Sylvia, I don’t have any old B'ville photos. I do have some Pitkin Avenue (and other Brownsville) photos taken in ‘97, '98 and 2000, and I can identify what the stores and sites were in the Fifties. I’m sure you’ve seen the Pitkin Avenue photos in Roger Willensky’s “When Brooklyn was the World,” and Wendell Pritchett’s “Brownsville, Brooklyn."
Peter.K: I know Turnbull Avenue, but my name comes from the line, "Turnbull is a good man,” in “The Godfather, Part II."
LuisV: I read elsewhere (maybe on this site) that, while the exterior is still standing, the ceiling has collapsed onto the stage, and the entire theater has been heavily damaged by water.
BTW: I saw a TV segment a few years ago about the Hip-Hop producer Russell Simmons. He had a home theater in his NJ mansion that he modeled on the Pitkin.
We lived in Brownsville from ‘51 through '57. Since the Pitkin was the high end in our part of Brownsville ($1 for kids), it was only for “special occasions.” One was for the premier of the first 3D movie, “B'wana Devil” ('52), which was preceded by a trailer in which an opthalmologist assured the audience they would’t go blind watching it. A sign of the Pitkin’s “class”: their 3D glasses had plastic frames, vs. cardboard frames for those distributed in other houses. The ushers collected them after each show, so we kids always tried to sneak out with them. For “Quo Vadis” ('51) the Pitkin’s management stenciled the title and its dates on every sidewalk crossing in the theater’s area. If the movie was boring, we’d explore the vast, uncharted balconies, which were almost always empty on Saturday mornings. The proscenium arch had a tromp l'oeil mural called “Dawn.” After the show, we’d get a papaya drink at Jungle Jim’s Cocoanut Whip stand on Herzl Street off Pitkin.
The two movie houses closer to us were the Ambassador and the Peoples Cinema, diagonally across from each other on Saratoga and Livonia Avenues. The former was the “nabe,” two program changes per week, 26 cents for kids, with 3 features, 25 cartoons, serials, Three Stooges, etc., on Saturdays. Its covered emergency staircase was home to the neighborhood winos, and stank of urine so badly that you had to cross the street to go by it. It was demolished and is a day care center today. The Peoples was a low-end B-movie place, 14 cents. Memorable feature: a 5-cent soda machine with four flavors—if you pushed all four buttons simultaneously, it gave you “tutti frutti.” It was converted ca. ‘54 to the neighborhood’s first superette, whose opening was enlivened by an actor playing “Rocky Jones Space Ranger” of the eponymous TV show. Now it’s the Brownsville Bargain Center.
Sylvia, I don’t have any old B'ville photos. I do have some Pitkin Avenue (and other Brownsville) photos taken in ‘97, '98 and 2000, and I can identify what the stores and sites were in the Fifties. I’m sure you’ve seen the Pitkin Avenue photos in Roger Willensky’s “When Brooklyn was the World,” and Wendell Pritchett’s “Brownsville, Brooklyn."
Peter.K: I know Turnbull Avenue, but my name comes from the line, "Turnbull is a good man,” in “The Godfather, Part II."
LuisV: I read elsewhere (maybe on this site) that, while the exterior is still standing, the ceiling has collapsed onto the stage, and the entire theater has been heavily damaged by water.
BTW: I saw a TV segment a few years ago about the Hip-Hop producer Russell Simmons. He had a home theater in his NJ mansion that he modeled on the Pitkin.
We lived in Brownsville from ‘51 through '57. Since the Pitkin was the high end in our part of Brownsville ($1 for kids), it was only for “special occasions.” One was for the premier of the first 3D movie, “B'wana Devil” ('52), which was preceded by a trailer in which an opthalmologist assured the audience they would’t go blind watching it. A sign of the Pitkin’s “class”: their 3D glasses had plastic frames, vs. cardboard frames for those distributed in other houses. The ushers collected them after each show, so we kids always tried to sneak out with them. For “Quo Vadis” ('51) the Pitkin’s management stenciled the title and its dates on every sidewalk crossing in the theater’s area. If the movie was boring, we’d explore the vast, uncharted balconies, which were almost always empty on Saturday mornings. The proscenium arch had a tromp l'oeil mural called “Dawn.” After the show, we’d get a papaya drink at Jungle Jim’s Cocoanut Whip stand on Herzl Street off Pitkin.
The two movie houses closer to us were the Ambassador and the Peoples Cinema, diagonally across from each other on Saratoga and Livonia Avenues. The former was the “nabe,” two program changes per week, 26 cents for kids, with 3 features, 25 cartoons, serials, Three Stooges, etc., on Saturdays. Its covered emergency staircase was home to the neighborhood winos, and stank of urine so badly that you had to cross the street to go by it. It was demolished and is a day care center today. The Peoples was a low-end B-movie place, 14 cents. Memorable feature: a 5-cent soda machine with four flavors—if you pushed all four buttons simultaneously, it gave you “tutti frutti.” It was converted ca. ‘54 to the neighborhood’s first superette, whose opening was enlivened by an actor playing “Rocky Jones Space Ranger” of the eponymous TV show. Now it’s the Brownsville Bargain Center.