A Treasure Waiting to be Found

 

[On the CBS News New York (WCBS; Channel 2 in New York City) evening broadcast on 7 May, I watched a story that piqued my curiosity.  It was slugged “Hidden Treasures found during reconstruction of century-old theater.”  It was teased several times before the report aired, which only whetted my interest.

[When I was a grad student at New York University, one of my professors was the late Brooks McNamara (1937-2009), a theater historian whose special interests were American popular entertainments and early American theater architecture (see my post on Rick On Theater in his memory).  

[Sometime around 1985, while I was still taking classes at NYU, Brooks brought up in class that the long-abandoned theaters on Union Square were going to be opened up so they could be inspected to determine if they could be modernized and repurposed.

[In the 1870s and ’80s, Union Square was the entertainment center of New York City.  When that district moved uptown (eventually ending up in what’s now the Times Square Theatre District), many of the theater buildings were sealed up.  If one bothered to look up and over the false fronts with the stores in them, you could still see the stage houses—the structures that housed the fly spaces and lighting grids—rising above the low-rise buildings around them.

[The theater buildings weren’t demolished, just boarded up and commercial establishments were inserted in what had been their lobbies.  The rest of the theater space was just home for ghosts and vermin.  And there they remained from the 1910s and ’20s until the 1980s.

[Once they were opened for the inspection, a select and invited few would be allowed to have a look, and Brooks was one of the select few.  The theaters were all mostly still intact—visually, at least.  Building and fire inspectors poked around, finding in more than one old theater interior caches of wallets and purses, many with ID’s intact, stashed there by pickpockets who’d managed to get in over the years to look at their haul and remove the cash and credit cards, and burrow away the rest to avoid being caught with the looted detritus.

[But aside from the crumbling architecture, the buildings were too deteriorated to be salvaged—and the cost of remaking a theater, a somewhat unique structure that’s hard to remake for any other purpose, would be prohibitive.  So they were all eventually demolished and replaced by higher-rise building that became NYU residence halls and apartment buildings with commercial spaces on the lower levels.

[So, that was the enticement of hearing what the rebuilders of the Beacon Theatre in Port Washington in Nassau County had found and what they planned to do with the 100-year-old movie palace.  (My dad was in the movie-theater business in Washington, D.C., when I was a boy, and in the late 1950s, some of the company’s houses were no longer viable structurally.  The problem was that no one could figure out what to do with them aside from tearing them down; the only idea anyone came up with was to turn them into trampoline centers—that was a fad at the time—but how may of those could a small city support?)

[But the new owners of the Long Island Beacon found the old theater “had a treasure inside, discovered when [the developer] started demolishing the walls.”  Among other finds, there was gold hidden above a drop ceiling, century-old hand carvings, plaster work, intricate molding details from the 1920s, a grand stage flanked by gold-leafed columns topped with a crest, arches with original drapes, hand-painted silk wall coverings, and bronze patina railings.] 

“THE SHOWS WILL GO ON:
PLANS ARE UNDERWAY TO TRANSFORM CLOSED
LANDMARK THEATER INTO A $15M ENTERTAINMENT VENUE”
by Joshua Needelman 

[Below are reposted two reports from Newsday (Nassau edition; Melville, Long Island, NY), both by Joshua Needelman.  The first was posted on 17 January 2025.]

Plans underway to restore, transform closed Beacon Theater in Port Washington

Moviegoers mourned the Bow Tie Cinema on Main Street in Port Washington [Nassau County, on western Long Island] when it closed its doors in 2018. It has sat dormant ever since, another symbol of the nationwide decline of the movie theater industry – and a reminder of the loss of one of the peninsula’s most treasured venues.

[Bow Tie Cinemas was founded in 1900 as the B. S. Moss Motion Picture Company, venues for nickelodeons and then venues for Vaudeville and a film production company. In the 1930s, the vaudeville program was phased out in favor or the movie business. It’s the oldest surviving film-exhibition company and, as of 2013, the eighth-largest movie theater chain in the United States.

