Victoria Theater (Harlem)

The Victoria Theater was a theater located on 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was designed in 1917 by Thomas W. Lamb, a notable and prolific theater architect of the era, for the Loew's Corporation. It was largely demolished in 2017, with the facade and lobby retained as part of a new mixed-use skyscraper, the tallest building in Manhattan north of Central Park. The Loew's Victoria Theater, as it was known until 1977, opened as a 2,394-seat, luxury Vaudeville and motion picture theater. 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, then the Hurtig & Seamon's New (Burlesque) Theater. In 1977, the Harlem Community Development Corporation acquired the building. The Victoria was converted to a multi-screen cinema in 1987. Five movie theaters were created from the large auditorium, mezzanine and stage areas. The cinema closed soon after, in 1989, but a 400-seat venue was left intact in the orchestra, at which the original Harlem company of Godspell, which drew

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