Loew's 46th Street Theatre

I know what you mean, bkj.

Yes, 55 TBird, many thanks for posting your photo. From your photo’s balcony viewpoint, it looks like it’s still a theater, with a play taking place on the larger-than-usual stage, a play that makes use of lots of furniture, maybe a play that takes place in the furniture dept. of a large department store.

It looks as much like it’s still a theater as does the RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill, much more so than the former RKO Madison, in which the most prominent former theater feature still visible, is the curve of the front of the balcony, as a change in elevation of the drop ceiling.

Here is a wonderful recent photo of auditorium used as a furniture storeroom. It looks relatively intact, minus lower lever seats, definitely looks like it could be restored. The photo is not dated, and doesn’t give a date, hope it will remain on the site a while, after reading the postings about it, I was consumed with curiosity about what it looked like now. Hope you enjoy!

http://reliques.online.fr/civilian06.html

Thanks, Warren. Would that have been on or near Claremont Avenue, north of 116th Street, between Bway and Riverside Drive, near Columbia University ? Do you recall when the change occurred ? Does the Claremont have its own page on Cinema Treasures ?

The building on 60th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway was made for Rogers car dealership(who first sold Pontiacs). It was never a theatre.

I of course it doesn’t mean that it was ever a theater….however, I can’t believe this building was built for a “car dealership”….

I didn’t know where else to post this, but since this theater’s cross street is Fort Hamilton Parkway, I figured I would ask here.
Does anyone know what this building in the link from forgotten NY was before the roller rink? It sure looks like an old theater, but don’t know where to begin to look for it. It is at the intersection of Fort Hamilton Parkway and 60th.

View link

Here’s the description the forgotten NY site gives:

[i]In my youth I would take hundreds of bus rides on the B16 (Fort Hamilton Pkway) route and would always pass this building on FHP and 60th Street. In the 60s, and prior, it was home to the Rogers car dealership and later, in the 1980s, United Skates of America had a franchise here (Brooklyn’s last roller rink, Bed-Stuy’s Empire, closed in April 2007). Currently, the building houses a couple of wholesalers.
Was the building ever a theater?
[/i]

All the dreamers (including me) who would like to see the 46th become a theater again, consider that in that neighborhood, from 42nd to 62nd streets, 9th to 20th avenues, there is not ONE dvd/video rental store anymore. The one’s on 8th avenue are chinese languuge DVDs. If there aren’t enough people in the area to support a single dvd store, forget about keeping a theater going, even a yiddish theater. The hasidim are very anti any sort of public entertainment. Even when yiddish was a living language and culture, here and in europe, their feelings towards yiddish theater, culture, etc, were on a level with the puritans who banned shakespeare and public concerts. (This can clearly be seen in the astoundingly negative attitude the manager of the furniture store. Like the very idea of being in an old theatre buidling is somehow treif).
The fact is, this area went through a sea change, culturally,in the mid-sixties, when the types of jobs that had employed people for generations (longshoremen, factories, the army base) all disappeared at the same time. Families moved to where the jobs were, there was suddenly a housing glut, property values sank. The leaders of the hasidic communities in other area saw an opportunity and took it. For non-hasidic jews(like me), and non-jews, especially kids, it was like an invasion. It suddenly wasn’t our neighborhood any more, all our friends were moving away, everything was shutting down. For older members of the community, it was something of a salvation, in that, unlike in other areas, (even as close as sunset park, until new immigrants moved in and renovated it) because of the hasidim, the area didn’t decline physically, and the streets were safe. But boring. Very, very boring.
A quick note regarding the French Connection chase: Though most of the footage does show the 86th street area, as noted, if you watch closely, you see New Utrecth Avenue as far north as 51st street, what used to be a bicycle shop, and a few other quickly glimsped places. I always found it amusing that, because of how the scene was edited, popeye doyle is driving in bensonhurst, then boro park, the bensonhurst, without ever turning around.
Another quick note: I didn’t think anyone else on the planet remebered 13 Ghosts. I also saw it, in 3-d, at that same flatbush theatre. I held on to those 3-d glasses until they disintegrated. Another movie tie-in: that flatbush cemetery mentioned above was shown, briefly, in Arsenic and Old Lace, which took place in that neighborhood.

Thanks, Warren.

Why is probably because you can’t get a good idea of what the building would look like without the el in front. I have often seen photos or sketches of the Valencia also without the el. The marquee sketch doesn’t appear to be intricate enough to show a cut out for the el pillar.

Ditto, Warren. Thanks for posting the link to the sketch. The sketch and the color photo seem very similar. A bit hard to tell, because the view in the color photo is so skewed.

I think most likely it was scaled down. Thanks for the information, Warren.

So true, ERD, as this site attests. It’s also true of the NYC subway and el system. We still suffer the lack of the 2nd and 3rd Avenue els in Manhattan, as well as several BMT elevated lines in Brooklyn.