The Ziegfeld Theatre was a single-screen
movie theater
A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall (Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...
located at 141 West
54th Street in
midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildin ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
. It opened in 1969 and closed in 2016. The theater was named in honor of the original
Ziegfeld Theatre (1927–1966) which was built by the impresario
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.
History
On December 17, 1969, a few hundred feet from the site of the original Ziegfeld Theatre, a new Ziegfeld opened as a single-screen movie house with the New York premiere of ''
Marooned''.
It was the flagship of the
Walter Reade movie theatre chain.
[
Constructed by ]Emery Roth & Sons
Emery Roth ( hu, Róth Imre, July 17, 1871 – August 20, 1948) was an American architect of Hungarian-Jewish descent who designed many of the definitive New York City hotels and apartment buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, incorporating Beaux- ...
from designs by Irving Gershon[ it was built on part of the old theatre and was the first new theatre in the Times Square area since ]Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue and theater at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Nicknamed "The Showplace of the Nation", it is the headquarters for th ...
was built in 1932.[ It was one of the last large-scale, single-screen movie palaces built in the United States.]John J. McNamara John McNamara or Macnamara may refer to:
Politics
* John Macnamara (MP), MP for Leicester in the 1780s
* John McNamara (Australian politician) (fl. 1850s), New South Wales politician
*John Macnamara (1905–1944), British Army officer and politicia ...
at a cost of $600,000.[
The theatre had 1,152 seats (825 seats in the orchestra section and 306 seats in the tiered rear section).][
After ''Marooned'' it showed reissues until July 1, 1970, when it had the world premiere of Walt Disney Productions' '' The Boatniks''. From then it was often used for world premieres and big-event press screenings, such as the November 1977 opening of '']Close Encounters of the Third Kind
''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' is a 1977 American science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François Truffaut. It tells the story ...
''.[
In 1987, Cineplex Odeon Corporation acquired the Walter Reade Organization and took over operation of the theatre.][ The theater underwent extensive renovations in the late 1990s. It was a centerpiece site during the 2008 New York Film Festival because of reconstruction work at ]Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...
that year. During the 2000s, digital projection was installed. The theater became the largest single-screen cinema operating in New York. The screen was 20 feet tall and 52 feet wide,[ making it the largest non-IMAX screen in New York City.
From 2013 until its closing, the Ziegfeld was managed by Bow Tie Cinemas, on behalf of ]Cablevision
Cablevision Systems Corporation was an American cable television company with systems serving areas surrounding New York City. It was the fifth-largest cable provider and ninth-largest television provider in the United States. Throughout its ex ...
, which owned the theater. The theater was previously part of the Clearview Cinemas chain, which was owned by Cablevision, prior to the chain's sale to Bow Tie; the actual ownership of the Ziegfeld building was excluded from the sale.
Closure
On January 20, 2016 owners announced that the Ziegfeld would close "within a few weeks" due to dwindling attendance and revenue.
See also
* List of art cinemas in New York City
* List of buildings, sites, and monuments in New York City
* List of theaters in New York
References
External links
Cinema Treasures
*{{official, https://ziegfeldballroom.com
1969 establishments in New York City
2016 disestablishments in New York (state)
Cinemas and movie theaters in Manhattan
Emery Roth buildings
Midtown Manhattan
Theatres completed in 1969
Former cinemas in the United States