Colonial Theatre
1746 Broadway,
Brooklyn,
NY
11233
1746 Broadway,
Brooklyn,
NY
11233
6 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 75 of 198 comments
Stop the anarchy!
There is a great site called BrooklynBoard.com Check it out. Alot of people from Bushwick and Broadway area.
Lisa, Isabel had dark hair and did go to Lourdes around my time, but I don’t remember her last name or know whatever happened to her. We used to play house. I think she was at least half-Italian. She used to call herself “Rosaba,” pronounced “ro-ZAH-ba.” You could go in and ask for Rosaba and see if she responds. By the way, she was hot.
Sorry Warren, but I just have to ask Joe G. something…To Joe G. I was curios to know if the Isabell you mentioned in the above paragraph is the same Isabell that I know of who now lives on Staten island. she went to Lourdes and she should be around your age…she is a dark hair girl, but I don’t recall her last name…she has a beauty shop around the corner from my house..she use to hang out on De Sales Pl at the time…
Ahhhh, the anarchy of the internet!
c'mon, kids, let’s play nice. Warren, I backdoored into your photo album from the Colonial pix. Did you take all those? You’ve got some great stuff there.
Leroylliston, I didnt go to 73 but I remember the dances. I believe they were on Wednesday or Friday night, not sure. But my cousins would go there instead of conferternity in Lourdes. Father Lynch would go to the school and pull them out for their religious instructions. Havent found anyone that went to Lourdes the same time as me 1946-1954 or played on Furman Ave. Does anyone remember Scotties?
What’s going on with 24 Furman?
warren, take a valium.
me too. there’s room for everybody and their info and opinion. many of the other boards for other theaters have similar postings with info about the neighborhoods, not just the theaters.
As a regular contributor and visitor to this site I fully agree with the comments posted by John
Warren, with all due respect, I think you are going way overboard in trying to become the Emily Post of this site. As this tread convincingly demonstrates, a local movie theater was, along with the local parish, the epicenter of what constituted a neighborhood in many communities during much of the 20th century. This was especially the case of the Colonial. Thus, the celebration of the old community – in ways that are not directly related to the movie house itself – merely validates the importance that the old movie house lent to it. So you should should welcome these comments and not deride them.
Even looking on what was stated, Warren, don’t you appreciate the fact that Veronica Lake’s sister actually lived at 24 Furman Ave and that the actress herself occasionally visited the site and – who knows – took in a few movies at the Colonial?! Isn’t this a terrific addition to the items contained on this tread – even on your own terms?
Regarding 24 Furman, when I was the Community Board’s District Manager, this was an abandoned site that we were trying, against considerable odds, to be recast into an affordable housing coop. Well, things worked out OK, and 24 Furman now stands as a very successful survivor of a difficult era. I’m sure Veronica Lake’s sister – and perhaps Veronica Lake herself – would approve.
Hope you enjoy these comments!
They were kept in the rectory.
Can anyone tell me what happened to the Sacramental Registers when Our Lady of Lourdes Church burned?
Did anyone go to JHS 73 (William J. Morrison) between 1950-53?
To Joe G. talk about famous people. Veronica Lake was a famous actress in the ‘50s. Her sister lived in the apartment house 24 Furman Ave. She would come and visit once in a while.
yes a reuion would be great…i went to lourdes between 64 to 69
Thanks John for steering me to this site from another Brooklyn site. Wow! do all these postings bring back memories. I left Furman Ave. in 1960 when I got married to a Woodhaven man, a retired NYPD and since deceased. Went to Lourdes from 1940-1954. Played on Furman Ave.,Saturdays went to the Colonial or Aberdeen Park or Highland Park. Hung out in Niers Ice Cream Parlor and bought candy in the candy stores on Aberdeen and Furman. We made prank phone calls to Mr. Brown. My father was great friends with the Grims. They were at my wedding. I knew Anton and Bob and Anton’s wife and family. I have just gotten in touch with some Lourdes Alumni from Classmates.Com and we would love to have a reunion. Is anyone interested????????
Thanks, Joe G. and Peter L.
My friend Fred recently visited our old neighborhood, Chauncey street and Rockaway avenue, about a block away from the Colonial Theater. Here is a link to some of the amazing photos he took. enjoy.
View link
To all my friends from Bushwick and the hood,
This note is long overdue, and unfortunately I’m short of time to do it, as I’m getting ready to go out of the country for two weeks. But I just wanted to let you all know that I recently paid a visit, my first in many years, to Bushwick and the surrounding area, inspired by Lisa’s visit, mentioned above. I passed through en route to my mother’s in Canarsie and decided to stop by.
First:
The Wayside Baptist Church, the former Colonial Theater, is alive and well. I arrived as a Sunday afternoon service was letting out. The outside is just a brick façade, nondescript and a little fortress-like, but inside it’s a vibrant church, very colorful and bright, with lots of well-dressed and upbeat people. A few of them were kind of suspicious of me, especially since some nut out in the Midwest or somewhere had just killed some people in a church earlier that week, but most were friendly. Like so many other things from one’s youth, it didn’t seem nearly as big now as it did when I was a little kid. Still I stood and marveled at the huge, colorful stained-glass window that stood where the screen used to be, and the pews that had replaced the orchestra seats. Upstairs the balcony had been converted to more seating. A few of the parishioners questioned me about who I was and what I was doing there, and they seemed genuinely awestruck when I told them I used to go to the movies there as a kid, 50 years ago.
