Gary Denis

Another Slaughtered Lamb, Another McElfatrick Disappers Into Oblivion

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Back In August of 2013 I put up a piece about a theater.  It was announced that yet another piece of our puzzle, mosaic, history or whatever you want to call it was going to go.  The once upon a time Columbia Theater at 47th and 7th was going to join the list of “used to be”.  We knew this place as the Embassy 2, 3, and 4.  It’s last incarnation was an over sized souvenir store – never had I seen so many Statue of Liberty(s) or Empire State Buildings in one place. 

The Columbia Burlesque was designed by William McElfatrick, one of the most prolific theater architects of the late 19th through the early 20th centuries. Sort of Thomas Lamb of his day.  A re-design of the theater was carried out by Thomas Lamb when the Columbia became known as Loew’s Mayfair.

We knew this place as the Embassy 2, 3, and 4.  It’s last incarnation was an over sized souvenir store – never had I seen so many Statue of Liberty(s) or Empire State Buildings in one place.

The theater had several names over the years, including The DeMille, like in Cecil B. Amongst the big New York City premiers was one of the most famous movies ever made.  In June of 1960, with the famous “No one will be admitted after the start of the picture” policy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho opened.

I was walking by the demolition site the night before Thanksgiving and I decided to investigate. I found a small hole in the wall.  Aren’t we lucky to be living in an age where most of us have a camera at all times?  The souvenir store did not use the entire space.  What we are looking at, I believe, is the downstage edge of the stage and where the orchestra pit would have been and the orchestra section of seating would have begun.  I tried to get in there the next day but there was no one there on Black Friday. However, I knew that with the help of the iPhoto, I would get something usable.

I pointed my phone as best I could to the left so I could get what I believe is the stage.  It is not unreasonable to think that we are looking at the stage right wing space through the proscenium opening.  Or what is left of it. That yellow machine is a small bulldozer type thing. The machine’s arm (for lack of better term) is resting on what could be the proscenium arch structure and the vertical channel for the smoke pocket used with the fire curtain.

There is a bit of an incline going up to this area. Does this mean that the area with the mini bulldozer, the area I believe to have been the stage, somewhat elevated? If I ever get down there . . . but it may too late.  Goodbye Columbia Burlesque, while New York reinvents itself again, as you fade away into the memories of fewer and fewer,  along with the careers of those who tread your boards.

Friday, January 25, 2013

 By the late 18th century, after the revolution and naming and renaming streets and places had begun, the area on this rock north of the village of Manhattanville all the way to the top of the island was called Mount Washington. It was the popular name anyway as it was also very patriotic; after all George Washington did have 1 of his 9 major battles in the area.
In 1921 the New York Tribune sent a reporter uptown to explore the rapidly developing hills of northern Manhattan and Washington Heights.   At the time of her quest the area that was once the home of some of the wealthiest New Yorkers, that last bit of rural Manhattan was being swallowed up and absorbed into the city. The reporter, Eleanor Booth Simmons, went alone without a photographer.  Even though there was much in the way of change happening there still was enough of the old to write about and she gives us quite a document of the still-standing homes of once rich and powerful families including Nathan Straus, James Mcreery and C.K.G. Billings, to name a few.

This is from the 1867 map showing the north tip of Manhattan prior to the Harlem River Ship Canal cutting through and adding more acreage to the Bronx.  The Harlem River flowed into a marsh and creek,  then the Spuyten  Duyvil Creek,  .
As time marched on the upper section of the area close to the Hudson River became known as Tubby Hook, a name still used by a soon to be no longer dilapidated marina called the Tubby Hook Marina.  But who was “Tubby” and why is there a hook named after him?  The common theory behind the name lies with Dutch Sailors who, as they went up the Hudson called every point of land that stuck out into the river a “hook”.  Perhaps they saw in what was the bay of the Spuyten Duyvil creek a resemblance to a tub, with the steep wooded hills for sides. The actual hook is gone and so is the creek. The hook was just a bit north of the foot of Dyckman Street, but with all the land fill, the hook is now just part of Inwood Fields Park.

This is the same area but in 1897. The Harlem River Ship Canal has been cut through and a piece of Manhattan became part of the Bronx. Although still considered part of Manhattan by zip code and area code, the neighborhood of Marble hill looks like it is part of mainland United States.  It also looks like wishful thinking to me, but there I go again being very boro-centric   The path of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek that went around Marble Hill, making it a part of Manhattan Island and not part of the Bronx (or mainland United States), was filled in.  The canal was widened along with what was left of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek.

“Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt was told he was crazy to invest in a railroad so far over on the west side of Manhattan. No one will use it he was told.  “Build it and they will come” and by 1851 the railroad went all the way to Albany.  Build a station and they will come is more  like it.  This the Inwood or Tubby Hook Station of the old Hudson River Rail Road.  Once Vanderbilt consolidated his railroads into the uber railroad the New York Central, passenger service began to bypass the old passenger stations of the Hudson River Rail Road.  The 1921 article points out that the  “Old inhabitants say it was the policy of the New York Central that left Tubby Hook, as Inwood used to be called, in a forgotten pocket between two rivers, unpeopling the beautiful houses and abandoning them to ghosts”. In 1871, with the opening of the first Grand Central Station, Vanderbilt connected the tracks of his Harlem River Rail Road with the tracks of the Hudson Line by building the Spuyten Duyvil – Port Morris Railroad so that trains leaving Grand Central could have easy access to the Hudson River Line.  The old Hudson River Rail Road was used more and more for freight only. By the late 19th century only one or two slow locals served the passengers along this line and after the subway opened up there in 1905 the line was truly redundant. Not till 1900 did the first trolley cars run to Kingsbridge, and it was five years later when the subway was extended to Dyckman Street. For a good many years this most attractive part of Manhattan Island was rather inaccessible, except for the men who could afford their horses.

The postcard above correctly states that this is the Inwood Station of the N.Y. Central as this is after  the Commodore consolidated his railroads.  The Hudson River Railroad Station at Inwood, was also known as Tubby’s Hook.  In the above picture Dyckman Street is the street crossing the tracks, coming from the right and ending at the shore of the Hudson River which would be on the left.  The road coming down the hill is River Road, later known as Bolton Road.

On one map the station is indicated as either “Inwood or Dyckman” 

This is River Road / Bolton Road looking south towards the train station and the river. What all those guys are doing in that veranda is a mystery.

Way before the Titanic took them, way before they moved downtown to The Bloomingdale area, this was the home of Isidore and Ida Straus.  Even with the over grown foliage of a front yard gone wild, one could tell that the home of Straus Family home must have been a swell place in its prime.  However, by the time the Herald reporter made her trip to the area the house was in, as she put it, “a melancholy state of dilapidation”.  At the time the article was published, a policeman was living in it, and according to the article very happy to be there. “He is a fresh air enthusiast” the article went on, so much so that “he parked his two infant sons day and night for many months on the roof of the wide veranda”. This is what attracted the Straus family to living way up in Tubby Hook as they too were fresh air enthusiasts.  Isidore and Ida Straus were what we would now call “health nuts”.  However, rural splendor would eventually lose out to Ida’s feeling cut off. This was not an especially easy area to get to.

This is the McCreery house, photographed in 1921. James McCreery was a successful dry goods dealer.  So successful that he opened a behemoth department store on Broadway at 11th street (the building is still there – even after a bad fire in 1971 – as apartments).
To reach the McCreery house one had to take Dyckman Street to the end and then take  a narrow path to River Road, a road that no longer exists. Walk north, past overgrown terraces and box hedges, and quaint houses with cupolas and pillars, with the river and the railroad tracks below.  At the end of this narrow path, maybe wide enough for one car to negotiate it  stood the house of James McCreery. At the end of what appears to be the path described there was a 20 acre estate owned by an E. Riggs. This site had a wooden house on it and would have western and northern views of the river (in addition to south and east) Basically where the tollbooths are now for the Henry Hudson Bridge. It is was not considered a beautiful building by the author of the article, calling it  “high and square shouldered, it looks like a boarding house. But it commands a splendid view, and it has a generous air, as if it had tales to tell of the hospitality that once made it a social center.” 

 Recognize this? If you take the north bound Henry Hudson past the George Washington Bridge on a stretch that was once Riverside Drive you have passed it. Constructed of Manhattan Schist quarried on site, this great arched stone gallery was the extravagant entry to the estate of Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings, a wealthy industrialist, noted eccentric and avid horseman.
Billings father was a major stockholder in the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company.  After college he joined this firm, that provided a lion’s share of the gas for lighting to Chicago, eventually inheriting controlling interest in the company and, at the age of 40, retired from business to devote his time to his true love: the growing stable of horses he owned.  In fact, he moved to New York and purchased acreage in this undeveloped area of uptown because of the recent opening of the Harlem River Speedway which ran from 155th street to Dyckman Street, where the elite would meet to compete, with their horses.  

 Another view of the driveway.

