The shell of a 1911 movie palace still stands on this Harlem block
In the 1910s, as motion picture mania swept the country, architect Thomas Lamb began carving out a niche for himself as one of the foremost designers of movie palaces.
In the early 1900s, audiences of this exciting form of entertainment would watch short reels and early features in storefront theaters and nickelodeons—which were typically small, no-frills places.
By 1910, movie palaces made their debut. These were enormous venues with lavish ornamentation and comfortable seating for large audiences that wanted to see the new screen stars in a safe, family-friendly setting.
One of Lamb’s first movie palaces stands on West 145th Street. Opened in 1911, the four-story Odeon (above) launched as a Vaudeville theater with a mix of live acts and motion pictures. It converted to a full-time movie palace by 1925, according to Cinema Treasures.
White terra-cotta and Romanesque arches are hallmarks of Lamb’s movie palace facades, and both features decorate the Odeon, which stands out like a cinematic fortress over the tenements that surrounded it (above photo, 1940).
Lamb went on to design at least 48 theaters in New York City, according to Christopher Gray in the New York Times in 2008, including the Rialto, Strand, and Rivioli—all in Times Square and all since demolished.
What played at the Odeon over the decades, as the neighborhood changed from a diverse one early in the century to majority African American by the 1920s?
Based on old newspaper ads, the fare seems to be the same Hollywood flicks as other theaters likely showed, with stars like Wallace Beery in 1930’s The Big House.
Clark Gable and Greta Garbo’s 1931 film Susan Lenox also played there. Note the top of the ad, which would have appealed to tenement dwellers in pre-air conditioned Manhattan: “always cool and comfortable.”
The movie palace era came to a close in postwar New York City. But the Odeon still stands because another use was found for the space.
In the 1950s, what was born a cathedral of cinema transitioned into the home of St. Paul’s Community Church, which occupies the movie palace to this day, according to David Dunlap’s From Abyssinian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship. Congregants now enter the two Gothic-style doors were moviegoers once waited on line for their tickets.
Meanwhile, a “ghostly palimpsest,” as Dunlap calls it (see above photos), on both sides of the former palace still advertise the Odeon—which no longer officially exists in the streetscape but remains in the imagination.
Thanks to Justine for spotting this treasure!
[Second image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; third image: New York Age, 1933]
