Loew's Victoria Theater -- 235 West 125th Street

The once-grand theater sits boarded-up awaiting its fate -- photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In the opening years of the 20^th century nickelodeons and theaters offered New Yorkers a fascinating new form of entertainment—the silent movie.  By 1910 more than a dozen theaters offered motion pictures along East 14^th Street alone.

Marcus Loew was born on the Lower East Side in 1870, the son of Jewish immigrants.  Starting out as a newsboy, he worked his way up to owning his own newspaper and selling furs.  When he met fellow furrier Adolph Zukor, his life would take a drastic turn.

The pair established the Automatic Vaudeville Company around the turn of the century and opened penny arcades with hand-cranked “motion picture” vignettes.  As motion picture technology improved, Loew began purchasing established theaters and renovating them into actual motion picture houses.

Loew’s fortunes soared and before long he was constructing his own buildings; and his motion picture palaces were intended to outshine the best of the legitimate theaters.  In 1907 Loew joined forces with architect Thomas White Lamb to design his theaters.  The arrangement would be mutually advantageous and by the end of his career Lamb would be responsible for the plans of more than 300 theaters in the United States, Australia, India, South Africa, England and Egypt (not all for Loew’s, of course).

In 1916 Loew acquired the properties at Nos. 235 and 237 West 125^th Street occupied in part by the 12^th Ward Savings Bank.  And now Lamb returned to his drafting board to design what would be Loew’s Victoria Theatre.

On May 13, 1916 Exhibitions World predicted “Loew’s Victoria will be the last word in the theater construction.”  The periodical said the theater would be “devoted to high class vaudeville and the very best of motion pictures.”

The Harlem area around the site was changing in 1917 from the all-white middle- to upper-class neighborhood of a generation ago.  Black New Yorkers, in an attempt to escape the prejudicial treatment of landlords downtown began moving north around the turn of the century.  Even here, however, the blacks were taken advantage of.  Later, in 1939, the WPA’s New York City Guide noted “Barred from most residential areas in the city, Negroes pay rents 50 per cent higher than those charged for comparable living quarters elsewhere.”

Yet it was still a vibrant neighborhood and motion picture theaters were cropping up along its avenues.  For the Victoria, Lamb melded an Italian Renaissance Classical facade with British 18^th century Adams interiors.   Completed in September 1917, its exterior was clad in white terra cotta.  A grand, soaring colonnade, two stories tall, supported a dignified paneled parapet.  Inside were wall murals and in the 2,394-seat auditorium, a large and striking ceiling dome.  The boxes were set within triumphal arches.  The final construction cost was $250,000—a significant $4.25 million today.

Terra cotta rhytons stand at the ends of the deteriorating parapet.  photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

With the new Victoria along West 125^th Street were Hurtig & Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater (it would be renamed the Apollo Theater later in the century), the Alhambra Theater, Proctor’s, and the Hammerstein Opera House.  The strip would become popularly known as “Opera Row.”

photograph Architecture & Building, January 1918 (copyright expired)

Opening night was on October 3, 1917 and it was noteworthy.  On the bill that night were the silent films Barbary Sheep and Oh, Doctor!  The stars of both, Elsie Ferguson and Fatty Arbuckle, were present.  Vaudeville draws Raymond & Caverly, known as the Wizards of Joy, presented their new act “The Submarines,” and The Hirshcheff Troupe played in A Russian Wedding.  Also present was Loew’s good friend Irving Berlin.

photograph Architecture & Building, January 1918 (copyright expired)

The Victoria opened its doors every day at noon and ran continuously until 11 p.m.  Admission was 10 or 15 cents in the afternoon and 15 and 25 cents at night.  For the price audiences could see two live shows per day along with the movies.

The popularity of the theater is evidenced by the take in the armed hold-up on December 6, 1925.  Assistant Manager Irving Plumer and cashier Ada Maurice were counting the receipts from one of the ticket booths in the business office.  Suddenly the window to the alley suddenly burst.  They were faced with a revolver thrust through the broken glass as the thug ordered them to turn over the cash.

