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It all begins with the opening of a curtain or the first light flickering onto a screen. We have all enjoyed getting lost in the collective imagination and transcendence that we find in the dark.
These are the personal experiences of our friends and neighbors in the Upper West Side who would like to continue that tradition in the Upper West Side’s Metro Theater.
©2017 – SNFFNGLU
Long-abandoned Art Deco cinema gets new life in Manhattan By Hannah Frishberg March 22, 2022
After 17 years of vacancy, the building is finally once again set to be put to use.
For 17 years, Manhattan’s Metro Theater has been collecting dust on the Upper West Side. Since 2005, the 82-year-old Art Deco theater has sat vacant, nearly home to numerous tenants — Urban Outfitters, Planet Fitness, Alamo Drafthouse, an arts education nonprofit — all of which eventually fell through.
Now, though, it’s official: A lease has finally been signed and the historic building will stay a cinema.
“There have been so many false starts and failed plans at The Metro; I think a lot of us started to feel like Charlie Brown with the football and had given up being excited,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine told The Post. When he heard yet another potential business was interested in bringing back the Broadway building, “I decided that I wouldn’t celebrate until I heard it directly from a tenant that a lease had been signed.”
And now that’s finally happened.
“This is real, I heard it direct from the head of the company: The lease has been signed so there’s no turning back,” he went on. “They’re asking for a bit of anonymity at this point, but I can tell you unambiguously that this is real, it’s happening, and it’s a best case scenario.”
The 10,260-square-foot building will become a “Community Entertainment” and “multi-screen cinema center, with restaurant facilities and community meeting rooms on a rental basis,” longtime owner Albert Bialek told The West Side Rag. Since being built in the 1930s, the two-story building has housed an art house cinema, pornography theater and two national movie chains, and still boasts the same landmarked exterior. Its interior, however, has since been gutted.
“It kind of works for this new format because it’s going to be a large number of smaller screens,” Levine noted optimistically of the blank interior canvas.
The yet unnamed company of “renowned people” from California are refusing to reveal their identity until they “file their plans” in the next few weeks, but they’ll offer movie-goers an alcohol-equipped dine-in film experience, the Rag reported.
In response to The Post’s inquiry, movie chain Alamo Drafthouse — which almost built a five-screen theater in the space before backing out in 2012 — offered no comment regarding if it is the secret new tenant.
The news is a huge boon for the area, which has lost a lot of businesses during the pandemic and is now pockmarked by empty storefronts.
“It’s been a rough two years,” said Levine, who represented part of the Upper West Side during his time on New York City Council from 2014 to 2021. “We had feared this would be a chain clothing store or a pharmacy, although anything would’ve been better than abandonment.”
Its vacancy has indeed been not only sad but also expensive: Bialek has been charged over $840,000 in city property taxes in the time the address has remained vacant, the Real Deal previously reported.
“This is gonna transform that area,” Levine went on enthusiastically. “This is just the boost that the neighborhood needed.”
After a very long intermission, this Upper West Side theater is finally set to return.
©2017 – SNFFNGLU
At Metrograph, on N.Y.C.'s Lower East Side, the custom seats are made from pine that was reclaimed from the demolished Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn.
Wes Anderson Takes Us Inside Metrograph, New York City’s Awesome New Indie Cinemaplex It has two theaters. A curated candy shop. A restaurant, a bar, a miniature bookstore, and four highly trained projectionists who handle the rare archival film prints. It’s Metrograph, the coolest new theater in the world. Here, indie auteur Wes Anderson interviews Alexander Olch, Metrograph’s mad-genius founder.
By Wes Anderson
Photography by Jeremy Liebman September 6, 2016
Wes Anderson: Jumping right in, how did Metrograph start? Alexander Olch: It started about seven years ago. I was traveling to theaters around the U.S. with a documentary I directed, The Windmill Movie. The man who released that film theatrically was Jake Perlin, and an idea came into my head that there was a way to fill a theater with Jake as the artistic director. And I suppose that, slowly but surely, Metrograph has become my latest feature film.
It's been a great thing to watch, because what we've seen over the past 20 years is our favorite cinema houses dying off, one by one. Film Forum remains, Walter Reade and the various screens at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art remain, but practically nothing has been added into the mix—except Metrograph. For a lot of us New Yorkers, it's been a totally unexpected, wonderful surprise. Even the theaters that inspired me growing up in the city are all gone. I fell in love with movies going to the Beekman, to the Plaza, to the Ziegfeld.
