Yes, it is sad, but not as much as if it had been totally demolished.
The Myrtle Avenue facade still exists, has been cleaned, and is still mostly visible. “RKO MADISON THEATRE” is still faintly visible on the front western wall, from the Wyckoff Avenue el platform. Unfortunately, it’s gradually fading, and becoming obscured by new, fresh, bold, graffiti.
Yes, the RKO Madison would have been great as a church. Grover Cleveland High School had its graduation ceremony there in 1972, among probably many other years.
Apollo, what is the address of the house that Jackie Gleason grew up in ? Is it on Herkimer or Chauncey Street ?
I read a Gleason biography twelve years and two weeks ago. There was a chapter in it, “Limo To Bushwick”, about a 1962 or 1963 visit Gleason paid to his old neighborhood.
One of the June Taylor Dancers was a man ?
It was the Colonial Theater at Chauncey and Bway, now the Wayside Baptist Church. Bway has posted a link to a recent photo of it, on its page here.
I was born at Evangelical Deaconess Hospital, formerly at the north corner of Chauncey and Bway, on the northeast, or Bushwick, side, across the street from the former Colonial Theater. I think one of the hospital buildings is gone now, as I recall from my last el ride past there.
Do you mean the old Pennsylvania Station at 34th and 8th in Manhattan ? Try :
Jackie Gleason saw vaudeville and burlesque at the Halsey as a boy and got his start in show business there on amateur nights.
I think the address on his mother’s death certificate was 357 Chauncey Street, if the TV bio I saw in early November 2002 was accurate, and if I am remembering it correctly.
The references to streets in “The Honeymooners” are to real streets in Bushwick, like when Norton mentions “that vacuum cleaner place on DeKalb Avenue”.
Groundstar Pete, where in Ridgewood did you move to, and live, after you moved out of 800 Knickerbocker Avenue in 1965 ?
My family’s doctor moved in 1965 or 1966 from Palmetto between Bushwick and Bway to 70th Avenue between Forest and Fresh Pond : he went from a parlor floor (sidewalk level) in a Bushwick brownstone to one in one of those beautiful, three story bay window front brick houses with the high brownstone stoops, that are so numerous in upper Ridgewood !
My family and I shopped most often at the German deli a few doors east of the Ridgewood Theater. I remember the fancy German Tobler candy bars and the Dr. Oetker pudding and pastry glaze mixes. Ja Wohl ! Gemutlichet ! Prost ! Half my ancestry is German, the other half, Polish.
Please e-mail me privately if you want to indulge in some more Bushwick and Ritch Woot (Ridgewood) nostalgia.
I have a friend at work about your age who graduated Grover Cleveland High School in 1965.
I live in a near north suburb of NYC where I can still walk to the store in ten minutes.
“A whole community within walking distance” : well-put ! It gives a new meaning to one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, “Walking Distance”, whose bittersweet nostalgic music I can hear in my mind as I write this !
Yes, “Neighborhood” is returning : have you noticed it in the subtitle of the suburban Applebee’s ? “Eatin' good in the neighborhood” ?
Speaking of malls : Jay Leno once quipped that a movie theater’s not a movie theater any more. It’s a concrete bunker at the end of the shopping mall !!!
groundstar, you’re welcome. I see PS 106 on the northeast side of Wilson Ave. between Putnam Avenue and Cornelia Street, and JHS 296 on Central between Eldert and Covert Sts. on my USGS Brooklyn wuad sheet.
My father lived at many addresses in Bushwick as a boy and young man.
As for me, I was born in Evangelical Deaconess Hospital, at the north corner of Bway and Chauncey, mid-November 1955. I lived at 1668 Cornelia Street (between Wyckoff and Cypress Avenues) from then until my marriage in September 1991. I still visit Ridgewood once a month, and hope to visit and photograph my dad’s Bushwick addresses and haunts before the bitter cold weather starts this year.
