Fans of cinema rejoice! It’s not often a movie palace from yesteryear is given a chance at new life, but today it was announced that New York City’s Metro Theater on Broadway at 99th Street has been purchased and that the new owners intend to rebuild and reopen. Shuttered and gutted since 2005, the Metro was built between 1932 and 1933 amidst the Great Depression, when theater owners were looking to downsize from the grandeur of movie palaces to smaller houses that were easier to maintain. Though the interior of the building was demolished, the Art Deco facade was and is still considered a historical landmark and remains intact.
A recently formed nonprofit organization known as Upper West Side Cinema Center has bought the building for $6.9 million, shared the group’s President and Co-Founder, Ira Deutchman. These funds were gathered through a combination of grants provided by Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, as well as contributions from private foundations and nearly four hundred individual donors.
“For far too long, the beloved Metro Theater has sat empty — waiting for leaders with the courage and conviction to bring it back to life,” Governor Hochul said in a press release shared with IndieWire. “The Upper West Side community deserves another world-class venue for cinema and art, and that’s why I was proud to step in and allocate $3.5 million to make the new Metro Theater a reality. Working with my friend Assemblymember Lasher and Senator Hoylman-Sigal, we’re going to give Upper West Siders a new cultural institution that stands the test of time.”
Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg’s Hearthland Foundation, the Klingenstein-Martell Foundation, and the Brandt Jackson Foundation also all provided major grants to make the acquisition of the building possible. In addition, once this effort was first announced, an outpouring of support came from filmmaking notables such as Martin Scorsese, Ethan Hawke, Frances McDormand, and Griffin Dunne, who are all fighting to keep the theatrical experience alive. They and others have signed on to be advisors to UWS Cinema Center, which in addition to Deutchman, is led by a Board of Directors that includes Adeline Monzier (Vice-President), Stephen Cohen (Counsel), Beth Krieger (Community Liaison/Marketing), Sally Klingenstein Martell, David Huntington, Peter Koffler, and Tim Blake Nelson.
Since the closure of the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and The Landmark at 57th Street, the Upper West Side has long been in need of a dedicated art cinema and UWS Cinema Center looks to provide just that. The non-profit now enters Phase 2 of their initiative, which involves raising funds to restore the former Metro theater into a yet-to-be-named vibrant five-screen art house featuring movie classics, foreign films, documentaries, and first-run independent films. UWS Cinema Center also intends to form an education center and a café/lounge.
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