[In 2004, the company changed its name to Bow Tie Cinemas, referring to the intersection of Broadway and 45th Street in Manhattan, known as the “Bow Tie” of Times Square because of its shape. (See my remarks on Times Square in “Rick's Guide to New York, Part 1,” 29 November 2024.) In October 2023, the company renamed its remaining seven theaters BTM Cinemas (for “Big Time Movies”).]

But before it was a multiplex, the building, which opened in 1927, was known as the Beacon Theater: A glitzy, multiuse entertainment hub with red velvet seats, an orchestra pit, a single screen and a stage that hosted live shows.

[Port Washington’s Beacon Theatre should not be confused with the Beacon Theatre on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which opened in 1929. Note, too, that though this newspaper, as well as others, have spelled the venue’s name “Theater,” my research indicates that, at least in its earlier days, it was spelled “Theatre.”]

Now, Lou B. Branchinelli [New York-based promoter, artist manager, and event producer; b. 1977] is channeling the space’s past – and literally uncovering it bit by bit – as he maps out its future. After a developer purchased the building, Branchinelli leased the space and created Beacon LLC with plans of launching the Beacon Theater of Long Island in 2026 as a dinner theater.

The $15 million venue will host everything from concerts to bar mitzvahs, with a throwback interior that resembles the original design of the theater, Branchinelli said.

“The whole thing is going to look like the 1920s when you walk in,” he said. “We’re looking to do something that is going to redefine dining and entertainment and catering into one facility.”

Branchinelli, who has been producing concerts, shows, private events and more on Long Island for more than two decades, noticed during the pandemic that restaurant owners were starting to bring entertainment to their establishments more frequently. In the absence of freedom of movement because of COVID-19 restrictions, people would sit at their tables for long stretches.

“I think it retrained the customer,” he said. “You would make a whole night of it. . . . People weren’t going bar hopping or restaurant hopping, or from a restaurant to a show.”

He started brainstorming, and in March 2023, Branchinelli and Brad Thurman, a friend and developer, took a tour of the 30,000-square-foot facility. To Branchinelli’s knowledge, it had always been a movie theater. Then, he took a peek in the supply closet. Behind an opening in the wall was a large white pole, adorned with golden leaves.

He had heard of the old Beacon Theater, he said. He didn’t know he was standing in it.

“I was like ‘Oh my god,’” Branchinelli said.

‘The Beacon is under here’

He did an online search and learned the history of the building. The pole, he realized, had been part of the stage. His mind raced with possibilities.

When the building was converted into a full-time movie theater, around the 1970s, its classic infrastructure wasn’t destroyed. It was simply built over, with screens, walls and seats installed on top of the old accouterments.

“They built multiple movie theater rooms, so they put walls over the old Beacon Theater, and they divided up the rooms and they put it behind Sheetrock,” Branchinelli said. “So when we started opening up the walls, we were like ‘Oh my god, the Beacon is under here.’ “

In September 2023, Thurman purchased the building for $2.85 million. Then, last November, the Town of North Hempstead’s Board of Zoning Appeals permitted the men to move forward with the project. Around 20 residents came to the Nov. 20 meeting to express their support for it. [Port Washington is a hamlet in the Town of North Hempstead.]

“Residents really cared about revitalizing the area and getting a use that they’d enjoy,” said Nancy Shahverdi [b. 1980], the town’s commissioner of planning. “It will attract people from out of town as well, which will help the economy and other businesses in the area.”

Next on the team’s list is to begin demolition, pending a permit. Branchinelli, who plans to bring on a group of investors, expects to be granted the permit in the next few weeks.

He is eager to uncover more historical features and find creative ways to work them into the modern infrastructure, drawn up by the Huntington-based mother-daughter design duo Gail Cipriano [b. 1963; owner of Gail Cipriano Design Studios, Huntington, Long Island] and Taylor Giamanco [b. 1997; Lead Designer, GCDS].