Bway, one more thought. The Casino / DeKalb’s address is listed as 1151-55 DeKalb Avenue. If DeKalb Avenue is consistent with the other Bushwick and Ridgewood streets that run parallel to it, the odd building numbers would be on the northwest side of the street. If that is so, then, to front on DeKalb Avenue, the DeKalb / Casino would have to be northwest of DeKalb, between DeKalb Avenue and Dodworth Street.
Wanna drag “Where’s Bargain Town ?” back into the mix, for good luck and good measure ?
Thanks, Bway. No, I don’t know the name of that church that became a nightclub. However, I have heard of a nightclub in Manhattan called “The Library”, which looked like one, and know of a “Seminary Coffee Shop” at Lincoln, Halsted and Fullerton, in Chicago, near several blues clubs.
Bway, the Imperial must have closed well before “The Exorcist” opened in NYC the day after Christmas 1973.
I am both awed and horrified at the thought of how “Exorcist” would have looked and sounded at Loew’s Valencia in Jamaica. I have read on this site that it played in a similar theater, the now-closed State Lake in Chicago’s Loop.
Actually, some have said that “Exorcist” was a commercial of sorts for the Catholic Church, implying that its rituals were powerful enough to cast out demons. Then again, both priests died in the process, the younger, first possessed, then a suicide, then absolved before he died …
I would have to walk around those blocks again to be sure. My inital thought was that was the railing around the library just out of view to the left in your first photo.
It’s such a beautiful day, I’m tempted to leave my office and zoom out there on the J or Z or M just to check !
Thanks, Bway. According to my aunt, this was the original Brooklyn location of St. John’s University.
What is the address of this St. John the Baptist RC Church ?
I’ve been in the church and rectory of St. Jean Baptiste RC Church at 74th and Lexington on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That was late 1980 and early 1981. My best friend was studying for the priesthood at the time and had stayed there.
It would be interesting to research the history of Our Lady Of Lourdes R.C. Church, which once stood on Aberdeen St. between Bway and Bushwick Avenue. It was demolished between 1972 and 1976.
You might recall the uproar in the late 1980’s over the conversion of a Greenwich Village church into a night club, and the scene showing that in L.A. in the 1992 film “Basic Instinct”.
Thanks Bway for confirming that. I realized after posting that it had to be Kosciuszko, because it’s one way southwest, and DeKalb there is two-way, to permit the B-38 bus route there. It’s also consistent with what my quad sheet shows : a big school building on the block bounded by DeKalb, Kosciuszko, Bway, and Bushwick Avenue.
I remember well the library at the south corner of Bushwick and DeKalb Avenues. I think it’s the DeKalb branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Your experience of at first missing the DeKalb reminds me of my April 30 2004 attempt to observe the Colonial Theater from the rear of the Manhattan bound J train I was on. Just west of the Chauncey Street station, all I could see was the former entrance, adjacent to the Rockaway Avenue exit of the Jamaica-bound platform. As I got further away, the Colonial Theater building stood out more and more from adjacent buildings, and became more obvious, particularly the roof.
I think the original entrances were on Broadway and DeKalb Avenue. I will ask my father when I see him next Sunday.
I see “Thomasina Aquinas” is on-line. Perhaps this lady (?) named after the learned doctor of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, can be of help here. She could consult her greatest work, her magnus opus, “Summa Theologica Et Cinematicus”.
I have read in it that most medieval films were in Latin, with vernacular subtitles, particularly those of Chaucer and Bocaccio.
Glad you liked that ! Not only “Oh God !” but any religious movie. “The Next Voice You Hear” and “Between Two Worlds” come to mind, as they are older films, 1950 and 1947, respectively. In the latter, God is a character called “the examiner”.
Will the ACLU, and conservative, puritanical anti-theater sects get up in arms about “separation of church and theater”, and a fall from grace into Godless entertainment, respectively ?