“The hold-up man, a well-dressed youth wearing a cap pulled over his eyes, ordered: ‘Give me that money.  Hurry up; give here quick!’” reported The New York Times the following day.  Plumer handed the two piles of bills to the thief who fled down the alley into the night.  The take was $351—a substantial amount considering the dime and quarter admission fees.

Although the Harlem neighborhood by 1927 was comprised of two-thirds of New York’s black population, there were still a significant number of Irish residents here.  Problems came to the Victoria in August that year when the motion picture The Callahans and the Murphys was screened.  The picture had already aroused protests in other theaters and so on August 26 there were two patrolmen stationed outside the Victoria.  But inside, when a scene depicting an Irish picnic started, two audience members initiated what The Times deemed a “row.”

Mrs. Alice Tennyson and Mrs. Katherine Tennyson shouted “Are you going to stand for this.  It’s a disgrace to the Irish!”  The New York Times reported “The shouts brought more cries, hisses and catcalls.”  Two other women, Mrs. Anna Skillan and Mrs. Mary Monahan joined in the disruption.  The two policemen rushed into the theater and when the women refused to desist, they were arrested for disorderly conduct.

But in 1927 it was not discrimination against the Irish that was most evident at Loew’s Victoria.  Black patrons were permitted only in the balcony.  African-American jazz musician Garvin Bushnell had moved to Europe in 1925 to escape discrimination and had established a successful career.  Now he was back in New York and according to James L. Conyers, Jr. in his African American Jazz and Rap, he set out on his own personal campaign against segregation.  He did so at Loew’s Victoria by “sitting down in the restricted section, wearing a Homburg hat, speaking with a British accent, and daring them to throw him out.”

Although live vaudeville came to an end at the Victoria in 1930, the Great Depression years brought another type of diversion—the talent contest.  On week nights the Victoria, along with most of the theaters on Opera Row, staged local talent contests.  It was the beginning of a tradition that created a national name for the nearby Apollo Theater.

As it had done on opening night of the Victoria, the Loew’s Corporation drew audiences with live appearances by stars on premiere night.  The choice of stars in August 1940 could be argued as either demographic marketing or inherent racism.  While Eddie Cantor appeared downtown at Loew’s Canal Theatre for the premiere of Forty Little Mothers; it was not Jack Benny, but Eddie Anderson--who played Rochester--who was sent to Loew’s Victoria for the opening of Buck Benny Rides Again.

From the late 1940s through the mid-1950s the Victoria was the scene of the Police Athletic League’s annual Christmas party for the underprivileged children of the neighborhood.  Each year thousands of youngsters would file into the theater for free screenings and gifts and candy from the PAL.

By the 1960s motion picture attendance nationwide dropped as families purchased television sets and stayed at home.  In response, the Loew’s chain initiated close-circuit large screen television viewings of live boxing matches.  In 1962 over 2,500 patrons—mostly black according to the New York Post’s writer Ted Poston who was there—paid $6.75 to see the Sonny Liston-Floyd Patterson fight in Chicago.  Poston described “hundreds of standees…scores of others crouching in the crowded aisles and…dozens of teen-agers who had slipped through a back door.”

The scene would be repeated for major bouts like that 1966 Clay-Williams fight and the 1973 Ali-Norton bout.

By now the Harlem neighborhood around the theater was impoverished and crime-ridden.  And so when the Dance Theatre of Harlem threw a “gala benefit” at Loew’s Victoria on November 13, 1972, wealthy New Yorkers were concerned about political correctness.  The following day The New York Times remarked “But after many a white liberal discussion about what one should or should not wear to Harlem in 1972 (let alone whether one should go or not), the partygoers finally got themselves together.”

People like Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Mayor Lindsay, Rod Steiger and Brock Peters were present that night and The Times said “When they arrived at the brightly lighted theater, Harlem was waiting for them behind police barriers.  Black children in bell bottoms, teen-agers in faded corduroys and adults in the worn cloth coats of the poor stood six rows deep to stare, whistle, cheer and comment as black and white women in minks, sables and even chinchilla climbed out in the middle of 125^th Street.”

