Metropolitan Theater
168 Manhattan Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11206
168 Manhattan Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11206
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Ligg, would you happen to know where on Graham street is the building Betty Smith lived? I’d love to check it out next time I’m in Williamsburg. Thanks!
The Devoe branch of the Brooklyn Public Library system where the book’s heroine went for sanctuary is just a few blocks west of the Metropolitan on Devoe St. & Manhattan Ave. As I remember, it was a rather quaint neighborhood branch on a quiet neighborhood tree-lined street.
Yes, I know. The housing project there was the first Federal Government Housing Projects built under FDR’s “New Deal.” Here is an interesting though. Supposedly the book, “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” took place in the old tenements somewhere where the Projects are built. Even at the end of the book, Betty Smith says in the semi-autobiographical book, that after her father married the cop, and they were moving, “they had planned to tear down her old neighborhood.”
Here is a fact that most people do not know, and now that Grand Street around there has a redevelopment plan. The building, where Betty Smith lived as a girl and where her family lived actually survived. It is actual one of the tenements with a store front near Graham and Grand. Why, no one with the Brooklyn Historial society never checked this out is beyond me. It is something I was thinking of bringing to Marty Markowitz. It is the perfect place to be a museum for the “rich history” of Williamsburg.
There is the WAH centery on Broadway, WAH being the Williamsburg Art and Historical society, however, it closed for the time being because the old building, across from Peter Luger’s, is an old Bank Building, but does not have a fire escape, so the WAH center had to close until they raise the money.
I hope that, the building Betty Smith grew up in does not get knocked down by developers. It would be a shame, knocking down the building where the most famous book about Brooklyn took place.
The Maujer Street Houses are reknown as one of the first NYC Housing Authoprity developments in the city. The location of this theater is an odd one as both Manhattan Av. & Scholes were not major thoroughfares, unlike Graham Ave., one block over. The closure of this site probably encouraged the construction of the nearby Rainbow.
I do not know if this building even exist anymore. It probably was knocked down in ubran renewal when the housing projects went up. That whole street is just projects.
In only 2 posts. Is that a record? hehe.
The Metropolitan Theatre is listed in the American Motion Picture Directory 1914 – 1915.
The Film Daily Yearbook’s;1926 & 1927 editions list it with a seating capacity of 460. The 1930 edition of F.D.Y. lists it as ‘Closed’ with a seating capacity of 600.