I agree with Bway that a church is probably the best post-theater function of a building originally built as a theater, as it tends to be the “friendliest” towards the preservation of the interior.
My one visit to Loew’s Oriental in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was late February 1987 when it was already a triplex. One friend I was with, not knowing about the grandiose and ornate design of old movie palaces, thought it had once been a Muslim mosque, because of the tiles, arches and vaulted ceilings !
Thanks, Bway. “Link” looks like a view towards Broadway from Bushwick Avenue and Kosciuszko Street. “Link2” looks like a view northeast on Kosciuszko from Bway to Bushwick. Correct ?
Bway, I think that’s more than a coincidence. I was going to remark that I see a slight similarity in design and construction of the Luxor and Wyckoff Theaters.
Thanks, Bway, for the second shot, looking north at the northern corner of Knickerbocker and Eldert St. It shows that Knickerbocker is now one way northwest, which confirms my understanding of the orientation of your first shot.
The school just beyond the former Alhambra was the original East New York Vocational High School. My dad attended it at its later location in the Bway Junction – East New York area. The school beyond it was St. Martin of Tours Catholic School. My oldest first cousin, born Sept. 3, 1955, was baptized at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church, at Knickerbocker and Jefferson Avenues.
groundstar, here is the e-mail contact for Brooklyn Friends :
groundstar, are you a member of the “Brooklyn Friends” website, administered by Eleanor Phillips Coody ? Eleanor is the “bushwickbuddy” I refer to in my comment, four above this one.
Yes, it is sad, but not as much as if it had been totally demolished.
The Myrtle Avenue facade still exists, has been cleaned, and is still mostly visible. “RKO MADISON THEATRE” is still faintly visible on the front western wall, from the Wyckoff Avenue el platform. Unfortunately, it’s gradually fading, and becoming obscured by new, fresh, bold, graffiti.
Yes, the RKO Madison would have been great as a church. Grover Cleveland High School had its graduation ceremony there in 1972, among probably many other years.
Apollo, what is the address of the house that Jackie Gleason grew up in ? Is it on Herkimer or Chauncey Street ?
I read a Gleason biography twelve years and two weeks ago. There was a chapter in it, “Limo To Bushwick”, about a 1962 or 1963 visit Gleason paid to his old neighborhood.
One of the June Taylor Dancers was a man ?
It was the Colonial Theater at Chauncey and Bway, now the Wayside Baptist Church. Bway has posted a link to a recent photo of it, on its page here.
I was born at Evangelical Deaconess Hospital, formerly at the north corner of Chauncey and Bway, on the northeast, or Bushwick, side, across the street from the former Colonial Theater. I think one of the hospital buildings is gone now, as I recall from my last el ride past there.
Do you mean the old Pennsylvania Station at 34th and 8th in Manhattan ? Try :
http://www.nycsubway.org/
You may have to look around a bit there, or search it with Google.
Commenting on the new vs. the old Penn Station, someone once said, “We used to come into the city like gods. Now, we come in like rats !”
Thanks, ErwinM. Just joking !
Jackie Gleason saw vaudeville and burlesque at the Halsey as a boy and got his start in show business there on amateur nights.
I think the address on his mother’s death certificate was 357 Chauncey Street, if the TV bio I saw in early November 2002 was accurate, and if I am remembering it correctly.
The references to streets in “The Honeymooners” are to real streets in Bushwick, like when Norton mentions “that vacuum cleaner place on DeKalb Avenue”.
Thanks, Bway. I had the same thought about the golden arches being in the way. But thanks for posting your rationale for that photo’s vantage point !
So perhaps the Irving was once the true “Aryan” theater, as opposed to the Arion, in Middle Village, or the Wagner, in Wyckoff Heights !
Groundstar Pete, where in Ridgewood did you move to, and live, after you moved out of 800 Knickerbocker Avenue in 1965 ?