[Huntington is in Suffolk County, the easternmost county on Long Island.]

The designers envision a “super lux” space, Cipriano said, with a maximum capacity of 468 and the Beacon’s original crest positioned on the outside of the building.

In a Facebook post, Giamanco called the building a “gem from the Gatsby era” and the restoration an “invitation to revive the glamour of the Roaring Twenties.”

Drawing from elsewhere

“There’s also going to be a big community aspect,” said Leyalanny Mata [b. ca. 1981; Major Accounts Development Manager, Worldnet International, New York], a Port Washington resident and the project’s community development consultant.

The theater, though, is about a five-minute walk from the LIRR, which Mariann Dalimonte [b. ca. 1968], the North Hempstead councilperson representing Port Washington, said could attract visitors from New York City.

“They don’t need a taxi, it’s literally right here,” she said.

Mata said she heard from numerous people eager to see the space once again become an institution. She recalled one woman who said she had seen Bette Davis [1908-89] perform there.

“People have history here,” Mata said. “People remember really amazing stuff here.”

That hint of nostalgia already is in the air: On a frigid early January afternoon, as Branchinelli, Mata, Cipriano and Giamanco conducted tours of the space, “All of Me” by Frank Sinatra [1915-98; “All of Me” was released in 1954 on Swing Easy!] blared through the speaker.

“Your goodbye . . . left me eyes that cry,” Sinatra crooned, as if taking on the community’s feelings toward the historic building. “How can I . . . get along . . . without you?”

RESTORING THE BEACON

■ The Beacon Theater opened in 1927 on Main Street in Port Washington. It was a multiuse entertainment hub with red velvet seats, an orchestra pit, a single screen and a stage that hosted live shows.

■ The landmark had become a multiplex cinema before it closed its doors in 2018.

■ After a developer purchased it in 2023, plans are underway to launch the Beacon Theater of Long Island next year as a dinner theater.

[Joshua Needelman covers the Town of North Hempstead (Nassau County) for Long Island’s Newsday.  A Long Island native and University of Maryland graduate, his work has appeared in publications including the New York Times and the Washington Post.]

*  *  *  *
“A BEACON INTO THE PAST:
WORK UNCOVERS 1920S VENUE HIDDEN
UNDER FORMER MOVIE HOUSE”
by Joshua Needelman

 [Needelman’s second report was posted on the Newsday site on 29 April 2025.]

Hidden treasures of the 1920s-era Beacon Theater revealed during construction work

One hundred years after the publication of “The Great Gatsby” [1925], the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940] novel set on the North Shore of Nassau County, Lou B. Branchinelli uncovered a relic from the Roaring ’20s in Port Washington.

A demolition of the inside of the former Bow Tie Cinemas movie theater on Main Street revealed Beaux Arts-style architectural accoutrements from the old Beacon Theater that had been hiding underneath.

Carved columns. Original paintings. Brown curtains along the walls. A cartouche with a lion above the stage. A ceiling medallion. An orchestra pit. When the building was transformed into a movie theater decades ago, the owners did not destroy the previous layout – they simply built over it.

Branchinelli, owner of Beacon LLC, had planned to channel the spirit of the old Beacon, a glitzy entertainment venue that opened in 1927, in the construction of the new $15 million Beacon Theater of Long Island. The venue is expected to open in 2026 as a dinner theater that will host comedy shows, concerts, weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and more.

But as the old walls came down, Branchinelli realized he could incorporate the historical flourishes of the original Beacon into the building’s new iteration.

“It changed the complete design,” Branchinelli said in an interview. “After you see it like this, you want to keep as much as you can. So we had to figure out, OK, how do you restore that? How do you restore that?”

Design plans reworked

The mother-daughter Huntington-based design team of Gail Cipriano and Taylor Giamanco are working on new floor plans to reflect the discoveries.

