Van Buren Theatre
514 Main Street,
Cairo,
NY
12413
514 Main Street,
Cairo,
NY
12413
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Additional Info
Previous Names: Love Star Theatre
Nearby Theaters
The Van Buren Theatre first opened in 1932, and was named in honor of President Martin Van Buren (1837-41), a native son of the region. One of his distant relations, Mrs. L.J. Van Buren, built the cinema because the Catskill Mountains town lacked one and had no competition for many miles around.
Cairo had a resident population of only 900 or so, but the area had a constant flow of tourists to its many hotels and boarding houses, especially in summer. How the Van Buren Theatre managed to survive the Depression is unknown to this writer, but it was still open in 1941, although closed by 1943.
More information is needed about its history and the current status of the site. According to one report, the building still existed as recently as the 1990’s. It has since been demolished and the site is now a parking lot.
Contributed by
Warren G. Harris
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Recent comments (view all 3 comments)
also called Love Star Theatre
The theater building is long gone (I found this site while trying to determine when it was torn down). Your location is slightly wrong too. It was located closer to railroad ave.
Google street view proves this, as the building next store in the picture does still exist and still has enough of the original architecture viewable to identify it. (I tried putting the URL here for google street view, but the blog SW keeps re-writing it. Just use the map view above to get to google street view and look at the building near the corner of main & railroad)
Address was 514 Main Street. Living Structures Realty Service is in the building next door at 516 Main Street. The demolished theatre site is today the parking lot for Living Structures. Circa 1950 photo added with Love Star Theatre signage on the far right.