Times Square Playpen may get demolished for high-rise
BY LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, September 14th 2007, 4:00 AM
Eighth Ave. theater dating to 1916 is likely be replaced by a tower.
A historic Times Square theater that opened as a vaudeville showplace 91 years ago and closed as a porn shop last month appears headed for a date with a wrecking ball.
Unless preservationists prevail, the Playpen on Eighth Ave. at W. 44th St., once considered for landmark status that would have protected it, likely will be torn down and replaced by a high-rise.
Leading the battle to save the Playpen, which opened in 1916 as the Ideal, is Michael Perlman of Manhattan, who wants to keep intact the building’s Beaux-Arts facade with its curved central arch, pilasters, statues and other ornate features.
With few theaters dating from the early 20th century still around, one of the oldest “shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of progress,” he said.
“It’s a culturally, architecturally significant structure, and we hope to preserve this gem for future generations.”
A group called the Committee to Save the Playpen Theater has joined Perlman in calling for the Playpen to be spared.
Perlman played a key role in the recent rescue of the Moondance Diner in SoHo, but saving the Playpen would be harder.
The Tishman Realty Corp. got the property in July and said it already was looking at “development options.”
During its life, the Playpen operated under at least eight different names, offering screen fare ranging from foreign films and Hollywood B-movies to Scandinavian skin flicks and gay movies.
As the Adonis, it was closed by city health inspectors in 1994 after patrons were seen taking part in “high-risk sexual activities.”
I worry that if you ask them to lower the sound of the previews then they won’t turn it back up for the feature. And I actually like booming trailers — it starts the show off with a bang!
IFA comes here and shills for his beloved War and Peace (soon to be screening at one of the smallest screens in New York,) and then comes back to mock us in his barely-translated gibberish. At the risk of starting a flame war, I can think of several Anglo-Saxon things that the letters IFA must stand for.
I see that a Katherine Hepburn picture was scheduled to play for three days, April 18 – 20, 1933, during her “box office poison” period. Therefore, I blame Miss Hepburn for the closing of this theater.
[Photo caption: Until just a few weeks ago, the World Trade Center continued to glow at night on the facade of the Playpen cinema. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)]
The homogenization of the Times Square area (yes, The Times has contributed to the phenomenon with its new headquarters opposite the Port Authority Bus Terminal) has claimed another quirky victim: the Playpen, a former cinema that closed recently after 90-odd years.
Very odd years.
The Playpen is part of a larger parcel at the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 44th Street that is owned by a partnership including affiliates of the Tishman Realty Corporation. The partners have not gone public with their plans. They may not even have decided yet among themselves. But the future certainly does not include the old theater.
What Eighth Avenue will lose with its disappearance is more than an adults-only emporium with suggestive neon come-ons â€" “Live Girls,†“Preview Booths,†“Leather & Lace.†It will lose the last home of the Funny Store, an almost vaudevillian novelty shop. It will lose one of the most distinctive façades of any surviving theater from the early 20th century, a kind of heroic Palladian composition. And will lose a three-dimensional history lesson in the evolution of Times Square.
The Ideal Theater, designed by Eisendrath & Horwitz, opened in 1916 as a modest movie house, with 598 seats. It attracted some notice in 1935 for showing an Italian-language movie, “Dopo una Notte d’Amore†(â€After a Night of Loveâ€). Briefly known as the Esquire, it stayed in business until early 1937. It reopened a few months later as the Squire. In 1939, it was renamed the Cinecitta and played Italian films for a while.
Once again the Squire in 1941, it showed “The Eternal Gift,†said to be the first feature-length depiction of the Roman Catholic high mass, and the documentary, “Greece on the March.â€
Such serious fare had disappeared by 1946, when “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors†topped the bill. During a tense moment on screen one evening, a 10-by-20-foot section of the theater’s ceiling fell down, injuring 19 patrons. Those in the front seats were unruffled, thinking they were hearing weird sound effects. By the 1950s, “girlie†films were drawing customers to the Squire.