“Our initial concept kind of had this vibe, but now, the original architecture being there, we’re going to pivot our floor plan to respect it,” Cipriano said in an interview.

Demolition began in January, after the Town of North Hempstead’s Board of Zoning Appeals approved the project in November. The work should be completed by the end of May, Branchinelli said.

The next phase – restoring the old architectural elements and plastering the walls – is expected to start shortly after that.

The demolition also offered the team a better understanding of the room’s space.

The Bow Tie Cinemas closed in 2018. When the crew tore down the two movie theaters on the top floor, they revealed the original theater’s mezzanine. Branchinelli discovered a clear sight line from there to the stage.

That floor, which was supposed to include a private room and the kitchen, will now feature additional seating for guests.

“The line of sight from the top to the bottom . . . exists. We didn’t know if it existed,” Branchinelli said.

The room is also more open than the team initially expected. Leyalanny Mata, a Port Washington resident and the project’s community development consultant, said the vast space will allow the building to host more types of events, like fashion shows, yoga retreats and cooking demonstrations.

“The only way for us to honor it, and keep it as what it is, and not have another multiplex come here in 20 years to try to buy out, is to have the versatility,” Mata said.

Can’t ‘fake it’

Branchinelli, who has worked in entertainment for decades, said he’s noticed a trend in recent years of people craving entertainment reminiscent of a bygone [era] – both in terms of architecture and experience.

“The idea of going back to when times were beautiful and classy is something that I think people are longing for,” Mata said. “They’re finding it in some places, but there’s nothing like that on Long Island.”

The modern entertainment experience, Mata said, has become impersonal: Customers order meals and drinks on QR codes, and are then rushed away from their table. The new Beacon will look to channel a time when “you actually spoke to your waiter and had a conversation with them,” she said.

Part of the appeal of the new Beacon, Branchinelli hopes, will be that it won’t just feel like it’s from a different time. Much of it actually is.

“It doesn’t work when you fake it,” he said, sitting on a railing in the mezzanine. “To see a room that is really history right in front of you . . . is incredible.”

Found beneath the Bow Tie

■ When developers demolished the inside of the former Bow Tie Cinemas, historic accoutrements revealed themselves.

■ The Bow Tie Cinemas were built over the historic Beacon Theater, which opened in 1927.

■ Among the findings: Carved columns, original paintings and brown curtains along the walls. There was also an orchestra pit, a cartouche with a lion above the stage and a ceiling medallion.

[The Beacon Theatre in Port Washington, at 116 Main Street, was a long-standing movie theater and local landmark, operating at 116 Main Street.  Originally constructed in 1926, it started as a 1,500-seat, single-screen theater showing both silent films and “talkies,” eventually becoming a multiplex.  The Beacon Theatre opened in 1927, initially featuring stage shows, silent films, and eventually “talkies” in the 1930s.

[The Beacon was known for its grand interior, including a large stage, orchestra pit, and a pipe organ.  In 1976, it was one of the first local theaters to be triplexed, with the balcony becoming one theater and two more downstairs.  In 1985, the Beacon was converted into a quad (with two screens upstairs), then a five-plex (with the old stage being turned into a screening room), and finally a seven-plex in 1989, with the addition of two “theaters” that held around forty people over six rows of beat-up seats.

[What became the Bow Tie Cinemas in 2013 was ultimately converted into a multiplex with 11 screening rooms.  The Bow Tie closed in January 2018, but was sold at the end of September 2023 to Tribeca Mews Ltd., a Long Island-based real estate company, and is undergoing an approximately $2.85 million renovation with plans for a new purpose, possibly as an entertainment venue.]

Moving the Empire

ROTters probably know that I go to the Signature Theatre on W. 42nd Street often, though you probably don’t know how I get there.  I take the Broadway BMT subway to Times Square and then the M42 crosstown bus along 42nd to 10th Avenue.  The route passes the AMC Empire 25 at 234 W 42nd, the last street address on the south side of the street at 8th. 