Like the postcard says, it was called Fort Tryon Hall. The “Hall” cost was $2,000,000 and stood on Manhattan’s highest point, 250 feet above sea level, with 20-mile views of the Hudson Valley. His 25-acre  estate encompassed formal gardens, a 126-foot-long bathhouse for the  75-foot indoor marble swimming pool, and a yacht landing on the Hudson at Dyckman Street. There he had his 232-foot yacht, Vanadis.
The road to the right is Margret Corbin Drive, the first woman to be wounded in battle during the American Revolution.  “Captain Molly” as she became to be known, was from Kentucky and had followed her husband north.  At the Battle of Washington Heights, November 16th 1776, “Captain Molly” took over her husband’s cannon when he fell mortally wounded.  The actual Fort Washington was further south between what is now 183rd and 185th streets.   “Captain Molly” was severely wounded herself but recovered and after the war served as a domestic and cook.  Always addressed as “Captain” she was reportedly “tart of tongue and sloppy in dress”.  She died in 1800 in Highland Falls New York.  In 1926 the Daughters of the American Revolution had her remains moved to the Post Cemetery at West Point, one of the few women and maybe only one of two civilians to be interred there.

Originally from Chicago, in 1907, Billings, his wife, two children and 23 servants moved to a new residence described at the time as “In the style of Louis XIV”, the house had several large towers, a Mansard roof along with the previously mentioned swimming pool, squash courts and maple lined bowling alleys.

This is the Gate keepers house at the end of Fort Washington Avenue.  The gate was for Fort Tryon Hall.  This little house was built in 1908, a year after the big house was completed.  The gate house is till there, right at the entrance to the Heather Garden. The house serves as the office for the park administrator of Fort Tryon Park.
 Billings and his family moved out. By 1916 he wanted to move on, not for any financial reason, he just wanted a change. He sold his 25 acre estate to John D. Rockefeller Jr. for $875,000. This sale began what we all know and love today, Fort Tryon Park. Unfortunatly Fort Tryon Hall is gone, it burned down in 1926 after being spared the wrecker’s ball.  Preservationists protested the destruction of the house and the city turned down John D. Rockefeller Jr’s offer of a new park; the city knew he wanted to have some streets closed on the East Side for his Rockefeller University (but this is another story) so the quid pro quo situation would have to wait, as would the park and the house was saved for a while.  This practically a chateau house only lasted 19 years but his 232-foot yacht, Vanadis, still exists. Itis now anchored at Riddarholmen in Stockholm.  It is being used as a hotel known as Mälardrottningen.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

After the Civil War, New York grew at a rate like never seen before in this town.  The only way New York, and when I say New York I mean the Isle of Manhattan, could grow was up. Up the island. There were pockets of the once rural character left on this rock. Morningside Heights, for example, the natural plateau above 110th street (a plateau bounded by Riverside Park on the west,the drop off down to Manhattanville on the north and Morningside Park on the east), the home to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum (now home to Columbia University), the Leak Watts Orphanage (now home to Saint John the Divine) and Saint Luke Hospital, was under served by any form of public transportation. The 9th Avenue El which opened up here by 1879 headed east at 110th street and then headed north into the plains of Harlem.  The area loaned itself to more of an institutional development than residential given it’s inaccessibility transportation-wise and plateau like features. The area just south of 110th street where the parent company of the insane asylum had purchased land in the early 19th century east of Broadway had retained some of the rural character as well.  There are books on this subject that go into greater detail than one should on a blog.
This is the Downes Boulevard Hotel. It was built along the Bloomingdale Road a little close to west 103rd street some time after the Civil War. Note the picket fence in the background. On the other side of the fence there is a lane, something that dotted the landscape of the Upper West Side once upon a time.

This is a map of the area from 1867. The future Broadway is shaded in just to the west (or left) of the Bloomingdale Road.  The precedent setting for this area hotel, Downes, is there as the lane running from the Bloomingdale Road to west 105th street between what is now Amsterdam and Columbus. In fact there is a small apartment building just east of P.S. 145 (The Bloomingdale School!) that has a western face at an angel that would have followed the contours of the lane. The future home of Isidore and Ida Straus is the house labeled “M.T. Brennan”.  “M.T.” was the original owner of the house.

 Once it was known where the Interborough Rapid Transit Company was going to build, the evidence of radical transformation became apparent, especially on street with a station on it. When I said precedent setting Downes Boulevard Hotel, there was an abundance of hotels around this intersection – 103rd and Broadway.  With the station opening in 1904, by the mid 1920’s it was almost a mini Orlando Florida with all the hotel rooms around here. In this picture, along with the subway construction and the apartment buildings built in anticipation of the subway opening is the Hotel Marseilles. Eventually up towards West End Avenue on 103rd street the Hotel Alexandria would be built. On Amsterdam and 103rd street, where the western most building of the Fredrick Douglas Houses now stands was once the site of the Hotel Clendening.  By 1922, a once very ambitious project to build a hotel for missionaries with a church in the first 5 floors, opened with out a church and opened to everyone, The Broadway View Hotel. Perfectly situated as there is a bend in Broadway at 104th, the building was designed by the firm of Carrère & Hastings and Shreve, Lamb & Blake.  Shreve, Lamb & Blake took over Carrère & Hastings (who designed the main branch of The New York Public Library) and along with Arthur H. Harmon went on to design the Empire State Building. The Broadway View Hotel is now the Regent.

 The blueprint of the station.  The architects were Heins & LaFarge, the original architects of Saint John the Divine.

The chaos of construction and development has taken a rest.  The previous picture of the construction was taken from the roof of the church on the corner, the Baptist-based Metropolitan Tabernacle of New York City.  The church and the little building north of it are in the footprint of the what is now the Hotel Regent. What is also gone is the original beautiful control (or station) house in the middle of Broadway. Not so much a hazard to cars on Broadway (although it was) but to the eventual numbers of people coming in and out of those beautiful doors every day onto a very small piece of sidewalk in front of the station.

The 104th street exit from the uptown platform on July 30th, 1912.  The church is still there in the background. The apartment building above the man in the straw hat head is still there although much altered and is the home to Tap-A-Keg, as the the building just to the right (or north). The building with the awnings is not. The exit and the fire hydrant are still there but the building on the left, home to a Men’s Outfitter is gone.

The Men’s Outfitter building was replaced by this, the Horn & Hardart Automat. With so many hotels surrounding this area, it was nice to have a dining choice where you did not have to read a menu. You just looked in the little window and then dropped your nickels. Incredibly helpful for recent arrivals who could not read English but had nickels. This was especially true right after World War II when the Hotel Marseilles housed a large number of the displaced European Jewish community.
The Hotel Regent is there and the New York chain Riker’s Restaurants  moved into the corner store (where the Ben & Jerry’s is now) in 1947 and commissioned an artist named Max Spivak to create murals for this location. What survives can be seen in Ben & Jerry’s.

I have been coming to this street for too many years. I escaped the death sentence of the local Junior High School by going to The Bank Street School for Children for two years.  I was always intrigued by the city, it’s history, every facet of it’s history, and how it got that way. Now that my children are enrolled, and have been so for many years, at one of the greatest schools ever to be born of this city (and I firmly believe that New York City is the only city in the world where Elisabeth Irwin and Lucy Sprague Mitchell could flourish), it was time to spend a little time on this block.

The above picture is looking north from the east side of Broadway from West 111^th.  The picture was taken sometime after the subway opened in 1904. How do I know that?  There are no trees in the center island of Broadway, they had to be removed during construction of what is now the Number 1 Line, but look at those massive tree trunks on the right.  The Home to the Bank Street Book Store is there on the left.  

This is the Maranamay, 611 West 112th.  It is the building across from the school that has been in various stages of dilapidation since the 1970s. At one point there were as many as 60 bicycles chained up to the iron rail outside as the population of the building was predominantly in the food delivery trade.  The 6, 7, and 8-room apartments were cut up over the years, and at one point small rooms created by these “renovations” would hold up to 6 people.  The brochure for the building points out all the features of the neighborhood, the proximity to Saint John the Divine, Columbia University, Horace Mann, the Broadway Surface Cars, and the Subway at 110th Street.  The building boasted steam heat, hot water, hall, and elevator service all day and all night, and phone connections for local and long distances.

This is a map of the block from 1896.  There is nothing on the block that is still with us. In fact, only some of the single-family homes on the south side of West 114th Street are still with us.  The dark shape on Riverside was the 1884 George Noakes House, soon to be replaced by an apartment building and two extant townhouses.  The corner of 112th and Riverside Drive (the service road anyway) is the St. Christopher Home.  What is surprising is how much still undeveloped land there is on the block and surrounding area. By 1896, those in the real estate business knew that there was a subway coming, Columbia University knew what it was doing when it started building its Acropolis at 116th Street.  This area was going to explode with development, or so it was hoped. 

This is 1911. What a difference 15 years make.  After 1896 Morningside Heights, as the area north of 110th Street, south of 123rd Street with Riverside Drive on the west and Morningside Drive on the east is called, saw a great deal of change as you can see. Now that this area was accessible, it became desirable.  Claremont Hall, The Clarendon, The Maranamay, and Fowler Court (400 Riverside Drive) line the north side still. The Porterfield and The Wendit are no longer with us as this is the footprint of the Bank Street College of Education.  The Saint Christopher Home is now The Riverview Hotel and the building that is home to The Bank Street Book Store is there. 

