Madison Avenue Movie Mystery ... Solved

Here’s a quick one that probably only matters to me and a precious handful of others. Almost a year ago, I posted a little entry about a vanished movie theater on the Upper East Side that I’d remembered from my (now very distant) youth, but had found very little documentation of its existence. Helpfully, some readers wrote in to inform me that the theater in question was the Translux Theater on Madison Avenue and 85th street.

Ever since gleaning same, I’ve periodically searched for pictorial evidence of it. In doing so early this morning (in lieu of getting ready for work on time), I stumbled upon this recent article from the New York Times’ site wherein a reader was also searching for information on the long lost movie house. Along with a thorough explanation, the Times thoughtfully appended a photo (see below, courtesy of the Office for Metropolitan History), albeit one taken in 1937 – a few decades before I was taken there as a child. Still it was cool to finally find a photo of it.

Comments

[James Taylor]

What a beatiful, dream-like photo. Looks like a movie still.

[Alex in NYC]

It does have an other-worldly quality to it, doesn't it!

[mykola (mick) dementiuk]

Like coming home, eh? I can imagine you sitting for hours and looking at old movies... What a like that would have been?

[Jack]

Awesome photo! And to me I feel nostalgic for the days before multiplexes where small, unique theaters were all over this city.

[Charles H.]

As the NY Times item mentioned, in its early days the Translux showed newsreels and short subjects exclusively. A famous New Yorker cartoon from the 1930s by Peter Arno shows a giddy Park Avenue dowager exclaiming to her blue-blood neighbors “We’re going to the Translux to hiss Roosevelt!”