Uptown Theatre
4037 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10032
4037 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10032
2 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 29 comments
The Supermarket and all frontage commercial sites are closed - the demolition plans filed in 2020 have not been implemented - so the developer’s plans for a 13 story residential tower must be on hold. The closed storefronts are a blight on an otherwise vibrant commercial thoroughfare.
The Uptown Theater closed in the mid-1960’s after a fire did much damage. I was a neighborhood kid back then.
If you look at the THSA website on the Manhattan index cards (card 186) it says Pollard started work on a theater at 4023 Broadway that wasn’t completed, but De Rosa built the Uptown at 4037. https://historictheatres.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/MM-Manhattan-Index-Cards.pdf
As I said, I’ve been in there and if you see the dome and the proscenium you’d immediately recognize it as a De Rosa theater.
It’s quite possible that De Rosa was the the architect and Pollard was simply acting as supervising architect. De Rosa was a very busy guy in those days and might have turned the project over to Pollard after it stalled, or the owner of the theater, Adolph Lewisohn, might have hired Pollard to get the project finished if he was dissatisfied with how De Rosa’s office was handling the construction phase.
@Joe Vogel I’ve been inside this theater. It looks like a Eugene de Rosa theater, and various lists of De Rosa theaters have him as the architect.
I have went into this building before my dad worked here as a produce guy and he took he up were the autorium was now is a storage room
The Wurlitzer company shipped an organ, Style H-Special, opus 1403, to the Uptown Theatre, NY in July 1926.
Thanks, BobFurmanek. It’s been a long time. Good memory (or reference).
The Uptown Theatre probably opened in late 1921 or early 1922. Items in the Bulletin of the Board of Standards and Appeals of the City of New York indicate that the application for a permit to build the theater was made on July 25, 1919, but as late as July 13, 1921, architect George Mort Pollard applied for an extension of the time the board had required for completion of the project. The extension was granted for one year. Adolph Lewisohn was the owner of the theater.
Pollard, best known for his residential buildings, designed at least one other theater in New York, the Harlem Grand. There was also a theater in his artists cooperative studio-apartment building, the Hotel des Artistes, but I’ve found no indication that it was ever used as a movie house.
The Perez Prado film is Cha Cha Cha Boom!
I remember seeing a movie with Bill Haley and the Comets there, and one with Dámaso Pérez Prado in ‘56, maybe “Mambo Mania” or “The Mambo Kings”.
Another missing intro.
???
I was a frequent moviegoer at the Uptown Theatre in my boyhood, and I recall seeing there, among other films, DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS, THE SILVER CHALICE, THIS ISLAND EARTH, THE LAST COMMAND, HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (Anthony Quinn version), THE BUCCANEER, DAMN YANKEES, many others. I distinctly recall that around 1960 or early 1961, to the chagrin of everyone in the neighborhood, it was turned into a Sloan’s Supermarket. Years later, as mentioned in these posts, it became a Gristedes market. It was indeed a small theater, but it had a handsome lobby where there was always a large standee cutout or poster of the films being shown. I took a walk through the old neighborhood last year, and did see that the low building itself was still there, but I can’t seem to find any photograph of this theater online.
The ceiling was obviously lowered for the supermarket.
The photo is the streeet entrance which leads to the entrance/checkout section which looks ilke a lobby and leads you to the store. The supermarket is huge for NYC standards. It was definitely an auditorium, no columns, etc., though the ceiling is low for a theater.
I have been at this supermarket and it was definitely a movie theater. You can just know from the shape of the outside of the building. Which theater? I don’t know.
I think it’s still there. I was biking by towards the GWB before the United Palace and noticed the looming stagehouse on the left (going north) around 170th.
The Uptown opened in 1920.
The architect was George M. Pollard.
The movie palaces of Washington Heights and Inwood.
View link
It looks like zero population growth was the evening’s theme on the night that picture was taken. And rather insistent about it.
I am also trying to run down this photo. The large triangular rails server as a additonalattraction board over the marquee were used mostly in the east and midwest. I don’t know of them ever being used on the west coast. In Ohio they were used on the Cleveland Palace and Alhambra, and in Columbus on the Palace and Grand, in Chicago on the Garrick and modified to one side on the Palace, Oriental, State-Lake and others. This is not the Uptown in Cleveland which was over 3.000 seats. The entrance area was several sets of doors, as was the entrance to the Chicago Uptown. This theatre photo shows only two or three sets of doors, and I would guess it to be a theatre of about l200 to 1500 seats.
I agree that the photo is not of Uptown on B'way near 170th St. Really nice photo though Lost Memory. Looks to date from the late thirties when there was a spate of exploitation films.
According to a 1943 ticket stub this was an Interboro house at B'way and 170th Street. Adult admission was .46 cents plus .09 federal tax for total of .55 cents evening performance. Child rate was .15 cents plus .03 federal tax for total of .18 cents.
I believe that this theater occupied the location where the supermarket (south west of the McDonalds).
Warren, please contact me,
Thanks Warren. My mistake. Now… do you know anything about a possible old theater whose shell (at least) is still standing at Broadway and 204th Street? I drove past a few weeks back and thought I recognized the familiar roof-line of a theater on the west side of the block, but have been able to determine what that might have been.