When the bus goes past the AMC movie multiplex, I always think of the move (reported, with diagrams and all, in the NYT) of the entire Empire Theatre from its perch at 236 W. 42nd Street, in the middle of the southern side of the block between 7th and 8th Avenues, to the west end of the block to become the façade and lobby of the AMC Empire 25.  Does anyone else remember that almost-unbelievable feat in March 1998?

(Okay, I can’t explain how the AMC cineplex is at number 234 and the Empire was originally at number 236.  The Empire was in the middle of the block and the AMC is at the west end; house numbers on all cross streets in the Manhattan grid go up from 5th Avenue—on the West Side, that means increasing from east to west.  But the Empire’s old lot was east of AMC, yet it has a higher house number.  Theoretically, that’s impossible.  I double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked the theaters’ addresses, and the numbers are correct.  I can only guess that during the remaking of 42nd Street, the lots along the 200 block were renumbered, perhaps when some buildings were demolished or combined.)

The “New 42nd Street,” as the remaking of the strip was dubbed, was being planned and created.  A builder jacked up the Empire in the center of the block, put it on wheels, rolled it west almost to 8th Avenue, and set it into the south side of the street as the front of a new multiplex.

For those who are too young to know about this odd bit of New York City theater history, or weren’t around the Big Apple, or just plain don’t remember it—let me tell you how it went down.  Or, rather, west, as Horace Greeley (1811-72), great New York City newspaperman, might have pointed out.  (The editor of the New-York Tribune, which was publishing when the Empire was up and running as a Broadway playhouse, popularized the famous phrase “Go West, young man” in an editorial in 1865.)

Let me start with some “real”—that is, old—theater history.  The backstory, as we’d say today.

There have been, in fact, two Empire Theatres in New York City, both Broadway houses.  The first one was built in 1893 at 1430 Broadway, between 40th and 41st Streets.  A 1,100-seat theater, this Empire closed and was demolished in 1953 after 60 years of producing both revivals and first-run plays.  It plays a small role in this story.

(The 41st Street Empire had a shot at a second act, too.  When it was torn down, Robert Porterfield, 1905-71, founder of the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, in 1933—one of the United States’ oldest and most esteemed regional rep theaters, salvaged many of the Empire’s interior furnishings and equipment.  Items recycled by Porterfield included seats, paintings, stage lights, and a lighting control system, some of which are still in use at the Barter today.  Perhaps it was a kind of forecast of what was to come 45 years later.)

The second Empire was originally named the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre, only the eighth theater built on the street.  It was built for theatrical producer Al (Albert Herman) Woods (1870-1951) by noted theater architect Thomas W. Lamb (1871-1942), one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas in the U.S. during the 20th century.  Its Beaux Arts, polychromed (green, blue, orange, and red) terra cotta façade featured an immense arched window several stories high above the marquee.  Inside, a mural by French artist Arthur Brounet (1866-1941) adorned the lobby and the auditorium, with a richly detailed plaster ceiling and proscenium arch, was decorated in Roman, Greek, and Egyptian motifs. 

Woods specialized in light comedies and he named his theater for his most successful and profitable star, Julian Eltinge (1881-1941), who was best known for playing female roles.  Among the other stars Woods presented at the Eltinge were John Barrymore (The Yellow Ticket, 1914), Laurence Olivier (Murder on the Second Floor, his U.S. début, 1929), and Clark Gable (Love, Honor and Betray, 1930).

The 900-seat Eltinge. a small house, opened on 11 September 1912 with Within the Law by Bayard Veiller (1869-1943), which ran for 541 performances despite an outright pan from the New York Times.  The theater fared poorly after the stock market crash of 1929, and in 1931 Woods leased the Eltinge to Max Rudnick (1896-?) as a burlesque house.  Comedian Jackie Gleason (1916-87), later a television star, got his start here as the emcee and in 1935, Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59), who’ll feature in the upcoming story of the theater’s move, met doing separate acts at the Eltinge.