Then it was on to visit Our Lady of Lourdes, my alma mater. A sign outside says it is being converted into a high school, accepting its first class in September 2008. It’s designed for lower-income people whose kids may not be able to afford a private school, and allows them to pay their tuition through a work-study program, which is usually only done in college. They were having an open house and I looked around inside. Again, it seemed so much bigger then, but as Dylan sang, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. The principal and a teacher told me the school has been shut for about two years but will now reopen. Another former alumnus of the grammar school was also visiting; he said he graduated in 2002. When I told him I was the valedictorian of the graduating class of 1966, a look came over his face like he couldn’t even imagine humans living on this planet in 1966. It was kind of funny.
I also drove around the neighborhood a little, some of my old haunts, Furman Avenue, where the former Grove Chevrolet service garage is now the temporary (for about the last 30 years) O.L.L. church; the dead end on Granite Street, where lived so many girls I pined for, Linda and Mabel and Willie and Isabel, and where it looks like you can still scale the fence and get onto the L train tracks; Chauncey Street, by Evangelical Deaconess Hospital, which is now some city health clinic or something; and others. The neighborhood was a hellhole when I moved away in ’71, but now it looks like they have fixed it up a good deal, though I’m still not sure I’d want to walk around there at night. They even have some new condos going up right on Bushwick Avenue, which are, of course, labeled “luxury†(nothing seems to get built anymore that isn’t, but luxury condos on Bushwick Avenue? I sincerely doubt it). All in all, the neighborhood doesn’t look too bad, all things considered. Probably some spillover from Billyburg (Bushwick, after all, is often euphemistically referred to as “East Williamsburgâ€).
Aside to John Dereszewski, Hull Street still exists on the other side of Broadway across from DeSales Place. I’ll check out that website asap. Thanks.
It’s funny how you start poking around the Web and find this stuff, and people you may have known, or who at least were close by. My wife is Russian and we’ll be in Moscow later this week, and hook up with some of her classmates from 30 years ago. The world gets smaller as the World Wide Web gets bigger. Ciao!
Hi, my name is John Dereszewski. While I was not involved in the area during the active life of the Colonial, I served Bushwick as the Community Board District Manager during the horrid days of the late 1970’s. Thus I am in a very good position to talk about the problems that plagued the community once served by the Colonial during that era.
One of the things that I really like about this tread is the extent to which the life of a movie theater can reflect that of the surrounding community, in this case the Our Lady of Lourdes Parish. Thus, many of the memories previously shared that do not directly relate to the Colonial really do, since they encompass the life of a community in which this movie theater was very much a part. Thus I hope future contributers will continue to apply this broad approach when they submit their comments.
Along this line, I would like to throw out an interesting tidbit concerning the origins of the name given to DeSales Pl. It appears that Our Lady of Lourdes, which was established way back in 1871, was initially named after St. Francis DeSales and only adopted its present name in 1900. But, during the interim, DeSales Pl. was named after the new church – it was previously called Hull St. So the old name lives on albeit as a street. How many of you old parishioners know this and can you add any further info?
Finally, if you are interested in exploring other Bushwick related issues – both current and past – many I suggest visiting the “My House in Bushwick” web site. It contains a varied tread very much like this but that is not tied to a specific topic. Just Google this phrase and link to the first selection. Hope you enjoy it.
Thanks, Warren. I may contact you privately for that purpose.
Photo Bucket is blocked by my pc, Warren. In a few words, what do those 1935 program covers show about the Colonial Theatre ?
I also like Ray Russell’s short story, “The Cage”, which I read in “Alfred Hitchcock Presents : Stories That Scared Even Me”.
There’s also Russell’s “Unholy Trinity”.
I know, Joe G., truth is stranger than fiction, re : small world.
I have “Sardonicus”, by Ray Russell, at home, in a paperback anthology of horror fiction that first appeared in Playboy, which also includes “Black Country”, by Charles Beaumont, his first published story, I think, and “Beelzebub” by Robert Bloch. Great stuff.
Joe G., Lisa, have you joined Bushwick Buddies yet ?
Lisa, you’re right. Pedro Vera. Rudy, his brother, was in my class at Lourdes. Thinking about this actually inspired me to look on a Vietnam memorial page, where his name was listed, along with some poignant comments from family members. I’ll leave a comment when I have time. Your memory is better than mine at this point, but you’re a couple of years less removed. Alan Bursack doesn’t ring a bell offhand, but sounds vaguely familiar. I might have seen you around back then, but I didn’t really know too many girls in the neighborhood. I was pretty shy. Lourdes was segregated, girls on one side of the building, boys on the other. Then I went to SFP, all boys. I was a late bloomer, haha.
PKoch, I also went to one or two of those shows at the Film Forum, saw “13 Ghosts” and “Mr. Sardonicus.” The latter was cheesy but a great plot, based on the short story by Ray Russell, the fiction editor of Playboy. So you and I were at SFP at the same time, maybe sitting next to each other at the Film Forum years later, and now here. Small world, is right. More than 20 years ago I was sitting in a bar in Hong Kong and struck up a conversation with a Chinese woman. She asked me where I was from and I said New York. She said, “Oh, my sister, she live in Brooklyn, New York, on Bushwick Avenue.” You can’t make this stuff up.