Lyceum Theater

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.

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…., :)

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!

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.