Yes, MartyBraun, thank you. Downtown Richmond Hill has always been special to me, and by posting your description of the RKO Keith Richmond Hill, you have made it even more special, and magical. Thank you.
Thanks for the pic, Warren. I know both that block, and the trolley’s successor, the Flushing-Ridgewood bus, very well.
I used to regularly eat at the Wendy’s a few blocks north of there, near the southwest corner of Main and Roosevelt, as recently as fall 1999. Fortunately, I was no longer eating there when it was shot up and terrorized by criminals in May 2000.
Bobosan, which Jahn’s are you referring to ? I think the one in Richmond Hill, next door to the former RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill, is the only one left in NYC. I was last there April 4, 2004. It was so dark, quiet and empty there, I’ve been in brighter and livelier funeral parlors !
Eddie’s Sweet Shop across the street from the Cinemart Cinemas on Metropolitan Avenue in Forest Hills was, fortunately, still much busier and livelier. I was last there Saturday August 6 2005.
Thanks. I’ve been there, as well as to Salerno’s to the north (last ate there Saturday Sept. 8, 1990) and Jahn’s to the south (Saturday April 4, 2004 : sadly, I’ve been to livelier and brighter funeral homes, compared to how it was then !)
It’s also a flea market, about which Bway may have something more to say.
Bill, I wish you well with the software-aided music you are now composing. Perhaps you didn’t have Br. A. Edward for humanities that year.
I said hello to Gasper Ilasi for you at lunch today, but he unfortunately did not remember you from the Prep, glee club or otherwise, although I tried to jog his memory.
Thanks for the correction, Bway, and for the reminder about “The Fair”. I bought some shirts there in spring 1995. ABC = Always Bring Cash or : Aloha Bill Clinton ! Yes, that’s the one I mean. The name “H L Green” was probably before your time.
You’re welcome, Bill, and thanks for answering me. Where did you find an on-line photo of Joe Kriz ? I almost re-connected with him in Chicago in the 1980’s, courtesy of my friend and classmate Terry McHale. Joe’s address was listed as “North Mozart”, appropriately enough.
I will say hello to Gasper for you when I see him at lunch today.
Woolworth’s on Myrtle Avenue has become a Foot Locker and several other stores. S.H. Kresge’s became a Robbins, then something else.
I think H.L. Green, “the third five and ten”, as my parents and I called it, on the north side of Myrtle between Onderdonk and Forest Avenues, is still H.L. Green.
The closest Queens library to where you lived on Seneca and Menahan would have been the Ridgewood Branch at 20-12 Madison Street between Fairview and Forest Avenues. I started going there early 1969 after the Irving Branch started seeming “unsafe”.
I remember an intense discussion with you about computers and music in the Pace College cafeteria in lower Manhattan near where I work now, the first Sunday in March 1972. We were there for the Math Fair, to present our papers, along with Robert Dominijani (sp ?) and Richard Dittus (I remember his paper was titled “History Of Zero”).
You seemed very interested when I mentioned something Br. A. Edward Wesley had said in my class a a year before about composer Iannis Xenakis feeding Beethoven into a computer to produce his “composition”, “Occident / Orient”. Perhaps you had Br. A. Edward for humanities in your senior year at the Prep (1971-72).
Welcome, Bill Joel, SFP Class of 1972 ! This is Peter Koch, SFP Class of 1973. This Ridgewood Theater page was quite a “wailing wall"
of SFP, St. Brigid and St. Matthias graduates for awhile !
Last Friday I attended the wake of John J. Pinzel, SFP Class of 1973.
John died August 29 2005 after a lengthy battle with cancer.
Thanks to this site, I have re-established personal contact with your fellow former glee club member, Gasper Ilasi, SFP Class of 1973.
I expect to have lunch with him tomorrow.
Bill, have you been teased alot re : singer, songwriter, pianist Billy Joel ?
EdSolero, the former Valencia, now the Tabernacle Of Prayer, is a different story. It reads like a strong Christian church, and I see no reason not to go inside.
I have read that the interior there has been repainted in colors gaudier than the original decor, and that the naked cherubs on the ceiling have been covered for modesty.
Warren, I never knew that St. Sebastian’s in Woodside was once a Loew’s movie house. I’ve passed it so many times on the el, yet have never been inside. Yet a friend of mine once was. Thanks for mentioning this.
Joe G., good having you back. My father remembers the Night In The Sky / New Eastern Chinese Restaurant, from around 1929 or so, at the eastern corner of Bway and Cooper, third floor.
It’s a red and white striped building now. Bway can provide a link to a photo, if he hasn’t, already.
I was last there Saturday Aug 6 2005, about 3 p.m. Just as I was getting off the Manhattan-bound Bway el at Chauncey Street station, Westminster Chimes type bell sounds were coming out of the loudspeaker atop the roof of the Wayside Baptist Church, formerly the Colonial Theater. I then exited down to the street at the eastern corner of Bway and Cooper, next to the former Night In The Sky / New Eastern Chinese Restaurant.
