Amityville Theatre
217 Broadway,
Amityville,
NY
11701
217 Broadway,
Amityville,
NY
11701
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Paul-There are several Amityville web pages, for the original, the one that was torn down when Broadway was widened and the final Big A which was subsequently twinned. A lot of comments and pictures have been posted to the wrong sites. Try the others for the comments you can’t find.
There is something wrong with the Amityville web page.You can’t access recent comments for 217 Broadway!
According to Amityville Historical Society records the theatre, as the Star, opened in 1913. It was a long, narrow building with a center aisle with six seats on either side. It had a rectangular shaped marquee advertising the films.
A lot of the heading is in contradiction to material in the files of the Amityville Historical Society. They say that in the late 1920’s it was sold to the Prudential chain. The new owners installed new equipment for talkies and changed the name to Amityville. Then in the 1930’s it was deemed obsolete and suffering from competition by neighboring village theatres which had smoking loges and AC.
The theatre closed on Sunday, January 26, 1936 with the promise that a new theatre, “the finest of its type on Long Island” would open in ten weeks. The final film was a “Tale of Two Cities” with Ronald Coleman and Elizabeth Allen.
And on May 6, 1936 the new theatre opened. Since that 1936 theatre doesn’t exist on CT I will create it.
Apparently there weren’t a whole lot of telephones in Amityville back in 1928, eh? The theater’s phone # is listed as “Amityville 221!” Too bad that the program doesn’t even mention an intersection for the theater’s location. I drove through Amityville going west down Rt. 27A before turning north on Rt. 110. The older “downtown” area seems to be along 110 (Broadway) to the north of 27A (Merrick Rd) and south of the LIRR tracks. The location of this theater was probably somewhere near the area where Broadway crosses Union Avenue – but that’s just a guess.