Playhouse
104 Middle Neck Road,
Great Neck,
NY
11021
104 Middle Neck Road,
Great Neck,
NY
11021
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Showing 51 - 75 of 87 comments
Still puzzles me how the auditorium space could have been converted to residential. There are no windows at all that have been punched through any of the auditorium walls, as you can see from the photos I posted. Not to mention that the upper floor or two doesn’t even connect to the original apartment building that fronts Middle Neck Road. Still wondering exactly what was converted to what, aside from the garage that obviously exists on the ground floor where the foyer and rear orchestra were situated.
According to someone from the Great Neck Historical Society the old dressing rooms and cages (!) existed in the basement after the conversion to residential. Never established whether they are still there.
Calling Wally 75! If you still have some photos of the Playhouse that you’d like to share, please try my email again (see post above) or try your hand at uploading them yourself – it’s quite easy, as long as you have the photos in a folder that’s easy to browse to in your computer!
So glad to read that there are fans for the old Playhouse Theater in Great Neck. When it was owned by UA, I worked at both the Playhouse and the Squire across the street. I tried to schedule as often as possible in the Playhouse. The theater was so lovely. It had a great balcony and projection room. Even the upstairs lobby was huge. The programming was more focused on B-movies and second runs which were so much more fun than the A list playing across the street. I had 2 great experiences at the Playhouse—seeing THE EXORCIST for the first time and the original release of HALLOWEEN. These films were just scarier in an old movie palace.
Hey Wally… My email is still . Perhaps you hit a typo. Feel free to try again, but if you have those pics on your computer, you should now be able to post them yourself using the newly restored add-a-photo feature. If you have any troubles with that, definitely send the pics my way and I’d be more than glad to post them for you!
thanks
I have the answer on remove. CT now gives you the ability to remove messages you, and only you, have posted. Helpful for those times when you hit enter twice or when something has been resolved and the comment no longer applies.
Ed, tried to e mail you some photos…. i tried that quan somthing but it keeps returning it..please e mail me. Also, next to my last comments April 27th and 29th it says (remove) whats that about? thanks
Here’s a curious photo of something that was called the Great Neck Village Airdome.
The image comes from the digitized collection of the Great Neck Library. The information provided about the image notes that the Airdome had an “earth floor” and would exhibit motion pictures after the sun went down. No dates provided, but this is obviously early in the 20th Century. Oh… and it was owned by a “Mr. Duck!”
You really can’t make out much apart from the apparent capacity crowd, but that looks like a projection booth in the back of the room (and raised seating only on the side sections). Click on the image to zoom in and click on the thumbnail to move the “red box” and change the area of detail shown in the larger image.
ED:
Looking at the the condo entrance..there use to be an alley there for the Playhouse exits and there was also a door that lead to back stage…there was also a door that lead to the boiler room under the Playhouse Box office, it gave heat to both theatre and condos..
The strange roof top structure is a large fan that would pull the heat from the projection booth, there was no ac….the windows on the top belong to the booth…The windows above the garage were covered years ago on the 2nd floor…The exit doors where the garage entrance is now, to the left and right of the exits there was a stair
case on both sides that lead to 2nd. floor to balcony…more later!
Usually don’t get out east, rvb, but thanks for the tips! Will keep them in mind if I ever find myself out there.
Ed, I’ll try to find more. In one of your photo tours see if the people at the law firm at the former Farmingdale will let you in to see the balcony, which is supposed to still be in tact. Also, if you’re in St. James check out the former theatre on Second Av. There are supposedly remnants there. If you get to the old Mattituck quonset get into the storage area and see some of the old decorations and look back for the projection booths holes. Projection booth holes can also be seen at the old Center Moriches. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get into the auditorium of the former Bellerose to see if anything was left. I’m sure the ceiling treatment is still there but, I think, they’ve put corrogated panels under it to protect the merchandise in what has now become a two story warehouse.
Looking at the pic again, maybe the garage goes back more like 40 or 50 feet from the building line at the threshold of the entrance. But no more than that.
Not that deep… maybe 30 feet or so? And if you look at the pic, it doesn’t run the entire width of the building. You can practically see the entirety of the garage in the photo. Didn’t go inside, but I really didn’t have to. I want to know what’s behind and above the garage.
How far back is the garage…where the exit is use to be exit doors
that faced the snack bar…did you try to get inside?
Great photos..
I’m trying to figure out how the former auditorium is being used, rvb. I know there is a garage in space that was certainly the rear of the orchestra – perhaps a foyer or promenade behind the last row. The garage appears to go deep enough that it certainly eats up much of what would have been mid-to-rear orchestra seating. We’ve pieced together that portions of the backstage area remains at least at basement level, with the dressing rooms and animal cages for the vaudeville acts. Now, I’m wondering, what about the rest of the space above those areas? The balcony area and the rest of the auditorium?
