THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE: 2025

Sunday, August 31, 2025

14. JAMIE ALLAN'S AMAZE (seen August 27, 2025)

For my review of Jamie Allan's AMAZE please click on Theater Life.

Saturday, August 30, 2025

LEITER LOOKS AT BOOKS: Garrett Eisler's BEN HECHT'S THEATRE OF JEWISH PROTEST

For my review of Garrett Eisler's BEN HECHT'S THEATRE OF JEWISH PROTEST please click on THEATER PIZZAZZ.

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

GHOST LIGHTS ON FULTON: A WALK THROUGH BROOKLYN'S LOST THEATRES

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 20^th 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.