This is 1916 and the Riverview is now The Hudson Terrace Inn.  404 Riverside is on the earlier map but now it has a name, Strathmore, which can still be seen very faded on the south-facing facade overlooking Fowler Court.  The Riverside Mansion (410 Riverside Drive) was built in 1909, replacing the Noakes House.  The townhouse to the right (or to the north of 410 Riverside) had to have gone up earlier.

The Heyday of townhouse construction along Riverside was dwindling by 1909. It would make sense that the townhouses came first and large apartment buildings, like 410 Riverside Drive, came after.  What I am suggesting is that the two townhouses just north of 410 Riverside Drive were built while the Noakes House was still there. the Noakes house sat in the center (or thereabout) of the property. 410 Riverside was built right up to the property line, thus obliterating the view and the use of this bay window.  This sort of thing has happened before, it continues to happen now and will continue in the future.

This is a detail of the 1916 map.  The little triangular building next to the yellow strip (indicating a wood frame building) is the home today of Samad’s Delicatessen.  The two buildings to the north sit in the footprint of what was once upon a time known as Asylum Lane.  The site of Columbia University was once the home The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum of New York Hospital. Having started in lower Manhattan and opening up here in 1821, New York Hospital began buying land in this area in 1811.  This location was chosen for the asylum as it was believed that the rural setting and farm work was therapeutic.  Not long after, the Leak & Watts orphanage buys a piece of land from New York Hospital and opens in 1843. Eventually, they sell their land to the Episcopal Church for what will become Saint John the Divine – but that is another story.
The Asylum Lane was an offshoot of the old Bloomingdale Road, a road that was eventually conformed, in parts, to the street grid of 1811.  Originally the lane started near the Hudson River at what is now 111th Street as there had been a ferry boat landing.

This is looking north from what is now 112th Street and Riverside Drive.  The gate in the background on the right of the man seated, on what appears to be a pipe,  I believe is the gate to what was then probably a private home but eventually the Saint Christopher Home and later the Hudson Terrace Inn. Just to the left of the surveyor is the entrance to the Noakes’s property.

This is 1879 and Riverside Avenue, as it was briefly called, was going to be the next millionaire’s row rivaling Fifth Avenue.  It did not quite happen as hoped.  The institutions in the area as well as the New York Central tracks along the Hudson did not help.  There were other factors as well, some having to do with wanting to remain where the Astors, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and the like had established their homes.  Other factors were less obvious but anti – Semitic attitudes of the day prevailed.  The undeveloped west side was where wealthy Jews could buy, or have built for them, homes. 

Again, another story but look at the names of the architects working on the West Side at the turn of the century and look at the names of those working on the east side at the same time. You would never see the Blum Brothers, Schwartz and Gross, or even Gaetan Aijello working on the east side back then.
The construction and opening of this avenue were delayed by the numerous lawsuits involving land ownership and eminent domain laws.  Wealthy individual landowners along what became the drive disputed with the city about where their land ended and where the city could build its road.

Monday, November 28, 2011

This is the late, great, much missed largest theater in the world (for a while), birth place of what became the Rockettes and “The Cathedral of the Motion Picture”. The 5,920 seat Roxy Theatre. This, by the way is the opening of this palace, March 11, 1927 and this is also the north east corner of 50th street and 7th Avenue.

The idea for the largest motion picture theater in the world was brain child of a movie producer named Herbert Lubin. Mr. Lubin wanted to build the largest and most luxurious house in New York City. The Times Square area saw a good deal of movie palace construction in the late teens and early 20’s. These were lavish, overblown and beautiful houses catering to audiences that wanted to be entertained in a luxurious environment. With one of the biggest stages ever built for a theater on Broadway, The Strand Theater opened in 1914. At 2989 seats this was one of the earliest movie palaces to hit Broadway, Broadway at 47th street to be specific. Only five years later The Capitol opened in 1919 on 50th street and Broadway at 5230 seats. Both of these theaters were designed by my favorite architect Thomas Lamb.
The movie and stage show combination lasted at these theaters until the early 50’s with a few years during the depression that saw no action on those big stages. The shows may have stopped for a while but rest assured, the mighty Wurlitzer organs rose from the depths of their pits to entertain between pictures.

The competition was fierce, each theater had to be the biggest and the best. This is a color rendering done by the decorating firm, The Rambusch Decorating Company, in conjunction with the Roxy’s architect Walter Ahlschlager, giving those involved an idea what the finished product would look like. In the days before computer rendering, an oil painting would have to suffice.

 The name “Roxy” was the preferred nickname of Samuel Rothafel. Born in Brooklyn but raised in Minnesota, this former Marine became the showman of the 1920’s. He successfully combined motion pictures with vaudeville. He moved to New York City and worked his magic first at the Regent Theater in Harlem. He then moves down to the Times Square area where he performs his wonders at the old Rialto, The Rivoli, The Strand and The Capitol.  His shows are so successful that he eventually gets his own radio show. Broadcasting from the Capitol Theater, Roxy has an audience of over 5 million and receives thousands of fan letters a week.  After so much success with other people’s theaters, it was eventually time for Roxy to have his own.

 When Roxy did get his own theater, it was the biggest. Everything about the theater was big. During the silent era it was not un-common for a big palace to have an orchestra play along with the picture in addition to the stage show. In this case the orchestra was a 110 person affair. This is a shot from house left looking down at the orchestra which has risen up from it’s depths below to stage level. The largest Kimball organ ever constructed was operated by three consoles rising in the front of the pit.
With the pulpits on either side of the proscenium arch, you can see why this house was referred to as “the cathedral of the motion picture”.

The balcony was very step indeed. The auditorium was on the shallow side and the stage was oddly shaped. The stage was a triangle but the center line of the stage did not meet up with the what I guess would be one of the angles that compose a triangle. That angle was off to the side. It was a real pain for set designers.
The plan had been to build the big Roxy and then to build several other “satellite” Roxy’s. One such satellite was begun but due to cost overruns and escalating costs with the main Roxy, the unfinished satellite theater was sold and completed by a different owner.  The final cost of the Roxy was 12 million dollars.

 12 million dollars that is. That figure put the idea of satellite Roxy’s on a back burner so far back it might as well have been Cleveland. Only one of the satellites was under way and that had to be sold to finish the big Roxy.
The Roxy was staffed by a myriad of professionals all out to produce the biggest and best stage shows. In addition to the master showman, there was producer Leon Leonidoff, choreographer Russell Markert, and conductor Erno Rapee. Almost every week the show was changed (along with the picture) and a new show was produced by Roxy and his producer Leonidoff.

Choreographer Russell Markert came east from the Great Plains with his Missouri Rockets, a line of precision, high kicking dancers. He eventually made it all the way to New York and to Roxy and the Roxy were the Missouri Rockets became the Roxyettes. They joined the Roxy ballet company, the male chorus and lavish support facilities which included five floors of private and chorus dressing rooms, huge rehearsal rooms, a costume department, dry-cleaning and laundry rooms, a barber shop and hairdresser, a completely equipped infirmary, dining room, and a menagerie for show animals. There were also private screening room seating 100, as well as a cafeteria, gymnasium, billiard room, nap room, library and showers.
This is the view from the stage looking towards house left over the orchestra pit which looks like it might be at the height at which it would have been in to play for the feature picture. The organ consoles are visible at the downstage area of the pit.
Among the many innovations at the Roxy, the projection booth was placed in a cut in the center of the balcony. This allowed for a straight on throw from the booth, instead of the typical angle from a booth all the way up at the back of the balcony.
The stage was very wide; and even with it’s two stage elevators it was very shallow.

 I love this picture. It is a very full orchestra pit all the way up to “overture level”. Roxy had begun what became a successful radio program on N.B.C. while he was at the Capitol and he carried the show over to his new theater. Another feature of this palace was the radio studio from which “Roxy and his gang” would broadcast from. This made the Roxy Theater even more popular and known nation wide. During the construction period, costs went spiraling out of control. The man behind this idea, Herbert Lubin, was $2.5 million over budget and near bankruptcy, sold his controlling interest a week before the theater opened to movie mogul and theater owner William Fox for $5 million. This ended the idea or hopes for the “satellite Roxy’s” to be built around New York. However, construction had begun on one satellite theater and was almost finished but cash was needed to complete “the cathedral”. This theater was sold to Warner Brothers who completed it and opened it as the Warner Beacon in 1929. At 3,154 seats The Beacon, as it is known today, was the largest movie palace left in Manhattan until movies were no longer shown there as of 1986. It was designed by the same architect as the Roxy, Walter W. Ahlschlager.

