Suffolk Theater
118 E. Main Street,
Riverhead,
NY
11901
118 E. Main Street,
Riverhead,
NY
11901
6 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 75 of 89 comments
To carry over a conversational thread from the nearby (and demolished) Riverhead Theatre, the address for this theater seems to be wrong. The Suffolk Theatre is on East Main Street and the address listed above (11 West Main) belongs to the L.I. Science Center, several blocks to the west and on the other side of the street.
I think we should reconsider the address someone posted earlier of 118 East Main Street. Seems to fit better in the way the rest of the businesses on the street are numbered.
That is some great picture taking to capture a portion of the moving image on the marquee. If they’re being this top shelf with the marquee I can hardly wait to see the interior. However, wait I shall since, according to the “man in charge” completion is a year away. The final product will have a combination of cabaret and regular theatre seating. I queried, “Like Studio 54?” That reference was lost on him.
Can the street view be reset? Someone clicked the wrong location for the Suffolk Theater in this view, it needs to be further east on Main St….
According to one of the workmen on the site all the seats have been removed. The new space will have chairs around tables, like the old Hollyrock in Bay Shore or Studio 54 in Msnhattan. However, unlike Studio 54 the table and chair concept will be continued in the balcony. It would seem to me that this type of seating, particularly in a space that is long and fairly narrow, is going to severely limit the type of entertainment booked. The old Westhampton, now the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center kept the old seating plan and offers independent movies, concerts and specialty programs. The future form of the Plaza in Patchogue will break it up into a series of venues for screenings, classes etc..
After Five long years of delays, on Aug 9th 2010 the restoration of the Suffolk Theater has started. The website is being designed and will be up and running by August 31st 2010. SuffolkTheater.com
Here is another photo:
http://tinyurl.com/ylrbsuh
Believe it when I see it. Correction on the above – Patchogue Plaza.
deal gives old theater new life
newsday march 19th 2010 by mitchell freedman…
Like that’s ever going to happen. That’s three pending projects – Suffolk, Islip and the Patchogue Rialto that have grand designs; four if you include Westbury.
According to this article, the owner now has until August 22, 2010 to get the necessary permits to get the work going, and then two years to complete the work: View link
I’m holding my breath on this just like the Islip. Two projects which have bad track records.
Here’s an article that indicates that the long-delayed renovations o the Suffolk may begin in March, 2010:
View link
Moved to Riverhead a few months ago, into a home owned (1922-2009) by the family that owned the old West Main Street theatre (predating Suffolk). Unfortunately they didn’t leave any memorabilia behind, but perhaps I can contact our seller to see if she can help us set up a web page for her grandfather’s theater.
Although my glib remarks in my first post above struck some as slanderous, I’ve always liked Riverhead a lot, and totally fell in love with the town while staying with family at one of the local trailer parks. Aside from the better-known tourist destinations (the historic and amazing Vail-Levitt Music Hall, aquarium, annual Blues Festival, etc.), it’s worth a visit (even a major family outing from the city) just to have a sundae at the Star Confectionary (Roanoke & Main), or to shop at Griffing Hardware (Osborn & West Main). Show your grandkids what America was like before you were born. (Note: If you must go to the monstrous Tanger Mall at the west end of town, the only decent store there, with value for money, is (believe it or not) Brooks Brothers. All the rest are scams.)
The Suffolk Theater is still dormant. No one seems to know what’s going there. Several rival groups are, as always, scheming to “revive” Main Street (some say the landlords are the problem, others say they’re the solution). Ever since the Town decided (circa 1959) to chop down all the grand old shade trees (due to bird poop on car windshields), Main Street has been in a tailspin â€" there are plenty of other factors at work, but that event marked the beginning of the end. What’s bringing Main Street back to life now (aside from a couple of nice pubs with good pricey food) are the Mexican and Guatemalan groceries and restaurants â€" check out the restaurant just east of the tracks, reputed to be the most authentic and best on the island.
Sooner or later, the Suffolk Theater has to be reborn â€" that is, if there’s any trace of its former glory still intact when the town is finally ready to get its act together.
I was just in Riverhead today. Nothing seems to be happening at the theatre. Who pays the electric bill for the marquee. Once, as a child summering on eastern LI I attended a showing of The Key with William Holden and Sophia Loren. There was also a promo with the local WT Grant store. The theatre gave you a key and you went to Grant’s to see if it opened the box. It did and I won boys briefs.
Referencing Sammie Girl’s earlier posting Riverhead had the misfortune of having a downtown populated by chain stores that either went out of business or had financial difficulty. Freeport also had a similar problem. Add Sears to the closed stores. Riverhead now has more empties than full. The Marine Store relocated to Route 58 and the Bagel Store across from the school complex. Chase took over one of the banks and closed their original Main Street branch. The Dinosauer and Reptile Museums closed but the Atlantis Marina packs them in. Except for some specialty type stores the restaurants are the big thing. It’s the courts that keep them alive.
