re: What Times Square Area Buildings Use To Be Theaters?

[Mamie]

LIBERTY THEATRE, 1911

Are the columns on the sides with the carvings on top (caryatides) still visible? Do you know if you can still see the eagle and liberty bell on top?

I sure wish I knew somebody in the Mayor's office or somebody powerful enough to arrange a tour of these lost treasures!

[thtrbear]

Some Liberty Theater, and other, tidbits.

In late 1996 there was a limited one-week? run of TS Eliot's The Waste Land performed by Fiona Shaw and directed by Deborah Warner. I attended this. I took some pics of the thtr but dont know if I developed 'em (i'm bad that way) or where they are. Actually, I think it was darkish and they didnt come out too well.

About 4 years ago the same Ms. Warner directed something for Lincoln Center's summer festival where you went around to different places in NY and saw people representing ghosts or angels wandering around the sites (The Angel Project or something?). I didnt get to go, it became sold out, but at that time I went by 41st street and the Liberty had its doors thrown open there during "performances" (the stage and the bottom of the doors is about 3 feet above street level). I got to take a look for a few minutes from the street, but they wouldnt let me take pictures.

Every few years, there will be one or another theater society having an expensive trip around New York to see theaters (like $1000 to be in the group) and they sometimes visit the Liberty, I've seen fotos. I think they may throw open the 41st street doors to get daylight so that would be a good day to go by IF you could hear about it which isnt easy.

Even now if you go by 41st you may be able to peek between the crack of some of the doors and get a very small glimpse (if it's lit inside and it's night out). It's not a very wide or deep stage so you cannot be too far from any spot where Cohan, as someone posted, sang Give My Regards. There's a famous photo of him in this number and it is recreated with a similar set in Yankee Doodle Dandy. (from Little Johnny Jones, 1904).

I guess if this ground floor of Applebees is deserted sometimes it could be an idea to try a credit card on the famous door :). I find the escalator exit route from AMC INTERMINABLE but you can try to sneak onto another floor and see another film.

Around 10 years ago, when they were renovating the Times Square Thtr, a teenager on the door miraculously let me go in when I asked him (in my experience guards will never say yes to anything you ask them). I walked in but about 10 seconds later I heard the official group of investors that was in there coming down from the mezzanine, so I immediately left so as not to cause any trouble. Another time I walked in during the morning and asked if I could look around, the construction workers said no, but I did get to walk across the orchestra floor to ask the foreman (no seats).

I got to see the Harris Theater when the Times Square Info Center used to be there, wish I'd gone more than once, I did get to walk across the stage.

I think in London there are more small West End theaters than there are on Broadway, even some with 2 balconies but that are or feel small. And some from the late 1800's, the Criterion where the 39 Steps plays in london fits all these. Smallish bway thtrs here have been demolished I'd say, like the Bijou and another that were torn down for the Marriot Marquis (kind of a crappy replacement but great orchestra sightlines). I think 5 theaters were torn down for that incl. the Astor which had become an art gallery, but 2 of them were small ones iirc. And the Hudson (part of a hotel) and the vanished Henry Miller were kind of smallish. A new/renovated broadway thtr with 1200 seats or less that could not fit a big musical, only a play or a very small musical, is not attractive financially it looks like (otoh the Biltmore and the Selwyn were not all that big, guess we're lucky to have them).

btw the Rialto mentioned above, on 42nd and 7th, was originally Hammerstein's, a huge vaudeville theater, figuring in the plot of Portrait of Jennie. Until it was torn down around 10 yrs ago the large facade on 7th ave and on 42nd was a 30's facade familiar from fotos (and not very theater-ish). They have a beautiful blown-up photo of the OUTSIDE of this thtr, circa 1900, in a bank at 68th and bway on the sothwest corner, across from Sony Linc. Sq. This bank chain (forget their name) has a lovely huge colored photo blowup of old NY in most of their branches, you can walk up to it when they're open or look in when they're closed but lit. They have at their branch on 42nd and 9th (NE corner), a great foto looking north up bway around 1910 and showng the huge old Criterion Thtr torn down in 1929 or '30. At 22nd and Park there's one of the Flatiron and at 54th and 6th, one of Columbus Circle. Sorry these arent theater ones; and also at 43rd and 3rd, and 42nd east of Park.

I second that the book Lost Broadway Thtrs is excellent for pics of these theaters, it will set yr imagination dancing. If I had gotten into this book 2 or 3 years before I did I could have visited some of these thtrs when they were still movie theaters, I wish I had!

Thanks to everyone who posted the great photos in this thread, many of them were new to me.

btw, sometimes including lately, the 1980 film The Fan with Lauren Bacall is shown on the Sleuth Channel on cable (and a sorely lame and disappointing channel it is, considering that name). In the 1st several minutes, they show Lauren Bacall coming out of the Morosco and being beseiged by fans. The Morosco looks so clean and nice outside, 2 yrs before it was torn down, and you can see just where it was in relation to the Booth across the street. Supposed to be a pretty bad/cult fave film, and to have many scenes of Times Square in 1980. As I guess the 1979/80 fiction film Times Square does too.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

In the pic of the Liberty just above, either side of the door are two diamonds in the stone work- these are very visible from 42nd St and they are what I mentioned earlier in the thread!
Oh and Bwaybabe2, thanks for the 'no thanks' for my input too!!!!

