Harbor Theatre
9215 4th Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11209
9215 4th Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11209
4 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 34 comments
The actual opening date is July 19, 1935. I can’t find what attraction the theater first opened.
Photo added to CT Gallery.
Are you sure Norma Rae was the last film? Norma Rae was released in March of 79, I remember seeing Beyond The Poseidon Adventure there May 18th, and it was at that time the manager told me the theater would be closing in a month.
Wow I loved this theater as a child I would walk a few blocks with my friends on Saturdays to see a movie I was about 9 in 1972 It was safe back then in Bay Ridge. My mother brought me to see The Poseidon Adventure. I also remember the Manager Steve Zeller I believe, he was so nice he give me posters after the movie had its run. Remember staying all day watching What’s Up Doc and got in trouble for not being home on time. Saw Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, the Exorcist, Superman, Beneath The Planet Of the Apes, Bluebeard just to name a few.
Nice photo!! Do you have any more classic shots of Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights theaters?
Any thoughts on why Loew’s didn’t want this theatre?
On the corner of 92 St. & 4 Av there was a White Castle. This White Castle was just a few feet from the Harbor Theatre. I’m pretty sure it was the White Castle in Saturday Night Fever. First the Harbor Theatre closed then the White Castle. Two sad days in Bay Ridge history.
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the Harbor have an interior mosaic
wall with an undersea theme? Of all things to remember – sheesh!
The mosaic was not in the auditorium… probably between the lobby
and area behind the last row of orchestra seats.
Here is a 1967 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cgwkxp
Listed in the 1940 Brooklyn yellow pages. Phone number was SHor Rd 8-4900.
On May 5, 1993, The Brooklyn Spectator published two pages of Bay Ridge movie palace memories written by Andrew Johnson and John Cocchi.
Here they are:
View link
View link
View link
View link
haha That’s funny. But the photos are cool aren’t they?
Thanks Mike, I do my best…(blushes)
Cool photos KenRoe. You should open a gallery. You are very talented.
Three photographs I took of the Harbor Theater in June 2006:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/211072499/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/211072944/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/211073442/
Lostmemory—
Thanks for the stats. If you remember the location of the lot, you’ll recall how odd it is. At 86 Street, the hitherto parallel 4 and 5 Avenues begin to converge, and the block between 91 and 92 Streets is the last—now trapezoidal—full block before 5 Avenue vanishes into 4 Avenue.
On the building’s 5 Avenue side (the proscenium wall), a fairly large billboard announced the week’s attractions: it appeared as a miniature of the Rivoli’s wonderful rear-wall billboard in Manhattan. The difference was, that the Harbor’s programs changed twice each week, as it showed the hand-me-downs from the Loew’s circuit on Wed-Fri and from the RKO circuit on Sat-Mon (or perhaps vice versa—I’m straining to recall what I saw there in the late 40s and early 50s), with a double-bill revival on Tues. The poster-hangers practically had a full-time job keeping up with it. In addition, neighborhood stores displayed in their windows a cardboard poster listing the weekly attractions. You might think of it as pre-web advertising.
The Phantom—
Thanks for the fine picture of the Harbor. Its geometric vertical brick designs and asymetrical placement offer a wonderful example of art deco facade. The top storey windows belonged to the projection room, and I remember frequently seeing the projectionist puffing a cigarette at one of them as I walked to the library a couple of blocks away. The interior was perfectly symmetrical, with maroon walls bathed in yellow side-lights, and with a shallow balcony for patrons who smoked and an expansive orchestra for the rest of us. The length tapered to a rather narrow proscenium, just fine for the pre-wide-screen era, and quite attractive as a pale yellow traveler curtain neatly framed the screen’s black-bordered surface.
To accommodate new projection ratios in 1953, they removed the curtain and installed the widest possible screen that the space allowed, but it was still only just slightly larger than the original one and, when a top mask descended for CinemaScope, proved even smaller than the latter. The nearby Stanley did a much better job by removing sections of the old proscenium to accommodate a properly panoramic screen.
For all that, the Harbor displayed a freer license in selecting films than the neighboring RKO or Loew’s theaters did. As part of the Interboro chain, it received most of its fare third-hand after the Alpine or Dyker passed it on to the Bay Ridge or Shore Road and then to the Harbor, which in turn passed it to the Fortway and last of all to the Stanley. Occasionally, however, the Harbor would disrupt the chain and play a popular foreign film or a domestic film whose distribution was shunned by RKO or Loew’s. In 1953, such a film was “The Moon Is Blue,†which had been denied a Production Code Seal and was condemned by the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency (see posts above for 15 March 2005). In 1956, the Harbor played “Diabolique,†a French thriller that had broken records at the Fine Arts on E. 58 Street. In the early 1960s, the Harbor became an early venue for Premier Showcase bookings and it scooped prestige films such as “West Side Story†which normally would have gone first to the Alpine or Dyker. If only its screen had been large enough to display those films to full advantage!
Whoops that would be www.bayridgebrooklyn.blogspot.com
A current photo of the ( simple, pretty ) building that was the Harbor was posted on the Bay Ridge Blog yesterday (www.bayridgebrookyn.blogspot.com )
bBox Office Bill…. And they will be doing it forever.World without end Amen!
The CLOD might have been pathologically obsessed with visual suggestiveness in the ‘50s. Today the obsession would be with the social-values concept of extra-marital relations (i love that idea of “extra”—a good thing if it trickles down your way). Same difference if you call it family values, I guess. People were doing it then and are doing it now (thank God, deo gratias, kyrie eleison).
Box office Bill… If the CLOD objected to Cyd Charisse`sHigh profile tights in 1957, wonder what they would say today about the was pre teen and adolescent girls dress… especially the way they go out in public with those skimpy blouses and ultra short skirts, not to mention those skin tight black pants!
I believe that the CLOD objected to “The Greatest Shoe on Earth” for James Stewart’s role as a doctor on the lamb for having killed someone (remember how the FBI agents eye him suspiciously during his clown act, and how he nobly reveals his medical skills after the train crash). The CLOD objected to films that “took a light view of human life,” meaning films that depicted or implied acts of murder.
The CLOD objected to “Singin' in the Rain” for “suggestive costuming,” specifically for Cyd Charisse’s high-profile tights in the “Broadway Melody” number.
The CLOD always objected to films that presented “suggestive situations” (“The Moon is Blue”) or that “took a light view of marriage” (any film depicting or implying divorce).
I remember when the Harbor opened the X-rated Alice in Wonderland with Kristine DeBell and how I begged my babysitter to go in and open the side door so I could sneak in. Never came to pass. I also remember seeing All The President’s Men as a kid and management yelling at us that it was too grown up a film. Other good memories—Halloween (went again and again to see it) and Dawn of the Dead, when an older couple came in, saw about two seconds of it, groaned, and walked out!
Wonder what was so objectionable about The Greatest Show on Earth and Singin In The Rain?