Friday, February 6, 2015

ARCHITECTURE: AN ABANDONED THEATRE CIRCA 1941

                                                Archival image courtesy NYPL digital
Who can guess this Harlem location taken in 1941?  The abandoned theater that sits in foreground still stands today alongside the two buildings on the left and right.  A school building on the side street to the left is no longer standing and it also looks like there were brownstones lining that block at one point in time also.

ANSWER: This is the east side of Lenox Avenue at 111th Street just north of Central Park.   No other details are provided from the archival photo but we assume the establishment shuttered during the depression year like so many uptown venues.

3 comments:

  1. That's the second Canaan Baptist Church at Lenox and 111th. Love this picture.

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  2. My research indicates that the theater was originally named the Lenox Theatre, though the exact date of its construction is uncertain. By the 1920’s however, it had become known as the Goldberg & Jacobs Lenox Theatre, one of several Harlem theaters offering Yiddish theater productions. One of the theater's producers was Jacob Jacobs, who went on to pen the lyrics to a very popular 40’s song, "Bei Mir Bistu Shein." In 1922 the Yiddish music composer/conductor Alexander Olshanetsky emigrated here from the Ukraine, producing numerous Yiddish musicals at the Lenox Theatre. Olshanetsky would later serve as the first musical director of Concord Hotel, a fashionable Jewish resort in New York’s, Catskills. – John Reddick

    Ulysses, I also have some theater program and poster images for this theater that i'm emailing you, if you'd like to use them.

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  3. I use to live on the next block between 111th and 112th st between 1955-1965 very beautiful pic i didn't know it was a movie theater before.

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