Burlesque shows also featured strippers, and New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1882-1947; in office: 1934-45), determined to close all the burlesque houses in the city, shuttered the Eltinge in 1937.  In 1942, after having been boarded up for five years, the Eltinge reopened as a movie theater called Laff Movie, a first-run house.  

By 1954, the Times Square neighborhood had begun to deteriorate. After the 41st Street Empire was razed, the Eltinge was renamed the Empire, becoming a second-run grindhouse screening low-budget horror, splatter, and exploitation films.  By the mid-1980s, Times Square had become so sleazy, with porn houses, peep shows, sex shops, drug sellers, and hookers inhabiting every street and corner, that nothing else could survive, and the Empire on 42nd Street closed its doors for good in 1986. 

According to a historic-preservation agreement reached in 1981 by New York City and New York State, the theater building couldn’t be demolished, however, and it stood, along with six others like it, derelict and ignored as the Theatre District went to wrack and ruin.  In 1990, however, the New 42nd Street, a non-profit organization, was formed to oversee the redevelopment of the seven neglected and historic theaters on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, including the Empire, and to reestablish the block as a desirable tourist destination. 

The Empire Theatre site at the center of the block became part of an entertainment complex planned by Forest City Ratner Companies, a Manhattan-based real estate development firm.  It occupied the eastern end of the project’s 42nd Street frontage, so the Empire was, as I already said, lifted and moved westward to 8th Avenue to become the entrance and lobby of the AMC Theatres cinema complex. 

Here’s how that happened.

The plan was announced in June 1996.  Forest City Ratner had been selected in 1994 to redevelop the property occupied by the Empire and the buildings next to it to the west.  AMC Entertainment, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, had already been instrumental in persuading the Walt Disney Company to renovate the New Amsterdam Theatre (built in 1903) at 214 W. 42nd Street, east of the Empire, as the flagship for Disney Theatrical Productions on Broadway.  (That renovation of an architectural jewel of 42nd Street and one of the oldest surviving Broadway playhouses was completed in 1997 and Disney opened the New Amsterdam with The Lion King, which ran there for nine years before transferring to another Broadway house.)

Madam Tussauds, the British wax museum, had agreed to create a branch a few doors east of the AMC entrance using the same transplanted Empire as its space.  As a balance for the AMC entrance through the former Empire Theatre, Tussauds incorporated the façade of the Sam H. Harris Theatre (built in 1914) at 226 W. 42nd; the interior of the theater was demolished in 1997 to construct the museum and entertainment center.  (Madame Tussauds New York location opened in 2000.)

In order to clear the lot at 236 42nd Street, Ratner was confronted with a problem to solve.  The 1981 historic-preservation agreement prohibited razing the Empire Theatre, so Ratner had to choose between repurposing the building or moving it intact. 

Now, across the street from the Empire were situated two other historic playhouses: the Lyric Theatre at 213 W. 42nd Street, designed in 1903 by architect Victor Hugo Koehler, and the Academy Theatre at 223 W. 42nd, built in 1910 by Eugene De Rosa.  Both theaters were slated for demolition by the New 42nd Street, so Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky (b. 1949) of Livent purchased them in 1996 and created the Ford Center for the Performing Arts by combining elements of both old theaters.  (The Ford Center opened in January 1998, but Livent declared bankruptcy in November 1998.  The theater, now under new ownership, was renamed the Lyric in 2014.)

This option, however, was obviated for the Empire because, explained Bruce Ratner, president of Forest City Ratner, the Empire blocked street-level access to large blocks of space along 42nd Street that would become other commercial enterprises in the development.  In addition, the engineers said that it would be easier to move the entire building than to take out parts of the old one and incorporate them into a new structure as Drabinsky had done with the Ford Center.  One proposal, for instance, had been to dismantle the Beaux-Arts façade of the theater and reassemble it up the block, but the architects determined it would cost as much to do that as it would to move the whole building.

