I find it amazing that a theater as famous as the Apollo, perhaps one of the most famous theater in the world, and even though it only was a film house briefly, it’s unimaginable that there is absolutely no opening paragraph or intruduction above.
Well, it’s officialy….the Plaza Theater has FINALLY been condemned, and will be torn down. An end to a two decade long battle to rid East Main Street of the blight of the Plaza Theater.
Here’s an article from the Long Island Advance:
Here’s some quotes from the article about the theater:
[i]
…
The theater condemnation has spurred other positive movement along the corridor, Eddington explained. For instance, a developer has opted to buy the abandoned True Value Hardware Store, located across the street from the theater and a little further east. Like the Plaza Theatre, the hardware store has also become an eyesore and roost for pigeons.
“The condemnation of the Plaza Theatre is what appears to have spurred this developer into wanting the True Value Property,†said Eddington. Eddington added that the new owner has agreed to pay for an extension of the Patchogue sewer system up to his building and to pay for the caps needed for other businesses en route to hook into sewer lines as well.
…
The corridor project itself, said Eddington, for now will include buying the several parcels of land on which the Plaza Theatre is located in order to convert the back parcels into a large off-street parking lot; realigning the two intersections; and improving the traffic flow on East Main Street from Route 112 to Phyllis Drive and between Swan Lake and County Route 101.
Eddington said he negotiated with Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who had removed $4 million for the project from the county’s 2007 budget. “The Patchogue East Main Street Project was just one of several projects put on hold when the legislature brought the capital budget in $14 million over. I negotiated for Levy’s help with the Plaza Theatre condemnation and for enough money to be placed into the 2007 budget to get a number of things done on the project,†he said.
[i]so budgets are designed for very little staff (who are required {otherwise fired} to walk through the auditoriums every 15 minutes with a flashlight.
[/i]
Yeah, what the hell is that! Itg must be true, as I have seen this myself! Every friggen so many minutes some guy would walk down the aisle in the middle of the movie with a flashlight, and then walk out. VERY distracting. What the heck is the reason for that?
While I must say, the popcorn was great at the Patchogue (probably the best I have had in a while in a theater), that’s about the only positive I could say about my last experience there. The cost of a popcorn and a drink was more that the price of the tickets themselves, and I missed the beginning of the movie because the line took forever to buy the concessions.
A real shame, because the place was quite busy, it would probably be even busier if it was better maintained.
Actually, for a theater with so many responses, and it’s status as the longest continuously operating theater in the City and perhaps NY state, it’s whole introduction leaves much to be desired.
Even today, I don’t think “movie going” is a dying trend. People still enjoy going to a theater to watch a movie. Any time I ever go to see a movie, the multiplex is usually packed. Theaters are usually full. It is the multiplexing and the way movies are distributed that killed the old movie theaters. While the number of theaters of course has decreased exponentially, the number of sceens probably hasn’t. You just have 12+ screen mulitplexes doing the job now.
Many theaters lasted into the 70’s, I think the RKO Keith’s fell as an earlier one.
BTW, the RKO Keith’s is far from lost. It’s a diamond in the rough, but entirely restorable. The plaster is in okay shape. Even many of the detailing like Chandeliers all still exist, railings, everything. It would be costly, but it’s not a lost cause by any means, unlike many others that have been gutted, such as the RKO Madison.
There is no damage to the integrity of the Keith’s, and in the meantime, it’s being maintained, so who knows….perhaps if there is a viable use for it, it could come back again.
I am not sure of the exact date, but I believe at this point it was a Bingo Hall/Flea Market longer than it was a theater. I first set foot in the Keiths back around 1981 or so, and it was already a flea market then already, and by the look, it was closed quite a while already then. I would estimate the early 70’s some time, but that is totally an estimated guess, it perhaps even could have been the late 60’s. It s a LONG time either way.
Wow, that brings back SO many memories….and wow, it’s “so” 80’s!!
Seeing the video though makes me remember that place almost perfectly from the roller rink days. I was lucky enough to remember it as both a theater in the 70’s when I was a kid, and as the roller rink as a teenager….many a good times in both ways…
Hahaha, I used to remember that in the 70’s at the Ridgewood Theater when it was still one large theater. You would be watching a movie and all of a sudden daylight would flood the auditorium and kids would be running in from the left side doors…
In some cases this may be true, but in the case of the Patchogue, Theater 13 IS the same exact building it always was, even when it was the indoor theater for the drive in. They did NOT demolish the building, and instead incorporated it into the new multiplex attached to it. If they tore down the drive in indoor theater, I may say you guys have a point, but in this case, you are sitting in the exact same theater you would have sat in when attending the drive in indoor theater when you vist Theater 13 today. I saw Empire Strikes Back at the Patchogue drive in’s indoor theater….if I attend a movie in Theater 13, it’s the SAME theater.
