Victoria Theater 227 West 125th Street WTM3 The Fixers 0048

The Victoria Theater is a

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

located on 125th Street in the

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Ha ...

neighborhood of the borough of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. It was designed in 1917 by Thomas W. Lamb, a notable and prolific theater architect of the era, for the Loew's Corporation. The Loew's Victoria Theater, as it was known until 1977, opened as a 2,394-seat, luxury

Vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

and motion picture theater.RFP: Victoria Theater
/ref> Typical of movie palaces of its era, it contained a stage and backstage dressing rooms and provisions for live music, including an organ. It cost $250,000 to build and was hailed “as one of the largest and most beautiful theaters in greater N.Y.” by a contemporary publication. When the Victoria was built, it joined many other Harlem theaters including the Proctor, Hammerstein Opera House, the Alhambra as well as the nearby

Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label= Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label ...

, then the Hurtig & Seamon's New ( Burlesque) Theater. In 1977, the Harlem Community Development Corporation acquired the building. The Victoria has experienced numerous changes since its opening, the most radical being its conversion to a multi-screen movie theater; in 1987, five movie theaters were created from the large auditorium, mezzanine and stage areas. The theater closed as a cinema in 1989, though a 400-seat venue was left intact in the orchestra, at which the original Harlem company of ''

Godspell ''Godspell'' is a musical composed by Stephen Schwartz with book by John-Michael Tebelak. The show is structured as a series of parables, primarily based on the Gospel of Matthew, interspersed with music mostly set to lyrics from traditional hym ...

'', which drew major newspaper and television network broadcast coverage, ran for approximately a year in the 1996/97 season. In 2005 several proposals for redevelopment were made. Only two proposals call for reusing the theater's interior, which has angered some community leaders, according to the ''New York Times''. The new Victoria Theater project, developed by the Lam Group and Exact Capital, designed by architect Ariel Aufgang and interiors by AJC Design, began construction in April 2017 and was scheduled to open in the spring of 2019. The completed 400,000-square-foot structure will have 191 mixed-income rental apartments; a 210-room Marriott Renaissance hotel; about 25,000 square feet of retail; and another 25,000 square feet of cultural and arts space. This project has suffered numerous delays and was forced to seek refinancing. After a very long process it appears that refinancing was secured in the Spring of 2022. As of September 2022, some portions of the building are open, but the hotel and theater are not operational.

References

External links

Photo at Wired New York
{{coord, 40, 48, 35.08, N, 73, 56, 58.28, W, region:US-NY, display=title Movie palaces Victoria Theater Harlem Loew's Theatres buildings and structures Thomas W. Lamb buildings