Century's Baldwin Theatre
865 Merrick Road,
Baldwin,
NY
11510
865 Merrick Road,
Baldwin,
NY
11510
3 people
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Please update, total capacity 606
Before Century went out of business they modernized several theatres. The Baldwin was one and had a spiffy facade. Would be nice if someone could locate pictures of the theatre in the day.
Please update, the theatre closed January 9, 1986. Final display ad in photos section. The last film they showed was Alchemist
Uploaded photo as Baldwin Medical Plaza. Interestingly Century’s Plainview also became a medical facility.
A brief article in the October 1, 1932, issue of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said that plans for the new theater to be built by the Schwartz Amusement Company on Merrick Road in the village of Baldwin were being drawn by architect R. Thomas Short.
The article noted that the theater’s site, which Schwartz had purchased six years earlier, was west of the Baldwin M.E. Church. The church now displays a sign reading First Church Baldwin United Methodist.
The modern address of the theater’s lot, displayed on the front of the Baldwin Office Plaza, is 865 Merrick Road.
I saw my first movie, snow white and the seven dwarves, at this theater in the 1950s. also later saw tom thumb, the good the bad and the ugly, and a double bill of the secret invasion and robin and the seven hoods. it was old when I was new.
Yes by cracky I remember seeing Way of All Flesh and Susan and God back in the fall of 1940 but haven’t been thar since.
Saw “Victor/Victoria” here in the early 80s-way after its initial release and engagements. I believe that by this time The Baldwin had become a dollar theatre
Lol, Bellerose-Floral Park had always been “iffy,” like Alsace-Lorraine. I grew up in Valley Streamn and as I remember, Floral Park spilled over the Queens-Nassau line.
Hey, a lot of stranger things have happened. The Bellerose Theatre is now in Floral Park, after having been in Bellerose for over 70 years. Seems they changed the Post office for the Nassau County portion of the village to Floral Park. The Queens County portion is still Bellerose. Go figure.
If the earlier Baldwin Theatre was on Grand, then the most likely explanation for the current address of this theater not being the 71 Merrick Road that Chuck found would be a renumbering sometime after 1933. The newspaper article quoted earlier said that the area around Merrick and Grand was the original center of the village’s business district. If growth later led to several small settlements expanding into one another, then a renumbering of the lots would be fairly likely to have happened.
There was an earlier Baldwin Theatre on Grand Avenue. I established it on CT earlier this year based upon newspaper accounts. I have yet to establish a specific address. If I have an opportunity to access some really old phone books I may be able to do so. However, I’ve found that for listings prior to 1930 there are often only street names and no specific address. Life was simpler then.
Back on September 26, 2007, lostmemory said: “Was there another Baldwin Theater? A Midmer-Losh theater organ was installed in a Baldwin Theater in Baldwin, N.Y. in 1925.”
Chuck: Is it possible that the address you provided for this theater in the first comment was actually the address for the earlier Baldwin Theatre? It’s clear from more recent comments that the 1933 Baldwin Theatre is now the Baldwin Medical Plaza, and the Internet brings up addresses of of 865-869 Merrick Road for that building.
I’m thinking that either your source for the address was a pre-1933 publication, and actually belonged to the earlier Baldwin Theatre, or Baldwin has renumbered the lots on Merrick Road sometime since 1933. In either case, the current correct address of the former Baldwin Theatre is that of the Medical Plaza.
I was born and raised in Valley Stream, and I was only in the Baldwin twice, but I’m as sad as any of you Baldwiners to see that the theater is gone, like so many of the theaters that we grew up with. The first time I drove out to the Baldwin was in 1972, to see the very obscure movie, “Rivals”. I’ve always been a Joan Hackett fan, and it was the only theater where the movie was playing. The following year I drove to the Baldwin again, to see “Night Watch,” which was ending its theatrical run (had the theater become a dollar venue?). That night was a very memorable experience, because near the end of the movie, which is a thriller, a woman sitting way down front let out a blood curdling scream, which turned my blood to ice and my 22 year old heart to stone.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Friday, March 17, 1933, said that the new Baldwin Theatre would open that night. The opening feature was to be “Flesh” with Wallace Beery. The Baldwin Theatre was the 24th house in the Century Theatres chain, which had been founded more than twenty years earlier by A. H. Schwartz.
