Playpen Theatre

Rudy claimed the credit for a plan that predated mayor Lindsay.

I read the story today about the Playpen closing and read all the commentaries here. A thought came to my mind too that I wanted to share with all of you.

We give Rudy G so much credit for cleaning up Times Square. Did he have something to do with this, and if he didn’t, will he somehow get credit for having something to do with this pending closure?

I did this and I did that and I’m all that, blah blah blah.

This is such a shame. I walked by a few weeks ago and noticed it was closed ( i swear I was going to The Funny Store next door!!). Besides being one of the oldest theaters around- it’s architecture is so distinct and cool, it’s neon sinage is awesome, and it’s just about the only reminder left of old school gritty New York. So much for character I guess. Yey for homogenization!

I understand the site will be a hotel.

I remember walking around Times Square in the mid seventies. It was quite a panorama. I think a lot of that has been lost now. Too bad.

Here’s the entire article.

September 7, 2007, 10:11 am

A Seedy Eighth Avenue Landmark, Gone Dark

By David W. Dunlap

[Photo caption: Until just a few weeks ago, the World Trade Center continued to glow at night on the facade of the Playpen cinema. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)]

The homogenization of the Times Square area (yes, The Times has contributed to the phenomenon with its new headquarters opposite the Port Authority Bus Terminal) has claimed another quirky victim: the Playpen, a former cinema that closed recently after 90-odd years.
Very odd years.

The Playpen is part of a larger parcel at the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 44th Street that is owned by a partnership including affiliates of the Tishman Realty Corporation. The partners have not gone public with their plans. They may not even have decided yet among themselves. But the future certainly does not include the old theater.

What Eighth Avenue will lose with its disappearance is more than an adults-only emporium with suggestive neon come-ons â€" “Live Girls,” “Preview Booths,” “Leather & Lace.” It will lose the last home of the Funny Store, an almost vaudevillian novelty shop. It will lose one of the most distinctive façades of any surviving theater from the early 20th century, a kind of heroic Palladian composition. And will lose a three-dimensional history lesson in the evolution of Times Square.

The Ideal Theater, designed by Eisendrath & Horwitz, opened in 1916 as a modest movie house, with 598 seats. It attracted some notice in 1935 for showing an Italian-language movie, “Dopo una Notte d’Amore” (”After a Night of Love”). Briefly known as the Esquire, it stayed in business until early 1937. It reopened a few months later as the Squire. In 1939, it was renamed the Cinecitta and played Italian films for a while.

Once again the Squire in 1941, it showed “The Eternal Gift,” said to be the first feature-length depiction of the Roman Catholic high mass, and the documentary, “Greece on the March.”

Such serious fare had disappeared by 1946, when “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors” topped the bill. During a tense moment on screen one evening, a 10-by-20-foot section of the theater’s ceiling fell down, injuring 19 patrons. Those in the front seats were unruffled, thinking they were hearing weird sound effects. By the 1950s, “girlie” films were drawing customers to the Squire.

The theater’s next transformation occurred in 1956, when it reopened as the New Cameo, a theater devoted to Russian films, beginning with the Mosfilm production of “Boris Godunov,” starring Alexander Pirogov. “A casual observer must shudder at the thought of the terrible shock and dismay of a former Squire patron who might wander into the theater looking wistfully for Rose La Rose or Lili St. Cyr,” wrote Bosley Crowther, who was then The Times’s movie critic.

Eventually, the theater became simply the Cameo. This was its most fitting name since the central arch is flanked sculptural cameos, showing women in diaphanous robes, one with a spool of movie film and the other with a camera. The Cameo was the showcase in 1970 for the blue movie, “Sexual Freedom in Denmark.”

Blue gave way to X over time, and then the “Cameo” on the marquee gave way to the Adonis, when that gay movie theater was pushed out of its home six blocks north on Eighth Avenue. The new Adonis was closed by the city’s Department of Health in 1994 after inspectors observed what they called “high-risk sexual activities” taking place among patrons, without “any attempts to monitor or control them.”

Lately, the theater was the Playpen, whose marquee loosely traced the New York skyline in red neon. It included the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which still stood and still glowed at night in their uptown incarnation. And yes, Eighth Avenue is losing those, too.

I think we can safetly assume that this theater will be gone and replaced with an ugly hi-rise.

I am sorry to hear that you have received no reply to your emails. Unfortunately Place Matters is not an organisation which rescue buildings. Other organisations already do this, Like the Municiple Arts Society, who are co-creators of PM. MAS are aware of the threat to the Playpen, and it may be the case that your emails were forwarded to them.

I agree with your comments about the likely sad loss of this building. But the PM project is more of an oral history/architecture exercise. Recording NY places of significance from New Yorkers perspective and researching these places further for the benefit of future generations.

Hope that clarifies.

Hello everyone,

Great to read all the interesting posts about the Cameo.

I am involved with a non-profit organisation called Place Matters. Which aims to collect information on places of interest, within the 5 boroughs, in order to keep them alive. This seems appropriate for the Cameo / Paypen. Once buildings are nominated some will be further reseached, and there seems a wealth of information here to start that process.

Place Matters conducts a citywide survey called the Census of Places that Matter to discover places that evoke associations with history, memory, and tradition. Hundreds of New Yorkers have nominated places to the Census. Amounting to a new knowledge bank, the Census identifies places of public significance and helps us understand how and why “place” is meaningful to people. Please check out the website.

http://www.placematters.net/flash/home.htm

As many of you appear to have information about the Playpen, and even some wonderful photos. I thought that you may be interested to nominate it on the website. Feel free to include photos and your experience. Or even nominate something else. I hope this is of interest to you. Thanks for reading.

There was an article in the NY Times a couple of weekends ago that focused on the adjacent novelty shop, The Funny Store. The story had to do with the store having to pack up and move to another location due to the sale of the building to developers. Here’s a passage:

<<The business, now at 44th Street and Eighth Avenue, has been part of the Times Square scene since 1957, changing owners and locations several times but always sticking to the same few blocks and staying ahead of rising rents, new zoning laws and new construction.

Now, it will have to move again. Mr. Martin’s landlord is selling the building, at 693 Eighth Avenue, to a developer, and he has to vacate the store by the end of the month to make way for condominiums. And retail rents in Times Square are now so high that he cannot afford to stay>>

The article makes a passing reference to the adjacent Playpen in this passage:

<<The Funny Store had an agreement with the Playpen, a shop selling sexually explicit materials next door that provided an entrance through the magic shop. The arrangement was drawn up after a 1995 antipornography law limited the amount and display of such materials sold in parts of the city to 40 percent of a store’s inventory or floor space.

That agreement ended last year, and now a wall has replaced the curtain.>>

Bottom line – Looks like the Times Square area gets another high rise condo and yet another of the neighborhood’s old cinemas bites the dust.

I heard the whole block will be torn down.

I haven’t a clue if it’s only women. Don’t take my word, I was only in that place that one time.