On a recent jaunt in Borough Park, I strolled over to Alben Square, where New Utrecht Avenue meets 11th Avenue and 46th Street, to check out the old Loew’s 46th Street Theater. When I had last seen it, it looked pretty much the same as when it was built in 1927 but it had become a Rubinstein & Klein furniture store. Now, it has acquired a completely new facade and is a branch of the social service agency, Hamaspik, which aids developmentally challenged patients.
When I researched the building in 2007, though, I had only the merest inkling that it was one of Brooklyn’s rock and roll palaces in the early 1970s. The building played host to top acts like the Grateful Dead, The Byrds, Iron Butterfly, Country Joe McDonald, The Youngbloods and the Jefferson Airplane who all played there. Can you imagine the Grateful Dead playing matinee weekday shows in sleepy Borough Park? It happened at the Loews 46th Street, which later became Bananafish Garden and hosted tapings of the ABC Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.
The far reaches of Brooklyn were no stranger to rock. L’Amour, in Bensonhurst, was a metal mecca throughout the 1980s and 1990s before closing in 2004. In Marine Park there was Rock Palace, later known as Zappa’s, where you could hear The Circle Jerks, Johnny Thunders, the Shirts, Joan Jett and many more. For classic rockers, the Ritz in Port Richmond, Staten Island hosted the Kinks, Jethro Tull and other staples of classic rock radio.
I gave a fuller account of the Loews’s 46th on this FNY page in 2007.
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12/23/22
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Except for the removal of the orchestra seats, the auditorium and stage were mostly intact when the furniture store used it as a warehouse. Unfortunately it was gutted and converted to condos in 2016.
While the building was being demolished in 2016/2017(?) I talked to one of the demo crew guys and was able to haul out a section of an interior pillar base. It’s now sitting in my basement music room. For a collector of old psych rock memorabilia, this was quite a find! Would’ve loved to see the Dead play there, but was born 10 years after their 1970 concerts there.