The historic Stoddard Theater stood at the Southwest corner of 90th street and Broadway for 70 years. It’s now a Food Emporium.
The theater opened in 1914 as the Standard Theater and then became known as the Stoddard in 1919 when it started showing movies, according to The Birdfeed.
“On this day in 1933, the marquee advertised Spencer Tracy and Colleen Moore in The Power and the Glory and movie ticket prices were 10 cents for children and 20 cents for adults! The Stoddard Theater closed in 1956 and the building (2431 Broadway) was demolished in 1986.”
Interestingly, the theater was used as a supermarket after it closed but before it was demolished, as noted in this New York Times story:
“Among the places Eddie Cantor performed were theaters on the so-called Subway Circuit, which booked shows after their Broadway runs. One theater on the circuit was the Standard, later called the Stoddard, which was built in 1914 at 90th Street and Broadway. By the 1960’s, the theater had become a supermarket, its marquee used to advertise specials on lobster tails and steer liver…”
In its heyday it was a beautiful spot, however. A program about the theater from 1916 said “it is the first theatre for the presentation of high class dramas and musical productions in this locality. The carriage entrance is on the W. 90th Street side. The theatre is planned to seat 1,493 persons, and is designed in the period of the Italian Renaissance. The decorations are simple and the color scheme is restful, refined and dignified.”
1933 photo via New York Public Library. Photo illustration by West Side Rag.
I’m the one who added that information from the program you found on Cinematreasures. I have the actual program. That’s where I got the information from. You’ll notice the name JEAN at the bottom of that information.
Occasionally my mom would shop at Daitch Shopwell, as it was called before it was the Food Emporium. The marquee was still there at the time. I got a kick that there was also an escalator there to take shoppers downstairs. The store had great gum ball machines. I still have my little toys from those machines!
It was the Garden Supermarket in the 60’s. Bobby Kennedy had a presidential primary election rally in front of it in May of 1968 which my mother, Evaline Segall, helped organize as a member of the FDR-Woodrow Wilson Democratic Club located on 96th St. Between Amsterdam and Columbus.
PS
The New Yorker movie theater was 1 block south where the HSBC bank is now
interesting and beautiful building.
Any information on the New Yorker Theater.
Ellman’s Tea Room
thanks
Ellman’s was next to the New Yorker theatre between 88th and 89th Streets and if memory serves me correctly was closed down sometime in the early 1950s. Always enjoyed a dinner there with my folks and remember sitting in a booth on the right side of the restaurant where you walked in. (Great creamed spinach, by the way, similar to that served at the Trianon restaurant between 93rd and 94th Streets on the east side of Broadway which was a European-style place featuring dishes like “rinderbrust” (or something like that which I believe was actually pot roast!).
The New Yorker was a first run house for most of its life (I actually caught BLADE RUNNER there when it had its first window), but as the end came it became a revival house with a set of marathon programs devoted to Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films and Woody Allen movies.
In fact, the New Yorker’s main claim to fame was a scene shot in the lobby for ANNIE HALL; the scene where Allen pulls Marshal McLuhan onth the screen to shoot down a bigmouth waiting in line t see THE SORROW AND THE PITY was filmed there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJ8tKRlW3E
It was also the “other” theater that showed the Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight, complete with costumes, yelling back at the screen, throwing rice, etc. It started at the 8th St Playhouse, and somehow spread to the New Yorker. I went several times in high school, it was a blast!
Also, “Bambi meets Godzilla” and “Thank You Masked Man” were shorts that were always shown first.
Young Richard Rodgers, who lived nearby on West 86th Street, saw his first musical — a revival of “Very Good Eddie” — at the Standard Theatre in 1916. The experience blew him away, and he resolved on the spot that he would spend his life writing for the musical stage.
The Stoddard was also one of the theaters bombed with tear gas bombs during labor strifes in 1937. Bombs at The Beacon, The Symphony, and three other movie houses (six in total) were all detonated at about the same time. 36 people were injured in total, mostly from flying glass from the bombs.