The theatre is said to have been converted into apartments. However, the apartments that front Middle Neck Road, over the former theater entrance and other first floor storefronts on the block, have been there from the very beginning. Since the actual theatre building, which sits behind the apartments, is all but devoid of windows to this day, there can’t be any apartments in that structure. So what did they convert the space into? That’s my question. Had I seen an attendant or superintendent in the garage area, I would have posed the question directly… but there wasn’t a soul around.
The woman said something about cages because there used to be animal acts in vaudville. No windows. Questionable ventilation? And, as I said they used the basement in Southampton. They erected an awning over a walkway that lead down a flight of steps outside the building. I have no idea what the space was. I’ve actually been in quite a few underground spaces- a multiplex under the marketplace in Toronto, the later Paramount in NYC, the Actors Playhouse in NYC and the Criterion in London, England. The Actors Playhouse was accessed by a single narrow staircase. I felt really uncomfortable about that particularly since there was also a very low ceiling. I think Circle in the Square in NYC is also below ground as was Westworld, or whatever that was called on 49th ST in NYC.
Rvb… any idea what the space is being used for? Can’t be living space back there with no windows. Even if they just expanded the apartments facing Middle Neck Road into the theater space, you’d think there would be windows, no?
One of those comments was from me per discussions with someone from the historical society. She was trying to gain access to the backstage and basement dressing room areas. Have to try and get back to her. Appartently in “the day” dressing rooms were in the basement. Before they built the new Southampton auditorium, on the old facade, some of the basement area was made into an additional screening room.
Was in the area late yesterday afternoon and snapped some shots of the former Playhouse with my cell phone.
Middle Neck Road
The Playhouse Condominiums
Apartments and fly tower behind
View of rear stage wall and fly from Cedar Dr
Western auditorium wall on Maple Dr
Maple Dr facade rear orchestra wall
Facade head-on
Facade detail
Former rear exit doors
Garage
Upper Facade view
Former exit doors and alley
Strange roof-top structure
I’ve read above that some of the old backstage areas still exist as storage, but I’m curious if anything else remains. There doesn’t seem to be a sufficient number of windows on any of the exposures to suggest that the building was carved up into additional apartment space. The middle window over the garage entrance looks like it has boxes stored against it and the old windows at the top of the facade seem to be in pretty poor repair to belong to any apartments. Maybe I’m wrong, but who’s going to buy a windowless condo unit? Unless, could all that space be for common facilities like a rec room, gym, etc?
The ornamentation around the garage door suggests that this may have been an original exit at some point. The facade is handsome enough that an alternate theatre entrance could have existed here as well, though I’m not sure what the interior layout was like. I might have to get back here with a proper camera to get some decent shots of the architectural details.
The theatre entrance would have been just off the corner where the Tailor shop is (adjacent to the corner Florist) and under the peak at the top of the roof line. The carved inscription at the top reads Baron Building.
I lived in Great Neck from 1951-1963. The Playhouse most definitely showed both types of Cinerama. I saw HOW THE WEST WAS WON there in 3-strip Cinerama (curved screen) and IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD which I THINK was in the later anamorphic dumbed down single projector format (less curve). I don’t think they ever showed ToddAO there because OKLAHOMA was in Cinemascope or some such lesser anamorphic wide screen. I never saw Cinerama in Manhattan but I did see AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS in ToddAO in Manhattan and my recollection was that it was a bigger screen there than the Playhouse had for Cinerama.
Still no luck in getting info on the Mayfair but I did speak to someone who is trying to gain access to parts of this theatre not involved in the conversion to condos. She said there are dressing rooms and cages in the basement from the days when vaudeville was the main source of entertainment. She’ll keep in touch with me and I’ll post any developments.
Warren, funny you should have posted this. I came upon the photo of the Mayfair on the Long Island Memories site and started to do some research on it thru the library. Yes, it was a movie theatre. In the twenties the admission was 15 cents. And it had a modern feature for its time – a sloping floor. My next step is to contact the Village of Great Neck Plaza historian.
Before moving to Great Neck in 1979, we lived in Floral Park for two years. I remember my dad driving us to this theater to see the 1978 re-issue of STAR WARS. That was the first movie I saw there.
I grew up in Great Neck from 1979 to 1993. Two of the biggest openings that I can remember at this theater were FLASH GORDON (1980) and SUPERMAN II (1981). Man, every kid in my junior high school must have been there for Saturday matinee’s. Even though FG sucked, those were great memories of being at the local movie theater at the right time.
The last movie I saw there was DEATHTRAP before it closed in 1982.
have you been to the squire lately?
they really diced it up….
when you walk in the door the first theatre to your right was once
a store called bermains…or something like that…the screening room
ua had, when the home office was upstairs was bigger…
wally