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| MAJESTIC THEATRE |
Last night, a delicious late summer evening, I emerged from
the Lafayette Avenue Station of the C line on Fulton Street to visit a play
called Well, I’ll Let You Go, a two-minute walk away at the Irondale
Center, at 85 S. Oxford Street, a block off Fulton Street. Although the play
was very well received by many, I didn’t share their enthusiasm. However, I still considered
the experience exciting, as I do whenever I visit this part of Brooklyn’s Fort
Greene neighborhood, so redolent of the borough’s old-time history.
Irondale is located in the historic, socially progressive,
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, a Romanesque Revival landmark built between
1860-1862, early in the Civil War, where its advocacy as a “Temple of Abolition”
was marked by visits from Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner
Truth. A walk up its creaky steps into the large Irondale Space, its high, weathered
walls almost as distressed as those at the nearby BAM Harvey—where the look is
deliberate—is a step into Brooklyn’s storied past.
But what gets me is its proximity to a nearby, vanished
world of theatrical activity that now survives only in miniature to what was
there at the turn of the 20th century. Let’s go back to 1905, for example,
when Fulton Street—especially the part a bit further west across Flatbush
Avenue—was called the “Rialto,” in imitation of the term used in Manhattan for the
Broadway area where its main theatres and restaurants were located.
A nice little stroll will allow us to see, briefly. what theatres
were close by on Brooklyn’s Rialto 120 years ago. Remember, these were theatres
with live performers, not movies, which still had no dedicated venues of their
own (but soon would). Reaching the corner of Fulton, we first have to turn east
(left) and walk about 10 blocks to the intersection of Grand to find ourselves where
Keeney’s Fulton Street Theatre once stood. A modestly sized vaudeville house long known as the
Criterion (1885-1937), it had a history of legitimate theatre, both amateur
and professional, before turning to vaudeville.
From there, we turn around, walk back in the direction of
Flatbush Avenue, pass S. Oxford Street, and come to the Majestic Theatre, a
legitimate playhouse built in 1904, and still standing between Ashland Place
and Rockwell Place in the guise of the BAM Harvey Theatre. The bones of its
structure remain, although deliberately made to look run down as per a Parisian
theatre occupied at the time of its renovation by late director Peter Brook,
who opened it in 1987 with his magnificent production of The Mahabhata.
Diagonally across the street on Rockwell would have been the Orpheum (1900-1953),
a grand vaudeville house that ended its half-century of life as a major movie
theatre.
Today, this junction reminds us of the old Brooklyn Rialto,
with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, and the BAM
Harvey—all of later creation—forming a theatrical hub within only a block or two
between them. (The original Brooklyn Academy of Music, which burned down in 1903, was on Montague near Court.)
Continuintg down Fulton brings us to Flatbush, which we
cross to visit where Brooklyn’s highest-priced theatre, Col. Sinn’s Montauk (1895-1940),
or simply the Montauk, stood. That, though, was before Flatbush Avenue Extension was built, widening
the street for access to and from the new Manhattan Bridge. Plans to demolish
the Montauk had been in the air for years, and, in 1905, what was called the
New Montauk was nearing completion as its replacement. Instead, in a major
feat of engineering, the old Montauk was jacked up and moved across Flatbush in
1907, while legal complications kept the New Montauk from opening until 1908. Meanwhile,
the old Montauk changed its name to the Imperial Theatre (Manhattan already had
one of its own), and it had other names as well over the years before being
demolished.
Moving along, we step off Fulton for a block or so to stand
before the site of the then under-construction New Montauk, at Hanover and Livingston,
before returning to Fulton, going west until we get to Fulton and Elm. This is a
one-block street ending at Livingston; in its middle stood the Grand Opera
House (1898-1920), a mid-priced legit theatre. Returning the half-block to Fulton,
we go left, past the famed Abraham and Straus Department Store, in the
direction of Borough Hall, stopping to pay homage to the location of the intimate
Bijou (1893-1934) at Bridges Street, a bijou of a theatre where the Spooner
Stock Company, starring sisters Edna May and Cecil held court in 1905.
We then turn right for a block at Fulton and Jay Street to
Willoughby, where the Star Theatre (1890-1947) had its notorious career as a
burlesque house, being shut down when its girly-girly shows went too far; it was also popular for its vaudeville shows and Italian movies. A block further eastward
takes us to Pearl and Willoughby, where Watson’s Cozy Corner (1903-1922), a vaudeville
theatre, stood before becoming the Nassau Theatre (in 1905, in fact) and other names. Then a few
more steps bring us to Fulton again where we pay our respects to the venerable
Park Theatre (1863-1908), across from Borough Hall; it was Brooklyn’s first permanent
theatre dedicated to legitimate theatre, achieving renown under the leadership
of Col. William E. Sinn.
Not on Fulton but only a brief distance away northward along
Cadman Plaza, which didn’t exist in 1905, we end our journey at the Columbia
Theatre (1892-1919), on Washington Street and Tillary. Soon to be renamed the
Alcazar Theatre, it later resumed its original name. It had a varied career,
mainly as a legitimate theatre, including stints as a high-priced venue, a
stock company, and a musical stock company.
This jaunt, be reminded, covers only theatres located in the
“downtown” section of Brooklyn’s Western District! In 1905, Brooklyn’s Eastern
District (or Williamsburg), Greenpoint, and East New York, where the population
was heavily working class and immigrant, there were the Gayety, the Novelty, Phillips’s
Lyceum, the Broadway, Payton’s Lee Avenue Theatre, the Unique Theatre, the Garden
Theatre, and the temporarily shuttered Amphion, each with a story to tell.
Brooklyn in 1905 was rippling with theatrical muscle,
although the legitimate was gradually being swallowed by vaudeville and
burlesque, and the movies were just about ready to pounce. Next time you’re on
Fulton Street in Fort Greene, imagine you’re decked out in 1905 finery, women
in big hats and long, flouncy dresses, mustachioed gents in high collars and hats, strolling along what once was Brooklyn’s Rialto, even before the subway
was around to take you there. Maybe you'll even see ghost lights flickering on the cobblestone streets.
For more on Brooklyn theatre history, see my blog: BROOKLYN THEATRE FROM 1898: AN ILLUSTRATED CHRONOLOGY.
