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American Movies Theater: Yiddish Nickelodeon, Underground Rock Venue, and Blue Man Group studio, to be Demolished


      Situated directly to the left of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe is an unassuming two-story brick building spanning 238-240 East 3rd Street. In the Fall of 2017 this building, owned and operated by the Blue Man Group as a rehearsal and production studio for almost twenty years, hit the market for a tidy $12 million, and by April 2018, EV Grieve reported that permits had been filed for a new 7-story residential development at the site. While these initial permits were rejected, and new ones have since been filed and remain pending, the demolition permits were approved this past July and a plywood barrier was erected around its ground floor in December.
      Constructed in 1913 as the American Movies Theater, it was part of a new wave of inexpensive theaters (known as nickelodeons for their 5-cent price) which swept the Lower East Side, an alternative to the vaudeville houses which dominated much of the Jewish theater culture. Hailed by its owner and founder, Charles Steiner, as the "best, richest theater on the East Side", the American Movies Theater boasted six-hundred seats, a roof which could open up in the summer, and all the silent Yiddish-language films you could want.

(circa. 1940)

       Unlike many of the Yiddish Vaudeville houses, the American Movies Theater managed to adapt to the cultural shifts in the neighborhood, showing an increasingly more "popular" array of films, sustaining itself as a movie theater well into the 60's. At some point in the 70's (this is an estimate based on what little information I could find) it became the "New Pilgrim Theater", but it is not clear if the ownership changed hands even though the American Movies Theater itself ceased to operate.
      Among the few fragments I can find on the New Pilgrim Theater is a single show flyer for a small music festival on September 18, 1981, called "Music for Millions", featuring fledgling band Sonic Youth, Y Pants, Rat at Rat R, and the Nihilistics. Three months before Sonic Youth recorded their debut EP, and only a couple after their formation, this show would have been an interesting convergence of the nascent hardcore and no wave scenes, and a very particular moment in the shifting terrain of New York City's punk movement.





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  1. Joe McGintyMarch 4, 2021 at 6:47 PM

    Was just doing some research. New Pilgrim is now Rossy's Bakery next door. Before that, it was Slug's, a jazz club that ran from 1960 to 1972. Still, it's incredibly sad that they tore down that building.

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