IFC Center
323 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
323 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
34 people
favorited this theater
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Why cant they call it the IFC Waverly?
Who would want to call a theater “the IFC Center”? Six syllables make for so much wasted breath. For me, “the IND Eighth-Avenue to Jamaica” is so much more descriptive and accurate than “E.” With subways, I’d expend any number of syllables in order to know exactly where I’m going.
From the January 25th New York Times…
Past Will Flicker in Village Theater After Renovation
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
here are often second acts in the lives of New York buildings. Sometimes third acts. At a timber-peaked brick box in Greenwich Village – the Waverly Theater to generations of moviegoers – the sixth act is about to begin.
In its newest incarnation, the 174-year-old building at 325 Avenue of the Americas will house the IFC Center, a three-theater complex. Scheduled to open in late spring, the center is meant to embody IFC Companies, a filmmaking and exhibition unit of Cablevision that includes the Independent Film Channel. Jonathan Sehring, the president of IFC Entertainment, said the complex would offer a comfortable and up-to-date place to watch movies and even to dine.
It will also offer audiences a glimpse into the distant past.
Bogdanow Partners Architects, designers of the $8 million renovation, chose to leave the original brick buttresses and roof rafters exposed in the main auditorium. And, as in the Waverly days, the old gabled roof will be visible along West Third Street, even though the facade will be newly framed in illuminated steel mesh panels.
“My view of architectural history is that it doesn’t stop,” said the architect, Larry Bogdanow.
Certainly not at 325 Avenue of the Americas.
Around 1831, the Third Universalist Society built a church on the site. It was enlarged from 1843 to 1844 by St. Jude’s Episcopal Free Church into a sanctuary that could hold nearly 800 worshipers. St. Jude’s successor, St. John’s in the Village, at 224 Waverly Place, still keeps the records of the Sixth Avenue church, which dissolved in 1853.
Poignantly, but with great cursive flourishes, these ledger books chronicle the shrinking of the parish. Mrs. Parcells of 18 Greenwich Avenue: “Disappears the second year; an Adventist.” Mrs. E. Wilson, widow, of 9 Sullivan Street: “Removed to the country.” (“Probably the Bronx,” said the Rev. Lloyd E. Prator, rector of St. John’s.) James McAdam of 109 Fourth Street: “Not right in the head. Belongs to St. Mathews Church.”
The Union Reformed Church, which next occupied the building, undertook a rehabilitation in 1872 that left the place “beautifully decorated and upholstered,” The New York Times reported.
J. & R. Lamb Studios, founded in 1857, was next to arrive. Its 1893 alteration turned the facade into a billboard for the firm’s offerings, but the church’s Gothic style windows and gabled roof were left intact.
“It was a fabulous place – everywhere there was stained glass,” said Barea Lamb Seeley, whose father, Karl B. Lamb, was president of J. & R. Lamb. The place was impressive and welcoming enough to have persuaded Jane Lathrop Stanford, a founder of Stanford University, to offer Lamb an enormous commission: the windows for the university’s Memorial Church, begun in 1899.
The Lambs may have installed the most unusual remaining interior feature at 325 Avenue of the Americas: a 10-foot circular opening in the second-story ceiling. There would have been room enough behind it for electric lights. Perhaps this was the frame for a stained-glass dome.
The Lamb studios moved in 1934 to Tenafly, N.J. (They are now in Clifton, N.J.) The building was remodeled into the Waverly by the architect Harrison Wiseman, who gave it an Art Deco flair but could not shake that gabled rooftop.
The theater opened in 1937 and was best known for midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” beginning in 1976. It made it into the lyrics of “Frank Mills” in the musical “Hair” and was the setting of a scene in the movie “Six Degrees of Separation.”
At the time of its closing in October 2001, the Waverly was run by Clearview Cinemas, a corporate sibling of IFC. For a while, the building looked abandoned. The lobby was boarded up and the marquee explained only that it was “Clo ed for Reno ation.”
Mr. Sehring ascribed the long delay in part to the uncertainty after 9/11. Plans were revised. Two general contractors came and went. And there were more structural problems than expected in converting an adjacent building into a 60-seat theater and a cafe, which will be called the Waverly.
The main theater is to have 220 seats and the upstairs theater 110. Overall, that is a loss of 120 seats from the Waverly era. On the other hand, Mr. Sehring said, “I don’t think the community would have welcomed a twelve-plex.”
It remains to be seen whether it will welcome a new name. With good-natured resignation, John Vanco, the vice president and general manager of the IFC Center, predicted: “There will be people for years who’ll say, ‘We’re taking the IND to the Waverly.’ There’s nothing we can do about that.”
Although it seems to be at a snails pace, it looks like work is being done when I drive by.
