Orient Theatre
654 Ocean Avenue,
Jersey City,
NJ
07305
654 Ocean Avenue,
Jersey City,
NJ
07305
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The former Orient Theater (I remember it pretty well, I grew up on Ocean Avenue in the 1950s and my Grandmother lived in a cold-water railroad flat on Armstrong Avenue, between what was then Jackson Avenue and Ocean Avenue) is not actually the Our Lady of Sorrows Church building: that’s a few blocks away, on Clerk Street. On May 28, 1958 the Archbishop of Newark approved the purchase of the Orient Theatre on Ocean Avenue to be renovated as the parish auditorium. It is still used for weekly bingo games and social events. Frank and Nancy Sinatra were married at OLS on February 4, 1939. My grandmother and I used to wait for the Greenville-Lafayette bus at the corner of Ocean and Cleremont, across the street from the OLS auditorium after our Saturday visits to Woolworth’s on Jackson (now MLK Drive) and Cleremont.
October 7th, 1916 grand opening ad in the photo section.
Unless the Orient Theatre operated in more than one location, it existed before the 1920s. This item is from the January 29, 1916, issue of The American Contractor:
The style of the brickwork on the facade of this theater was popular in the 1910s, so I’m inclined to think that Our Lady of Sorrows Church is the movie house built by the Orient Theatre Corp. in 1916. $22,000 would have been adequate for construction of a theater of this size before construction costs rose following the U.S. entry into WWI in 1917.The October 21, 1916, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror said that the Orient Theatre in Jersey City had opened on October 7. The new moving picture house was being managed by John E. Moody.
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company installed a tiny pipe organ, style 108 (3 ranks) opus 700 in the Orient Theatre, in September 1923.
The building still exists. From street level photos, it looks like a late 1920s construction – typical neighborhood theatre. The marquee is wrapped with a banner proclaiming “Our Lady of Sorrows Church” with a street number of 654. But there is painted plywood across the entrance with padlocks. Looks like the church has closed down or moved, but the building is still intact, and presumably also the interior.
This is the theatre that is the one I remember was across the street from where my aunt lived on Ocean Avenue. This is the one that she saw Frank Sinatra in and I think Elvis. Boy this was many years ago. This really shows my age!!!!