RKO Madison Theatre

I think the live chicken market and gas station on the triangle formed by Myrtle and St. Nicholas Avenues and Woodbine Street lasted until the fire right before Christmas 1965 that destroyed the Ridgewood Gardens Chinese Restaurant that used to be across Myrtle Avenue from the chicken market. Then the chicken market and gas station gave way to an unfinished hole in the ground, with naked steel girders in it, which my parents and other Ridgewood residents joked about whenever they passed it on the street. The unsightly wooden square scaffolding across the street, by what had been the Ridgewood Gardens Chinese Restaurant, my father sardonically referred to as Ridgewood’s equivalent of the Arc De Triomphe in Paris, France. My first memory of eating in the diner that replaced the chicken market was summer 1968.

The last time I saw a movie from the balcony of the RKO Madison may have been “The Odd Couple” in summer 1968, rather than “The Green Berets”. I am not sure which I saw first. The last film I saw at the Madison, “Lipstick”, in June or July of 1976, I went to the men’s room on the balcony level (its window was at the western side of the building’s facade) but did not watch the movie from the balcony.

I believe it was Fred Allen who once referred to television (TV) as “tired vaudeville”.

$25/night was a lot of money in the mid 40s, and a lot more a decade earlier. Headliners of the old days, 1900 ?, made $4,000/week. before Bob Hope, George Burns,etal.

And as for the link; Beginning in Boston in 1883, Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward F. Albee used the fortune they made staging unauthorized productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to started build a chain of ornate theatres across the northeastern United States. Stealing Pastor’s format, they instituted a policy of continuous multiple daily performances, which they called “vaudeville."
Fascinating stuff here:
http://www.musicals101.com/vaude1.htm

You’re probably right about the quality of the vaudeville, Warren. I remember meeting a friend of one of my parent’s friends once who claimed she appeared as a singer every once in a while at the Madison in the vaudeville. As a child I was impressed, but we later found out she was an amateur and had a regular day job doing something totally different. Of course that doesn’t mean she might not have been talented anyway. BTW I noticed the Bushwick boys site mentioned above. Does anyone know an equivalent site for former Ridegewood boys?
oodygdin

PKoch who is Fast Eddie. Do you mean Fast Eddie in the ‘Hustler’ movie. Fella’s you can read about Ridgewood at Wikipedia. There is a photo of Myrtle avenue. The RKO Madison Theatre can be seen in the photo. Perhap’s you will find it interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridgewood,_Queens

I don’t mean to be Warren, Bway, but please let’s not risk invoking Fast Eddie again !

To open that door, Bway, or perhaps the as-built drawings of the RKO Madison can be found on-line somewhere.

The last time I remember being in the balcony of the RKO Madison was August 2, 1968 for “The Green Berets”, starring John Wayne, David (“The Fugitive”)Jannsen (sp ?) and George Takei.

Thanks for all the details, Bway and Lost Memory.

When I click on the links to Warren’s photos, I get a blank screen titled “blockpage”. Maybe my PC’s internal censor is somehow picking up the ghost of Mae West and Fast Eddie in an unseemly and compromised position.

Peter… I don’t remember from the theater days where that stairway came down. That second stairway IS original though. No doubt about that (and most balconies did have two (or sometimes more) stairways. I can see the door on the main level which leads to that stairway. From it’s positioin downstairs, it appears it came down either in the back right (if facing the stage) part of the theater (similar to how the RKO Keiths in Richmond Hills second stairway did), or it may have came down to the inner lobby. It’s hard to tell, as the “store” is one big room, and it’s hard to tell where the outer lobby ended, or the inner lobby ended. You can only see where the enge of the balcony was within the auditorium itself.

Lost, no, they did not extend the balcony at all. They actually shortened it (well not physically, but they put a wall up blocking off the curved edge of the balcony out, and perhaps even the lowest level of the balcony). When you get to the top of the stairway, the wall is immediately on your left, whereas in the theater days, you probably had some rows of seating to the left, and of course the curve of the balcony. Picture the letter U the balcony, but you put up a straight line through it where the curve begins, making the U square.