My family’s doctor moved in 1965 or 1966 from Palmetto between Bushwick and Bway to 70th Avenue between Forest and Fresh Pond : he went from a parlor floor (sidewalk level) in a Bushwick brownstone to one in one of those beautiful, three story bay window front brick houses with the high brownstone stoops, that are so numerous in upper Ridgewood !
My family and I shopped most often at the German deli a few doors east of the Ridgewood Theater. I remember the fancy German Tobler candy bars and the Dr. Oetker pudding and pastry glaze mixes. Ja Wohl ! Gemutlichet ! Prost ! Half my ancestry is German, the other half, Polish.
Please e-mail me privately if you want to indulge in some more Bushwick and Ritch Woot (Ridgewood) nostalgia.
I have a friend at work about your age who graduated Grover Cleveland High School in 1965.
I live in a near north suburb of NYC where I can still walk to the store in ten minutes.
“A whole community within walking distance” : well-put ! It gives a new meaning to one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, “Walking Distance”, whose bittersweet nostalgic music I can hear in my mind as I write this !
Yes, “Neighborhood” is returning : have you noticed it in the subtitle of the suburban Applebee’s ? “Eatin' good in the neighborhood” ?
Speaking of malls : Jay Leno once quipped that a movie theater’s not a movie theater any more. It’s a concrete bunker at the end of the shopping mall !!!
groundstar, you’re welcome. I see PS 106 on the northeast side of Wilson Ave. between Putnam Avenue and Cornelia Street, and JHS 296 on Central between Eldert and Covert Sts. on my USGS Brooklyn wuad sheet.
My father lived at many addresses in Bushwick as a boy and young man.
As for me, I was born in Evangelical Deaconess Hospital, at the north corner of Bway and Chauncey, mid-November 1955. I lived at 1668 Cornelia Street (between Wyckoff and Cypress Avenues) from then until my marriage in September 1991. I still visit Ridgewood once a month, and hope to visit and photograph my dad’s Bushwick addresses and haunts before the bitter cold weather starts this year.
Thanks, Bway !
Bway, one more thought. The Casino / DeKalb’s address is listed as 1151-55 DeKalb Avenue. If DeKalb Avenue is consistent with the other Bushwick and Ridgewood streets that run parallel to it, the odd building numbers would be on the northwest side of the street. If that is so, then, to front on DeKalb Avenue, the DeKalb / Casino would have to be northwest of DeKalb, between DeKalb Avenue and Dodworth Street.
Wanna drag “Where’s Bargain Town ?” back into the mix, for good luck and good measure ?
Thanks, Bway. No, I don’t know the name of that church that became a nightclub. However, I have heard of a nightclub in Manhattan called “The Library”, which looked like one, and know of a “Seminary Coffee Shop” at Lincoln, Halsted and Fullerton, in Chicago, near several blues clubs.
You know the whole thing by heart, lostmemory ?
Bway, the Imperial must have closed well before “The Exorcist” opened in NYC the day after Christmas 1973.
I am both awed and horrified at the thought of how “Exorcist” would have looked and sounded at Loew’s Valencia in Jamaica. I have read on this site that it played in a similar theater, the now-closed State Lake in Chicago’s Loop.
Actually, some have said that “Exorcist” was a commercial of sorts for the Catholic Church, implying that its rituals were powerful enough to cast out demons. Then again, both priests died in the process, the younger, first possessed, then a suicide, then absolved before he died …
I would have to walk around those blocks again to be sure. My inital thought was that was the railing around the library just out of view to the left in your first photo.
It’s such a beautiful day, I’m tempted to leave my office and zoom out there on the J or Z or M just to check !
Thanks, Bway. According to my aunt, this was the original Brooklyn location of St. John’s University.
What is the address of this St. John the Baptist RC Church ?
I’ve been in the church and rectory of St. Jean Baptiste RC Church at 74th and Lexington on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That was late 1980 and early 1981. My best friend was studying for the priesthood at the time and had stayed there.