Thanks, Bway and lostmemory. As you might recall, Bway, that nycsubway.org image had been a mystery “location unknown” for awhile. My initial thought was that it was some odd, double-domed bank building near the Marcy Avenue station. As I recall, what finally tagged it at 111th Street on the Jamaica el was that “skewed” apt. bldg. to the right of the theater building in the nycsubway.org photo. It’s good to have links to photos of it here from both the “el” and street levels, so we can see how it’s the same building.
Thank you, lostmemory. Yet another reminder that Ridgewood now, in so many unpleasant ways, is nothing like the Ridgewood you and I and so many others on this board grew up in.
Here’s a gruesome irony : someone had to be found murdered in the Ridgewood Theater for it to be correctly identified as being in Queens, although the newspapers still list it as being in Brooklyn.
It also reminds me of the Clive Barker short story, “Son Of Celluloid”, in a volume of his “Books Of Blood”, which takes place in an old movie theater in which someone has died.
Excuse me if this question has already been answered, but did the discovery of this murder lead to improvements inside the Ridgewood Theater ?
My father remembers an appearance by Al Jolson at the RKO Madison Theater in Ridgewood, Queens, almost on the Brooklyn-Queens border, and probably, like the Ridgewood, to this day, listed in newspapers as being in Brooklyn.
My dad remembers that Jolson “brought the house down” with “Mammy” and other big numbers. He also claims to have met Jolson coming out of the subway a block from the Madison Theater at Myrtle, Wyckoff and Palmetto, directing him to the Madison, and getting free passes to the show as a result.
I would have thought a star of Jolson’s stature would have pulled up to the back entrance of the Madison on Madison Street in a limousine and entered the theater that way.
Joe From Florida, have you started a page on the Rogers Theater on this site yet ? It may be worth our while for you to do so, to facilitate this discussion of small now-gone theaters by us fond ex-Bushwick-ites.
Yes, MartyBraun, thank you. Downtown Richmond Hill has always been special to me, and by posting your description of the RKO Keith Richmond Hill, you have made it even more special, and magical. Thank you.
Wacky Eddie is with Mae West either in his dreams, or in the Twilight Zone ! While there, check under “C” for cinema, or “T” for troll !
I know what you mean. Tastes good to me ! That says a lot for Jahn’s in those days.
The last time I saw Jahn’s with any degree of liveliness was when I went there Saturday April 21, 1990.
Great photos, lostmemory. Thanks a lot !
Thanks for the pic, Warren. I know both that block, and the trolley’s successor, the Flushing-Ridgewood bus, very well.
I used to regularly eat at the Wendy’s a few blocks north of there, near the southwest corner of Main and Roosevelt, as recently as fall 1999. Fortunately, I was no longer eating there when it was shot up and terrorized by criminals in May 2000.
Bobosan, which Jahn’s are you referring to ? I think the one in Richmond Hill, next door to the former RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill, is the only one left in NYC. I was last there April 4, 2004. It was so dark, quiet and empty there, I’ve been in brighter and livelier funeral parlors !
Eddie’s Sweet Shop across the street from the Cinemart Cinemas on Metropolitan Avenue in Forest Hills was, fortunately, still much busier and livelier. I was last there Saturday August 6 2005.
Bway, I like your implicit naming of the ex-Valencia’s current interior color scheme : puke camouflage !
Yes, paint is only paint, and the interior still survives. It could be worse. Think of the former RKO Madison in Ridgewood (# 4621 on this site).
Thanks. I’ve been there, as well as to Salerno’s to the north (last ate there Saturday Sept. 8, 1990) and Jahn’s to the south (Saturday April 4, 2004 : sadly, I’ve been to livelier and brighter funeral homes, compared to how it was then !)
It’s also a flea market, about which Bway may have something more to say.
Bill, I wish you well with the software-aided music you are now composing. Perhaps you didn’t have Br. A. Edward for humanities that year.
I said hello to Gasper Ilasi for you at lunch today, but he unfortunately did not remember you from the Prep, glee club or otherwise, although I tried to jog his memory.
Thanks for the correction, Bway, and for the reminder about “The Fair”. I bought some shirts there in spring 1995. ABC = Always Bring Cash or : Aloha Bill Clinton ! Yes, that’s the one I mean. The name “H L Green” was probably before your time.
You’re welcome, Bill, and thanks for answering me. Where did you find an on-line photo of Joe Kriz ? I almost re-connected with him in Chicago in the 1980’s, courtesy of my friend and classmate Terry McHale. Joe’s address was listed as “North Mozart”, appropriately enough.
I will say hello to Gasper for you when I see him at lunch today.
Woolworth’s on Myrtle Avenue has become a Foot Locker and several other stores. S.H. Kresge’s became a Robbins, then something else.
I think H.L. Green, “the third five and ten”, as my parents and I called it, on the north side of Myrtle between Onderdonk and Forest Avenues, is still H.L. Green.
The closest Queens library to where you lived on Seneca and Menahan would have been the Ridgewood Branch at 20-12 Madison Street between Fairview and Forest Avenues. I started going there early 1969 after the Irving Branch started seeming “unsafe”.