The newspaper added “If either black or white guests were afraid of what might happen to them on 125^th Street, nobody, including Mrs. [Oscar] Hammerstein, admitted it.”  Mrs. Harold Reed told a reporter “Someone asked me, ‘Aren’t you afraid of muggers?,’ and I said, ‘Good heavens, No.’  I said, ‘I’m wearing my best fur coat and my best pearls.  Harlem is not a jungle.’”

The following year iconic French entertainer Josephine Baker held a benefit concert at Loew’s Victoria to aid the Police Athletic League.  When a New York Times reporter somewhat oddly asked her how she found Harlem, the chanteuse replied “Well it was night, and we have a saying in France, ‘Every cat looks black in the dark.’”

 

By the mid 1970s the Victoria could no longer command the first-run films being shown in midtown.  Instead it featured “mostly Kung Fu and action movies,” according to Philip Morrow, the director of development for the Harlem Urban Development Corporation a decade later.

Finally, in 1977, after six decades of screening motion pictures to the Harlem community, Loew’s Victoria shut its doors.  It was acquired that year by the Harlem Community Development Corporation.  After nearly a decade of mixed use the corporation issued an announcement in July 1985.  Harlem was on staging a come-back and Loew’s Victoria would be part of it.

The $2.6 million renovation resulted in Moviecenter 5--five theaters and a small restaurant.  Then, on November 27, 2007 the Harlem Community Development Corporation announced its latest idea.  “The plan calls for a 40,500-square-foot cultural arts condominium, a hotel with 170 to 200 rooms and 91 residential condominiums,” reported Cityrealty.  “The arts center will include a 199-seat theater to be used primarily by the Classical Theater of Harlem, a 99-seat theater for the primary use of the Harlem Arts Alliance, 10,150 square feet for the primary use of the Jazz Museum of Harlem, and 4,000 square feet of office space for the primary use of the Apollo Theater.”  Lamb’s façade would be salvaged.

The ambitious project ground to a halt in 2011 when an Environmental Impact Statement revealed that water seepage had led to “heavy mold growth, potential threats to the structural integrity of the building and other defects which…threaten to seriously undermine the long term viability of this historically significant structure.”

Lamb's magnificent interiors and wall murals were heavily damaged by water infiltration -- photos Library of Congress

A revised project plan in 2013 suggested that “certain historic preservation measures” would be taken.  These include “restoration of its original lobby, façade, marquee and blade sign.”  Behind the lobby Thomas Lamb’s Adams-style auditorium would be demolished for a hotel and condominium structure and mixed use cultural center.

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In the meantime, Loew’s Victoria sits boarded up.  Its once animated auditorium is quiet.  And the theater awaits its fate.

The Glorious Loew's 175th Street Theater -- 4140 Broadway

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In 1939 Thomas Lamb was far from his birthplace in Dundee, Scotland, on many levels.  In 1883 he arrived in New York at the age of 12 and went on to study architecture at the Cooper Union.  Eventually, after working as a buildings inspector for the City, he established his architectural office, Thomas W. Lamb Inc.

Lamb would make his name with the advent of motion pictures.  His first commission for a theater came in 1909 from motion picture magnate William Fox.  Within eight years he had designed three more motion picture theaters on Times Square.

By the 1920s movie theaters were rightfully deemed “palaces.”  And among the foremost architects of these lavish structures was Lamb.  Before his death in 1942 he would have designed more than 170 theaters.

When the Great Depression hit, Hollywood responded by cranking out carefree musicals and comedies with elaborate sets and lavish costumes.  Busby Berkeley’s Gold Digger series, for instance, offered depression-weary audiences an escape from the gloomy world outside the theater doors.  Even the lyrics in one of the Gold Digger songs, “We’re in the Money,” pretended the financial crisis was over with lines like:

“Old man Depression, you are through. / You’ve done us wrong.”

 and

“We never see a headline about a breadline today.  / And when we see the landlord, we can look that guy right in the eye.”

In 1929 Thomas Lamb would assist in diverting movie-goers’ minds from their troubles.  That year his Loew’s 175^th Street theater was built at No. 4140 Broadway, between West 175^th and 176^th Streets.  Nothing the architect had designed before could outdo this latest extravaganza.

