The Lost Ziegfeld Theatre -- 6th Avenue and 54th Street

 

photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1925 news that the Sixth Avenue elevated train was soon to be demolished sparked excitement and speculation among real estate operators.   Sixth Avenue in Midtown was still mostly lined with humdrum brick buildings three stories tall.   And its location between Fifth Avenue and the theater district made it deliriously exciting for developers.

By now William Randolph Hearst’s publishing empire included 27 newspapers and nine major magazines like Cosmopolitan.   He opted in on the Midtown real estate potential.    On June 13, 1925 The New York Times announced his ambitious intentions.

Hearst, with Arthur Brisbane, had purchased 14 old buildings which were already being demolished.  In their place he planned a $7 million group to include a theater, a residence hotel, and two office buildings.  The hotel, which would be completed in 1926, became the luxurious Warwick Hotel; and the theater would be known as the Ziegfeld Theatre.

Hearst was well-acquainted with Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegeld, who was disgruntled with owner of the New Amsterdam Theatre, Abe Erlanger.   But, of course, the construction of a theater was not simply out of the goodness of his heart for an old friend.  Hearst realized that a high-class theater diagonally across from his hotel would enhance business.

In announcing the project, The New York Times noted “Thomas W. Lamb will draw the plans for the new theatre, which, according to tentative plans, will have a seating capacity of about 1,650 persons.  The stage will be unusually large and especially adapted to Ziegfeld productions."

Florenz Ziegfeld thought big and he thought flashy.  His set designer, Vienna-born Joseph Urban, understood the producer’s mind and for years had supplied the sensational stage sets audiences came to know as pure “Ziegfeld.”  While Thomas W. Lamb was a veteran of theater designing; his reported neo-Georgian design that he submitted to Ziegfeld fell flat.

Two days after The New York Times’ announcement, another article appeared in the newspaper.  In it Ziegfeld made a surprising change of course.  “The plans have been drawn by Joseph Urban in conjunction with Thomas W. Lamb, architect.  Mr. Urban will act also as artistic director.”  It was perhaps the last time Lamb’s name would appear in conjunction with the structure.

Ziegfield said he had hoped to have his own venue for 30 years.  “Now at last I shall have such a theatre.  I shall be able to build what I call a super-theatre that will startle the public by its modernity and equipment.”

He enumerated a few of the modern features, including “a revolving stage, hydraulic stage, and remarkable electrical equipment, capable of producing all sorts of stage effects.”  The impresario told of an early form of air conditioning.  “There will be a cooling plant, capable of keeping the theatre at 50 degrees if desired.”

By November 7, 1926 Lamb’s involvement had essentially been swept under the carpet.  On that day The New York Times ran a headline reading “Joseph Urban Turns from Scenery to Architecture and plans a Theatre with Highly Original Features.”

The article reminded readers that, indeed, Urban had worked as an architect in Austria “before he got mixed up in the theatre at all.”   The New York Times journalist H. I. Brock wrote “Now he builds a theatre.  And his theatre is not the conventional type.”

Brock called the proposed exterior “unique” and the interior “novel.”  The façade was designed to mimic a theatrical auditorium.  The bowed section above the lobby entrances was meant to depict a gigantic theatrical proscenium.  The boldly Art Deco façade featured clean geometric carvings above the “proscenium” and heroic-sized console brackets that flanked the bowed section above its cornice.

Brock explained further, “The base represents the stage.  The mock-stage front framework rises above it, with architectural simulation of the curtain above the row of tall windows.”

 

Fluted pilasters suggest open curtains beside the proscenium -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

More than the exterior, Brock was impressed with Urban’s innovative design of the auditorium, calling it “the shape of an egg.”  Urban had done away with all corners and areas out of eyesight.  The goal was acoustical perfection.

“The inside of this egg is decorated after the fashion of the outside of those very gay, giant, egg-shaped candyboxes which are sold to the guileless at ruinous prices around Easter time.  A design of romantical personages and creatures from the legends of the Middle Ages covers it with rich colors and curious, intriguing forms…Thus one sits under a canopy composed of a mad medley of knights, ladies, knaves, archers, men-at-arms, charging steeds antelopes, unicorns, castles in Spain.”

The cornerstone laying ceremony, on December 9, 1926, was a Ziegfeld spectacular.  Will Rogers was master of ceremonies and Vincent Lopez and his entire orchestra played.  Following Rogers’s amusing remarks, Billie Burke (who was married to Ziegfeld) and their daughter Patricia placed the chosen items into the box—photographs of the Zeigfeld family including Florenz’s mother; one of A. L. Erlanger; a copy of Theatre Magazine; a program from Sally, the show Ziegfeld considered his greatest success; another of the first Follies; a photograph of Charles Frohman who had made Billie Burke a star; and an ancient brick from a Greek theater.

Patricia Ziegfeld cemented the stone in place.  Afterward, many of the 1,500 present filed into the Warwick Hotel “for coffee.”  Included in the crowd were many notables of the entertainment industry including Marilyn Miller, lyricist Gene Buck, actress Ada May, cartoonist Harry Herschfield, and comedian Bert Wheeler.  The New York Times noted that Mr. and Mrs. Josef Urban were in the assemblage.  No mention was made of Thomas Lamb.

On February 1, 1927 the theater prepared to open.  The New York Times reported “The cast of ‘Rio Rita’ [went] through their preliminary paces in the $500,000 stage of [the] $2,500,000 Ziegfeld Theatre, in preparation for tomorrow night’s opening.”

Theater critic J. Brooks Atkinson suggested that Urban’s innovative and wonderful decorations could possibly steal the show from the production.  “For the wall and ceiling decorations of this elliptical playhouse Mr. Urban has unfolded one of the most extravagant and bizarre cycloramas of imaginative designing to be found this side of fairyland.  It is not only splendid but appropriate…Mr. Ziegfeld must take care lest his productions on the stage prove inferior to the sweep of carnival beauty on the walls of his theatre.”

