Beekman Theatre

What an insult that would be, if the North Folk Bank is preserved as the Beekman is demolished. There are, what, some 100-150 North Folk Bank branch locations, but only one Beekman (no matter the re-named New York One and Two across the street)…

Speaking of the New York/Beekman One and Two, newspaper display ads and movie clock listings are still referring to it by its old name. I wonder if Clearview is waiting for some sort of ‘grand opening’ before making the name change formal, despite the recently installed and unobscured new signage…

Sometimes progress isn’t always better.

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On Friday, August 5, a work crew was at the Beekman, setting up a scaffold directly beneath the marquee. Either the marquee is going to be taken down, or the scaffold is being built to conceal the demolition of the interior.

I also included a pic of the new Beekman 1&2…definitely should have used the old script for the name. After looking at the front of the hideous glass building the theater occupies, I see very little room for where the original metal and glass Beekman signs (removed from the Beekman marquee weeks back) might have been placed. Maybe those two signs were brought into the Beekman once they were removed, just to store them until they can be taken away.

Here is an excerpt from the massive tome “New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial.” Published by The Monacelli Press. Second edition, 1997. Page 842:

New York Life’s plans for Manhattan House also included a two-story commercial structure, built to preserve the views from the apartment building. Designed by Fellheimer & Wagner and completed in 1952, the low-rise building contained a beanck of the Corn Exchange Bank on the northeast corner of Sixty-fifth Street and Second Avenue, and the Beekman Theater, at 1254 Second Avenue. The theater, which featured art films and served coffee in the lobby, lent a note of sophisitication to the area. The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther applauded the decision to include the theater: “Despite all the dire prognostications of the ruinous competition of TV, not to mention the mischievous rumors that the public is getting tired of films, the big New York Life Insurance Company had the courage to go right ahead and back this new theater construction, to the tune of a million or so.” The theeater’s Modernist design, Crowther said, was a vast improvement over the previous era’s vast and ornate picture palaces and an overdue response to public preference. “For a long time it has been apparent,” he asserted, ‘that one of the several things that have caused a decline in movie-going, especially by people of better taste, has been an increasing aversion to the older downtown and neighborhood 'barns’….Clean and respectable though they may be, they are achitecturally passe and dull.“ In contrast, Crowther said, the Beekman was "tastefully planned and decorated in sleek but not ostentatious style, with plenty of room for lounging, having coffee and stretching the legs, as well as for freedom pf passage in and out of the widely spaced rows.” All in all, he said, the theater had an “air of refinement, elegance and chic that bathes the discriminating patron with a relaxing warmth.” The lobby was redesigned in 1962 by Rolf Myller to include a free-form, undulating bank of seating that accommodated up to seventy-five people."

Another case in which those evil landlords win out, & another failure for the Landmarks Preservation Commission!!! We don’t have too many theaters left around the city that were erected in mid-century modernism. A DAMN SHAME!!!!!

Despite several suggestions on this site that the distinct marquee signage from the Beekman orignal be moved across the street for the renaming of NY Twin 1 & 2, new lettering has appeared on that marquee which is stark and linear, with little relation to the cursive style of the revered predecessor.

On the 27th, I saw that the two Beekman marquee signs were gone and the one over the facade was still in place. The theaters across the street are now Beekman 1 & 2, and their newly-installed signs don’t mimic the original Beekman design.

What a sad news!

I noticed the Beekman sign over the marquee was gone. Are they planning on using it in the New York Twin location?

Call me a conspiracy theorist – if you did, you wouldn’t be the first – but methinks Memorial Sloan-Kettering established the closing date they did in order to negate any last-minute, miracle landmarking effort.

Hi dave
In the past whenever I have seen buildings sealed off this way with painted wood or paper, it usually indicates that the property is going to be sitting empty for a long period before demolition begins. In this case the landlord might have to wait for the bank’s lease to expire before starting to tear the block down, and until then the former Beekman’s windows and doors have been sealed against curious sentimental nosy photogs (like me!). The big pane of glass was removed right after the closing, maybe they need it clear so they can remove large objects through the window.

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It’s crushing to consider how an almost perfect theatre can effectively be turned to ruin in such a short amount of time. Thanks for posting that most recent set of photos, davebazooka, and for the previous ones you posted as well.

My favorite porn title, towards the end of New York, was at the Circus Circus, which is now Noche:

A Clockwork Orgy

Sure wish I got a picture of that.

Hey, I don’t know where else to post this but Howard Johnson’s last day is this Friday, sometimes between 2am and 3:45am. After Howard Johnson’s closes, the last of Times Square will cease to exist.

City Knickerbocker lights and lamps on 8th just closed and has been emptied out too. Expect another lame bar to fill the space…