This is the Grand Rotunda at the Roxy. It contained it’s very own Kimball organ (to entertain patrons who were waiting for the next show) and the largest oval rug in the world. Oval, not square or rectangle, but oval. When the Roxy Midway, as it was to be called, was sold to the Warner Brothers, it was partially completed. The framework was in place and theater was physically laid out; the stage, for example is set into a triangle the same exact way the stage at the Roxy was except not as big. It was still wide and shallow and looking in at the loading door on Amsterdam Avenue you are looking almost straight into the house. The auditorium at the Beacon had not yet decorated. Since was no longer going to be part of that Roxy Gang, alterations were made to the design of the auditorium so it looks nothing like the Roxy. The inner lobby was finished however and it is a 1/4 scale version of the “Grand Rotunda” at the Roxy.

 This is the outer lobby and box office area of the Roxy. The outer lobby and box office area and, I believe, all or part of the Grand Rotunda were constructed within the Hotel Taft structure. That hotel was built with the entrance to the Roxy on it’s south eastern corner, 50th and Seventh Avenue. A very similar arrangement to the Beacon hotel and the Roxy Midway (now the Beacon Theater). Note the marble floor with the Roxy logo inlaid.  This area is now occupied by “America’s Largest Friday’s”. Now there is an achievement.

This is the same area as pictured below but with people in it. That is a Roxy usher standing at attention on the right. Cole Porter was right when he wrote the lyrics for “You’re The Top” , those are some nice pants on that Roxy usher.
It appears that this is a later photo of the outer / box office lobby. The floor has been altered and what looks like a panel of mirrors have replaced the curtained transoms just above the ticket booths.

This is a line heading to the Roxy and all that this “World Famous Theater” showing only “Outstanding Motion Pictures in Stereophonic Sound and in CinemaScope”. This is obviously the 1950’s and if I remember correctly, this is a line to get into see the first movie in CinemaScope “The Robe” starring Victor Mature. In the old days children, a big picture would open at a handful of theaters. This may have been the only theater in Manhattan, for example, that this picture would have played in before moving on to neighborhood or second run houses.
You would think that with a line like this that the Roxy was forever in the black and reaping in the dough. Not so, as the theater suffered dramatically in it’s early years. After William Fox bought out the nearly bankrupt Herbert Lubin, The Roxy was forced to show some very inferior Fox products, movies that would not put them in seats. It was not until 1942, ten years after Roxy’s departure from his beloved cathedral that things started to turn around for the big house.
A. J. Balaban, co-founder of the Balaban & Katz theater chain of Chicago, began nearly a ten year term as Executive Director of the Roxy. He had been retired from the business but coaxed into the job by Spyros Skouras, the head of the Roxy’s parent company National Theatres, as well as 20th Century-Fox Studios. Now superior 20th Century -Fox product would open at the Roxy. Mr. Balaban also turned his attention to the stage shows presented at the Roxy. The Roxy held on to the movie and stage show combination long after most theaters discontinued the practice.

In addition to installing ice on the stage Mr. Balaban would engage popular acts such as The Nicholas Brothers, Milton Berle, Cab Calloway and “The Poet of the Piano” Carmen Cavallaro. This is a photo of one Mr. Balaban’s more interesting engagements. For two weeks in September of 1950, the New York Philharmonic along with soprano Eileen Farrell, were the show. Four times a day between showings of the 20th Century Fox feature, The Black Rose starring Orson Welles and Tyrone Power.
The orchestra appears to be on the pit lift which looks as if it is at stage level. Except for a few empty rows on the sides of the balcony and loge, the house looks pretty full. This photo affords a great view of how and where the projection booth was situated.

This all star blockbuster opened in December of 1950. Big openings were not just the realm of Hollywood. Mr. Balaban knew how to throw a premiere.
After Roxy left, he went over to work on the opening of Radio City Music Hall. He took his production staff with when he headed east to 6th Avenue. Originally planned to be called The International Music Hall, Radio City Music Hall opened to the public on December 27, 1932 with a huge stage show featuring Ray Bolger and Martha Graham. The opening was meant to be a return to high-class vaudeville. The new format was not a success. The program was incredibly long and individual acts were lost in this enormous very deep (as opposed to the shallow more intimate Roxy) hall. On January 11, 1933, the Music Hall converted to the then familiar format of a feature film with a spectacular stage show perfected by Rothafel and produced by Leon Leonidoff at the Roxy Theatre. It was this production staff that left a legacy that includes the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. Musical Director Erno Rappe worked continuously that first year. He also drove the Radio City Music Hall orchestra with one iron fist holding the baton and the other holding a bull whip. A story handed down to me by my father about Rappe is when asked for a day off from one of the pit musicians who had been working for almost a year without a break, Rappe replied “You can take a week off, you can take a month off, but if you miss one day of work you’re fired”.

In 1950, CBS asked Lucille Ball to take her popular radio show My Favorite Husband to television. She saw this possible television show as a great opportunity to work with Desi Arnaz to whom she had been married to since 1940. It would keep them both in Hollywood and perhaps save their shaky marriage. Lucy insisted that Desi play her husband. CBS was reluctant because Arnaz was Cuban. Network executives believed that audiences would not accept the marriage between an all-American girl and a Latin man. To prove CBS wrong, the couple developed a vaudeville act, written by Bob Caroll and Madeline Pugh, writers on the My Favorite Husband program who went on to write (or be part of the team that wrote) every I Love Lucy episode. They took this act on the road with Arnaz’s orchestra, playing the big picture houses as the stage show. The act was a hit and convinced CBS executives that a Ball-Arnaz pairing would be a worthwhile venture. One of the stops on this tour was The Roxy, obviously. In fact, that’s Desi in the white blazer under the marquee.
Desi was appearing with his orchestra here at the Roxy in 1940 when Lucy came east from Hollywood. On November 30th 1940, Lucy and Desi went to Connecticut (there was no waiting period once you had a marriage license) got married and headed back to New York where she was introduced as Mrs. Desi Arnaz on stage at the Roxy.

This is the center console of the Roxy Theater Kimball Organ. When Rothafel moved over to the Radio City Music Hall, the new Roxy management decided to extend the stage apron out over the orchestra pit. When this architectural miscarriage was committed, not only was the pit elevator immobilized, this act of vandalism left the consoles entombed in the basement. In addition, New York City fire codes required that the fireproofing between the house and the stage go up to the apron line. To do this, the massive organ pipes behind grilles on either side of the proscenium had to be walled up behind cinder blocks. A valiant effort to save the organ was made. The new management team talked about relocating the pipework. The Kimball people suggested that all the pipework be placed on one side of the auditorium. An estimate was obtained but the Roxy management balked at the cost of the work so the organ fell silent and the three consoles were moved to a warehouse.
Then came the happy order to move the master console from the warehouse back to the theater. When the console arrived, it was placed up in a little balcony on the left side of the proscenium, where it remained until the early 1950’s. The organ had to be amplified due the cinder blocking. So the worst possible amplification system was employed; the organ sounded strangely muffled as it was amplified through the house public address system. The distortion and limited frequency response of the PA system. In addition, this system could hardly do justice to the big Kimball sound… but at least it was organ music.

This is the death of The Roxy. The big house closed on March 30th 1960 and demolition begun not long after. This is a picture of Gloria Swanson standing in the rubble of what appears to be the Grand Rotunda. She was there at the beginning, her picture The Love of Sunya opened the cathedral so it is fitting that she is there at the end.
As I have said, everything about this place was over-sized. The tuned tubular bells, the longest at 21 feet and so large they had to be installed while the house was under construction, fell victim to the wrecking ball. Not much could be recycled, except for part of the organ and the center console, which is now in Las Vegas. Once the rubble was cleared, a nondescript office building rose in it’s place.
As for Roxy, the master showman, he passed away in 1936. His magic all used up, he could not save the gigantic Mastbaum Theater in Philadelphia. The man who helped move movies out of the nickelodeons, who created a special atmosphere in every theater that he touched, the man who told the New York Central Railroad that their 20th Century Limited should have a red carpet rolled out to meet the train both coming in and going out (they listened), faded into the history books of show business.
This photo, the inspiration for the musical Follies, ends my Roxy revere.

Monday, November 28, 2011

So I am looking through the New York Public Library and its new way of viewing online.  The clarity is a little better.  However, looking around, I found a picture of a house that is listed as being on 110th Street and Riverside but really it is a house that was on 108th and Riverside.

This is looking south on September 30th 1870 from 109th Street.  Obviously much has changed but there is so much that is recognizable today.  None of the houses are with us but the shape of the island of greenery (the tangled mess of bushes and trees) between the service road, merely a suggestion at this point, and the main drive is starting to look familiar.   The service road does not exist on the 1867 maps and neither do these houses.  There are houses that unfortunately do not appear in this photo but do appear, along with their driveways, on the 1867 map.  The hill leading down from 106th Street to the intersection of the service road and 108th street where the shortest timed traffic light on the west side is placed is already evident.  Where the wagon with the big wheel in the middle of the drive is sitting is 108th Street.  In such a short period of time, massive change will happen.  The white house on the left is on the north corner of 108th Street and Riverside Drive.  How much longer will it be there?  It will be gone in less than 17 years.

