By Gus Saltonstall
Change has come to the former Metro Theater.
The atmosphere was festive on Tuesday morning outside the long-shuttered Upper West Side theater, now named the Uptown Film Center, as a pair of construction workers in yellow sweatshirts and hardhats climbed onto the historic marquee.
Their task?
To remove the large graffiti currently donning the facade of the 93-year-old building.
“For me, the removal of the graffiti symbolizes a down payment to the neighborhood that shows them this is really happening,” Ira Deutchman, the president of Uptown Film Center, told West Side Rag. “To see any physical progress is a way of letting people in the neighborhood know that this is not just another one of those empty promises, where nothing is going to happen with this theater.”
Uptown Film Center is the group that purchased the theater at 2626 Broadway, between West 99th and 100th streets, in 2025 for $6.9 million from its previous owner. The new ownership group has set a goal of breaking ground on construction within the building in the first half of 2027, and then opening to the public in 2028.
On Tuesday, leadership of the Uptown Film Center, elected officials, and community members all arrived to celebrate the removal of the graffiti.
“I’ve been on the Upper West Side since 1971. I used to come here when it was an operating theater,” longtime local and supporter of the theater, Susanne Ray, told the Rag. “The terracotta is exquisite. The fact that it was graffitied over was just heartbreaking. There were movie theaters all over the neighborhood, and they are all now gone. We’ve got to keep this one. It’s a beauty. It’s worth keeping.”
Susan Tutnick, who has been involved in advocacy for the Upper West Side theater for more than 40 years, arrived in support of Tuesday’s action with a photo of what the facade used to look like.
“I’ve been working on this building since 1983, first in an effort to get it landmarked and during these more recent years, to get this graffiti removed,” Tutnick said. “I’m president of The Friends of Terra Cotta and this is one of the finest terra cotta theaters in the country. It’s been a long slog with very little cooperation with the previous owner. I’m very excited and supportive of the changes that are happening and coming. It’s great for the neighborhood and the building.”
There were “oohs” and “ahhs” as the workers began the graffiti removal process around 11:30 a.m.
The Uptown Film Center needed to get approval from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to remove the graffiti from the landmarked building, and also performed tests with approved methods to make sure they wouldn’t damage the facade during the removal process.
“For many, many years people have been waiting for something to happen with this site, there have been false starts, and the feeling of ‘oh, is the building actually going to be revitalized?'” Eli Northrup, the Democratic nominee for Assembly District 69, told West Side Rag. “This is a major step in the process of reopening the theater and making this a hub for the community. It’s very exciting to have a tangible step that people can see.”
There have been multiple attempts to reopen the former Metro Theater since it closed in 2005, including as a dine-in theater, a fitness center, and an Alamo Drafthouse location, which was nixed in 2024, in part due to the death of the former owner of the theater, Albert Bialek.
“It symbolizes movement. It symbolizes we’re revitalizing this community and taking back a beautiful fixture on the Upper West Side,” Sally Klingenstein Martell, an Uptown Film Center board member, told West Side Rag about the graffiti removal. “This is just the beginning. It’s very exciting.”
The Uptown Film Center is in the midst of a $39 million capital campaign to raise the funds needed to bring the building back to life.
While most of the graffiti was removed on Tuesday, the entirety of the job is expected to be completed on Wednesday.
Read More:
- Upper West Side Metro Theater Officially Has a New Owner and a New Plan
- UWS Metro Theater Gets a New Name: Goal to Reopen in 2028, New Details, Renderings
- Bare Beams and Steel: A Look Inside the Planned Renovation of the UWS’s Former Metro Theater
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
