Biltmore Theater
30 S. 5th Avenue,
Mount Vernon,
NY
10550
30 S. 5th Avenue,
Mount Vernon,
NY
10550
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According to “The Encyclopedia of the American Theatre Organ” by David L. Junchen, pg. 630, the “Westchester Th.” in Mt. Vernon, New York, had a Smith theatre pipe organ installed at some point. No further details, such as size (# of manuals/# of ranks), blower info, nameplate (Smith, Seeburg-Smith etc) or install date are available in the book, and probably weren’t documented at publication time.
Does anybody know any more about this organ or theatre, and where the organ (or its parts) is/are today?
Also, is this theatre building still standing? (empty, converted to other uses, etc) OR has it actually been demolished? It is very unclear from the listing on this site and also from the comments of some users, what is actually going on with this theatre.
Thanks a lot!
The photo above was taken via a historical book by Dr. Larry Spruill. MVNU’s President Joseph Pombo has donated this photo of this beautiful theater. This way we can know how things once looked. It also makes this theater google searchable for others looking to see where it once stood and what it looked like.
This is part of an article in the Syracuse Post-Standard, dated 1/13/50:
MOUNT VERNON.â€"A 12-year-old girl missing from her Yonkers home for a week was found unharmed yesterday in the Biltmore theater here. Police said the girl, Josephine Leach, had run away from home after a quarrel with her mother, although fear had been expressed earlier that she might have been abducted.
Detectives came upon the girl after searching all theaters in a large area of Mount Vernon, a New York suburb, on a tip that she had been seen in another movie house some distance away. Only a few hours before, the girl’s trail was picked up when a minister and his wife found she had been in their apartment, in a mixed white and colored section of Mount Vernon, while they were absent earlier in the day.