This is 108th street and Riverside Drive in 1921 while the Drive was at the end of it’s second incarnation.  The is house is part of the second wave, or incarnation of Riverside Drive.  I believe that we are in the third incarnation at this point.  It was hoped that the Drive would rival Fifth Avenue and would become a thoroughfare of suburban type villas for the wealthy.  Although the construction of many large private unattached homes, ranging from houses such as this one to the largest private house ever built on this rock (The Schwab Mansion of 1906 at 73rd street and Riverside Drive), single family homes gave way to apartment house construction in the first few decades of the twentieth century.

Built in 1892 for Samuel Gamble Bayne(1844- 1924 ), the son of a prosperous merchant in the town Ramelton, Ireland.  At the age of  twenty-five Sam graduated from Queen’s University Belfast and decided to travel to America.  While he was here Samuel G. Bayne accumulated enough wealth to join the billionaires club.  His wealth was based on gold prospecting in California, oil in Texas and banking; he was a founder of Seaboard National Bank, which ultimately after several mergers and acquisitions became what we all know and love today – Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase).  Could that be the nearly 80 year old Bayne sitting on the steps?

Bayne was involved in keeping the area around his home as elegant as possible and bought the vacant lots on 107th Street and 108th Street. Andrew Carnegie would do something similar on 5th Avenue, to control who his neighbors would be.
When Bayne sold the Riverside Drive lots near his house in 1899, restrictions were put into the sales agreement controlling not so much the neighbors, but how the the lots would be developed. Only “high class residences” with no more than two detached homes were to be built on the lots and that there be at least 30 feet between the houses in the middle of the block and those on either corner.  What is with us today is a result of these stipulations, the distances between 355 Riverside, 353 and 352 Riverside and 351 Riverside (the Schinasi Mansion) are 30 feet and they allow sun to get into the usually dark sides of houses too close together. 

This photo, looking north / uptown dates from 1894 and was taken by J.S. Johnston.  It is labeled, not by the Library but but by the photographer as being on 110th street.  I always had doubts about the location, and the house looked too familiar to the Bayne House.  A little more comparison and a closer look with the zoom, a street lamp and the indications of a street appeared to me.  This is clearly not 110th street as it is no way wide enough.  What is great about this picture is that we can see the house that was to be the second structure on the north east corner of 108th and Riverside the second (?) 360 Riverside Drive.
Both houses were built by Bayne and designed by Frank Freeman.  355 Riverside was a larger house and Bayne had an ever growing family.  He sold 360 Riverside Drive and moved to 355 Riverside by 1892. 

When 362 went up a spite wall was built on the north end of the lot of 360 Riverside, blocking the views of the side garden and the river looking south.  Cora B. and John A. Rutherford were the owners of 360 Riverside when 362 Riverside went up.  Cora was the descendent of Henry Spingler Fonerden Davis who had purchased the house from Samuel Bayne.  She had found it too insulting to live next to an apartment building.  She eventually sold the house and lot in 1917 to the Paterno Brothers who, with their favorite architect, Gaetan Ajello and built the current 360 Riverside Drive, known as The Rutherford.  No mention of Bayne, a man who left a mark on this neighborhood, in a good way, anywhere . . . I’m just saying  . . .

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Thursday, January 29, 2015

Upper West Side Country – The slowly disappearing vestiges of rural life.

This is a section of one of the plates that comprise the Dripps Map of 1868.   It is based on the Commissioners Plan of 1811 map.  The map that did not take in the topography of this rock we call Manhattan.  It includes the old farm names, property owners, the structures that were present on the blocks created by the Grid and shows the old lanes and the route of the 1842 Croton Aqueduct.  The future road called Broadway is indicated to the left of the Bloomingdale Road.  Edge Hill is a name not used for way over a century for the area surrounding 112^th Street and Riverside Drive.  Just above that the name Andrew Carrigan appears, a name that is associated with the creation of a bank and laws protecting newly arrived immigrants from the machinations of con men (and woman).  Looking at the larger triangle created when the Bloomingdale Road crosses 11^th Avenue the name M.T. Brennan appears, as does the house he owns.  Matthew Brennan was a Tammany Hall connected former volunteer fireman who had moved up in the world. Eventually he sold the house to Isidore and Ida Straus who eventually booked passage on the Titanic.  The house, which had the first cast iron bathtub in the United States was torn down soon after the tragedy and 924 West End Avenue rose in its place.  On top of all this, the map shows us a “Burying Ground” at what is now 110th Street and Columbus Avenue.  The map also serves to solve the orientation of the following photos. 

I know that people have found this picture out there before.  I have never been able to find a photographer’s name attached to it.  However every source declares that this picture is of the David Knapp house on West 105th Street near 10th Avenue and dates from 1875.  But which way are we looking?  North west. Those telephone poles in the distance, serving to bring lower Manhattan to the sticks, quite possibly could be on Broadway.

The orientation here is facing north east.  And like the photo above this one, 1875 is the date and West 105th Street is the location.  For this photo, one more piece of information was given; the large white house on the right was known as the David Gorham House in 1875.  On the map The David Knapp house is to the west of the David Gorham house.  On the map above, the Gorham house was owned by S.A. King.  This view is from the south west looking north east.  The road on the right is possibly the end of Clendening Lane. 

John Clendening was a landowner in the area, and this would have been, over 30 years earlier, the north west corner of the property.  The lane served as a boundary line as well as a lane.
This is Clendening’s house.  Clendening lived on his rural estate for many years, but in 1836 he lost most of his money when President Andrew Jackson refused to renew the charter of the United States Bank, in which Clendening was a major stockholder. The estate was sold in 1845 as forty lots for a total of $4500.

 Although the mansion was torn down the area was known as Clendening Valley well into the post civil war 19th century New York.  On the site where Clendening’s house one stood, the Clendening Hotel (left and below) rose in its place on the west side of Amsterdam Avenue at 103rd street.  The Hotel survived until 1965 when it was torn down for furthest west building of the Douglas Houses complex.

The house called “Woodlawn”, on the block bordered by 106th and 107th, Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, was owned by the Rogers family.  Their property ran east along 103rd Street from Riverside Drive, around a little piece owned by the Furniss family, who owned a once upon a time very large estate. By the late 19th century all that was left was the house and the land around it – 99th Street to 100th street, Riverside Drive to West End Avenue.  The house was called “The Colonial White House” and was famous enough to have it’s own postcard.

This is The Colonial White House.  The name came from the 
columns and the fleeting resemblance to the real Executive Mansion.

The Rogers’ property then ran over to the Bloomingdale Road just south of the Downes Boulevard Hotel at 103rd and then followed the western edge of the Clendening Lane up to the south side of 105th street between 9th and 10th Avenues.  Then over to 8th Avenue and up to 107th street where the boundary ran a non – conforming to the grid straight line over to Riverside.  Big piece of land once upon a time,  but it was starting to shrink.

The building in the left background is referred to as “The Ward School” on the map above.  The white fence surrounding it separates the school from the vacant lot, indicated on the map, just uptown of the school.  So given the location of the houses and the position of the school on the map, we can say that this photo, probably taken from the Gorham House, is looking southwest towards 104th street.  What appears to be a road in the foreground, running at an odd angle, is the route of the Croton Aqueduct.  The houses in the background above the Knapp house are on 10th Avenue.  To the right of the cupola on the roof of the Knapp house, off in the distance is what I am fairly certain is the house that once stood on the site occupied by 895 West End Avenue.  In a little over 20 years, this area will be unrecognizable.  I always wondered if they removed the bodies from the “Burying Ground” on 110th Street . . . I have always felt a chill there.

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Tuesday, January 6, 2015

This is the end . . . does this really need to happen?

 Streit’s Matzo’s back in a funkier era.  And soon it will join the ranks of the “used – to – be’s”.

When I was at P.S. 145 on the upper west side back in the late ’60’s, a forward thinking teacher took us on a tour of the Streit’s Matzo factory.  Yes, they really gave tours of this place.  Although they probably had tried it before and did not realize it, half the kids didn’t know what a matzo was but all where intrigued and moved by this tour.  Why? The very simple theme of immigration.  It was the theme about immigrants, coming here from wherever, and putting down roots. They were able to do this, build a life, because of the steady employment offered to the newly arrived.  One group after another, and not just in matzo factories but this was the one field trip that hit home with so many of my classmates, in a great many cases the first English speakers in a household.  They saw themselves, their parents, on this tour.  The tour spoke volumes to them, more history that could ever be gotten out of a book – because they felt it.  This is a loss on so many levels, the educational value alone is worth more than what ever glass and steal box will net a developer.  Not to mention how many of us grew up with a box of this on the table at Passover and Rosh Hashanah?  When will this city learn?  Maybe never but I still love this dirty town. 

Click here for more of the story, a trailer for a documentary and more pictures.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Another One Bites the Dust – Another Slaughtered Lamb, Another McElfatrick Disappers Into Oblivion

Back In August of 2013 I put up a piece about a theater.  It was announced that yet another piece of our puzzle, mosaic, history or whatever you want to call it was going to go.  The once upon a time Columbia Theater at 47th and 7th was going to join the list of “used to be”.  We knew this place as the Embassy 2, 3, and 4.  It’s last incarnation was an over sized souvenir store – never had I seen so many Statue of Liberty(s) or Empire State Buildings in one place. 

