RKO Madison Theatre

Jeez guys, I didn’t realize the Lefferts was already listed on the site:
/theaters/4686/

As for the Liberty Square theater…Unfortunately, the el is in the way, so we can’t tell the business that’s there without someone taking a “road trip” to get what the address is.
At least we know what corner it is on, and that the building still exists.

Warren and Lost, it appears that the Rite Aide appears to be in the location of the old lobby entrance for the old Lefferts Theater, so whatever the Rite Aide’s address is should probably be the “new” Queens address that should be used for the Lefferts section on this site.
It amazes me that a theater of this size (from what it appears to be in the photo) was missed until now to add to the site. It appears hard to miss!! I can understand some of the now gone or smaller theater being missed, but this one appears to be a large theater, again, hard to miss.

Lost Memory;
Someone just told me out about this thread.When I lectured for the Richmond Hill Historical Society several years ago, I gave the audience a list of local theatres from the American Motion Picture Directory 1914/15 and the Film Daily Yearbook 1941.
The Directory lists a Library Square Theatre not Liberty. Don’t know how or when it was changed to the Liberty on the website.
According to Nancy Cataldi, of the Richmond Hill Historical Society,the area surrounding the library before they expanded hillside avenue was called Library Square. She even has a post card of this theatre.
In any case, Nancy believes the theatre was a few storefronts away from the Republican Club, 86-15 Lefferts Blvd. going towards Jamaica Avenue. The building/site could be the car repair shop or the hair salon (according to Nancy).
The one theatre on the 1914/15 list to make it to 1941 was the Garden. There is a Lefferts Theatre listed in 41.
The one theatre left off the website from the 1914 Directory was the Maple aka Cedar aka Richmond Hill. The building was still there a few years ago at 112-21 Jamaica Avenue.
The one theatre that did not make it to the 1914 list was the Owl which opened in 1910 at 112-16 Jamaica. It is sometimes mistaken for the Maple, Cedar. Richmond Hill mentioned above. I’ve been told that the building survives by several local people but another theatre historian says it is not the same building.
Hope that answers all your questions. Will get back to the Wilson later as well as the Sparta Hotel theatre which I believe you mentioned elsewhere.

Just to add, that’s one of the reasons they had to change a lot of the names. When all the various towns combined in QUeens, you sometimes had let’s say 4 “Maple Sts”, or 4 “4th Streets”, and none of them were connected or even near each other.
I hate the fact that Queens lost all it’s street names (unlike Brooklyn), but I can see why they may have felt the need to do it.

Lost Memory, it may help to identify the highest house or lot number on the portion of Jamaica Avenue in Brooklyn, at its eastern end at Elderts Lane at the Bklyn-Queens border. Then, going from Elderts Lane to 75th Street, you can see the jump between the original lot numbering and the Queens lot numbering.

104th Street as Oxford Avenue makes more sense to me than Wyckoff Avenue, and can be found on the older subway maps (same as 111th Street = Greenwood Avenue) though who knows exactly where the Wyckoff farm(s) was/were ?

All those Richmond Hill streets that are now numbered, used to be named. The last time I was in the Triangle Hofbrau Restaurant in Richmond Hill, Friday November 11, 1994, a friend who was dining there with me showed me a map of Richmond Hill on the wall, done as an aerial perspective, which showed all the original names of the now-numbered streets. I do not know what has happened to that map, or if it showed a Liberty Square.

Perhaps Dennis Doyle of the Richmond Hill Historical Society could help. I used to have the link; perhaps Bway could still furnish it to you.

Your last sentence is what I am afraid of. It was probably different for every street converted. For example, take the Madison…it is current 54-XX, but was probably either 2XXX or 1XXX something before the conversion, cusideriing that as soon as you cross the QUeens-Brooklyn border a few hundred feet away, Myrtle Ave’s numbers go into the 1XXX series.

Haven’t a clue. And unfortunately have no way to know how to convert it.

Sounds good. As long as it’s not in the address at the top of the page, because otherwise the “google maps” thing won’t work, and show the wrong location.

Lost Memory, you could always enter the old address for it, with a note explaining that it IS the old address, and that you’re not sure what the new address would be. The old address was, after all, the correct address of the theater when it existed.

Could Liberty Square have once been the intersection of Lefferts Avenue and Liberty Avenue ?

Perhaps Bway could be of some help to you.

Rapid Robert, I will ask him about it this weekend !

Thanks for posting the link, Warren. My dad remembers those RKO Madison stage presentations well, including the then-controversial film “Pinky” being introduced live on stage at the RKO Madison by none other than Ed Sullivan, Mr. “Rilly Big Shew” himself.

My dad also remembers attending live Shakespeare at the RKO Madison.