Claremont Theater Building

3320 Broadway | also 536 West 135th Street, 3330 Broadway, 3332 Broadway | Manhattanville | built 1914

Open on the map5 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1914

    The Claremont opens as an early theater built only for movies

    Designed by apartment-house architect Gaetan Ajello, the Claremont opened on Broadway at 135th Street in 1914 with 1,350 seats and no vaudeville, one of the city's early movie-only houses. A relief of a motion picture camera on a tripod crowns its white terra cotta front. Its Wurlitzer organ was repossessed in 1916. After 1933 it became an auto showroom, then a roller rink and ballroom, and later a storage business.

    Source: newyorktoursbygary.blogspot.com

  2. 1915

    February 25

    The Broadway Claremont Restaurant and Ballroom opens upstairs

    The theater building's second floor opens as the Broadway Claremont Restaurant and Ballroom on February 25, 1915, with dancing directed by Elva Wheeler Wilcox. Advertised as the most magnificent and spacious ballroom in the city, it reportedly holds six hundred people, and groups such as the Upper Manhattan Property Owners' Association hold events there. By 1917 it is renamed the Clarendon, and from the mid-1920s it is the Royal Palms Ballroom and Roof Garden.

    Source: nyc.gov

  3. 1915

    Thomas Edison films the theater's entrance for a short movie

    In 1915 Thomas Edison produces a three-and-a-half-minute film that shows the Claremont's corner entrance from the center of Broadway. Audiences are seen leaving after a showing of the photoplay On the Stroke of Twelve. The footage also records the original marquee and signs, and the entrance's low relief of an early motion-picture camera on a tripod.

    Source: nyc.gov

  4. 1933

    The Claremont is remodeled as an automobile showroom

    From the late 1920s the building's storefronts are leased to automobile-related businesses. In August 1933 the New York Times calls the area an "automobile centre" and reports that the old theater property is being remodeled into a large showroom and service station. The change ends the run of one of the city's earliest buildings planned specifically for motion pictures.

    Source: nyc.gov

  5. 2006

    June 6

    The city designates the Claremont Theater Building a landmark

    The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Claremont Theater Building a landmark on June 6, 2006. It cites the building as one of the oldest structures in the city planned specifically to exhibit motion pictures. At a May 16 hearing, preservation groups including the Historic Districts Council and Place Matters spoke in favor, and no one spoke against.

    Source: nyc.gov

Nearby

All 15 buildings with stories in Manhattanville