The Columbia Burlesque was designed by William McElfatrick, one of the most prolific theater architects of the late 19th through the early 20th centuries. Sort of Thomas Lamb of his day.  A re-design of the theater was carried out by Thomas Lamb when the Columbia became known as Loew’s Mayfair.

We knew this place as the Embassy 2, 3, and 4.  It’s last incarnation was an over sized souvenir store – never had I seen so many Statue of Liberty(s) or Empire State Buildings in one place.

The theater had several names over the years, including The DeMille, like in Cecil B. Amongst the big New York City premiers was one of the most famous movies ever made.  In June of 1960, with the famous “No one will be admitted after the start of the picture” policy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho opened.

I was walking by the demolition site the night before Thanksgiving and I decided to investigate. I found a small hole in the wall.  Aren’t we lucky to be living in an age where most of us have a camera at all times?  The souvenir store did not use the entire space.  What we are looking at, I believe, is the downstage edge of the stage and where the orchestra pit would have been and the orchestra section of seating would have begun.  I tried to get in there the next day but there was no one there on Black Friday. However, I knew that with the help of the iPhoto, I would get something usable.

I pointed my phone as best I could to the left so I could get what I believe is the stage.  It is not unreasonable to think that we are looking at the stage right wing space through the proscenium opening.  Or what is left of it. That yellow machine is a small bulldozer type thing. The machine’s arm (for lack of better term) is resting on what could be the proscenium arch structure and the vertical channel for the smoke pocket used with the fire curtain.

There is a bit of an incline going up to this area. Does this mean that the area with the mini bulldozer, the area I believe to have been the stage, somewhat elevated? If I ever get down there . . . but it may too late.  Goodbye Columbia Burlesque, while New York reinvents itself again, as you fade away into the memories of fewer and fewer,  along with the careers of those who tread your boards.

Posted by New York Tours By Gary at 11:12 AM 1 comment: 

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Labels: Abandoned Theaters of New York City, Burlesque Theaters, New York City Walking Tours, NYC tours, NYC Walking Tours, Theater Demolitions, Thomas Lamb

Thursday, June 19, 2014

The Riverside and Riviera Theater – An Entertainment Meca On The Upper West Side.

In 1911 William Fox, a theater owner and pioneering film producer is finishing construction of a large Vaudeville house on 96th street and Broadway. He is approached by agents of the uber – powerful

Keith Albee company – the largest Vaudeville circuit on the East Coast. They want to buy the practically finished 1710 seat Riverside Theater.  Mr. Fox says at first says no but then threatened with the loss of all Keith performers for his already established theaters, he sells.  The Riverside Theater was built for high end Vaudeville (only 2 shows per day). The great Sarah Bernhardt even played B.F. Keith’s Riverside.   On the right is the standard early 1920’s program cover for the Keith circuit.  I found another east coast theater using the same art work on the program cover, the Orpheum (in Boston I believe) that was proud to be presenting Houdini live on stage. What a smart couple, all dressed up for an evening at the Riverside.  On the left is part of the program from January 22, 1923.

At the time of this programs publication composer and bandleader Julius Lenzberg was the orchestra leader at the Riverside.  This is the Riverside Orchestra, Julius is the guy with the violin.  Born January 3 1878 in Baltimore, Lenzberg began his career accompanying dancing lessons at the piano. By 1903, with a couple of published compositions to his credit, he got himself married and moved to New York City, eventually settling in Queens.  Thus began a long stint serving as orchestra leader at various vaudeville houses in Manhattan and in the summer, he led a band out on Long Island. 

In 1919, Lenzberg served as director of the George White Scandals of 1919 and also led the house band at the Riverside Theater in New York. That year, Lenzberg  and the Riverside Orchestra began to make records for Edison, and though Lenzberg’s recording activity ended in 1922, he was prolific, ultimately producing more than 50 sides for Edison.  Lenzberg continued to lead a band and appear on radio once it emerged, into the 1930s, but the depression knocked him out of the performing end of the business. By the last time Lenzberg is heard from in the early 1940s, he was working as a booking agent.  He passed away in April 1956.  I recently received an email from a gentleman who worked at the theater through out the 1940’s and 1950’s.  Among the tales of the Riverside and Riviera next door, he wrote that legendary Hollywood composer, the man who gave us the soundtrack to Gone With The Wind, Max Steiner, had also served for a time as the conductor of the Riverside Theatre Orchestra.  

Not long after giving up the Riverside Theatre, Mr. Fox buys the lots next door and builds the Riviera Theatre.  This is obviously a very early in it’s life picture of the original entrance to the Riviera.  The Riviera was built as a legit house, and was on the subway circuit. What is the “Subway Circuit”?  I will tell you.  A show played its 300 or so performances downtown on Broadway then moved to a neighborhood theater before going on the road. This was good, runs of shows did not have go on forever, or 25 plus years.  There was another show waiting in the wings.  Records in the Shubert Archives indicate that from 1918 to 1931, the Shubert’s had a profit-sharing contract with Fox. The Riviera became the Shubert Riviera in 1923. In one of her first Broadway appearances, Bette Davis came through the Riviera in a show that had been on the road. In this case the road was a railroad.   

A theater located at 96th and Broadway was ideally situated with a rail link two blocks west. A vaudeville show often traveled as a package, and by train. Up until recently, theatrical scenery flats were built to fit into railroad boxcars. Prior to the great depression and the WPA, 96th street ended at the Hudson River. There was no Westside highway. Access to the river and the New York Central freight line was as simple as crossing a street. The tracks under Riverside Park, built along what was the natural edge of Manhattan (the rest of the park and highway is landfill) have been there since the early railroad days of a pre-civil war New York. There had even been a passenger stop (not a station) at Stryker’s Bay (96th street) for many years just before and after the civil war. During the Great Depression, the Westside Improvement created the rest of Riverside park, the highway and covered over the tracks, thanks to Robert Moses and his persuasiveness with the WPA.

This is 96th street prior to the Westside Improvement.  The top picture is looking south, the building in the background is 230 Riverside Drive at 95th street and the kids crossing the tracks are really old now.  The third rail in the foreground is the same used today on the Metro North railroad (the LIRR and the NYC subway system use a different type).

This is looking north from just south of 96th street. The train in the background is being pulled by an electric locomotive. Curiously, there is a passenger car at the back end. Passenger service on that part of the Hudson Line had ended decades earlier.  It was not unusual to see a passenger car as part of the consist of a freight train.  A very bad accident along this line in the mid 1960’s involving a head on collision near 147th street, a photograph from the New York Times does show a passenger car amongst the wreckage.  They were used for the crew.

These are the original house right boxes in the Riverside Theatre. 

Early in the life of the Riverside. This photograph has been mislabeled as The Regent Theater, which still stands today as The First Corinthian Baptist Church on 116th and 7th Avenue.  The architect of the Regent, Riverside and Riviera is the same person.

The lobby leading into the Riverside. On the right that appears to be an elevator.  This elevator has a lock on it, but is it to keep people from going into or coming out of the elevator?  There were two floors above the lobby in what was called a “taxpayer” structure.  The rental revenue collected on the retail establishments, the much missed Chess City for example, would defray the costs of taxes on the land and structure. So the elevator must have served those upper floors, bringing up ping pong tables and countless number of ping pong balls. 

The Dome over the Riverside auditorium. Probably not the original chandelier.

The mural in the soundboard, above the proscenium appears to be Columbus discovering America (maybe New York – how “urbocentric”).

Detail from the ceiling of the Riverside Theatre. It appears to be Christopher Columbus asking for financing for his voyage west. 

Toward the stage at the Riverside from house right balcony.  As a vaudeville house, the Riverside only presented high class acts and originally only 2 shows a day.  Before opera singer Rosa Ponselle was Rosa Ponselle, she was part of a vaudeville act called The Italian Girls – Carmella and Rosa Ponzillo.  They appeared as one of 9 acts at the Riverside beginning the week of September 3 1917.  Belle Baker “Incomparable Delineator of Character Songs” was the headliner, the Italian Girls were second billed.  Although she was proud to have played The Palace and did not talk too much about her life in vaudeville, Rosa Ponzillo’s appearance at the Riverside was the one she did. It was here that she was heard by voice teacher / agent William Thorner and her path to the Metropolitan Opera, divaness and a less ethnic last name began.   

Balcony, house left.  Everyone who was anyone in vaudeville went through The Riverside. Bert Lahr, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, The Marx Brothers are luminaries among the names of those who played the Riverside.  Even more, whose careers began and ended in vaudeville, people whose stardom has been lost to the ages and dusty booking ledgers, for a shining moment tread the boards of the Riverside stage.

 From the Stage towards house right.

Detail of the proscenium at the Riverside.

Both houses underwent renovations in the 1950’s. It was at this time that the Skouras Brothers owned the theaters.

