URT

NORTH BROOKLYN CINEMAS

Created by HANNAH FIDELL DECEMBER 8TH, 2010

Who Killed the Cinema in North Brooklyn

What killed cinema in north Brooklyn?

 

Macintosh HD:Users:hannahfidell:Desktop:wburg.jpg

 

It is impossible to know exactly why movie theaters in north Brooklyn[1] ultimately failed. But by the end of the 1970’s, there were no working cinemas in and above the Bedford Stuyvescent neighborhood.

 

Was it an oversaturation of theaters (see http://urt.parsons.edu/urt/research/project/north-brooklyn-cinemas ) that led to their demise? Perhaps. But wouldn’t a similar saturation in Brooklyn’s southern neighborhoods have created the same effect as up north?

 

Even with the rise of the multiplex in the 1960’s[2], the theaters in the southern part of the borough were able to sustain and maintain, with a few exceptions in downtown.

 

Perhaps it was the changing demographic, but that too was happening all over the city as the Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants of the turn of the 20th century began to move out of Brooklyn. Or the ghettofication of BedStuy and Bushwick during the same period?

 

Or was it changes in mass transit? Again, perhaps. But the L train (the main route to connect North Brooklyn with Manhattan) came into existence, as we know it today, by the early 1940s.

 

And how about the golden age of television in the 50’s and 60’s? Did that create enough of an alternative to the traditional movie theater going experience to account for the demise mentioned prior?

 

            What is evident, is that the failure of the cinemas can be seen as an intersection of technology, economics, and changing ethnic demographics meeting in such a way that it is impossible to detangle. If the failure of the theaters was due strictly to competition, why didn’t the surviving theaters at the tail end of the 70’s manage to remain in business? This thought proves that it wasn’t a matter of free market competition, but rather an amalgamation of other factors.  

 

           


[1] Greenpoint, Bushwick, Williamsburg and Bedford Stuyvescent neighborhoods.

 

Related Records: