AMC Orpheum 7
1538 3rd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10028
1538 3rd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10028
10 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 28 comments
Yikes! My first visit here in over thirty years, and it is so rundown and neglected and feels ready to blow away in the next big storm. It is in some ways better than I remembered, because the eighties sloped floor multiplex auditoria (opened in early 1990s but design very much of the 1980s) with their aging squeaking seats and the aisles down the center do at least have decent size screens, and they were filling some seats on a slow December weekend, but Manhattan deserves better than for this rundown multiplex to be the only option north of 60th Street and East of Central Park.
Al Schwartz and Michael Landis were all about the money and could care less.
Al Schwartz would also have a fit if he saw what happened to his beautiful Meadows in Fresh Meadows the demolition and rebuild of the Shore in Huntington.
Wonder what Marcus Loew would think about the current use of his original building site, which has numerous images displayed here
Now called AMC Orpheum 7.
I gotta admit that would be pretty cool.
AMC should really donate one of the neon Loews signs its in the process of getting rid of to The Museum Of The Moving Image in Astoria Queens for preservation purposes.
The first multiplex that opened under the Loews brand when they decided to drop the Sony nameplate was the Loews New Brunswick 18 in New Brunswick NJ in November 1996, the Sony Theatres name switch was announced in April 1994 so it lasted approximately two and a half years. I wonder what the cost was to change all the signage from Loews to Sony, then back from Sony to Loews cost? Also AMC never had much of a presence here in the five boroughs so the Loews name definitely had more recognition in NYC.
I know that. Most people thought that Sony killed the Loews brand during its control of the chain from Coke in 1989. Tristar owned the theaters starting in 1985 in a joint venture with CBS and HBO. The joint venture broke up but Coke kept the chain when it merged Tri-Star into Columbia in the late 80s until the Japanese electronics giant took over. During Sony’s reign, when Playstation came out, they had kiosks inside the lobbies of the theaters. Advertisements for Sony music would play in the theaters, and a majority of the theaters would use SDDS much like its competitor (and soon to be parent) AMC as well as show Sony’s movie studio slate. In 1997, Sony reverted back to the Loews name and merged it with Cineplex Odeon; that relationship lasted a short time before Chapter 11 came along, forcing private companies to take over the chain. In 2006, Loews merged with AMC, and the rest is history. Loews was owned by the tisch family when they took control of the chain after it was spun off from MGM in the late 1950’s in 1969, and it became a huge conglomerate that owned everything from hotels to cigarettes and watches.
Looks like I have to hurry and re-photograph all the Loews marquees before they’re gone. While I can understand the idea of a consistent identity plus the ego of buying a chain, I wonder if AMC did any research into which brand was better liked by the public, Loews or AMC. My bet is that at least in NYC, Loews would have come out on top. Sony learned this lesson years ago.
They did make them more plain unfortunately as time went on. My favorite was the Loew’s Sunburst design & RKO Zig-Zag style. I only shudder to think what we will be left with once they finish the AMC signage swap out project. Because of the whole Loews-Sony-Loews name swap in the nineties there was very little Original Loew’s lettering left anywhere.
The old Loews Oprheum and Cine marquees were far from perfect but certainly the Orpheum was fun to see when you were coming home at night either from the 86th St or 3rd Ave side The current signage is almost redudant
The Legacy Loews exterior signage will be removed and replaced by the AMC Brand –
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170301005839/en/
Was passing by a few weeks ago at night & the marquee was totally dark, do they ever turn on the Marquee at night anymore? If you were looking for this place after dark and were not sure were it was it might be rather difficult to find it.
Judging from an Nov-5-2015 review on Yelp, it doesn’t sound to me like it’s been renovated as yet. It is definitely open on Nov-15-2015.
If they do renovate and put in lounge seating, it will reduce the number of seats substantially, but before that renovation comes to pass, I still stand by my original statement of about 2450 seats, not 2090 as follows: 250, 350, 370, 330, 330, 350, 470 (all rounded). Lounge seating could half that number.
But renovation or not, it is a “blah” theater. I think all basement theaters are not very nice, almost by definition, but the fact that it’s a basement theater is probably what’s saving it from becoming something else. Certainly nothing like the wonderful theater it replaced.
Has this theater been renovated and reopened?
Reportedly, this theater is next on the list to receive a 84th Street 6th-style “luxury seating” renovation.
Since the theatre is a tenant of the condo above it, I suspect they were told how bright they could go.
In all fairness, I cannot offer an opinion on the characteristics of the individual screens. However, the marquee could not be any blander. Walking by, it’s easy to ignore the theatre’s existence. Many of the local merchants have more eye-catching neon. In comparison, the previous marquee on 86th St. was a beacon, that could be seen for blocks up and down the street. Regardless of the product that was playing you could not possibly ignore the marquee as your eye was drawn to the wattage. Would anyone notice if the 3rd Avenue marquee went dark?
Exterior photos from July 2010.
Looks good from the outside.
In the teens, twenties and thirties, the areas around Park Row, the lower east side and Union Square challenged Times Square. The 166th Street and 125th Street areas also were well screened.
Thanks Al for the response but I was referring to the early decades of the last century. By the 60’s & 70’s many theatres had been bulldoozed for the massive building development that gripped Yorkville. As much as many applaud the dismantling of the 3rd Ave. El in the mid-50’s, it led to a vast upheaval of the surrounding neighborhoods around the 3rd Ave. corridor.
The area certainly had its fair share of screens but I think Greenwich Village and the east 59th/60th zone almost always had more.
Curious that in the 18 years since this theater opened there are fewer than a handful of comments. Unlike its predecessor namesake, it must be a bland and anonymous set of screens. Walking through East 86th St. it is difficult to imagine that in the past century it was a thriving movie scene with theaters on both sides of the street. Did the area have the largest conccentration of theaters outside of Times Square?