The brothers Skouras started in St. Louis with distribution and exhibition as their business and eventually went into production. Spyros Skouras became president of 20th Century Fox in 1942 and was instrumental in introducing Cinemascope. With this new wide screen process came the removal of boxes in many theaters across the country. Somewhere there is a pile of old discarded boxes.

 The Skouras brothers were notorious “modernizers”. As you can see in these photos, there are not only no more boxes but no more orchestra pits as well. Very often orchestra pits were covered over to add an extra row or two of seats. In some cases, the Mighty Wurlitzer (or similar organ) would be left on it’s lift, at the basement level, covered over by concrete slabs. The organ for the Riverside Theatre was a Wurlitzer with a manufactured date of August 8, 1928.  I am not sure what happened to it or where it ended up. 

The Riviera was built with a revenue generating office building and another theater above the Riviera designed for this new fangled motion picture thing, the 1579 seat Japanese Gardens. In part, due to it’s heavy Japanese motif, this theater closed after “The Day That Shall Live In Infamy”. The other reason that this theater probably closed in early 1942 was that the fire escapes on the south side of the building went back into the building. Accessible by one staircase and two elevators, this was a tragedy in formation.

 Early in the life of the Riviera.  According to the New York chapter of the Theater Organ Society of America, there had been an organ installed in the Riviera Theatre. It was built in 1917 by M.P. Möller of Hagerstown, Md. and was one of the firm’s standard theatre organ models having three manuals and 16 ranks.  The Riviera had been built for legit theater, it was not unusual for such a house to have an organ installed. 

 Just behind the orchestra section. Notice the dirt around the vents in the ceiling. Normally, none of this would have been visible but because it was picture day, the theater were brighter than usual and we can see more.  I do not remember these theaters being so brightly lit.  I do remember the perpetually closed balconies.  
The Shuberts ended their relationship with the Riviera in the late 1920’s. During the 1931 and 1932 seasons, the Chamberlain Brown players called the Riviera home.  A former actor turned agent and producer, Chamberlain Brown claimed to have discovered Clark Gable, Helen Hayes, Alfred Lunt, Rudolph Valentino, Leslie Howard, Jeannette MacDonald, Jack Haley, Don Ameche, Preston Foster, Robert Walker, Glenda Farrell, Carlotta Monterey (eventually Mrs Eugene O’Neill), Conrad Nagel, Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Menken (the first Mrs. Humphrey Bogart), Harry K. Morton, Nita Naldi and many others. The Brown agency represented such theater notables as John Carradine, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Lon Chaney, Jr., Ruth Chatterton, Constance Collier, Glenda Farrell, Dorothy Gish, Hal Holbrook, Miriam Hopkins, Otto Kruger, Fritzi Scheff, Spencer Tracy, and Tom Ewell (once an agency employee) among others.

The screen is lit quite possibly by the projector and by footlights. I have often wondered if the footlights were original.  The red curtains cover the damage done by the removal of the boxes.  In 1931, Jean Arthur had returned from Hollywood.  Her success in the pictures would be greater after her return to the New York Stage.  By this point, the Riviera was home to the company run by   Chamberlain Brown.  He was sufficiently impressed with her work that he cast her a production of Lysistrata that opened in January of 1932.  In the cast, a relatively unknown Sidney Greenstreet.   In Febrary of 1932 Mr. Brown presented Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude” which will be followed by the Theater Guild Success “Elizabeth the Queen”.

This is the mural on the sound board above the proscenium arch. Due to the terrible lighting it is hard to make out what it represents in this picture.
On March 9th 1932, a review appeared in the Columbia Spectator: “A talented actress named Kathryn Civney made her New York debut in “The Vinegar Tree” at the Riviera Theatre last Monday night and proceeded to make the audience forget that Mary Boland had ever had Gotham chuckling uproariously at her interpretation of the leading role in “The Vinegar Tree” last season”.  Other companies, as well as dance companies, used the theater during this era.  Eventually economics would give way and the Riviera would become a the movie house we all knew and loved.

 Looking towards house right from the house left balcony.  The red curtains cover the damage done by the removal of the boxes.  Both houses underwent renovations in the 1950’s when the Skouras Brothers owned the theaters.

Once there were boxes  . . .  I like this picture. It is amazing how intact the Riviera seems to be given it will soon be gone.

When it announced that a developer was going to tear down the theaters and put up a 30 story apartment tower (consisting of only studios and one bedrooms) I was devastated. They only managed to knock a hole in the side of the Riverside before running out of money. It was almost shocking to see the red velvet curtain hanging in shreds behind the now battered proscenium arch. The enormous balcony was collapsing. 

Then the whole thing did collapse, out onto 96th street (several parked cars were crushed) and inward. The fire and police departments searched and dug for days, looking for crushed junkies that supposedly lived in the shell of the Riverside. I remember seeing a hysterical woman on the news screaming that her daughter with a drug problem was in there. No bodies were found, at that time anyway.

This is an un – enhanced picture taken as the Riviera is beginning it’s final fade out.  The image is from a slide and once I scanned them into my iPhoto, I became convinced that there was more to the pictures than what I was seeing.  The theaters were photographed as discussion about their demise was bandied about.  Various community groups wanted space within the Riviera Building. Alexanders had expressed a great deal of interest in the site for a new store, apartment tower and new single screen theater.  Gimbel’s had offered pretty much the same deal.  However, neighborhood opposition to creating an overwhelmingly commercial area, at 96th and Broadway, scaled back the development to a 30 story tower of studios and one bedrooms (as the developer said – to meet the need of an ever growing swinging singles segment of society since the city was attracting a younger, less family oriented population and families were moving to the suburbs – or so the developer believed). However, there were cries about preservation which fell on deaf ears.

This is a digitally enhanced picture.  The wood frame structure on the stage was probably for the movie screen. The speaker horns are clearly visible behind the wooden frame. Obviously, demolition has begun, the lighting is quite possibly just natural light.

The mural on the sound board appears to be one of those life at Versailles pastoral images. Very Rococo. This mural, along with the murals in the Riverside, was probably not saved. This was in the pre-Urban Archeology days and nothing was saved or recycled.  It kills me that the red velvet curtains at both theaters where still hanging during demolition.

Looking to house right, light is coming on to the stage from 97th street.

House right about to be house no more. So much original detail that survived the decades was about to be reduced to rubble only to be put into a landfill some where.

This is an un-enhanced view of the stage.  I do not believe that these photos were taken by the photographer of the “before” pictures. He was just an enthusiastic amateur theater historian, as far as I can tell, and the condition of the Riviera looks precarious.

Un-enhanced view of the sound board mural.  The architect of both theaters was the great Thomas Lamb. Before calling himself an architect, Mr. Lamb had served as a building inspector for the City of New York. He had gotten himself into Cooper Union where he majored in mechanical drawings and acoustics.  In the un-miked world he designed for, he needed to have a complete understanding of acoustics.  Somebody had to sing over an orchestra to a 1700 seat house and the structure had to help.

The projection booth, like the one at the Hamilton Theater on 146th street were not original to the structure and were added later.

In case you were wondering how a balcony was constructed . . .

 This is the south wall of the Riviera Theater and the Riviera Building after the collapse and demolition of the Riverside Theater. I remember thinking, as a small child, that the balcony for the Riviera must be incredibly high, not knowing that there was a long closed theater up there.

I read a story written by the man who took the “before”photos.  His real quest that day was to not only photograph these two theaters but also to photograph the Japanese Gardens above the Riviera.  The two elevators that went up there were had been out of commission for years. The stair case that went up to the Gardens from the elevator lobby had been sealed off long ago. According to the floor plans for the Riviera Building, there were no connections between the theaters and the office building. The only way they found to get into the Japanese Gardens was through 5 floors of Riviera dressing rooms, described as dark, dank and musty.

 This is the only picture of the Japanese Gardens that I have found so far.

 In an earlier post, I cryptically stated that after the Riverside collapsed and emergency personnel had dug through the debris for days, that no bodies were found – at that time.  The two theaters were built a year apart, the Riverside (which had a longer construction period) in opening in 1912 and The Riviera in 1913, and were entirely separate buildings. There were connections made in the basement at some point between the two buildings.  It was during the demolition of the Riviera that, according to local legend and lore, two bodies were found in what was left of a connector passage between the still standing Riviera and the no longer with us Riverside.

The last of the Riviera. The derelict Riviera Theater and Riviera building became a haven for the fringes of society.  After much complaining from locals, demolition on the Riviera began a few years after the collapse of the Riverside. “We will be judged not by what we have built, but by what we have destroyed” said the New York Times in an editorial about the destruction of the old Pennsylvania Station.  How sad and true.  The site, which almost played host to Gimbel’s West, was a garden for many years. When the building that eventually went up on the site was built, the displaced garden moved to Riverside Park as is called the Community Garden.  The site is now home to one of the least attractive buildings on the upper west side.  

 What was once an elegant entertainment complex, a mecca that could seat almost 5000 at any given moment was certainly a gift.  The entire complex was designed by Thomas Lamb, whose career is slowly being obliterated in the name of progress. 