As far as the play went, Atkinson was tepid on its content, saying it broke “no fresh trail…the book is commonplace enough and the humor will never hold both its sides with laughter.”  But, he admitted, Zeigfeld’s trademark lavish production pulled it off.  He said “for sheer extravagance of beauty, animated and rhythmic, ‘Rio Rita,’ has no rival among its contemporaries.”

Ada May played Dolly in Rio Rita - photo by Ira D. Schwarz from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Ziegfeld had every reason to be pleased.  That evening he received scores of congratulatory telegrams including those from President Calvin Coolidge, Mayor James Walker and Eddie Cantor.  The audience was packed with luminaries, including Charlie Chaplin, polar explorer Roald Amundsen, and former Ambassador to Spain Alexander P. Moore.   Manhattan’s top echelon of society was well represented by Otto H. Kahn, James A. Blair, Jr., Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Pulitzer, and others.  Patrons purchasing the highest priced tickets that night would spend $5.50—more in the neighborhood of $75 in 2015.

Following on the tail of Rio Rita was the smash success, Show Boat which opened on January 7, 1928.  Called by one critic the following day “the best musical show ever written,” Zeigfeld used his showmanship to transform Edna Ferber’s novel with music by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II into a stage extravaganza.  On stage with the trio of stars—Howard March, Helen Morgan, and Norma Terris—were 31 featured players, 95 dancers and singers, and 18 sets designed by, of course, Joseph Urban.  The cast also included Tess Gardella, Edna May Oliver, Charles Winninger, Eva Puck, Sammy White and Jules Bledsoe.

When Flo Ziegfeld died on July 22, 1932 the Great Depression was taking a toll on Broadway.   One newspaper attributed the producer’s death partly to the economic situation.  Ziegfeld had been ill for some time, and “a hard season after his illness caused a relapse and complications.”

Theater-goers and players grieved.  One cast member said “We are all shocked and saddened and we do not feel like singing and laughing.  But Florenz Ziefeld would want the show to go on.  It will go on as our tribute to him.”   But in the meantime, business was attended to.

Almost immediately an armed guard was placed at the door of Ziegfield’s private office “with instructions to permit no one to tamper with the innumerable knick-knacks and mementoes with which the producer surrounded himself,” reported The New York Times.  Among the “knick-knacks” were two gold telephones.

Hard times continued and in December 1932 a dispossess warrant was tacked on the main entrance to the theater.   Two month later, on February 2, 1933 The New York Times reported that “The Ziegfeld Theatre at Sixth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, the home of the ‘Follies’ and other Ziegfeld productions, was leased yesterday by the Loew theatre circuit.  It will reopen in about four weeks under a different name, with a policy of continuous motion picture entertainment.”

Somewhat wistfully, The New York Times wrote on April 18, 1933, “The theatre, which housed the latter-day Ziegfeld success—‘Show Boat,' the ‘Follies,’ ‘Bitter Sweet’ and ‘Rio Rita’—will show second-run films with a tri-weekly change of program."

On the afternoon that the movie theater was to open—Friday, April 21, 1933—a stunning assemblage of chorus girls, stars and stagehands threw a Florenz Ziegfeld-worthy spectacular as a tribute to their former boss.  Eddie Dowling was master of ceremonies and Abe Lyman and his orchestra provided the music.  The who’s-who of the American state that afternoon included Marilyn Miller, Ruth Etting, Jimmy Durante, Fannie Brice, Ed Wynn, Lupe Velez, Bert Lahr, Will Rogers and others.  Fifty of Ziegfeld’s famous chorus girls showed off their legs for the last time.

William Randolph Hearst felt the financial hit of the Depression and in 1944 he found himself forced to liquidate real estate.  Among his most expendable properties, of course, was the Ziegfeld Theatre.   After some back and forth negotiations, it was another bigger-than-life impresario who bought the theater—Billy Rose.   Rose spent $630,000 on the building that had cost $2.5 million; then hired Joseph Urban’s daughter, Gretl, to restore it to its original condition.

Billy Rose returned the venue to legitimate theater.  Clifford Orr, writing in The New Yorker, said “Mr. Rose, who does not expect the reopening to be an anticlimax, is presenting ‘The Seven Lively Arts,’ a review which will combine the talents of Markove, Stravinsky, Cole Porter, Beatrice Lillie, Bert Lahr, Norman Bel Geddes, and (for all we know) Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Carol Channing and Anita Loos backstage of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes -- photo by Sam Siegel from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The theater would produce hits like the 1947 Brigadoon, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1949 with Carol Channing and Yvonne Adair, and George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra with Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh in 1951.  These were followed by Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, which ran for 305 performances; and Kismet in 1953.

Loew's added a movie marquee to the entrance.  photo from the collection of the New York Public Library

Billy Rose closed the curtain in 1955 when he leased the Ziegfeld to NBC as a television studio.  It was from here that the Perry Como Show was broadcast, as well as the Emmy Awards ceremonies in 1959 and 1961.  Although Rose briefly returned the theater to a legitimate stage; the musical Anya was the last production here.  It opened on November 29, 1965 and lasted only 16 performances.

Within months the wonderful Art Deco building, Joseph Urban’s fantastic interpretation of the inside of a theater on the outside, was bulldozed.  In its place rose the Burlington House building, designed by Emery Roth & Sons, completed in 1969.

photo by Americasroof

The box from the cornerstone was removed to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.  And one surviving chunk of the façade sculpture was carried away to the Upper East Side where it remains today.

The only surviving fragment of the facade sits on the Upper East Side -- photo by Tim Buchman

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.