Mayfair Theatre

920 Avenue U,
Brooklyn, NY 11223

Unfavorite 2 people favorited this theater

Showing 15 comments

dallasmovietheaters
dallasmovietheaters on September 1, 2021 at 7:04 am

The local papers and trade press state that Perri Construction built the Mayfair and the Marine theaters as “near twins” to the plans of Joseph M. Berlinger. Whether true or not…

HomecrestGuy
HomecrestGuy on December 26, 2018 at 1:11 pm

Added a photo of the Mayfair to the gallery, from the NYC Tax Photos, circa 1940.

MikeRadio
MikeRadio on November 20, 2016 at 3:57 am

I saw Earthqauke here. in SENSURROUND. I still remember running to make the show from school with my friend Leon. This was a great old theater with the entrance on Avenue U not CI Avenue.

TomZ
TomZ on May 21, 2016 at 1:36 pm

Did the Dave Clark Five appear at the Mayfair Theater around 1964-1965?

robboehm
robboehm on September 30, 2015 at 4:30 pm

Attn Bloop from 2007 and jay2300 I came upon a photo of the Mayfair by accident and uploaded it today. I came upon it when I Googled “Historic Stillwell Avenue, Brooklyn, NY photos”.

jay2300
jay2300 on March 10, 2009 at 12:19 am

My 86 year old grandmother just told me the story of her first date here with my grandfather in 1938. I would love to get a photo of the place for my personal family tree book. Does anyone know how to obtain one?

dizdi
dizdi on March 1, 2009 at 7:40 am

I remember this theater being demolished. As a child, I was struck by the gaping hole into the enormous cavern of the theater. Even at a young age, I felt there was something very wrong with this being done. Little did I know… the beginning of the end for Brooklyn theaters.

MikeRadio
MikeRadio on July 15, 2008 at 1:51 am

Not close.. This wa sin Gravesend not Bensonhurst…

Bloop
Bloop on June 19, 2007 at 4:09 pm

No pictures of it? How close to 86th street was this theater?

frankcan
frankcan on September 12, 2005 at 2:42 pm

As far as I know I was in this theater only once. My older sister and her boyfriend took me to see The Sting there back in ‘74. I remember it was a pretty big theater. I’m planning to return the favor by giving them the new DVD edition of the movie for Christmas this year.

Thank you for sharing your experiences with us MichaelAnthony. That image of the tickets soaring in the air while the bulldozers did their work would be a great image for a movie in itself! It certainly does seem like a sad memory.

berkfam
berkfam on November 30, 2004 at 1:00 am

I saw my first movie there back in 1966. It was “Born Free” and I was 4 years old.

MichaelAnthony
MichaelAnthony on November 28, 2004 at 8:56 pm

I grew up just a few blocks from the Mayfair. When Batman and Robin’s t.v. series was a big thing in the sixties, the Batman movie was shown at the Mayfair. Batman and Robin rolled up to the theatre in the Batmobile, leaped out and greeted their fans.
After signing some autographs, they ran into the theatre and jumped onto the stage and began answering questions from the kids in the seats. Many years later, about a week before the Mayfair close, I saw the Beatles,“Magical Mystery Tour”. A week later, it was very sad, I was walking by and it was being bulldozed while old tickets from the past, began to soar into the air…

philipgoldberg
philipgoldberg on May 2, 2004 at 8:25 pm

True. Century never programmed this theater properly. It never booked movies to fill its size. no surprise that during the Century Theater purge of the early ‘70s, it was one of the first to go.

MikeRadio
MikeRadio on December 4, 2003 at 9:18 pm

I saw EARTHQUAKE at this theatre. It was in SENSURROUND which had to do with some low frequency sound which sounded like it was coming from the top of the theatre. MIDWAY and ROLLERCOASTER were two other movies to use this fad effect (which would be impossible now with multiplexes).

The Mayfair was odd because it’s entrance faced Avenue U instead of the busier Coney Island Avenue. However, the Kingsway a few blocks away also faced Kings Highway and not Coney Island Avenue.

Possibly Coney Island Avenue was not a busy thoroughfare back in the early 1900s?

The Mayfair was anice theatre..b ut it was always second fiddle to the Kingsway.

William
William on November 15, 2003 at 1:45 pm

The Mayfair Theatre was located at 920 Avenue U and it seated 1799 people.