I remember an intense discussion with you about computers and music in the Pace College cafeteria in lower Manhattan near where I work now, the first Sunday in March 1972. We were there for the Math Fair, to present our papers, along with Robert Dominijani (sp ?) and Richard Dittus (I remember his paper was titled “History Of Zero”).
You seemed very interested when I mentioned something Br. A. Edward Wesley had said in my class a a year before about composer Iannis Xenakis feeding Beethoven into a computer to produce his “composition”, “Occident / Orient”. Perhaps you had Br. A. Edward for humanities in your senior year at the Prep (1971-72).
Welcome, Bill Joel, SFP Class of 1972 ! This is Peter Koch, SFP Class of 1973. This Ridgewood Theater page was quite a “wailing wall"
of SFP, St. Brigid and St. Matthias graduates for awhile !
Last Friday I attended the wake of John J. Pinzel, SFP Class of 1973.
John died August 29 2005 after a lengthy battle with cancer.
Thanks to this site, I have re-established personal contact with your fellow former glee club member, Gasper Ilasi, SFP Class of 1973.
I expect to have lunch with him tomorrow.
Bill, have you been teased alot re : singer, songwriter, pianist Billy Joel ?
You’re welcome, EdSolero !
EdSolero, the former Valencia, now the Tabernacle Of Prayer, is a different story. It reads like a strong Christian church, and I see no reason not to go inside.
I have read that the interior there has been repainted in colors gaudier than the original decor, and that the naked cherubs on the ceiling have been covered for modesty.
Warren, I never knew that St. Sebastian’s in Woodside was once a Loew’s movie house. I’ve passed it so many times on the el, yet have never been inside. Yet a friend of mine once was. Thanks for mentioning this.
EdSolero, please don’t become a Jehovah’s Witness, just to get inside of, and photograph the interior of, that former theater ! It’s not worth it !
My first memory of the Wyckoff Theater (there’s a page for it on this site) in Wyckoff Heights, Bklyn, is as a Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall.
Samurai festival on all three Film Forum screens ? Have you complained to Bruce Goldstein yet ?
Cool ! Thanks, Bryan. I know that street corner very well, albeit only since June 1981.
Joe G., good having you back. My father remembers the Night In The Sky / New Eastern Chinese Restaurant, from around 1929 or so, at the eastern corner of Bway and Cooper, third floor.
It’s a red and white striped building now. Bway can provide a link to a photo, if he hasn’t, already.
I was last there Saturday Aug 6 2005, about 3 p.m. Just as I was getting off the Manhattan-bound Bway el at Chauncey Street station, Westminster Chimes type bell sounds were coming out of the loudspeaker atop the roof of the Wayside Baptist Church, formerly the Colonial Theater. I then exited down to the street at the eastern corner of Bway and Cooper, next to the former Night In The Sky / New Eastern Chinese Restaurant.
Thanks, Bway and lostmemory. As you might recall, Bway, that nycsubway.org image had been a mystery “location unknown” for awhile. My initial thought was that it was some odd, double-domed bank building near the Marcy Avenue station. As I recall, what finally tagged it at 111th Street on the Jamaica el was that “skewed” apt. bldg. to the right of the theater building in the nycsubway.org photo. It’s good to have links to photos of it here from both the “el” and street levels, so we can see how it’s the same building.
Yet another case of “els showing the cinemas”.
That’s a good original thought : people thinking there are TWO Ridgewood Theaters because of someone found murdered there !
BTW, Donna Gibson : I graduated St. Brigid in June 1969
Peter Koch
Thank you, lostmemory. Yet another reminder that Ridgewood now, in so many unpleasant ways, is nothing like the Ridgewood you and I and so many others on this board grew up in.
Here’s a gruesome irony : someone had to be found murdered in the Ridgewood Theater for it to be correctly identified as being in Queens, although the newspapers still list it as being in Brooklyn.
It also reminds me of the Clive Barker short story, “Son Of Celluloid”, in a volume of his “Books Of Blood”, which takes place in an old movie theater in which someone has died.
Excuse me if this question has already been answered, but did the discovery of this murder lead to improvements inside the Ridgewood Theater ?
My father remembers an appearance by Al Jolson at the RKO Madison Theater in Ridgewood, Queens, almost on the Brooklyn-Queens border, and probably, like the Ridgewood, to this day, listed in newspapers as being in Brooklyn.
My dad remembers that Jolson “brought the house down” with “Mammy” and other big numbers. He also claims to have met Jolson coming out of the subway a block from the Madison Theater at Myrtle, Wyckoff and Palmetto, directing him to the Madison, and getting free passes to the show as a result.
I would have thought a star of Jolson’s stature would have pulled up to the back entrance of the Madison on Madison Street in a limousine and entered the theater that way.
Thanks.
Joe From Florida, have you started a page on the Rogers Theater on this site yet ? It may be worth our while for you to do so, to facilitate this discussion of small now-gone theaters by us fond ex-Bushwick-ites.