I like how they have “Flashdance” “What a Feeling” on the marquee….
Sigh, I remember going to see a double bill of Grease and Saturday Night Theater here, as well as seeing Poltergeist. It’s a beautiful theater inside. I also remember seeing my cousins band play here at a battle of the bands in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
I have a beautiful black and white shot that my cousin took a few years back. Main St. isn’t the same since the theater closed and Sweezy’s, Linton’s, Rimland’s, and Woolworth closed their doors.
she told me
was in riverhead for the country fair….on marque was
www.suffolktheater.com
check it out…
from what i understand from talking to merchants ..no matter who runs the theatre or buys the theatre if they should ever fail it can not be sold out from under town..i did a guest spot on WLNG 92.1FM
we talked about the theatre and how important it is to the town..
also, talk to AMY CSORNY…doing a run for a town council…
she tolk me when she talks to shop owners in the town, the 2nd or 3rd
question she gets asked is about the theatre..
The fact that all 15 of R. Thomas Short’s theater designs were on Long Island was what made me conclude he was a local guy (albeit via Canada).
I used to pass The Suffolk when I took the ferry to Greenport on my wat to the Moriches. Last time was about 10 years ago and I can remember thinking I’d like to check it out sometime. Never realized what a great place it was.
This is a very nice page. Keep the outlanders out.
Wow, it’s like a time capsule. The movie posters for the coming attractions are still hanging on the walls. Roxanne, Superman 4…. Those movies were released in 1987 I believe, so the theater must have closed in 1987.
The following 20 years did it’s toll on the building. It needs a lot of work, but it is a diamond in the rough. it’s a beautiful building, and much of it’s great features are all still there waiting to be restored.
What’s the latest on the Suffolk? it’s been a while since I have heard anything on the progress (or non-progress).
From today’s New York Times Sunday Long Island section:
Long Island
Things Are Looking Up in Downtown Riverhead
By JOHN RATHER
Published: July 17, 2005
Riverhead
CYNICS around here used to say that nearly every house and building in town was for sale, if only someone would make an offer.
Whether this was ever true is doubtful, but it is surely not so now. Riverhead – the historic, but in spots seedy, seat of Suffolk County – is about to pop.
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Deirdre Brennan for The New York Times
The exterior of the Suffolk Theater on East Main Street in Riverhead.
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Deirdre Brennan for The New York Times
The interior of the 1933 Suffolk Theater has elaborate tile work, above, and etched-glass egrets.
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Deirdre Brennan for The New York Times
The Suffolk Theater, which has been closed since 1987, once had 800 seats.
That, at least, is the opinion of Robert Castaldi, a specialist in historic restoration, and other optimists who believe that empty stores on Main Street will soon be filled or replaced by new buildings, even five-story hotels, as downtown Riverhead is reborn, in accord with a new town master plan, as a perfectly situated center of arts, culture, entertainment and affordable living.
Mr. Castaldi, the owner of Castle Restoration and Construction in Long Island City, Queens, and his wife, Dianne, paid the town $707,000 in February for the Suffolk Theater on East Main Street, a rare surviving Art Deco movie house that had been sliding into dereliction.
The theater, the last of 11 on Long Island designed by R. Thomas Short, was built in 1933 but has been vacant since 1987. The Castaldis say they will make it the cornerstone of the new Riverhead.
In a bet on the downtown’s revival as a regional destination, the Castaldis, who have a home on Nassau Point in Southold, are spending about $1 million of their own money on the theater project, including the purchase price. Mr. Castaldi estimated that $2.5 million would have to be raised to renovate, expand and restore the 800-seat theater and to revive its interior and exterior, notable for etched-glass egrets, an elaborately tiled drinking fountain and the facade’s signature scallop shell.
Plans call for the theater to reopen by next summer for live entertainment, plays, dance, films, concerts and other events. The Castaldis have set up a nonprofit group, the Suffolk Performing Arts Society, to book the shows and handle fund-raising with their help.
The group will also have to raise about $1 million for its operations, and its success in fund-raising will also determine the extent of renovations. Mr. Castaldi said that a fund-raising campaign, which would include naming rights, would begin in September.
Mr. Castaldi, a compact man with a crushing handshake, is not put off by the current commercial distress on Main Street. Where some might see limited prospects, he sees opportunity.
His previous projects include restoration of the observation deck of the Empire State Building (which opened in 1931, two years before the theater), the Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport and the Suffolk County Courthouse in Riverhead.
“This is Long Island’s last forgotten town where you can still do a deal, and the theater is probably its most important building,” Mr. Castaldi said. “This project is going to be the spark that will change Riverhead.”