Also, there is NO DOUBT it’s the original balcony, and not something rebuilt. They may have platfomed it a bit (thus the three tiers I described) because of course the original balcony would have been sloped, which would of course not lend well to a store use, so thus the three tiers with ramps connecting them. It makes about two aisles of furniture, and then the third tier in the back which was chained off, but nothing was really there either.

Good find on the elevator. I didn’t think it was original, but since it was one of those creepy freight elvators, open sort of with mess walls, it “looked” old.

And no, Mae West was not up there…..

I was in the balcony of the RKO Madison yesterday. I was in Ridgewood, and and figured I’d check out what the Liberty Dept store had for sale while I was on that end of Myrtle Ave…. To my surprise, I noticed that the old Grand Staircase leading up to the balcony was open, and a sign that said, “Come visit our furniture dept on the second floor”. They didn’t have to invite me twice….so up I went…. There is NO remnant whatsoever of the ornate white marble staircase. At the top of the stairway, they have a straight drywall wall on the left (which does not incorporate the curve of the balcony, so I’d say at least one or two levels of the actually balcony are cut off on the side, and dead space. There was a closed door in this drywall wall. The furniture section’s floor is not sloped, but it does have three tiers, with ramps connecting each tier. There is NO remnant of the original plaster ceiling. It’s drywall now too. On the other side of the balcony, there was an open OLD door, which led to the other stairway to the balcony, which is a stairwell, quite old, and that leads downstairs. I did poke my head in and the floor is nondescript, and the walls are green painted plaster, which may be original, but there is no ornamentation in the plaster whatsoever, so I am not sure. The the right of that is a, what seems to be, old elevator, the frieght elevator type of things though, so it may only “look” old. The back wall is drywalled too, no evidence of the projection room. What I REALLY wanted to do is open the door in the fake drywall wall facing the stage, as I have a feeling, the open space of the Madison Theater, and the bottom mhalf of the balcony is on the other side of that door……

I think you are wrong Bway. I think the assessed value of a property is based upon two major considerations; location and zoning. Within zoning there are particular values associated with building size, construction details, and lot size. I don’t know what causes the inconsistency, but suspect it may be due to improvements made to the Ridgewood, relative to no changes for the Madison.

The higher value must be bothersome to the Ridgewood’s present owners, as well as prospective buyers such as Allie the film guy. Then again, maybe not.

The Donald
Ever vigilant to the needs of the oppressed.

True, but it of course is still a theater, so perhaps that has something to do with it. The Madison is just another commercial building at this point, not a theater.

It’s been a while, but I believe that when a tax search of the NYC tax records was run on the Madison was done, it showed that Liberty Dept Stores is not a tenant, but owns the building.

So would I!
Actually, the exterior is in such great shape because of when Busy Bee restored the exterior facade. When Busy Bee steam cleaned and repointed (that means repairing the cement mortar between the stones/bricks), they also installed new windows. I don’t know if Liberty boarded up those new windows, or just installed the sign in front of them.
The fire probably wasn’t as extensive as it may sound. There may be severe soot damage on the original ceiling, but that would be dirty with age and neglect anyway. As long as the roof don’t leak (and it appears it is maintained, as they don’t want water in their store), tha plaster should be fine. We have to remember that this building, although not a theater, has not been unoccupied for more than a year or two at a time. It never stood abandoned and neglected for too long, so it has been maintained.
It is entirely possible that the original walls exist, and just sheetrock placed in front of them. A perfect example is the Patchogue Theater on Long Island. In the 1950’s, they had a fire, and the theater was reopened, “modernized”, with sheetrock walls. It was even multiplexed in the 1980’s. In the early 1990’s, when Patchogue Village was restoring the theater, they tore down the sheetrock only to expose the original, glorious, Ward & Glynne interior! They were able to restore the theater to it’s former glory as a performing arts house.
Of course, it’s also possible that all the plaster adornment was knocked off to place up the new store walls. But even so, it would probably only be to the fake ceiling height. Above that it is entirely possible even the procenium arch and ceiling remians.