The theater’s next transformation occurred in 1956, when it reopened as the New Cameo, a theater devoted to Russian films, beginning with the Mosfilm production of “Boris Godunov,†starring Alexander Pirogov. “A casual observer must shudder at the thought of the terrible shock and dismay of a former Squire patron who might wander into the theater looking wistfully for Rose La Rose or Lili St. Cyr,†wrote Bosley Crowther, who was then The Times’s movie critic.
Eventually, the theater became simply the Cameo. This was its most fitting name since the central arch is flanked sculptural cameos, showing women in diaphanous robes, one with a spool of movie film and the other with a camera. The Cameo was the showcase in 1970 for the blue movie, “Sexual Freedom in Denmark.â€
Blue gave way to X over time, and then the “Cameo†on the marquee gave way to the Adonis, when that gay movie theater was pushed out of its home six blocks north on Eighth Avenue. The new Adonis was closed by the city’s Department of Health in 1994 after inspectors observed what they called “high-risk sexual activities†taking place among patrons, without “any attempts to monitor or control them.â€
Lately, the theater was the Playpen, whose marquee loosely traced the New York skyline in red neon. It included the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which still stood and still glowed at night in their uptown incarnation. And yes, Eighth Avenue is losing those, too.
I don’t think there’s a rule against displaying a photo in a post, I think most of us just don’t know how to do it. There are other photos in posts here and there on this site; I wish there were more.
There is an Aztec Theater in the Simpson’s hometown of Springfield, but I couldn’t find a listing for it on Cinema Treasures. You can spot the theater in the Simpsons movie. I didn’t notice a Springfield Theater, though.
I find it very irritating that many studios' newspapers ads in the local papers don’t list the individual theaters anymore — they simply say “check local listings,” like they do in the national editions. Why should I do the distributors' work and look in the movie clock (which isn’t in all papers) or look on line?
I want to look at the ad, look at the bottom for the theater listings, and for Manhattan listings I want to see the times. Is that really too much to ask?
Actually, if the theaters aren’t listed in an ad, then I am less likely to the see that movie. To save a little time or money, they are shooting themselves in the foot.
There is an Aztec Theater in the Simpson’s hometown of Springfield, but I couldn’t find a listing for it on Cinema Treasures. You can spot the theater in the Simpsons movie.
Bosley Crowther didn’t think so, as indicated in his review posted above on 8/14/07 and excerpted here:
“The great values in this lyric drama of the Negro residents of Catfish Row, an old slum quarter in Charleston, S. C., are colorfulness, vitality and the eloquence in the music that expresses its characters' joys and sorrows. These are the essential values that are handsomely and throbbingly put forth in this film, which opened last night at the Warner Theatre for a road-show run.”
And speaking of Pete’s Dragon (were we?) I just saw it on a VHS tape I bought from the Lynbrook Public Library for 25 cents, and boy did I over-pay. Dull story, pedestrian music and lyrics, hammy acting from Mickey Rooney and company — I have no choice but to blame it for almost single-handedly closing the Music Hall. I don’t know what kind of business it brought in, but it must have done wonders for the concessions, because every time Helen Reddy sang a song, I wanted to go to the lobby for popcorn or a souvenir — and I was watching it in my bedroom! (My 3 yr. old daughter’s attention wandered a bit, too, but then she immediately wanted to see it two more times again, anyway…go figure!)
I think that’s a (deliberate?) misreading.
The Globe’s (Lunt-Fontanne) marquee on Broadway was gorgeous. /theaters/2924/
Times Square Playpen may get demolished for high-rise
BY LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, September 14th 2007, 4:00 AM
Eighth Ave. theater dating to 1916 is likely be replaced by a tower.
A historic Times Square theater that opened as a vaudeville showplace 91 years ago and closed as a porn shop last month appears headed for a date with a wrecking ball.
Unless preservationists prevail, the Playpen on Eighth Ave. at W. 44th St., once considered for landmark status that would have protected it, likely will be torn down and replaced by a high-rise.
