The Liberty Theater Is No More.... — Page 2

"That is Bull! If there is a restaurant going into the space they need to have the proper exits, doors and fire exits. No reason this could not have been restored back to a functional theater. So sad!"

This is not necessarily true. The numbers of doors and/or fire exits will be determined by the seating capacity being applied for. I highly doubt that Tim Horton's will be applying for the same capacity that even a small sized Broadway house would be applying for. You do not need the same number of fire exits for even 100 people as you do for 1000. I also somehow doubt that Tim Horton's will be using the entire space. That would be one super large donut shop if it did.

You are 100% correct, newintown.

I am in Wisconsin, and most of our malls are awful. I wouldn't want any street in America to resemble one of our shopping centers.

Definitely, songanddance - I didn't mean to lump in other tourists with the Americans (although crassness knows no one nationality). but it is the Americans for whom most of this homogenization is geared.

I do, however, like the bit in Shirley Valentine about the confused suburban Brits in Greece looking for an egg & chip meal.

One of my favorite examples of horrible tourism: in the Uffizi, while looking at a 15th century painting of the Adoration of the Magi, an American tourist walked right up to the piece (placing himself directly between me and it), knocked on it, turned to his companion and honked, "Yep, it's wood!"

Its officially going to be a Famous Dave's BBQ, here some links I found the 1st one has some pictures of the construction
http://www.xzzspace.com/latest.html

http://www.zagat.com/buzz/famous-dave’s-bbq-moving-to-liberty-theater-in-august

http://www.famousdaves.com/NewYork

http://www.new42.org/new42/new42_liberty.html

There will be ghosts haunting that Famous Dave's.

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Walking home from Thanksgiving dinner (on a perfect New York evening) I discovered that the Famous Dave's BBQ restaurant on 42nd Street is now open.

Intrigued I went inside and I'm very happy to report that the restaurant has completely retained the physical structure of the Liberty Theatre. The interior of the auditorium has been cleaned up, repainted and pretty much still looks (sans seats) the same as the black and white photograph posted earlier in the thread.

A very nice manager actually gave me a full tour and I was able to see that everything is still there from the boxes to the balconies to the complete structure of the proscenium/stage.

The architect actually did a brilliant job in utilizing ways to incorporate the restaurant into the existing space - the entire kitchen basically sits on the stage as one big wagon set piece. On top of it is a VIP area. Standing up there it was obvious that they have preserved completely the fly space, the walls - etc.

So the good news to be thankful for today is that the Liberty Theatre is indeed still here and in good shape. She may be housing a restaurant at the moment but the possibility that some day she might return to being a legit space for performance is completely feasible.

Updated On: 11/24/11 at 09:35 PM

So in the below picture...where is the Liberty theatre located? I see the Empire and correct me if I'm wrong wasn't the Liberty directly beside it?

ucjrdude, that picture is from when they moved the Empire down the block closer to 8th. The building on the left side is the Liberty.

The New 42nd Street has a page about the Liberty, which includes the picture showing how the facade has been taken over by Madame Tussaud's. You can see the Empire next door, on the right side of the first picture.



http://www.new42.org/new42/new42_liberty.html

Updated On: 11/27/11 at 12:29 PM

Here's a video I took last Monday of the theater. It was such a pleasure to finally see the space and see much of the detail retained. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiHGy5pO1E8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Structurally the building is the same; so those are the original walls - at least as they were for the last 75 years. Its possible the building was slightly reconfigured in the mid 1930s when it ceased to be a performance house and became a movie theatre. The theatre is unique in that the balcony is actually larger than the mezz. When I did the tour with the manager and got to go up there - it looked like there was room for about 8 rows of seats.

The below link shows some better pictures of how the theatre is configured now.


The Liberty Theatre Rental Site

Updated On: 12/19/11 at 09:17 AM

Just noticed today the BBQ place had closed and the space is now called The Liberty Diner. http://libertydinernyc.com