Hey guys. you sure started the memories flowing after I read the above entries. We had lived on harrison ave, right around the corner from the old movie house. I can still remember the line when the Godfather was playing there. I read one of the entries above about Howies. I used to work for about an hour or two during the summers at Howies. I would pick up his breakfast from across the street, I CAN STILL SMELL THE AROMA. Howie was a special guy who really seemed to care about us kids. Someone mentioned the Venice In, some of the greatest pizza. I fondly remember going there with my brother and Dad on Sunday nights. He would have a beer while waiting for the pizza. He would say he couldn’t wait for us to get older and have a beer with him there. When the pizza was ready we would head home (2 minutes) and watch The Lawrence Welk Show. (guess I’m dating myself). I never got that beer with my Dad, He died a couple of years later, but I still have those memories. We attended Prospect Elementary School. What a school! Could not think of a better place to have started. If anyone has any pics of the old school, I would love to see them. I guess it was torn down in the 80’s. Baldwin was one heck of a place to grow up.
Yes, Ed Solero, that is the building. It is right across the street from what was (and perhaps still is) a Blockbuster video store. In that little shopping center was the Carvels (again, that could still be there too).
Ah, OK. Thanks, CConnolly, now I know the building you’re describing. It’s the building right before the church on the north side of Merrick just east of Grand Avenue. I’ll have to take a closer look next time I pass by, but it sure doesn’t bare any resemblance to a theatre! There’s a building further east down Merrick on the right hand side (currently a supermarket, I believe) that I’ve always thought looked like it might have been a small theatre at one point. It’s just across from the lake
It looks like a pretty modern looking but non descript office building. I remember when they built it, the pretty much ripped off the front of the building and then put in this kind of glassy atrium lobby “thing” where you could see through it into the stairs. Kind of 80s looking. There were some doctors offics in it at that time. The reason why you can’t remember what it looks like now is that they pretty effectively wiped out any resemblence to it ever being a movie theater.
Is the building still standing? If so, what currently occupies the site? I’ve passed through the area a number of times and can’t think of any structures on this block that resemble an old movie house.
I finally got around to reading the article about the Baldwin theater in the NYTimes. And it’s a real heartbreaker. Despite being over 20 years old, it still echoes the sentiments of a lot of people and especially those of us on this website.
Here is the article:
February 16, 1986
ABOUT LONG ISLAND
By FRED MCMORROW
THE RKO BALDWIN, built when they named Long Island movie theaters after their villages, is at the top of a slope where its marquee can’t be missed if you’re downhill at Merrick Road and Grand Avenue, the original hub of this village’s business district.
The Baldwin always changed its feature attractions Wednesdays. But when it had a good thing going, it kept the same show Wednesday after Wednesday. ‘'Santa Claus: The Movie’‘ stayed on that marquee for two months of Wednesdays.
But that had to end with the holidays, and I kept watching the marquee for what would finally be ‘'Starting Wednesday.’‘ Even if I didn’t intend to see the next movie, I always had to know what it was. What’s-playing-at-the-Baldwin was vital community trivia around here. Yes: Was.
Nothing trivial replaced ‘'Santa Claus’‘ on that marquee. THE END did. What’s playing at the Baldwin? ’‘FOR SALE,’‘ in those big blue capital letters they use for the marquee title. What’s playing at the Roxy? What’s playing at the Astor? the Paramount? What’s happening all over has finally happened on Merrick Road between Park and Harrison Avenues.
The place where all our children and our friends' children discovered the magic of seeing a movie from the dark and on a great big screen, not the dinky business end of a television set, is not Baldwin’s only movie house. There is the newer Cinema, halfway between Sunrise Highway and the Southern State.
But the Cinema, which opened as a spacious, wide-screen house, was hardly a teen-ager when it was converted into a ‘'multiplex.’‘ And what advancement is that over the nickelodeon? Just one. The sound. But that is why the Cinema is surviving and the Baldwin is not.
The Baldwin opened in 1933. Howard Herrman, who was born down the block in the ‘'upstairs’‘ over the Herrman family stationery store, says he remembers it well. This well: ’‘Arthur E. Norton, the Superintendent of Schools, gave a big speech before the movie.’‘ (Pause.) ’‘Will you look at this, I can remember a middle initial, but I don’t remember the movie!’'