I remeber seeing the Holy Mountain by Alexandro Jodoworsky at the Waverly. It’s been many years since I was in New York and seeing the Waverly all boarded up like that was a disappointment.I guess nothing Lasts forever.
The last time I went to the waverly was to see Six Degrees of Separtion, and the fun thing was that a scene in the movie took place outside the waverly, the audience chuckled.
With the Waverly closed, there are what, two cinemas serving the West Village now? There’s the Quad Cinema on 13th St., and Film Forum on Houston. This is a pretty sad state of affairs for the West Village. WHen I first moved to Manhattan, we had the Waverly, the Art Greenwich, the Eighth St. Playhouse, and the UA Movieworld on 8th St. also. There was also the Thalia South. The only other cinemas between Houston and 14th Streets are east of Broadway—the UA theatre at Union Square, the Loews Village VII, and the Village East Cinemas. The Landmark Sunshine is on the south side of Houston.
I hope they will put the theater back to the original way it was before Walter Reade ruined it by twinning it. Has anybody heard any details on the inside?
The IFC Center is scheduled to open in either late 2004 or early 2005. It will contain three screens and be a center for independent film exhibition.
This still looks like not much has been done from the outside, but it’s hard to really tell with all the scafolding.
Does anybody know the status of the Waverly? I heard IFC had purchased the theater. Walter Rede ruined the theater when they twined it.
Alex, I lived next to the an erly from 1990 to 1996 while working for Cineplex Odeon in an apartment owned by them. Larry would most definitely be the best source (if you can find him) as he worked there for years before and after was the site caretaker for Clearview the last time I saw him, but I can help if you have any questions. The Waverly is the CD cover of the 2001 FUN LOVING CRIMINALS CD and I often run into the marquee shots in London where it is often used in ads for some odd reason!!!
The scaffolding, I’m guessing – and I won’t have a chance to walk past the Waverly until this weekend to verify this – has been constructed in order to facilitate, at least in part, the removal of the marquee. Part of the architectural plans for the IFC Center (which will be the occupant of the space) include installing one of the two ‘Waverly’ marquee signages within the lobby, visible to passers-by.
Isn’t the Independent Film Channel turning this into a triplex scheduled to open later this year?
There seems to be scafolding up around the Waverly. Anybody know what work is being done there?
One person you might want to consider contacting, Alex, is Larry Alaimo. According to an article about the Waverly which ran in the Times last summer, Larry worked as a manager from the early-1980s until the theatre closed under the aegis of Clearview Cinemas in September of 2001. At the time the piece – and de-facto profile of Larry – ran, he was working at another Clearview location uptown which I suspect was the Chelsea West. My advice would be to stop by the theatre and see if someone on staff could put you in touch with Larry (or perhaps you’d have the good fortune of spotting Larry himself; he’s a bespectacled gentleman in his 50s with salt-and-pepper hair) or contact the corporate headquarters of Clearview Cinemas at 908.918.2000 and find out what, if anything, they can do to help.
I’m writing a news article on the block of 6th Ave where the Waverly is. I’d love to talk to anyone who has seen the block change and attended the Waverly throughout, and who can talk about the interactions between the Waverly and the block around it over the years. Please contact me either here or at: almindlin at hotmail.com (replace the “at” with @).
Best,
Alex
Slowly but surely, renovation work on the former Waverly space for its conversion into the IFC Center is proceeding, as per what I saw when I peeked in through the boarded-up entranceway last week. (I’m guessing hassles between the construction company hired to do the job, Cablevision, and IFC or perhaps Cablevision’s overall cash crunch might be the leading cause for the delay – perhaps Clearview Cinemas employee Joe Masher, who has to date posted a handful of messages on this site, can give us the skinny.)
My second comment is a mild revision of the first one – the reference in the first to the IFC Center opening this past spring was changed (at least within the context of the point it made reference to) this upcoming spring.
The Waverly is indeed a shell inside, Robert – or least it was when I last peeked through its boarded-up entrance in late November. However, I read a reference in an article published sometime last month (wish I could remember where) to the IFC Center opening at the site this past spring. That, unless the construction crew hired for the renovation worked 14-hour days starting this past December, seems like a long shot, but perhaps we’ll finally see films flickering at the Waverly site sometime this summer – or, heaven forbid, a new Chase branch or something similar within the next 6-12 months.
I guess the prior twin is gone and the place might be just a shell inside.
Thats a shame, it is another village landmark. I spent many days there when I was in college seeing some great films.
The Waverly Theatre is located at 325 Sixth Ave. and it seated 580 people when it was a single screen theatre.
The Waverly Theatre looks like its never going to reopen. Its been sitting there all boarded up and parts of the marquee have fallen off. It been over two years.
Has the Waverly re-opened yet? I have not been to that part of town in a few months.