Leading the battle to save the Playpen, which opened in 1916 as the Ideal, is Michael Perlman of Manhattan, who wants to keep intact the building’s Beaux-Arts facade with its curved central arch, pilasters, statues and other ornate features.
With few theaters dating from the early 20th century still around, one of the oldest “shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of progress,” he said.
“It’s a culturally, architecturally significant structure, and we hope to preserve this gem for future generations.”
A group called the Committee to Save the Playpen Theater has joined Perlman in calling for the Playpen to be spared.
Perlman played a key role in the recent rescue of the Moondance Diner in SoHo, but saving the Playpen would be harder.
The Tishman Realty Corp. got the property in July and said it already was looking at “development options.”
During its life, the Playpen operated under at least eight different names, offering screen fare ranging from foreign films and Hollywood B-movies to Scandinavian skin flicks and gay movies.
As the Adonis, it was closed by city health inspectors in 1994 after patrons were seen taking part in “high-risk sexual activities.”
With The Associated Press
I worry that if you ask them to lower the sound of the previews then they won’t turn it back up for the feature. And I actually like booming trailers — it starts the show off with a bang!
Aarrgh…
I wish I had visited during its seedy, “pervert’s paradise” days. You can’t really find that kind of decrepitude anymore.
IFA comes here and shills for his beloved War and Peace (soon to be screening at one of the smallest screens in New York,) and then comes back to mock us in his barely-translated gibberish. At the risk of starting a flame war, I can think of several Anglo-Saxon things that the letters IFA must stand for.
I see that a Katherine Hepburn picture was scheduled to play for three days, April 18 – 20, 1933, during her “box office poison” period. Therefore, I blame Miss Hepburn for the closing of this theater.
Please enter listings for all these houses — the Strand, the Grove, the Nickelodeon, the Bon Ton, etc.
Sounds like a lot of action for what seems to be a one-horse town.
Next thing you’ll tell me is that there’s no Santa Claus.
I don’t see the above-quoted caption, either “…the old Fox Theatre building being razed. The new Fox is on the left.”
Link to image here (Sorry so big…don’t know/remember how to shrink it)
View link
F*ck!
Here’s the entire article.
September 7, 2007, 10:11 am
A Seedy Eighth Avenue Landmark, Gone Dark
By David W. Dunlap
[Photo caption: Until just a few weeks ago, the World Trade Center continued to glow at night on the facade of the Playpen cinema. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)]
The homogenization of the Times Square area (yes, The Times has contributed to the phenomenon with its new headquarters opposite the Port Authority Bus Terminal) has claimed another quirky victim: the Playpen, a former cinema that closed recently after 90-odd years.
Very odd years.
The Playpen is part of a larger parcel at the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 44th Street that is owned by a partnership including affiliates of the Tishman Realty Corporation. The partners have not gone public with their plans. They may not even have decided yet among themselves. But the future certainly does not include the old theater.
What Eighth Avenue will lose with its disappearance is more than an adults-only emporium with suggestive neon come-ons â€" “Live Girls,†“Preview Booths,†“Leather & Lace.†It will lose the last home of the Funny Store, an almost vaudevillian novelty shop. It will lose one of the most distinctive façades of any surviving theater from the early 20th century, a kind of heroic Palladian composition. And will lose a three-dimensional history lesson in the evolution of Times Square.
The Ideal Theater, designed by Eisendrath & Horwitz, opened in 1916 as a modest movie house, with 598 seats. It attracted some notice in 1935 for showing an Italian-language movie, “Dopo una Notte d’Amore†(â€After a Night of Loveâ€). Briefly known as the Esquire, it stayed in business until early 1937. It reopened a few months later as the Squire. In 1939, it was renamed the Cinecitta and played Italian films for a while.
Once again the Squire in 1941, it showed “The Eternal Gift,†said to be the first feature-length depiction of the Roman Catholic high mass, and the documentary, “Greece on the March.â€
Such serious fare had disappeared by 1946, when “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors†topped the bill. During a tense moment on screen one evening, a 10-by-20-foot section of the theater’s ceiling fell down, injuring 19 patrons. Those in the front seats were unruffled, thinking they were hearing weird sound effects. By the 1950s, “girlie†films were drawing customers to the Squire.