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As if with gleeful abandon, Lamb’s wildly exotic design drew from nearly a dozen architectural styles.  Although The New York Times, on February 21, 1930, said “The house’s style of architecture is Indo-Chinese;” it went far beyond even that broad description.  The terra cotta façade—which smacked of a Cambodian or Thai temple--included elephants and Buddhas; and inside Moorish and Byzantine elements coexisted with stylized Rococo and splashes of Art Deco.

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As he did most often, Lamb used Harold Rambusch, of the Rambusch Decorating Company to lavish the interiors.  Rambusch and Lamb shared an important theory about motion picture theater design—the audience should be drawn into grander and grander spaces.

In writing about the rehabilitation of vintage theaters, Janis Barlow of Janis A. Barlow Associates quoted Lamb who, in 1929, said “To make our audience receptive and interested, we must cut them off from the rest of the city life and take them into a rich and self-contained auditorium, where their minds are freed from their usual occupations and customary thoughts…it does not seem wise to bring the people directly into the full richness and intensity of the decorative scheme, so it is customary to work up to this intensity through various stages.”

On February 22, 1930 the theater opened with tremendous fanfare.  More than 1,000 Boy Scouts marched up Broadway from 170^th Street to the theater.  “The parade represented the march of Washington’s army to defend New York against the Hessians,” reported The New York Times the following day.  Once in place, the assembled scouts watched the hoisting of the American flag on the roof of the theater.

Movie goers that day would see the screening of Norma Shearer in Their Own Desire.   The interior decorations, however, very well may have been the real show.  As the patrons entered the lobby they were surrounded by gold ornamentation, and red carpeting and hangings.  Intricate carvings encrusted the walls and ceiling.  The newel post lamps of the grand staircase were upheld by elephants.  At the top of the staircase was a gigantic mural featuring a bas relief Art Deco goddess.

Depression-weary movie goers escaped into an exotic fantasy -- photo https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/return-film-to-the-united-palace 

And, as Lamb and Rambusch intended, if the audience was awed by the lobby, they were blown away by the cavernous, richly decorated 3,400-seat auditorium.  Behind the pierced wall carvings were changing colored lights that created a magical kaleidoscope of changing hues.  Once they settled into their red plush seats, the cares of the Great Depression outside were temporarily forgotten.

Behind the filigree walls, lights constantly changed colors creating a mesmerizing effect -- photo by Tammy Lo

As with all the great movie palaces of the time, audiences were treated to organ music prior to the screening.  The size of a theater’s pipe organ was a source of pride as well as a marketing tool for competing motion picture companies.  The Loew’s 175^th Street Theatre boasted a Robert Morton twin-chambered “Wonder Organ.”

On Labor Day, 1943 Local Union 802 filed for a $12 weekly wage increase for movie theater organists.  Nearly a year later, on August 19, 1944, the War Labor Board approved the increase.  “The new scale of $92 per week affects only one musician at present, Henrietta Cameron employed at Loew’s 175^th Street Theater,” reported Billboard on August 26.  Henrietta received a windfall along with the increase.  “Miss Cameron has collected over $550 in retroactive pay from Loew’s,” the periodical said.  The organist was now earning a gross weekly salary of about $1,150 in today's dollars.

For another decade, before television kept families at home instead of at the movies, Loew’s 175^th Street Theater screened first run motion pictures, Saturday serials, and newsreels.  Fans left the auditorium teary-eyed after watching Judy Garland in A Star is Born, smiled through Five Little Peppers at Home, thrilled at Son of Monte Cristo. 

 

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As movie audiences thinned, Loew’s got creative.  In 1964 it screened live sports events such as the Liston-Clay heavyweight championship bout on in February; and the New York Giants and Redskins game at Yankee Stadium on September 25^th.  On September 26th The New York Times reported “Pete Rozelle, the commissioner of the National Football League, watched the first quarter of the contest from a seat at the rear of the orchestra of Loew’s 175^th Street theater, at Broadway.”

