faccini, who died of his injuries the following evening.
saps was kind enough to point me to this Theater.I originally
posted my comment at the Lyric Theater web page.
If you go to the links you’ll see my posted link to the photo of
the old Lyric there.The link is to the New York Public Library
Digital Collection.Once there you can enlarge the photo which is much
sharper and larger than some of the links I’ve seen here.
Lostmemory;
The Garden was an early movie house opening circa 1906 at 742 Manhattan Avenue (sometimes given as 742-748). It is listed under the names Warren & Sweeney (owners) in Trows for 1912. I can’t find it in the 1914/15 Motion Picture Directory. The Garden is listed in the 1926 FDYB (seating 600). It is also listed in 1929 which appears to be its final year of operation.
Moving Picture World (an early trade publication) reviewed the Comet in September, 1910. The screen was bright but there was enough diffused light to read by. The place was crowded with men, women, and children. An usher walked the aisles spraying the place with a sweet-smelling liquid. The films however were “junk”. A Vitagraph and a Selig (early film studios) missing opening titles (there were trademarks on the sets)and at least a year old.
The New York Times photo has been published several times with the address given as 3rd Avenue, Manhattan or 3rd Avenue & 12th Street. That would make it this theatre. If that is correct the Lyric exterior could have been part of the 1923 rebuilding.
There were two Comet Theatres in the Bronx and one in Manhattan listed in the 1914-15 Directory. The addresses for the two Bronx theatres:1013 Boston Rd. and 2355 Westchester Ave.
Is this photo of the Lyric from 1936 of the same theatre under discussion here?
RobertR mentioned in his post dated this past October 19th, hardbop, that the Bijou essentially became a gay cruising spot in its later years. (On the marquee front, I don’t remember it ever having one, either.)
Did this theatre even have a marquee? I don’t think so. This one is a real obscurity.
Ah, I remember this theatre when Cinema Village ran it — briefly — as a rep house. I went there once and only once to see Nic Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now.” I never knew what happened to this space, but remember walking buy and seeing men in raincoats walking through a turnstile.
The status here has to be changed to closed.
I’m not sure about this, but I think this was an off-Broadway playhouse up until the late 1960s. I think I saw the Claude Van Italie play, “America Hurrah!” here in 1968 or so.
I have been notified that the Jewel Theatre has now closed and has been for a while. It was seen as closed in December 2004,
The current Spartacus International Gay Guide 2004/2005 lists the ‘All Male Jewel Theatre’ operating at the former Bijou Theatre.
The current status need to be changed to; Open, Function; Adult Movies
About two years ago they were running HBO on the screen. It really did not matter what they played since the purpose of coming here was to have sex.
I lifted this off the Museum of the City of New York website:
LYRIC THEATER
100 Third Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets
APRIL 24, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 112
Built about 1880, the Lyric Theatre had started as a restaurant and was converted into a music hall before its 1910 renovation as one of New York’s earliest motion picture houses. Originally holding 274 seats, the theater doubled its seating in 1923 in response to the growing habit of moviegoing. By the 1930s, the Lyric’s clientele consisted chiefly of transients from the Bowery, a few blocks to the south. For a ten-cent admission, the show included two features (one a western), a newsreel, and a short subject. The theater opened at seven o'clock in the morning, but the first showing did not start until an hour later, allowing early birds to catch a short nap. On the day she took this photograph, Abbott also visited the Bowery, where she dodged cars under the El at Division Street.
Today this entire East Village block is intact, and the building is still a movie theater, showing adult films for a gay male clientele. While no signs appear, its function is nonetheless announced by its anonymous facade and blacked-out glass doors.
http://www.mcny.org/Exhibitions/abbott/a112.htm
The Bijou later served for several years as home to a nightclub, which closed sometime around 2001. The property – including the apartments above – are currently vacant, leading me to suspect a renovation of some sort of the entire property or perhaps a redevelopment isn’t too far away…
A correction to my above posting. The Bijou opened as a first run theatre on 8/10/89 with Lock Up starring Sylvester Stallone. Here is more of the theatres bookings.
8/10 Lock Up
8/18 Casualties of War
9/8 Relentless & Turner & Hooch (matinees)
9/15 Sea of Love
10/27 Worth Winning
11/3 Fabulous Baker Boys
12/1 Staying Together
12/8 War of the Roses
2/16/90 Born on the 4th of July
4/6 Hunt For Red October
4/27 The Guardian
5/11 Hunt For Red October (return)
5/25 I Love You to Death
6/1 Wild Orchid
6/8 Bird On a Wire
6/22 Back to the Future III