That happened once at the AMC Empire 25 on 42nd Street in manhattan too. ANd it was also some kid’s movie that it was supposed to be, and it turned out to some movie where the character hangs himself from a tree in the opening scene. These switches always seems to be switched for kids movies…
The church at the Belvedere is supposedly building a new church at the Stop N Shop site across the street from the Belvedere, from what that thread says. I don’t know how true it is or not.
Hmmm. I was never in the balcony when the Madison was a theater…only the orchestra level. Lost Memory brought up an interesting point. So what you are telling me is that the Grand Staircase and the other side stairwell, led to a landing/hallyway which then opened into the balcony. I have a feeling that the furniture area may be in that hallyway landing, and not actually the balcony. There were three tiers, but perhaps, they took a wall down towards the back of the hallway to make the area bigger.
I have a feeling, the actually balcony may be both ABOVE and to the right of the furniture area. If you look at the old photo (Peter, it does work, so it must be a problem on your end), there is a left and right entry area with a railing…but there is ALSO a center entrance. Notice that the balcony is both ABOVE and below those entrances. I have a feeling that that door I wanted to open leads to the CENTER entrance of the balcony as seen in the photo, and the entire balcony may still be unuses. That WOULD explain the floor NOT being sloped. I thought they had altered something, but they may not have, and I may not have been in the actual balcony, but that landing instead. I am at a disadvantage, because I don’t know the actual layout of what the Madison’s balcony originally looked like.
The answer may be to open that door…..
Okay, judging from this photo Warren posted: View link
…the balcony wall upstairs is from where you see that railing on the right half way up (where you come up from the grand staircase), and goes straight through the length of the middle of the balcony. The level in front of that is behind that door I mentioned that I wanted to open. Anything behind that is now the furniture deparment, which they “flattened” by making the three flat tiers out of it.
I still can’t figure out where that second staircase would have come down judging by the photo, but I “think” it may have been the extreme right (if facing the stage) of the inner lobby.
Now what exactly is this photo of Warrens? Is that the inner lobby, I can’t place it, especially picturing what the interior of the Madison looks like today….
Which way is this facing? View link
Peter… I don’t remember from the theater days where that stairway came down. That second stairway IS original though. No doubt about that (and most balconies did have two (or sometimes more) stairways. I can see the door on the main level which leads to that stairway. From it’s positioin downstairs, it appears it came down either in the back right (if facing the stage) part of the theater (similar to how the RKO Keiths in Richmond Hills second stairway did), or it may have came down to the inner lobby. It’s hard to tell, as the “store” is one big room, and it’s hard to tell where the outer lobby ended, or the inner lobby ended. You can only see where the enge of the balcony was within the auditorium itself.
Lost, no, they did not extend the balcony at all. They actually shortened it (well not physically, but they put a wall up blocking off the curved edge of the balcony out, and perhaps even the lowest level of the balcony). When you get to the top of the stairway, the wall is immediately on your left, whereas in the theater days, you probably had some rows of seating to the left, and of course the curve of the balcony. Picture the letter U the balcony, but you put up a straight line through it where the curve begins, making the U square.
Also, there is NO DOUBT it’s the original balcony, and not something rebuilt. They may have platfomed it a bit (thus the three tiers I described) because of course the original balcony would have been sloped, which would of course not lend well to a store use, so thus the three tiers with ramps connecting them. It makes about two aisles of furniture, and then the third tier in the back which was chained off, but nothing was really there either.
Good find on the elevator. I didn’t think it was original, but since it was one of those creepy freight elvators, open sort of with mess walls, it “looked” old.