Rob Dippel, the Suffolk Performing Arts Society’s executive director who moved to Riverhead from Cedar Falls, Iowa, in March, said that plans call for staging 60 to 80 live events a year, mostly during the summer. “We will do a professional touring series, theater, musical theater, dance, pop, country, comedy – we’re going to run the gamut,” he said. “We’re going to be able to draw from the North and South Forks, and I think there is a sizable market west of Riverhead.”
He added that classic, foreign and independent films would also be shown.
Some theater professionals said they doubted that the Riverhead theater would have such drawing power when established community groups elsewhere were having trouble filling seats.
“The obstacle they face is that what they would like to do and what the surrounding area is interested in are two very different things,” said John Blenn, a professor of music business and the general manager of the Dix Hills Performing Arts Center at Five Towns College. “That area has been a basic blue-collar audience, but things like theater and original theater have never seemed to find an audience out there.”
Riverhead bought the theater for $400,000 in 1994 and spent about $1 million to repair the roof, facade and marquee. But in July 2001 voters rejected a $4 million bond issue that would have allowed the town to restore the building as a movie theater and performing arts center.
Philip J. Cardinale, the current town supervisor, led the opposition to the bond issue before his election in 2003 but inherited the problem of what to do with the building upon taking office last year.
When Mr. Castaldi turned up, Mr. Cardinale said, he seemed highly qualified to carry out the project with private money. “We were very pleasantly surprised by his appearance,” Mr. Cardinale said. “If he can’t do it, nobody can.”
Mr. Cardinale said the theater fit the town’s plans for downtown redevelopment. Last month, the town formally asked for proposals from developers for a major redevelopment project along the Peconic River downtown. The project is envisioned as a small-town version of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, the River Walk in San Antonio or the popular WaterFire in Providence, R.I., a periodic event in which wood fires are lighted in caldrons along three rivers.
“We’re not asking for them to do a master plan,” Mr. Cardinale said. “We have the master plan, and we have the zoning. We want them to tell us how they would revitalize and recreate.”
Artspace Projects, a nonprofit real estate developer in Minneapolis that specializes in creating working and living spaces for artists in downtown areas, recently visited Riverhead and was interested in playing a role in its revitalization, Mr. Cardinale said.
Peter Sieve, the manager of consulting and new projects for Artspace, said he found Riverhead “extremely charming in the best sense of the word.”
“We left with the strong impression that all the ingredients were there for an affordable artist live-work project,” he said. “We’re optimistic we will be able to help Riverhead move forward and realize its vision.”
The Town Board is also discussing a downtown historic district that would include the theater and the 1881 Vail-Leavitt Music Hall on Peconic Avenue.
The town had been close to selling the single-screen Suffolk Theater to a buyer with plans to carve it into a multiplex. Mr. Castaldi strongly disagreed with that proposal.
“To save the building, it has to be a theater,” he said. He would leave the stage intact and with a single screen, but would expand the backstage area by 5,000 square feet, adding dressing rooms, lighting and sound equipment and a loading dock. He said he would also enlarge the lobby and add lighting, seats and more restrooms. And he would apply for a liquor license.
As word of the proposed renovation spread, people with memories of the theater visited during a recent open house. Some took old seats the Castaldis were giving away.
Larry Penny, 69, who grew up in Mattituck, said he and friends used to hitchhike to see movies at the Suffolk Theater during the heyday of downtown Riverhead in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.
“It was a classy theater and the place to go for first-run movies,” said Mr. Penny, now the director of natural resources and environmental protection for the Town of East Hampton. “In those days Riverhead was where it was at. For us it was like going to the Big Apple. There were two newspapers, and it was a place of culture and entertainment and all that kind of stuff.”
The downtown declined during the 1970’s and in more recent years has suffered as retailers like the Tanger factory outlet center, Wal-Mart, the Home Depot, Best Buy, Target and Pier 1 Imports opened on Route 58, once a downtown bypass.
Downtown, meanwhile, lost Swezey’s department store, but it gained the Atlantis Aquarium, which draw visitors to East Main Street not far from the theater.
New development, including an office building facing the river, is already planned. Suffolk County is also spending $35 million to renovate the court buildings on Griffing Avenue, which runs north from Main Street. A sculptor, Giancarlo Biagi, plans a studio in the space between the Barth drugstore, a Main Street mainstay, and the EastEnders Coffee House, a recent arrival.
“I’d say Riverhead is certainly on the upswing,” Mr. Dippel said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun just riding the wave of what’s going to happen here.”
Today’s Long Island section of the New York Times has a major article with photos, interior and exterior, of the Suffolk Theater. Story deals with the theater as the linchpin of a downtown rebirth of Riverhead.
I would also like to get in touch with Castle Restoration and Construction about another theater I am interested in restoring (the Loew’s Kings of Brooklyn). Does anyone know their url or E-Mail?
I tried to get in touch with the Friends of the Suffolk, and I have not heard from them in months. Would someone from the organization please try to contact me here.