[bwaybabe2]

Mamma! Sorry for my oversight =O Really. Sometimes, after scannig through pages of posts, I lose a handle as to who said what, posted what, so I just mention some. I went back to the post, and your input was, indeed, really worthy of mention. My apologies :[
...and thanks for posting them!

[MamasDoin'Fine]

haha!
More to come!

[Mamie]

A sad pic of the Liberty and Empire in 1993:

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Isn't it funny that that those two buildings are now many yards apart thanks to modern technology!
At least we still have them, tho the Empire will never, ever see an audience again. It's interesting to step into the Empires foyer now to see the auditorium almost complete but so very far away from a live show.
The statement on the front of the marquee is pretty amazing 'What usage will save us now?, now that sex won't!'

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Today.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

The Liberty and many other 42st theatres!

[MamasDoin'Fine]

The Hilton Theatre 43rd St elevation, before and after.

[Neverandy]

They actually moved the Empire down the street? I never realized that!

[Smaxie]

Double post

[Smaxie]

Here's the Empire being moved down the street, and the facade of the Liberty wrapped up, as well as the body of the auditorium on 41st Street.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

There is/ was a time lapse video of the whole process.

[Mamie]

Great pics!

Oops - I was having trouble getting it and by the time it posted, yours was there!

I still say if it hadn't been for Disney and their deep pockets, none of this work would have been done.

Is the old facade of the Liberty still connected to the auditorium at all? I know they've mentioned a doorway but that image showing the theatre being moved makes it look like they aren't connected at all.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Double post on my pic there Maimie!!!

[Mamie]

I just realized it wasn't the Liberty that moved, it was the Empire. (It gets a little confusing when you aren't there to actually LOOK at it!)

This is an interesting chronology of the 42nd Street renovation project:http://www.new42.org/about_history_chrono.cfm

to be part of the wax museum?
http://web.bvu.edu/faculty/whitlatch/42nd/liberty.htm

[RentBoy86]

Uh, so much to read! Thanks guys, I'll read it when I get back from work!

I love the Liberty's marquee though!

[RentBoy86]

Oh how I wish the American Airlines wasn't call the American Airlines, ha.

Hm....so who owns the Liberty if they performed a show there in 1996? What company produced it?

[Smaxie]

The Waste Land was produced by Jedediah Wheeler and the site-specific theatre company En Garde Arts. I believe it was something that New 42nd Street permitted in the stretch of time when most of the property on 42nd Street had already been condemned but the buildings were sitting empty, awaiting the next phase of the rejuvenation of the block. The street was pretty ghostly in the mid '90s, with lots of closed store fronts - so it was a bit of a brilliant idea to stage The Waste Land amid true midtown squalor. I've linked Ben Brantley's review of The Waste Land, below.

En Garde Arts, by the way, also staged a play called Crowbar at the Victory Theatre in 1990, five years prior to its restoration, where the audience sat onstage and the play was performed throughout the house. The Wooster Group staged Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape at the Selwyn in 1997, also pre-renovation.

If you want to see some of the 42nd Street theatres at their considerable worst, the Empire plays a major role in The Last Action Hero (1993), although the filmmakers did some additional set decoration with that theatre. Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), a version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya adapted by David Manet, was filmed amidst the wreckage of the New Amsterdam. Those of you you don't know quite how far gone that theatre was should check out that film. And though it's been a while since I've seen it, I think the 43rd Street facade of the soon to be demolished New Apollo briefly plays a role as an out-of-town theatre in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (1994). Or further back, Travis Bickle takes Betsy to a porn film at the Lyric in Taxi Driver (1976).
Ben Brantley - The Waste Land

[Paris400]

One of my favorite movies is Times Square from 1980. In this scene where the two girls are running from a plainclothes policeman, what theater do they run into?
Scroll to 8:34

[UglyBetty]

There was talk of a certain never-been-on-Broadway rock musical being put into the Liberty- but the cost to bring the structure up to code was cost-prohibitive.

[EvanK]

I found an awesome site with information and before and after photos of the New Amsterdams renovation:

http://web.bvu.edu/faculty/whitlatch/42nd/amsterdam_pictures.htm

[MamasDoin'Fine]

The Casino Theatre
Broadway and 39th
When the Casino opened in 1882 it wast he farthest uptown of all of the city's 10 playhouses!!!

[MamasDoin'Fine]

The Victory.
As it looked in the late 1980s.

[Smaxie]

There's also a little bit of the Rialto Theatre building on the right in your Victory Theatre photo, Mama.