I was in the balcony of the RKO Madison yesterday. I was in Ridgewood, and and figured I’d check out what the Liberty Dept store had for sale while I was on that end of Myrtle Ave…. To my surprise, I noticed that the old Grand Staircase leading up to the balcony was open, and a sign that said, “Come visit our furniture dept on the second floor”. They didn’t have to invite me twice….so up I went…. There is NO remnant whatsoever of the ornate white marble staircase. At the top of the stairway, they have a straight drywall wall on the left (which does not incorporate the curve of the balcony, so I’d say at least one or two levels of the actually balcony are cut off on the side, and dead space. There was a closed door in this drywall wall. The furniture section’s floor is not sloped, but it does have three tiers, with ramps connecting each tier. There is NO remnant of the original plaster ceiling. It’s drywall now too. On the other side of the balcony, there was an open OLD door, which led to the other stairway to the balcony, which is a stairwell, quite old, and that leads downstairs. I did poke my head in and the floor is nondescript, and the walls are green painted plaster, which may be original, but there is no ornamentation in the plaster whatsoever, so I am not sure. The the right of that is a, what seems to be, old elevator, the frieght elevator type of things though, so it may only “look” old. The back wall is drywalled too, no evidence of the projection room. What I REALLY wanted to do is open the door in the fake drywall wall facing the stage, as I have a feeling, the open space of the Madison Theater, and the bottom mhalf of the balcony is on the other side of that door……
Forget the last 15 years, while that is no doubt true, I can’t believe how much it’s evcen changed in the last 5 years! Everytime you go there, if you haven’t been there for a few months, it looks totally different.
Agreed. One thing to note though also is that a theater needs more than just the neighborhood people coming to it to survive. Atlas Park, and the Forest Hills theaters get a lot of outside activity. I myself used to take the subway from Ridgewood to Forest Hills to see movies at the Continental (Brandon) or Midway years back.
To add…of course while I am sure the Cinemart felt a blow after the Atlas Terminal Theater opened, they also get a blow probably from the Forest Hills Theaters like the Midway 9, and the theater on Austin St that used to be called the Continental (I forgot what it’s called today).
We were all worried about the Ridgewood Theater in Ridgewood closing when the Atlas Park Terminal Theater in Glendale opened….but apparently, the Cinemart may fall first, a victim of the nearby Atlas Park 8
I find it amazing that a theater as famous as the Apollo, perhaps one of the most famous theater in the world, and even though it only was a film house briefly, it’s unimaginable that there is absolutely no opening paragraph or intruduction above.
Well, it’s officialy….the Plaza Theater has FINALLY been condemned, and will be torn down. An end to a two decade long battle to rid East Main Street of the blight of the Plaza Theater.
Here’s an article from the Long Island Advance:
View link
Here’s some quotes from the article about the theater:
[i]
…
The theater condemnation has spurred other positive movement along the corridor, Eddington explained. For instance, a developer has opted to buy the abandoned True Value Hardware Store, located across the street from the theater and a little further east. Like the Plaza Theatre, the hardware store has also become an eyesore and roost for pigeons.
“The condemnation of the Plaza Theatre is what appears to have spurred this developer into wanting the True Value Property,†said Eddington. Eddington added that the new owner has agreed to pay for an extension of the Patchogue sewer system up to his building and to pay for the caps needed for other businesses en route to hook into sewer lines as well.
…
The corridor project itself, said Eddington, for now will include buying the several parcels of land on which the Plaza Theatre is located in order to convert the back parcels into a large off-street parking lot; realigning the two intersections; and improving the traffic flow on East Main Street from Route 112 to Phyllis Drive and between Swan Lake and County Route 101.
Eddington said he negotiated with Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who had removed $4 million for the project from the county’s 2007 budget. “The Patchogue East Main Street Project was just one of several projects put on hold when the legislature brought the capital budget in $14 million over. I negotiated for Levy’s help with the Plaza Theatre condemnation and for enough money to be placed into the 2007 budget to get a number of things done on the project,†he said.
…
[/i]
[i]so budgets are designed for very little staff (who are required {otherwise fired} to walk through the auditoriums every 15 minutes with a flashlight.
[/i]
Yeah, what the hell is that! Itg must be true, as I have seen this myself! Every friggen so many minutes some guy would walk down the aisle in the middle of the movie with a flashlight, and then walk out. VERY distracting. What the heck is the reason for that?
While I must say, the popcorn was great at the Patchogue (probably the best I have had in a while in a theater), that’s about the only positive I could say about my last experience there. The cost of a popcorn and a drink was more that the price of the tickets themselves, and I missed the beginning of the movie because the line took forever to buy the concessions.
A real shame, because the place was quite busy, it would probably be even busier if it was better maintained.
Actually, for a theater with so many responses, and it’s status as the longest continuously operating theater in the City and perhaps NY state, it’s whole introduction leaves much to be desired.