It would be interesting to research the history of Our Lady Of Lourdes R.C. Church, which once stood on Aberdeen St. between Bway and Bushwick Avenue. It was demolished between 1972 and 1976.
You might recall the uproar in the late 1980’s over the conversion of a Greenwich Village church into a night club, and the scene showing that in L.A. in the 1992 film “Basic Instinct”.
Which version ? Silent or sound ? There were also silent and sound versions of “Ben Hur” and “King Of Kings”.
The sound, Heston version of “Ten Commandments” (1956) is probably closest to when the Imperial closed :
“So let it be written. So let it be done !”
(old windbag !)
Thanks Bway for confirming that. I realized after posting that it had to be Kosciuszko, because it’s one way southwest, and DeKalb there is two-way, to permit the B-38 bus route there. It’s also consistent with what my quad sheet shows : a big school building on the block bounded by DeKalb, Kosciuszko, Bway, and Bushwick Avenue.
I remember well the library at the south corner of Bushwick and DeKalb Avenues. I think it’s the DeKalb branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Your experience of at first missing the DeKalb reminds me of my April 30 2004 attempt to observe the Colonial Theater from the rear of the Manhattan bound J train I was on. Just west of the Chauncey Street station, all I could see was the former entrance, adjacent to the Rockaway Avenue exit of the Jamaica-bound platform. As I got further away, the Colonial Theater building stood out more and more from adjacent buildings, and became more obvious, particularly the roof.
I think the original entrances were on Broadway and DeKalb Avenue. I will ask my father when I see him next Sunday.
I see “Thomasina Aquinas” is on-line. Perhaps this lady (?) named after the learned doctor of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, can be of help here. She could consult her greatest work, her magnus opus, “Summa Theologica Et Cinematicus”.
I have read in it that most medieval films were in Latin, with vernacular subtitles, particularly those of Chaucer and Bocaccio.
Glad you liked that ! Not only “Oh God !” but any religious movie. “The Next Voice You Hear” and “Between Two Worlds” come to mind, as they are older films, 1950 and 1947, respectively. In the latter, God is a character called “the examiner”.
Pun intended ? “Converted” to a church ?
Will the ACLU, and conservative, puritanical anti-theater sects get up in arms about “separation of church and theater”, and a fall from grace into Godless entertainment, respectively ?
I agree with Bway that a church is probably the best post-theater function of a building originally built as a theater, as it tends to be the “friendliest” towards the preservation of the interior.
My one visit to Loew’s Oriental in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was late February 1987 when it was already a triplex. One friend I was with, not knowing about the grandiose and ornate design of old movie palaces, thought it had once been a Muslim mosque, because of the tiles, arches and vaulted ceilings !
Thanks, Bway. “Link” looks like a view towards Broadway from Bushwick Avenue and Kosciuszko Street. “Link2” looks like a view northeast on Kosciuszko from Bway to Bushwick. Correct ?
Bway, I think that’s more than a coincidence. I was going to remark that I see a slight similarity in design and construction of the Luxor and Wyckoff Theaters.
Thanks for the photo.
Bway, thanks so much !
Thanks, Chris. Do you recall what side of Central Avenue it is on ?
Thanks, Bway, for the second shot, looking north at the northern corner of Knickerbocker and Eldert St. It shows that Knickerbocker is now one way northwest, which confirms my understanding of the orientation of your first shot.
The school just beyond the former Alhambra was the original East New York Vocational High School. My dad attended it at its later location in the Bway Junction – East New York area. The school beyond it was St. Martin of Tours Catholic School. My oldest first cousin, born Sept. 3, 1955, was baptized at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church, at Knickerbocker and Jefferson Avenues.
groundstar, here is the e-mail contact for Brooklyn Friends :
groundstar, are you a member of the “Brooklyn Friends” website, administered by Eleanor Phillips Coody ? Eleanor is the “bushwickbuddy” I refer to in my comment, four above this one.