This is the Hamilton Palace. It is one of the largest “dollar” stores in Manhattan. Everything from off – shore versions of Crest toothpaste to Guayabera shirts, slightly irregular undershirts to cleaning products you never heard of. It was once, however, the outer lobby and retail space structure for the 1913 Hamilton Theater.

Just a little detail, the caryatids are cast iron as are the frames around the windows.

Given the RKO logos above the boxes, this is what the theater looked like when RKO ran it. The Hamilton was built by Vaudeville impresario B.S. Moss and was designed for legit theater and high class vaudeville. Movies came later, once RKO bought the Hamilton and added motion pictures to the vaudeville shows. The Hamilton was one of the first theaters to show talkies in New York City.

This is what it looks like now. Actually what it looked like in 2006. The theater had / has not been used as a theater for over 40 years. Although you cannot tell from the pictures, it is in remarkably good shape for a theater this old, and this under – maintained. The boxes, as you can see, are still intact, even the boxes on the orchestra floor. A new roof put on in 1998 prevented any serious water damage to the plaster work. The space had been vandalized over the years however. All the stain glass exit signs were gone. Anything brass or copper has been striped. There are no banisters anywhere and the copper duct work that obviously went to power the “shin busters” was gouged out of the stage floor.

The Hamilton stopped showing movies in 1965. After that it became a sports arena (what sports I do not know but probably boxing), a church and a disco. The theater’s last use was as a beer and soda (maybe cigarettes as well) wholesaler. In the previous picture you can see a ramp going up the to the stage. This was installed to accommodate a fork lift. A doorway with a metal role gate was cut into the asbestos fire curtain.

These are the house right boxes. This is a rarity as boxes where generally removed from theaters that were not built for movies. The boxes would block the throw from the projection booth on the sides, especially after wide screen formats were introduced.
The photos had to be enhanced. When I got there, I was told that the property manager did not know how to turn on the lights.

This is a view towards the stage from the house left boxes. The large rectangular panel on the sound board above the proscenium looks as if something was cut out and removed. Given what looks like a piece of canvas hanging down from the bottom of that panel, I’d say that a mural was cut out.

 These are the house left boxes.

The dimmer board, original maybe.

The grid, high up above the stage.

The stage from the fly loft. This is looking towards stage left. In the bottom right corner of the picture you can see the top of the roll gate that was put in after the fire curtain had a door cut into it. The fire curtain appeared to have been lowered permanently.

This is the fly loft and the old pin rail.

These are the onstage “Star” dressing rooms. This is still the Hamilton. Apparently the beer and soda distributors also distributed cigarettes.

Those doors lead to dressing rooms on the level just above the stage level dressing rooms. You will notice the absence of any lighting fixtures. This area was pitch black, I just held the camera into the area and shot this photo. Apparently some of the people who distributed beer, soda and cigarettes also slept here.

There were at least three floors of dressing rooms above the stage level. There was no lighting in any of the rooms or the stairs that led up to them. The stairs also lead to the fly loft and eventually the grid.

A sink in one of the dressing rooms. Even with the window back there, the room was pitch black. Not knowing what the floor was like (or even if there was a floor) I just held the camera into the room and shot.

 These two pictures are of dressing rooms on the top floor of dressing rooms. The size of these rooms indicated that they were chorus dressing rooms and since there were two I am assuming one for the boys and one for the girls. This was, if I am remembering it correctly, the level of the fly loft so we are pretty high up above the stage.

 The Dome.

 Proscenium arch detail.

 The balcony still has it’s seats. That is the projection booth. It is not original to the theater. The Hamilton was built for legit and high end 2 shows a day vaudeville like I said earlier. Movies were added to the vaudeville just as a matter of economics and an inevitability. What appears to be a column supporting the booth, at the top of the steps, housed the ladder access to the booth.

 Over 40 years of dust and soot. I felt like I smoked 2 packs of Camels after I left, I coughed for days. I was surprised that the green circular cover of the air duct in the ceiling was not stolen over the years as it was probably copper. The Hamilton was not built with air conditioning but did have an air circulating system. Remember the good old days when you could smoke in the balcony (there were ash trays still attached to the seat backs)? Those ducts were part of that circulating system.

 The Passage way behind the last row of the balcony.

 View from the booth down to the stage.

 A D.C. meter in the booth.

Some sort of necessity of projection, what it is I do not know. It was dark in there. There were no windows in the booth as it was added to the theater after opening, so it was dark in there. 

 Several layers of wall covering revealed.

 Staircase from balcony.

 Probably not the original fixture, but this is the ceiling fixture in the Ladies Lounge.

 Look at all those stalls.

 This is the Ladies Lounge.

Fire Curtain detail.

 This is looking up a hole that was knocked into the house left base of the proscenium arch. It looks as if some one was looking for something. Brass organ pipes perhaps? This would have led up to were the pipes would have been.

 Detail of the front edge of the balcony.

 More detail of the front of the balcony. The damage was done when fluorescent light fixtures were installed.

More detail of the front of the balcony.

 This is the house right box in the the orchestra section. Thomas Lamb (again!) designed this theater. He was a prolific designer. The Hamilton opened the same month (January 1913) as his Jefferson on 14th Street. Mr. Lamb also designed the mega-palace, The Capitol. Once located on Broadway between 50th and 51rst (across from The Winter Garden), The Capitol at over 5200 seats was the largest theater in the world from the date it opened in 1919 to 1927 when the Roxy opened. The Capitol had boxes on the orchestra floor as well.

 I love that this sign was still there. It was an access to the stage from the house right orchestra floor boxes.

One more of the dimmer board, looking towards stage left.

Monday, August 22, 2011

This is the Downes Boulevard Hotel & Restaurant. The photo was taken form the roof of a building whose original address was 890 Boulevard, a mixed commercial/residential speculatively built structure.  The building still stands, although it has been renumbered 2708 Broadway and is home to Petland Discounts. The photo was taken on July 1, 1888 and it was one of at least 17 taken that day by an unknown photographer.
The street in the foreground is 103rd street.  The Downes Boulevard Hotel & Restaurant was located on the block of 103rd street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. According to the 1867 map of the area the structure is there with a little lane running diagonally across what would become the block from south west to north east. The lane may also have served as a property line. Contemporary accounts of the hotel and restaurant were not all that favorable. If the hotel was in operation just after the Civil War it served a purpose – a place to stay if travel down the old Bloomingdale Road was difficult due to weather or other circumstances. Kind of a Motel 6 for the last half of the 19th century. The 9th Avenue Elevated did not open until 1879.

 This is looking south on the Boulevard. As the old Bloomingdale Road was tamed and made compliant to the Commissioners Plan of 1811 (the grid plan of Manhattan streets north of 14th street), it was widened and called The Boulevard. South of 59th street the street was called Broadway. On February 14th 1899, the name Broadway was applied to the entire street, the only street to run the entire length of Manhattan. When the previous photo was taken the street was still called The Boulevard.
I believe that this picture was taken by the same unknown photographer. The view is from the same vantage point as the previous picture and it looks to be not just the same time and season, but the sign for The Downes Boulevard Hotel & Restaurant is visible as well. In addition, back then, photography was such a pain in the but that no one dragged a camera around to take just one picture.

 This looking south from the same vantage point. This is west 103rd street leading up to West End Avenue. The wood frame house in the center sits were 878 West End Avenue stands today. The little house behind it is still standing but it was moved from that location on West End Avenue and 102nd street to it’s present location, 102nd street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. It was also raised up a level so what you see as the first floor in the photo is now the second floor. The house was moved because the land on West End Avenue was more valuable than the land on the side street.

 The shack in the middle sits where 884 West End Avenue now stands. The photo, again, appears to be one of the at least 17 taken on July 1, 1888. What crop is being covered in the foreground is a mystery. The house with the conical tower is not on the map of 1867. According to the map of 1867 the land on which this shack sits was owned by Furniss family whose holdings in the neighborhood where reduced throughout the 19th century down to the block between West End Avenue and Riverside from 99th to 100th street. The property line stretched out into the middle of 103rd street between West End and Broadway. The streets were on the maps of 1811 but there was nothing there where the streets eventually would be. On many occasions, property lines in no way adhered to the grid plan. In many cases the streets were laid out, sewer and water lines put in and the road graded and flattened but the surrounding property was left untouched and often turned these newly laid out streets into mud filled gullies.

The house in the center of the photo is on the map of 1867. The land was owned by W.P. Dixon.  I do not know if Dixon lived in the house as they owned other land in this area that had large houses on it as well.  In addition, he also owned land along 110th street on which he built simple wooden houses for a working class community called Dixonville.  The 2 story frame house in the middle with the Adirondack Chairs on the porch is now occupied by 895 West End Avenue.  Dixon, Furniss, De Peyster, Rogers, Stryker (sometimes spelled Striker) and Astor are common names of land owners in this area. The stone castle looking building sits approximately where 320 Riverside stand today. The telephone pole and the top of the street light (at the very bottom of the photo) are on Broadway.