Even today, I don’t think “movie going” is a dying trend. People still enjoy going to a theater to watch a movie. Any time I ever go to see a movie, the multiplex is usually packed. Theaters are usually full. It is the multiplexing and the way movies are distributed that killed the old movie theaters. While the number of theaters of course has decreased exponentially, the number of sceens probably hasn’t. You just have 12+ screen mulitplexes doing the job now.
Many theaters lasted into the 70’s, I think the RKO Keith’s fell as an earlier one.
BTW, the RKO Keith’s is far from lost. It’s a diamond in the rough, but entirely restorable. The plaster is in okay shape. Even many of the detailing like Chandeliers all still exist, railings, everything. It would be costly, but it’s not a lost cause by any means, unlike many others that have been gutted, such as the RKO Madison.
There is no damage to the integrity of the Keith’s, and in the meantime, it’s being maintained, so who knows….perhaps if there is a viable use for it, it could come back again.
I am not sure of the exact date, but I believe at this point it was a Bingo Hall/Flea Market longer than it was a theater. I first set foot in the Keiths back around 1981 or so, and it was already a flea market then already, and by the look, it was closed quite a while already then. I would estimate the early 70’s some time, but that is totally an estimated guess, it perhaps even could have been the late 60’s. It s a LONG time either way.
Wow, that brings back SO many memories….and wow, it’s “so” 80’s!!
Seeing the video though makes me remember that place almost perfectly from the roller rink days. I was lucky enough to remember it as both a theater in the 70’s when I was a kid, and as the roller rink as a teenager….many a good times in both ways…
Mike, do you have a direct link? I can’t seem to find it, what’s the title of the video there?
Hahaha, I used to remember that in the 70’s at the Ridgewood Theater when it was still one large theater. You would be watching a movie and all of a sudden daylight would flood the auditorium and kids would be running in from the left side doors…
In some cases this may be true, but in the case of the Patchogue, Theater 13 IS the same exact building it always was, even when it was the indoor theater for the drive in. They did NOT demolish the building, and instead incorporated it into the new multiplex attached to it. If they tore down the drive in indoor theater, I may say you guys have a point, but in this case, you are sitting in the exact same theater you would have sat in when attending the drive in indoor theater when you vist Theater 13 today. I saw Empire Strikes Back at the Patchogue drive in’s indoor theater….if I attend a movie in Theater 13, it’s the SAME theater.
That happened once at the AMC Empire 25 on 42nd Street in manhattan too. ANd it was also some kid’s movie that it was supposed to be, and it turned out to some movie where the character hangs himself from a tree in the opening scene. These switches always seems to be switched for kids movies…
Maybe we should just go to Cypress Hills and ask Mae West, haha.
The church at the Belvedere is supposedly building a new church at the Stop N Shop site across the street from the Belvedere, from what that thread says. I don’t know how true it is or not.
Hmmm. I was never in the balcony when the Madison was a theater…only the orchestra level. Lost Memory brought up an interesting point. So what you are telling me is that the Grand Staircase and the other side stairwell, led to a landing/hallyway which then opened into the balcony. I have a feeling that the furniture area may be in that hallyway landing, and not actually the balcony. There were three tiers, but perhaps, they took a wall down towards the back of the hallway to make the area bigger.
I have a feeling, the actually balcony may be both ABOVE and to the right of the furniture area. If you look at the old photo (Peter, it does work, so it must be a problem on your end), there is a left and right entry area with a railing…but there is ALSO a center entrance. Notice that the balcony is both ABOVE and below those entrances. I have a feeling that that door I wanted to open leads to the CENTER entrance of the balcony as seen in the photo, and the entire balcony may still be unuses. That WOULD explain the floor NOT being sloped. I thought they had altered something, but they may not have, and I may not have been in the actual balcony, but that landing instead. I am at a disadvantage, because I don’t know the actual layout of what the Madison’s balcony originally looked like.
The answer may be to open that door…..
Okay, judging from this photo Warren posted:
View link
…the balcony wall upstairs is from where you see that railing on the right half way up (where you come up from the grand staircase), and goes straight through the length of the middle of the balcony. The level in front of that is behind that door I mentioned that I wanted to open. Anything behind that is now the furniture deparment, which they “flattened” by making the three flat tiers out of it.
I still can’t figure out where that second staircase would have come down judging by the photo, but I “think” it may have been the extreme right (if facing the stage) of the inner lobby.
