Hamilton Theater
3560 Broadway | Hamilton Heights | built 1913
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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.
- 1913
B. S. Moss opens the Hamilton Theatre for vaudeville and pictures
Vaudeville operator Benjamin S. Moss and partner Solomon Brill opened the 1,857-seat Hamilton Theatre at Broadway and 146th Street on January 23, 1913. Thomas W. Lamb designed it with a terra-cotta facade. The first week's bill mixed vaudeville acts with films, a formula the house kept until Moss retired in 1928.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1928
RKO takes over the Hamilton and turns it into a talking-picture house
After Moss retired in 1928, RKO leased the theater, dropped live acts and installed sound equipment, making it one of the first theaters in New York to show talking pictures. The organ came out in 1940 and the theater closed in 1958. A church bought the building in 1965, and a discount store later took over the ground floor.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1958
The Hamilton stops showing films and becomes a boxing venue
The Hamilton ended its run as a movie theater in 1958, 45 years after opening. RKO leased the venue first for sporting events such as boxing and later as a discotheque. A church bought the building in 1965 and held services in the auditorium while the storefronts stayed leased out, and the church left around 1989.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 2000
The city protects the Hamilton Theater's terra-cotta facade
In 2000 the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the theater's exterior an individual landmark. The designation covered the facade; the auditorium behind it, empty for decades, remained largely intact but unused as of 2021, while rival redevelopment plans for the site were debated.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
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