Neither do I, of course; we only moved here in 1959. But neither does the Baldwin Public Library. Its microfilm files of The Baldwin Citizen, the doyenne of this area’s weekly papers, skip 1933. But the ads show that in that era Wallace Beery, Mickey Rooney, Janet Gaynor, Norma Shearer, Grace Moore (you don’t remember ‘'One Night of Love’‘?), James Cagney and Beryl Mercer did their turns on the Baldwin’s screen. (Beryl Mercer? Cagney’s mother in ’‘Public Enemy’‘! I thought everybody knew that … ) My own sometimes reliable memory insists that at least once in the Baldwin, Clark Gable told Vivien Leigh after he rescued her from the burning of Atlanta and got her home to Tara that he was joining the Confederate service because he liked lost causes. Like this one. The former Eileen Palmer and I have made inquiries about the community chipping in to turn the Baldwin into a repertory theater, but nothing’s happening.
The Baldwin was not the village’s first movie house. A retired woman who lives near us remembers a store-sized theater on Grand Avenue around the corner from Howie’s. ‘'It cost a quarter,’‘ she said. ’‘My girlfriends and I saved up all week for Saturday. The piano player was always late and when he did get there he’d sit and study the music like it was a concerto or something and we’d clap and clap until he got started and the movie started. I had this awful crush on William S. Hart!’'
Yes. ‘'Come quick. Indians!’‘ The only silent I ever saw when movies weren’t called silents because there weren’t any talkies was ’‘The Lost World.’‘ It was shown in a Y.M.C.A. and the projectionist wasn’t very good and the film snapped just as the poor old confused dinosaur broke London Bridge. Or was it Tower Bridge?
The last movie the former Eileen Palmer and I saw at the Baldwin was ‘'Kiss of the Spider Woman.’‘ There were about seven other people in the fine old house. When the film ended, everybody left and nobody was coming in for the second show. I don’t think there was one.
Everybody in town is sorry about this, but then it’s everybody’s fault, including the movie makers. Movies aren’t any better than ever than they were when that empty slogan was dreamed up. Distributors' tastes aren’t any better, either. ‘'Spider Woman’‘ was the best film the Baldwin had had for I don’t know how long.
And I don’t know for how long because it’s been years since it was an imperative of my life to see at least one movie in a theater a week. Last year I think I saw three movies in theaters. I don’t have to wait for a movie to find its way to The Tube, but I do, and that is neither television’s fault nor the fault of the Baldwin’s owner, RKO Century Warner Theaters; it’s mine.
‘'No, don’t fault yourself,’‘ Morris Englander, the head of the real estate department of RKO Century Etc., said in a brief interview. ’‘The individual theater does not bring in what a multiplex does. That’s a fact of life.’'
And of course his company has watched the decline in attendance at the Baldwin just as all of us here have. He has a gentle, friendly manner, conveying over the phone the image of a man who is dedicated to theaters, but also to what he has to do. He declined, officially, to confirm a report that ‘'an architect’‘ had made a bid for the Baldwin that was rejected.
And he would not disclose the asking price, nor what kind of bids he was getting. But he gave me just the tip of a hint that the building would survive. Was there any possibility, I asked, pressing him, that it would be torn down to make room for one more row of condominiums?
‘'Well, it’s a building,’‘ Mr. Englander said, ’‘and we’re offering it as a building.’'
No Robert, it was just up the street on Jericho Trpk. But the DM did have an office in the Floral, heck of a nice guy, Mr.Murray I think was his name.
Vito
Was the home office in the Floral Theatre building?
The best part of working the Baldwin was the fact that it was a Century theatre, I worked most of the Century theatres during the hey days. The theatres were run very professionally, and always well maintained. Customer service was key, as was perfection in the film presentation.
We had a lot of rules, and if you worked a century theatre you were expected to give your best.
Does anyone remember Century’s policy of playing the star spangled banner at the start of the first show of every holiday?
The Home Office was located in Floral Park, so executives would
often stop by, and would come up to the booth and ask “do you need anything�
When Century sold out it was the end of an era of showmanship which, except for National Amusements, is something you don’t see anymore.
Hey CConnolly welcome back.