Tickets did not come cheaply.  The $6 cost to see the close-circuit coverage at Loew’s was the same price as the most expensive seat at Yankee Stadium (about $45 today).

Creativity did not save the majestic theater as a movie house.  In 1969, after the last screening of 2001, a Space Odyssey, the theater was closed.  It was quickly purchased by the Reverend Ike, considered to be the first black televangelist.  No store-front church, his United Palace had the funds to maintain the structure in its full glory.  Rather than alter the interiors Rev. Ike commissioned full-scale renovations that brought back the priceless Rambusch interiors.

In the early 2000s the church offered the auditorium as leased space.   Here audiences saw concerts by artists like Bob Dylan, Adele, the Allman Brothers, Neil Young and others.

Then, in June 2012, the United Palace of Cultural Arts—a nonprofit arts and cultural center—was created at the Palace.  The center hosts community arts programs, provides a venue for local artists to create and exhibit their work, and hosts events like the master workshop for elementary school students by the New York Philharmonic.

The church added the somewhat regrettable belfry; but was otherwise unusually sympathetic in the building's care -- photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

Thomas Lamb’s extraordinary motion picture palace miraculously survives—one of America’s relatively few intact gems from the golden age of theater design.

The 1927 Loew's Canal Street Theatre -- 31 Canal Street

photo by LuciaM  http://www.panoramio.com/photo/34131029

During the first quarter of the 20th Century, the poor immigrant population on the Lower East Side could escape the squalid conditions that surrounded them in two places: the majestic churches and the sumptuous movie palaces.

Marcus Loew was born into this neighborhood in 1870. The son of Jewish immigrants he worked his way up from a newsboy to owning his own newspaper and selling furs. When he met fellow furrier Adolph Zukor, the direction of his life would take a turn.

The pair established the Automatic Vaudeville Company around the turn of the century and opened penny arcades with hand-cranked “motion picture” vignettes. As projection moving pictures developed, Loew began purchasing established theatres and renovating them into motion picture houses. Before long he was erecting his own buildings; one of which, the Loew’s Avenue B theatre was on the site of the tenement in which he grew up.

As the motion picture industry matured, feature-length films developed and movie theatres became elaborate temples to films. In January 1926 Loew’s company contracted architect Thomas Lamb to design a theatre at 31 Canal Street. Lamb had already established himself as a designer of theatres and for this one he produced an ornate terra-cotta clad façade, completed in 1927.

The intricate and beautiful terra-cotta upper facade of Thomas Lamb's Loews Canal St. -- photo by Alice Lum

Approximately four stories tall, the exterior was embellished with griffins, urns, festoons and garlands – a marriage of Regency elegance with Baroque abundance. The movie-goer would pass through the relatively narrow 22-foot wide Canal Street entrance and lobby into a 2,314-seat auditorium – the second largest motion picture theatre in the city. The interior space was decorated with lush terra cotta ornamentation and grand chandeliers.

While the Canal Street Theatre was a fixture in the neighborhood, it never showed the premier films that were relegated to the Times Square theatres. Here “B” comedies, westerns and serials played to masses of local residents before the advent of television. It was here, though, on April 17, 1940 that Eddie Cantor’s Four Little Mothers was premiered.

photo NYPL Collection

The last movie was screened in the late 1950s and Loew’s Canal Street Theatre locked the doors for good. After it was sold in 1960, the lobby was used as a retail store and the seats were removed from the sumptuous auditorium so it could be used as a warehouse.

The once-grand Loew’s Canal Street theatre, now a retail outlet for electronics, sat unnoticed until 2010 when owner Thomas Sung supported a feasibility study to convert the theatre into a multipurpose performance arts center.

That year the Committee to Revitalize and Enrich the Arts and Tomorrow’s Economy (CREATE) was granted $150,000 from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to conduct the feasibility study, The same year both the façade and interior were granted landmark designation by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Today while residents wait to see what will become of the once-proud theatre, dust continues to settle on the chandeliers hanging over crates of electronics. The ornate terra cotta detailing that once dazzled immigrant movie-goers remains in an astounding state of preservation.