The theater’s next transformation occurred in 1956, when it reopened as the New Cameo, a theater devoted to Russian films, beginning with the Mosfilm production of “Boris Godunov,†starring Alexander Pirogov. “A casual observer must shudder at the thought of the terrible shock and dismay of a former Squire patron who might wander into the theater looking wistfully for Rose La Rose or Lili St. Cyr,†wrote Bosley Crowther, who was then The Times’s movie critic.
Eventually, the theater became simply the Cameo. This was its most fitting name since the central arch is flanked sculptural cameos, showing women in diaphanous robes, one with a spool of movie film and the other with a camera. The Cameo was the showcase in 1970 for the blue movie, “Sexual Freedom in Denmark.â€
Blue gave way to X over time, and then the “Cameo†on the marquee gave way to the Adonis, when that gay movie theater was pushed out of its home six blocks north on Eighth Avenue. The new Adonis was closed by the city’s Department of Health in 1994 after inspectors observed what they called “high-risk sexual activities†taking place among patrons, without “any attempts to monitor or control them.â€
Lately, the theater was the Playpen, whose marquee loosely traced the New York skyline in red neon. It included the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which still stood and still glowed at night in their uptown incarnation. And yes, Eighth Avenue is losing those, too.
I don’t think there’s a rule against displaying a photo in a post, I think most of us just don’t know how to do it. There are other photos in posts here and there on this site; I wish there were more.
There is an Aztec Theater in the Simpson’s hometown of Springfield, but I couldn’t find a listing for it on Cinema Treasures. You can spot the theater in the Simpsons movie. I didn’t notice a Springfield Theater, though.
I find it very irritating that many studios' newspapers ads in the local papers don’t list the individual theaters anymore — they simply say “check local listings,” like they do in the national editions. Why should I do the distributors' work and look in the movie clock (which isn’t in all papers) or look on line?
I want to look at the ad, look at the bottom for the theater listings, and for Manhattan listings I want to see the times. Is that really too much to ask?
Actually, if the theaters aren’t listed in an ad, then I am less likely to the see that movie. To save a little time or money, they are shooting themselves in the foot.
There is an Aztec Theater in the Simpson’s hometown of Springfield, but I couldn’t find a listing for it on Cinema Treasures. You can spot the theater in the Simpsons movie.
Maybe he was ashamed that he lip-synced a role that should have gone to a singing actor.
Bosley Crowther didn’t think so, as indicated in his review posted above on 8/14/07 and excerpted here:
“The great values in this lyric drama of the Negro residents of Catfish Row, an old slum quarter in Charleston, S. C., are colorfulness, vitality and the eloquence in the music that expresses its characters' joys and sorrows. These are the essential values that are handsomely and throbbingly put forth in this film, which opened last night at the Warner Theatre for a road-show run.”
I see that Love Camp 27 was playing at the Liberty. I think that was their favorite second feature, because it seemed to play there for years.
Lines outside a theater do create a kind of excitement, too, sort of an air of exclusiveness.
We’re lucky the Cinerama screen is still on site, although presently folded up.
And speaking of Pete’s Dragon (were we?) I just saw it on a VHS tape I bought from the Lynbrook Public Library for 25 cents, and boy did I over-pay. Dull story, pedestrian music and lyrics, hammy acting from Mickey Rooney and company — I have no choice but to blame it for almost single-handedly closing the Music Hall. I don’t know what kind of business it brought in, but it must have done wonders for the concessions, because every time Helen Reddy sang a song, I wanted to go to the lobby for popcorn or a souvenir — and I was watching it in my bedroom! (My 3 yr. old daughter’s attention wandered a bit, too, but then she immediately wanted to see it two more times again, anyway…go figure!)
I wish that image was bigger because I can’t read the names of the theaters!