So, that left only moving the 85-year-old historic theater without damaging its façade and ornate plaster ceiling and proscenium arch.  New York State hired Robert Silman, a structural engineer, to assure that the Empire’s auditorium with its eccentric interior design, including figures in Egyptian headdresses playing pipes, could be moved without falling apart.  Ratner said that approvals for the move from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and other agencies had all been obtained.

“People have moved bigger things in the world,” said Ratner, but Silman added, “One doesn’t often move buildings of this size in the middle of a congested urban setting."  Common wisdom asserts that the Empire Theater is the largest structure ever moved in New York City.  Silman explained: “It really doesn’t matter how heavy it is as long as you put enough stuff underneath to hold it up.” 

The engineer observed, “The concept is elegantly simple”—as we’ll be able to judge for ourselves shortly.  “This is nothing more than a classical shoring job,” said Anthony J. Mazzo, a senior vice president of Urban Foundations/Engineering of Brooklyn, which did the work.  “The horizontal move is secondary.”  Mazzo explained: “It’s like using a dolly to move a piece of furniture.”

The literally inch-by-inch journey of the Empire Theatre from the middle of the 200 block of 42nd Street to its new resting place was a mere 168 feet, 0.16 of the length of the block.

An earlier moving date—Tuesday, 17 February—had been scheduled, but the job was postponed so that the work could be done over a weekend.  The theater had therefore been hoisted onto its tracks for over a week, reducing the time it took on 1 March to accomplish the move.  Further decreasing the time and distance for the trip west was a test-run on Sunday, 22 February, when the building was shifted 30 feet to make sure the process would work.  It did, and the remaining move on the 1st would be only 138 feet.   It took four hours, from 7 in the morning of 1 March until around 11 o’clock.   

At a cost of $1.2 million (about $1.9 million today), that comes out to $588 an inch ($927 today)!  Some other stats: the Empire Theatre building was estimated to weigh 3,700 tons, or 7.4 million pounds.  (That makes the haulage rate 16¢ a pound—pretty cheap, considering.)  It took three months, starting in November 1997, to prepare the building for transport.  The building moved west at about 35 feet per hour. 

To prepare the theater for transit, a steel platform was constructed inside the building at its base.  To prevent the building from being damaged during the move, steel beams were welded to the underside of the platform and fastened to the building’s walls to support them.  The theater walls were rigidly braced so that the building wouldn’t twist or warp during the move.  

Beneath the building and next to it, eight steel tracks were laid, stretching from the theater’s original site to its new location across the block.  The platform with the theater on top was lifted up one-eighth of an inch by vertical hydraulic jacks so that steel rollers could be installed between the platform and the rails.  The jacks lowered the platform onto the rollers, transferring the weight of the building onto the track system, then the jacks were removed.  Then the theater was separated from its foundation by cutting through the walls at their base.  As I reported earlier, this was accomplished by 17 February, 12 days before the final move.

Another set of hydraulic jacks attached to the rails, horizontally oriented, then pushed the platform holding the theater, without putting any pressure directly on the building, along the tracks to the theater’s new foundation.  On 22 February, a week before the final leg, eastbound traffic was halted along the 200 block of 42nd Street and the jacks impelled the theater the first 30 feet of its journey to test the system.  “Everything had to be perfect,” said Heymi Kuriel, vice president of Urban Foundation.  “Every bolt had to be tested.” 

The jacks moved the platform with the building on top five feet along its route in about five minutes (that is, one foot a minute); then the jacks were repositioned and the five-foot advance was repeated until the journey was completed. 

