LYRIC THEATER
100 Third Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets
APRIL 24, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 112

Country Store, discarded image

Built about 1880, the Lyric Theatre had started as a restaurant and was converted into a music hall before its 1910 renovation as one of New York's earliest motion picture houses. Originally holding 274 seats, the theater doubled its seating in 1923 in response to the growing habit of moviegoing. By the 1930s, the Lyric's clientele consisted chiefly of transients from the Bowery, a few blocks to the south. For a ten-cent admission, the show included two features (one a western), a newsreel, and a short subject. The theater opened at seven o'clock in the morning, but the first showing did not start until an hour later, allowing early birds to catch a short nap. On the day she took this photograph, Abbott also visited the Bowery, where she dodged cars under the El at Division Street.

Today this entire East Village block is intact, and the building is still a movie theater, showing adult films for a gay male clientele. While no signs appear, its function is nonetheless announced by its anonymous facade and blacked-out glass doors.

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