Even the Ziegfeld is gone. Even the Ziegfeld is gone. All those places had a sense of something special in the building. They had glamour. When I was a young boy, it had started to fade, but you could still sense that there was something special, something beyond the films. That's part of what made me fall in love with movies in the first place. That feeling has been slipping away, and it was very important to me to rekindle some of that excitement.
N.Y.C.'s incredible new Metrograph theater has two screening rooms, a candy shop, a restaurant, a bar, and a rare film bookstore. No wonder
es
By David Freeland
THE METRO TAKES A BOW The marquee of the Metro Twin Theater at 99th and Broadway reads "SORRY WE RE CLOSED."A metal grate covers the entrance, and community members have attached cardboard signs with handwritten laments: "Save the Metro," "No More High Rises," "Gristedes Sucks My Butt!" Having recently lost the Olympia on 107th St. to development, people are upset that the Metro—one of the area's last remaining commercial movie houses—could be replaced by a supermarket.
Built in 1932-33 as the incongruously named Midtown, the Metro is admired for its striking Art Deco terra-cotta facade (complete with black "fins" at the top). The distinctive background of salmon and black sets off the building's most unusual feature: a large, circular emblem depicting comedy and tragedy masks alongside two human figures. With its innovative color and design, the theater commands attention from blocks away—especially at night when the neon marquee is blazing. There's nothing else quite like it in Manhattan.
Cinemas often take on the personal histories of their communities, as evidenced by one sign-writer's comment: "The movie theatre that I lost my virginity in!" Public concern for the Metro is understandable in a neighborhood that has seen its once-numerous picture houses—among them the New Yorker, the Loew's 83rd Street and the Riviera—gradually replaced by condos and chain stores. A New York Times article last year hinted at the uncertainty of the Metro's future, while a contributor to Cinema Treasures (a website devoted to classic theaters) recently gave it up as "doomed for redevelopment."
But in fact, everyone can all relax. Although no marker exists on the site, the Metro has been a designated New York City landmark for years—a fact confirmed with the help of the Landmarks Commission and Penny Ryan at Manhattan Community Board 7.
"Gristedes has no connection with the property," insists Albert Bialek, general partner for the theater's owner, Broadway Metro Associates. "I don't know what made anybody think that."
Instead of demolishing the building, Bialek plans to reopen it as "the ultimate art theater in New York." He recently bought out the existing lease with Clearview Cinemas, and will upgrade with new seats, carpeting and wider screens. A soon-to-be-named "celebrity operator" has been hired to run the theater and scout out cutting-edge films from around the world. If all goes according to plan, the new Metro could be unveiled as early as November.
"We're changing with the neighborhood," Bialek says. "The Upper West Side is a place where a great art theater will be appreciated."
For once, a New York theater story with a happy ending.
www.nypress.com
Old Metro Theater Now the Alamo With Films and Food
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by Hannah Norwick Jun 6, 2012, 11:23am EDT
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The Metro Theater on the Upper West Side got news in April that the Alamo Drafthouse would be reopening the shuttered historic space to show movies again. In an interview with owner Tim League the West Side Rag talks about the lifespan of the Metro, which opened in 1933 and ran as a respected neighborhood theater (except for that little stint when they showed porn) until 2005. The Alamo, which has five theaters in Austin, Texas, will reopen the space with five screens for viewing films and full dining options.
Plans for the new theater are not just centered around new releases, as the Alamo has garnered a following by showing movies like 70?s exploitation flicks to foreign and independent films. The once gutted building will boast stadium seating with full food service and beer, wine, and liquor options. There is even an option to have meals and drinks delivered to seats before and during screenings. Most of the food will be served prior to the start of a film, but through a non-verbal interaction can be delivered all while watching. League tells W.S. Rag, "If you want a pint of beer, you raise [a] piece of paper up like a flag in front of your table. It’s stadium seating so somebody sort of slinks in below you, picks up the paper, and then will drop off another pint of beer or whatever. Hopefully silently." The movies will also sometimes provide the inspiration for the menu that is being served. Plans for opening night from the Alamo's Facebook page toy with showing the movies Duck Soup and Hannah and Her Sisters paired with "a culinary riff on both chopped liver with crackers and Wonder Bread with mayo."
