Uptown Theatre
4037 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10032
4037 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10032
2 people
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Additional Info
Architects: Eugene DeRosa, George Mort Pollard
Functions: Supermarket
Nearby Theaters
Located at Broadway and 170th Street, Manhattan, NY. The Uptown Theatre was opened in late-1921 or early-1922. Plans were drawn by architect George Mort Pollard, but were superseded by plans by noted theatre architect Eugene DeRosa. It was equipped with a Wurlitzer 2 manual 10 ranks organ. The Uptown Theatre was closed in the mid-1960’s following a fire which damaged the building.
It became a supermarket and in 2020 plans were submitted to demolished the building and build high-rise residential on the site. The supermarket had closed by early-2023.
Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 29 comments)
The Perez Prado film is Cha Cha Cha Boom!
The Uptown Theatre probably opened in late 1921 or early 1922. Items in the Bulletin of the Board of Standards and Appeals of the City of New York indicate that the application for a permit to build the theater was made on July 25, 1919, but as late as July 13, 1921, architect George Mort Pollard applied for an extension of the time the board had required for completion of the project. The extension was granted for one year. Adolph Lewisohn was the owner of the theater.
Pollard, best known for his residential buildings, designed at least one other theater in New York, the Harlem Grand. There was also a theater in his artists cooperative studio-apartment building, the Hotel des Artistes, but I’ve found no indication that it was ever used as a movie house.
Thanks, BobFurmanek. It’s been a long time. Good memory (or reference).
The Wurlitzer company shipped an organ, Style H-Special, opus 1403, to the Uptown Theatre, NY in July 1926.
I have went into this building before my dad worked here as a produce guy and he took he up were the autorium was now is a storage room
@Joe Vogel I’ve been inside this theater. It looks like a Eugene de Rosa theater, and various lists of De Rosa theaters have him as the architect.
It’s quite possible that De Rosa was the the architect and Pollard was simply acting as supervising architect. De Rosa was a very busy guy in those days and might have turned the project over to Pollard after it stalled, or the owner of the theater, Adolph Lewisohn, might have hired Pollard to get the project finished if he was dissatisfied with how De Rosa’s office was handling the construction phase.
If you look at the THSA website on the Manhattan index cards (card 186) it says Pollard started work on a theater at 4023 Broadway that wasn’t completed, but De Rosa built the Uptown at 4037. https://historictheatres.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/MM-Manhattan-Index-Cards.pdf
As I said, I’ve been in there and if you see the dome and the proscenium you’d immediately recognize it as a De Rosa theater.
The Uptown Theater closed in the mid-1960’s after a fire did much damage. I was a neighborhood kid back then.
The Supermarket and all frontage commercial sites are closed - the demolition plans filed in 2020 have not been implemented - so the developer’s plans for a 13 story residential tower must be on hold. The closed storefronts are a blight on an otherwise vibrant commercial thoroughfare.