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Historic
Beekman Theater Closes Doors
By Rich Drees
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New York
City's Beekman Theater in April 1952. |
June 28, 2005- The Beekman Theater, the single-screen movie house on New York
City’s Upper East Side immortalized in a classic scene in Woody
Allen’s Oscar-winning comedy Annie Hall, closed its doors
this past Sunday, June 26, 2005 and is scheduled for demolition
later this summer.
The
Beekman, which has been operated by Clearview Cinemas for the last
six years, is not the victim of declining tickets sales, however.
The theater’s landlord, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, had
decided to not renew the theater’s lease. Instead, the hospital is
planning on razing the theater – located on Second Avenue between 65th
and 66th Streets - along with a bank and two existing
Memorial Sloan-Kettering buildings, in order to construct a new
outpatient breast cancer and imaging center. The hospital states
that it has outgrown its existing breast center on East 64th
Street. The hospital acquired the property in 1989.
"The Beekman epitomized New York movie houses at their best," stated
Woody Allen, in an interview with the Reuters news service. "The
size, the architecture, the location seemed perfect. I saw many
great films there by great foreign filmmakers, and it was an honor
to have my films shown there.” In Annie Hall, Allen plays a
television comic who gets hassled while waiting for his date in
front of the theater by an autograph seeker.
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The
entrance to the Beekman Theater in Woody Allen's Annie
Hall (above) and on its closing weekend (below). |
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The theater was one of the last single-screen venues in Manhattan
and was considered a premier destination to see a film. The
Streamline Moderne, late-period art deco theater opened its doors in
the last week of April 1952 and was noted for its plush, high-backed
chairs, rich carpeting and wood-paneled walls. Cost of construction
was approximately $1 million and was financed by the New York Life
Insurance Company as part of a plan to make the block face into a
modern shopping center. Throughout a majority of its history of
operation, the theater would always open and close the curtains in
front of its screen before and after each presentation. The curtain
motor reportedly burned out in May 2005 and no attempt was made to
replace it for the theater’s last month of operation.
An attempt to have the Beekman named an historical landmark for its
architecture had been launched by the Friends Of The Upper East Side
Historic Districts. The group contended that the results of the
Second Avenue Subway Environmental statement issued in 2003 made the
theater eligible for National and State historic landmark status.
The group submitted a request to New York’s Landmark Preservation
Committee, though no action was taken by the committee.
This marks the second time in recent months that a New York City
landmark familiar to film fans has been condemned to disappear in
the name of real estate development. In August 2004, the famed Plaza
Hotel, used as an actual location in such films as North By
Northwest (1959) and Plaza Suite (1971), was sold to a
United States investment group for $675 million. The group
originally planned on converting the entire building into
condominiums and retail space. After a public outcry, the plan was
changed so that 80 of the building’s 805 rooms would remain as a
hotel. The developers have stated the hotel’s famed Oak Bar, from
where Cary Grant is kidnapped at the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock’s
North By Northwest, would remain unchanged. The same weekend
that the Beekman closed its doors, the new owners of the Plaza were
conducting a sale of the building’s furniture, fixtures, chandeliers
and doorknockers.
Clearview Cinemas has stated that as part of the renovation of their
New York One and Two Theater, located one block north of the Beekman
on Second Avenue, the theater will be renamed the Beekman One And
Two.
The last film screened at the venue was director Sydney Pollack’s
thriller The Interpreter, which was filmed on location in New
York. |
