Joyce Theater
175 8th Avenue | also 171 8th Avenue | Chelsea | built 1942
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1942
The Elgin opens as a 600-seat art moderne movie house
Architect Simon Zelnik designs the theater at 175 Eighth Avenue in the Art Moderne style, with interiors by Winold Reiss, and it opens in 1942 as the 600-seat Elgin, a first-run neighborhood cinema. Spanish-language films fill its screen through the 1950s and into the mid-1960s.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1968
Ben Barenholtz turns the Elgin into a repertory art house
Ben Barenholtz takes over the Elgin's programming in 1968, transforming the aging first-run cinema into a repertory art house that mixes classic Hollywood revivals with experimental and underground films. His off-beat booking sets the stage for the theater's cult following later in the decade.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1970
The Elgin Theater starts the midnight movie craze with El Topo
This Art Moderne building opened in 1942 as the Elgin, a 600-seat movie house; Ben Barenholtz turned it into a repertory and art cinema in 1968. On December 18, 1970, he began showing Alejandro Jodorowsky's surreal western El Topo at midnight, making the Elgin the first theater to run midnight movies. The film played every night until the end of June 1971, and the format soon spread nationwide.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1977
A gay pornography program starts at the Elgin and the theater closes the next day after protests
On March 20, 1977, owner Roger Euster evicted tenants Steve Gould and Chuck Zlatkin over $21,393 in unpaid rent and immediately leased the theater to Tel-a-Gay, a producer of gay films. Its all-gay-pornography program began on March 21, prompting protests and picketing by local groups, and the theater shut the following day. Days later Euster and Tel-a-Gay's president sat down with community groups and agreed to try the earlier programming again.
“He immediately signed a lease with Tel-a-Gay, a producer and exhibitor of gay films, who launched an all-gay-pornography program on March 21.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1979
The Eliot Feld Ballet buys the shuttered movie house for $225,000
After the Elgin stops showing films in late 1978, the Eliot Feld Ballet purchases the building in early 1979 for $225,000, funded by philanthropist LuEsther Mertz. The company sets about converting the old movie house into a proper dance theater with 472 seats, a renovation that takes about three years.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1982
The shuttered Elgin reopens as the Joyce, a theater built for dance
Choreographer Eliot Feld and Cora Cahan bought the defunct Elgin in January 1979 for $225,000, with philanthropist LuEsther Mertz paying the cost. Hugh Hardy's $3.6 million renovation created a 472-seat house with a sprung stage, renamed for Mertz's daughter Joyce. It opened with a gala performance on June 2, 1982, and the Joyce Theater Foundation bought the building in 2016 for $20 million.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Elgin TheaterWikipedia
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