Casino Theatre
1151-1155 DeKalb Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11221
1151-1155 DeKalb Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11221
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Showing 51 - 62 of 62 comments
Fernando, in what direction from the Casino was Bargain Town ? Northwest, towards Broadway and Myrtle ? Was it that three or four story building with the arched windows, that used to be painted in red and white vertical stripes, and is now painted a light gray ?
Please help. Thanks.
Bargain Town was a few blocks away on Broadway, in the late 60’s, it was renamed Buy Rite. On the corner of Broadway and Dekalb was my father’s candystore (1965-67. On the same side of the street, up the block, on the corner of Bushwick, was the Casino, and the entrance was on Dekalb.
Bway, thanks for your help in posting the link to the photo I had referred to. Sometimes nycsubway.org seems like the only source of photos for so many of these theaters that are now gone. Like Loew’s Hillside. Or the RKO Madison in Ridgewood, whose original sign, painted on its western wall, grows ever fainter each year, while the graffiti obscuring it grows newer and more vivid.
Perhaps Bargain Town never was the DeKalb or Casino, but was a separate building a few blocks away.
Here is the link to the photo Peter was talking about above. It’s a start from some photos, even if just of the “roof”.
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?3033
Thanks guys for all the information on the Casino Theater. I am very interested in finding out more about this and some of the other Broadway (Brooklyn) area theaters. If I find out anything more, I will post it here. Some photos of either the interior or exterior would also be very welcome if anyone ever finds a link to this or some of the other Bushwick theaters.
Warren, you may be right. What you wrote is consistent with what Fernando wrote about finding the Casino Theater interior intact in 1968. As such it would not have been a store in 1955 and 1965.
Having gone through a list of Brooklyn theaters on cinematour.com in the last few days, and having seen how many Bushwick theaters were either closed or demolished, I have seen for myself how that neighborhood once teemed with theaters. It seems that television did away with many of them.
Given the demolition that followed the looting and arson in Bushwick that resulted from the July 13, 1977 blackout, some clues may be permanently gone.
I remember being in Bargain Town only once, at age ten, in November or December of 1965, but my oldest living aunt remembers my mother (her sister) and herself, being there in 1955, to buy baby carriages for myself, and for a first cousin.
I just found 1153 DeKalb Avenue Bklyn NY on MapQuest, and it is on DeKalb Avenue between Broadway and Bushwick Avenue, the block the Casino Theater once stood on, apparently once the DeKalb Avenue entrance of the theater.
MapQuest Map supplied with this page is incorrect. It is of the EKO Albee at Dekalb Avenue and Fulton St. in downtown Bklyn. Instead find 1151 or 1153 Dekalb Avenue Bklyn NY at MapQuest.
Thank you, Cinema Treasures, for adding this page on the Casino Theater in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, of which I am a native.
If you go to www.nycsubway.org, BMT Lines, BMT Jamaica Line, Kosciuszko St. station, image 3033, you will see the Casino Theater
above the el station, or at least a sign for the Casino Theater visibly painted on a building above the el station.
Does anyone know, and can anyone comment, on the relationship between the New Casino Theater, and the store, Bargaintown, which once stood near the intersection of Broadway and DeKalb Avenues ?
The oldest of my three living aunts, who is also from Bushwick, says that the New Casino Theater became Bargaintown.
Also, re : schools : if it’s any help, the USGS quad sheet for Brooklyn, NY, dated 1967, photorevised 1979, from aerial photos taken 1977, but not field checked, shows P.S. 274 as a black near-square centered on the northeast half of the large block bounded by Broadway, Bushwick Avenue, Dekalb Avenue, and Kosciuszko St., fronting on either Kosciuszko St. or Bushwick Avenue. It also shows the expansion of this school in purple tint, southeast, to border on Kosciuszko St. and southwest, to come much closer to Broadway and the el station.
The Casino Theatre was also known as the Dekalb, opened in 1911 and closed in 1947. Address was 1151-1155 Dekalb ave. Seating capacity was 2,242. As a 10 year old in 1968, I, and some neighborhood kids broke in to the theatre and it was still intact. By 1980, when I visited again, it was being demolished from the inside for use as a warehouse. The fading sign high on its wall read CASINO THEATER Latest in Screen Attractions. Under the words Latest in Screen Attractions was faintly legible “continuous VAUDEVILLE” obviously “Latest in Screen…” was painted over the vaudeville sign when vaudeville was being phased out. The El station here was “Kosciusko St” where I was born in 1958. About three stations down from Kosciusko was “Gates Ave” and right in front was the RKO Bushwick.
The Casino Theatre was also known as the Dekalb, opened in 1911 and closed in 1947. Address was 1151-1155 Dekalb ave. Seating capacity was 2,242. As a 10 year old in 1968, I, and some neighborhood kids broke in to the theatre and it was still intact. By 1980, when I visited again, it was being demolished from the inside for use as a warehouse. The fading sign high on its wall read CASINO THEATER Latest in Screen Attractions. Under the words Latest in Screen Attractions was faintly legible “continuous VAUDEVILLE”.