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Non-Digital marquees in NYC
posted by
jeremoss
on
November 3, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I write the blog “vanishing new york” and have posted a couple of stories with photos and information about old cinemas in New York City. Here are two on St. Marks Cinema:
Vanishing NY #1
Vanishing NY #2
I’m hoping readers can help me with a question. Do you know how many non-digital marquees are left in NYC? And where are they located? I’m trying to track them all down. Thanks!
Comments (11)
Off the top of my head, here’s what I think is a relatively complete list of the non-digital cinema marquees in Manhattan:
Cinema Village on 12th Street.
thanks—great list!
and cinema village has one of the best marquees left in town. i just posted this:
View link
Great list and subject for discussion…I’ll go out on a limb and say the one most missed of the post Times Square era is the old Cinema I and Cinema II with snippets from reviews
…and the Zieg.
Kings Plaza==brooklyn
The Paris with its signature-topped, three-sided box marquee, proudly standing as the one of the oldest independent theaters in the country. 4 West 58 Street.
The ImaginAsian (former 59th Street)
The Pioneer (R.I.P. as of 10/31/08)
The 64th and 2nd (Former Gemini)
The Quad on 13th Street
Shade, the Quad on 13th Street doesn’t really have more than a typical commercial awning, without any movie titles on it at all. In fact, if you didn’t look real close, you could easily miss that it’s even a movie theater.
They recently showed (or perhaps are still showing) THE DARK KNIGHT, which completely goes against their usual array of independent and (very often) gay films.
I guess Marquees are going the way of some of the older theatres. Even the Beacon now has a digital marquee. I remember back in the 70’s having to change the marquee at the now gone NY Academy of Music in the middle of winter. Having to deal with winds ,cold, rain and snow. There iwas on a 15 foot high ladder with all my cold metal letters. There is or was an art to it though. First you would read what was up there to determine what letters you would need. It saved time and dupliction of letters. I was also doing it for a while when it was changed to the Palladium. I even had to stop someone from taking letters from the rack there. They took letters to spell their name.
I thought about taking some of the marquee letters from some of the theatres I worked at but never did.The LOEWS MELROSE had those cold metal letters that EastCoast Rocker posted about.
YOU know you love the theatre business when you are on a twenty foot ladder changing movies out in a cold Georgia rain.I did keep a few letters from Columbia 1 and 2 after it closed i got and grabbed what i could before it went to the dump. I could always find an exit door ajar.