Ziegfeld Theatre (1969)
40°45′46″N 73°58′44″W / 40.7627°N 73.97881°W
The Ziegfeld Theatre was a single-screen movie theater located at 141 West 54th Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City. It opened in 1969 and closed in 2016. The theater was named in honor of the original Ziegfeld Theatre (1927–1966) which was built by the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr..
History
On December 17, 1969, a few hundred feet from the site of the original Ziegfeld Theatre, a new Ziegfeld opened as a single-screen movie house, as part of the Walter Reade movie theatre chain.. Located at 141 West 54th Street, it was one of the last large-scale, single-screen movie palaces built in the United States.[citation needed]
Constructed by Emery Roth & Sons from designs by Irving Gershon and red-carpeted interior designs by John J. McNamara, it had 1,152 seats (825 seats in the orchestra section and 306 seats in the tiered rear section). It was often used for world premieres and big-event press screenings, such as the November 1977 opening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The theater underwent extensive renovations in the late 1990s. It was a centerpiece site during the 2008 New York Film Festival because of reconstruction work at Lincoln Center that year. During the 2000s, digital projection was installed.
The theater was the largest single-screen cinema operating in New York and was used for film premieres and gala events.
From 2013 until its closing, the Ziegfeld was managed by Bow Tie Cinemas, on behalf of Cablevision, which owned the theater. The theater was previously part of the Clearview Cinemas chain, which was owned by Cablevision, prior to the chain's sale to Bow Tie; the actual ownership of the Ziegfeld building was excluded from the sale.
Closing
On January 20, 2016 it was announced that the Ziegfeld would close "within a few weeks" due to dwindling attendance and revenue.[1] Eight days later the Ziegfeld Theatre closed its doors to the public as a large single screen movie theater with a final showing of the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The theater is undergoing a major renovation and is planned to re-open as a luxury event space called the Ziegfeld Ballroom.
