Lyceum Theater

Lake Street,
Patchogue, NY 11772

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The Lyceum Theater on Lake Street in Patchogue began it’s life as a Congregational church. In 1895, the church moved out, and sold the building. The building was heavily renovated and expanded upon, and it became the 500 opera-seat Lyceum Theater.

It showed early movies and other motion pictures, in addition to vaudeville acts. It was also part of the Al Trahern Vaudeville circuit and the show performed at the Lyceum alternatively once a week. The vaudville circuit traveled around Long Island at eleven different towns including Patchogue, Huntington, Bay Shore, Sayville, Southampton, Sag Harbor, Port Jefferson, Riverhead, Mattituck, and Greenport.

On the nights that the show was to perform in Patchogue, the performers entered town around noon in a street parade.

The building had been razed on an unknown date.

Contributed by Chris

Recent comments (view all 8 comments)

Bway
Bway on June 17, 2004 at 7:12 am

I think the Lyceum Theater was located on the land that is now occupied by the Patchogue Fire Department on Lake Street, but am not sure. It was either there, or where the Patchogue Village parking lot is now.

Raiona
Raiona on February 19, 2005 at 5:51 am

The village parking lot used to be a group of stores, one of which housed the DMV for awhile. SO, the theater must have been on the north side of the street, where the first PAtchogue Fire Dept building was located. It could not have been further west, because Lake Avenue only went about one block further, ending where the Sam Gordon & Sons Produce building is/was.

Bway
Bway on June 5, 2006 at 6:15 am

Tony, I think you are right, the fire dept site was my first guess too.

Bway
Bway on May 7, 2008 at 5:11 pm

Thanks lost….it’s nice to finally see a photo of it. I didn’t know what it looked like when I added this theater. From the photo, it does look like the fire dept property near Jennings Ave, on the north side of Lake St, which was my assumption.
Interestingly, the building does show it’s original past, as a church, as it even though it was altered, the steeple is pretty apparent!
Interesting, the normal progression of theater buildings when they closed, many became churches….this building started as a church and became a theater!

Bway
Bway on April 16, 2009 at 9:33 am

Lost, we should have saved those images while they were active. Oh well….

Bway
Bway on April 16, 2009 at 10:10 am

Yeah, I had to save those too. They were too great. I even saved the Odd Lot one…., :)

robboehm
robboehm on March 14, 2015 at 6:38 pm

Theater plan and image added.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on March 15, 2015 at 12:36 am

The site of the Lyceum was on a tour of Patchgoue that was organized for the town’s centennial in 1993. This is the description from the brochure for the tour (rather large PDF here) which reveals the fate of the theater:

“Turn left onto Lake Street. The apartment building to your right was once the location of the Lyceum Theater. In 1893, this building was a social and entertainment center. It developed into a regular theater with a large stage to the north and the gallery to the south on Lake Street, which was destroyed by fire in the early 1920’s.”
The map in the brochure shows the Lyceum to have been on the north side of Lake Street between Ocean and Jennings Avenues. The apartment building referred to must be one of the two seen a few doors west of Ocean Avenue in Google street view, though in the photo robboehm uploaded the theater building looks pretty wide, so maybe it occupied both lots. Both apartment buildings look as though they’d have been built in the 1920s, so they probably went up not long after the theater burned.

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