Now what exactly is this photo of Warrens? Is that the inner lobby, I can’t place it, especially picturing what the interior of the Madison looks like today….
Which way is this facing?
View link
Peter… I don’t remember from the theater days where that stairway came down. That second stairway IS original though. No doubt about that (and most balconies did have two (or sometimes more) stairways. I can see the door on the main level which leads to that stairway. From it’s positioin downstairs, it appears it came down either in the back right (if facing the stage) part of the theater (similar to how the RKO Keiths in Richmond Hills second stairway did), or it may have came down to the inner lobby. It’s hard to tell, as the “store” is one big room, and it’s hard to tell where the outer lobby ended, or the inner lobby ended. You can only see where the enge of the balcony was within the auditorium itself.
Lost, no, they did not extend the balcony at all. They actually shortened it (well not physically, but they put a wall up blocking off the curved edge of the balcony out, and perhaps even the lowest level of the balcony). When you get to the top of the stairway, the wall is immediately on your left, whereas in the theater days, you probably had some rows of seating to the left, and of course the curve of the balcony. Picture the letter U the balcony, but you put up a straight line through it where the curve begins, making the U square.
Also, there is NO DOUBT it’s the original balcony, and not something rebuilt. They may have platfomed it a bit (thus the three tiers I described) because of course the original balcony would have been sloped, which would of course not lend well to a store use, so thus the three tiers with ramps connecting them. It makes about two aisles of furniture, and then the third tier in the back which was chained off, but nothing was really there either.
Good find on the elevator. I didn’t think it was original, but since it was one of those creepy freight elvators, open sort of with mess walls, it “looked” old.
And no, Mae West was not up there…..
I was in the balcony of the RKO Madison yesterday. I was in Ridgewood, and and figured I’d check out what the Liberty Dept store had for sale while I was on that end of Myrtle Ave…. To my surprise, I noticed that the old Grand Staircase leading up to the balcony was open, and a sign that said, “Come visit our furniture dept on the second floor”. They didn’t have to invite me twice….so up I went…. There is NO remnant whatsoever of the ornate white marble staircase. At the top of the stairway, they have a straight drywall wall on the left (which does not incorporate the curve of the balcony, so I’d say at least one or two levels of the actually balcony are cut off on the side, and dead space. There was a closed door in this drywall wall. The furniture section’s floor is not sloped, but it does have three tiers, with ramps connecting each tier. There is NO remnant of the original plaster ceiling. It’s drywall now too. On the other side of the balcony, there was an open OLD door, which led to the other stairway to the balcony, which is a stairwell, quite old, and that leads downstairs. I did poke my head in and the floor is nondescript, and the walls are green painted plaster, which may be original, but there is no ornamentation in the plaster whatsoever, so I am not sure. The the right of that is a, what seems to be, old elevator, the frieght elevator type of things though, so it may only “look” old. The back wall is drywalled too, no evidence of the projection room. What I REALLY wanted to do is open the door in the fake drywall wall facing the stage, as I have a feeling, the open space of the Madison Theater, and the bottom mhalf of the balcony is on the other side of that door……
Looks like Manhattan….certainly not Ridgewood, haha. Is that theater burning to the ground in that photo, what is that smoke!?
Forget the last 15 years, while that is no doubt true, I can’t believe how much it’s evcen changed in the last 5 years! Everytime you go there, if you haven’t been there for a few months, it looks totally different.
I don’t think they use the word “closed” unless the building sits empty. The building is very much open and in use, just not as a theater….
Agreed. One thing to note though also is that a theater needs more than just the neighborhood people coming to it to survive. Atlas Park, and the Forest Hills theaters get a lot of outside activity. I myself used to take the subway from Ridgewood to Forest Hills to see movies at the Continental (Brandon) or Midway years back.
To add…of course while I am sure the Cinemart felt a blow after the Atlas Terminal Theater opened, they also get a blow probably from the Forest Hills Theaters like the Midway 9, and the theater on Austin St that used to be called the Continental (I forgot what it’s called today).
We were all worried about the Ridgewood Theater in Ridgewood closing when the Atlas Park Terminal Theater in Glendale opened….but apparently, the Cinemart may fall first, a victim of the nearby Atlas Park 8
Did this theater have double balconies when it was one theater? How is it layed out now that they have nine?
BTW, The Pavilion is shown in a new article at Forgotten NY:
View link