On 1 March, with the south side of the roadway closed again, the Empire Theatre was moved the last 138 feet to its new home.  Leading the way, attached to the front (that is, the westbound) end of the slow-moving theater building were two huge balloons . . . in the shapes of Lou Costello and Bud Abbott, the two renowned comics who met at the Eltinge in its burlesque days and formed a successful partnership that lasted the rest of their lives.  It seemed as if they were tugging the old Empire down the street.

A new foundation at 234 W. 42nd Street had been prepared for the old building and the theater was lowered into place.  New walls between the foundation and the base of the structure filled in the portions that were removed for the relocation.

The Empire was touched up and appointed to serve as the ticket lobby for AMC Empire 25, which opened in April 2000.  Moviegoers ascend escalators through the old theater’s proscenium opening—where the stage would have been (lost, along with the theater’s fly-loft)—to the upper floors where the movie screens are. 

The 25 film theaters on the upper four floors in the complex—only the entrance is on the street level—range from under 200 seats to about 400 (for a total capacity of nearly 5,000 seats).  (Much of the AMC building, designed by the firm of Beyer Blinder Belle of New York City and Washington, D.C., noted for its work in architectural preservation and adaptive re-use, is actually behind the Empire and Tussauds, essentially on 41st Street, although there is no public access from that street.)

“Simple,” as engineer Robert Silman characterized the process, but only because it was straightforward—not because it was easy.  Complicating the operation was the fact that the Times Square Theatre District is built on turn-of-the-century residential lots, so the Empire sat on ground once occupied by townhouses with basements, excavated out of the bedrock which is usually right below the island’s surface. 

Urban Foundations/Engineering had to drive piles down into the now-lowered bedrock along the route of the transfer and the track system was laid over the piles.  This was necessary so that bedrock. that supports Manhattan’s skyscrapers, would bear the weight of the Empire Theatre, rather than the loose dirt filling the old cellars.  “Essentially, we have constructed a temporary steel bridge founded on rock to support the building during its transfer,” Urban’s Mazzo said.  The piles had to be removed after the transfer so that the commercial properties could be built.

When the empire Theatre arrived at its new site, it was greeted by a crowd of dignitaries which included New York State Governor George E. Pataki (b. 1945; in office: 1995-2006).  Kuriel remarked, “It’s amazing how smooth it went.  The birds at the top didn’t even move,” he added, referring to the nests near the old theater’s roof.

[There were many critics of the remaking of 42nd Street in the ’90s.  Most said the New 42nd Street organization was sanitizing the neighborhood; the word “Disney-fy” was used often.  Some advocates for the area’s longtime residents and mom-and-pop shop-owners pointed out that the lower-income residents were being displaced for wealthier folks and big corporations.  That was probably at least partly so.

[I’m not here, however, to argue for or against the renewal of the Theatre District and whether it was an ultimate good or not.  I’m just reporting on one event in local theater history that was, inarguably, an engineering feat that I found fascinating and noteworthy.

[Let me recount an illustrative anecdote from my own experience.  In 1982 or ’83, I took a trip to Egypt.  I was principally in Cairo, but I took a one-day jaunt to Abu Simbel, site of two massive rock temples situated on the western bank of Lake Nasser. 

[Now, Lake Nasser was created as a result of the construction of the Aswan High Dam across the waters of the Nile between 1958 and 1970.  It would have submerged the great temples, which were carved out of the mountainside  along the river in the 13th century BCE . . . if nothing were done to prevent the loss.  So an international team of archaeologists proposed to move them to safer ground—including building an artificial mountain on the shores of the new lake-to-be.

[When I saw the temples from the air—you fly from Cairo to Abu Simbel Airport—my imagination conjured up the meeting of the archaeologists and the Egyptian government when the proposal for the project was broached.  ‘You want to move what WHERE!?’ I heard an official gasp.

[Well, that’s sort of the way I felt about the idea of lifting the Empire Theatre up and rolling it up the block and replanting it.  ‘You want to move what WHERE!?’  But they did.  Astonishing!]