When asked about the build for the currently defunct theater, Alamo founder and president League said that, "We’re gonna fully restore the exterior, the façade and the neon and the marquee." The inside, however, will by no means be historically accurate, with the addition of five screens and a fully functioning kitchen. Other plans for movie and food pairings include a special menu for Julie and Julia, a five-course meal to match the cuisine in Like Water for Chocolate, and a 12-hour, eight meal dining event for Lord of the Rings. The opening for the new Metro/ Alamo Drafthouse is slated for sometime in 2013, with the date contigent upon permits and a contractor. · Movies Back to the Metro Theater [WSR] · Alamo Drafthouse Opening UWS Location [~ENY~] · All Coverage of the Alamo Drafthouse [Eater Austin] [West Side Rag]
The Metro Theater on the Upper West Side got news in April that the Alamo Drafthouse would be reopening the shuttered historic space to show
Metro Theater (New York City)
The Metro Theater is a New York City movie theater, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at 2626 Broadway between 99th and 100th Streets. An example of Art Deco architecture of New York City, it opened in 1933 and closed in 2005
Architecture
The comedy and tragedy medallion signals the use of the building.
In 1931 Architects Boak & Paris designed the Art Deco Midtown (now Metro) Theater at 2626 Broadway between 99th and 100th Streets.[3] The developer was A.C. and H.M. Hall.[4] Similar to the Variety Theater, Boak & Paris used lights on the underside of the marquee. The terra-cotta wall in its facade above the marquee was described in the report designating it a landmark as "The most notable feature of the theater’s facade".[5] The central part of the marquee features a polychromed medallion depicting the figures of comedy and tragedy.[6]
The interior of the single screen Midtown had niches on either side of the screen containing statues of nude women holding glowing dishes.[7]
History
The Midtown opened in 1933.[8] From its opening until the 1950s, the theater presented first-run films.[9] In the 1950s and 1960s, it presented art-house films by directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Buñuel and Roman Polanski.[9]
In the 1970s and 80s it operated as a porn theater.[10][2][11]
In 1982, Dan Talbot acquired the lease to the theater.[12][13]
In 1989, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated the Midtown (now Metro) an individual landmark. The theater is Boak & Paris' only individually landmarked building.[8]
The Metro was managed by Clearview Cinemas until it closed in 2003.[13] Peter H. Elson then leased the theater from Albert Bialek, operating the theater as Embassy's New Metro Twin until it closed again in 2005.[2][12]
The following year, in 2006, the interior of the theater was gutted. This was permitted because only the exterior was protected by landmarking.[14] In 2007 David Dunlap wrote in the New York Times that "...the inside, visible to passers-by on a recent afternoon, has been gutted. Gone are seats and plaster and curtains and screen. Gone is a golden ceiling molding with a chain of floral bouquets. Gone are the sylph-filled niches. Gone is grille work that sprouted like corn stalks."[15]
In 2009 Dunlap wrote that "When we left our story more than a year ago, the fate of the Art Deco jewel box known as the Metro Theater was up in the air. Though the building’s exterior is one of the most recognizable landmarks on upper Broadway, its interior—no longer usable as a cinema—had been gutted and no one could say for sure what kind of tenant might make use of such an idiosyncratic space, though the Winick Realty Group was searching."[16]
In 2011, Julie Satow reported in the New York Times that "... the longtime owner, Albert Bialek, wrested control of the Metro, an Art Deco landmark, after a protracted legal battle with the leaseholder, John R. Souto. Mr. Souto, whose firm filed for bankruptcy protection last year, had a 49-year lease with an option to buy the property, but defaulted on the terms, Mr. Bialek said. New York City marshals evicted him from the property in January."[17]
In 2015,The New York Times reported that the theater would be transformed into a gym.[18]
In 2016, the West Side Rag reported that "The Texas theater chain Alamo Drafthouse attempted to revive it, but gave up as construction costs rose."[2]:
In 2021 the UWS Patch reported: "Storefront vacancy on the Upper West Side has been a long-growing issue in the community, and there may be no greater symbol of the neighborhood's vacancy blight than the shuttered Metro Theater."[1]
