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1935 201 West 42nd Street
42nd Street & Broadway
1935
5
$150,000.00
BROADWAY, 1481; also 42D [42ND] ST, 201-205 W 2-sty bk stores, theatre & office bldg, 131˙100
OWNER / OWNER ADDRESS
(o) Rialto Times Sq, Inc, Anthony Campagna, pres / (o) 33 W 42 COMMENTS
ARCHITECT / ARCHITECT ADDRESS
(a) Rosario Candela / (a) 578 Madison av (source)
As the 1930s [and The Depression] wore on and little other work came his way, Candela expanded his repertoire of skills and in 1935 teamed with the theater-design specialist Thomas Lamb to produce for Anthony Campagna the Rialto Theater Building at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Broadway (demolished in 1999). Again showing his skill at matching design to need, Candela provided a jazzy Art Deco composition in glass block, aluminum fins, and opaque blue glass mottled to look vaguely like marble. Amusingly, he even carried the Art Deco theme through to the lettering style on the building’s construction drawings. The building housed a 750-seat movie theater, stores, offices, and a restaurant on the top floor. At the cornice line was a giant advertising sign with a huge corner pylon and an illuminated strip sign that provided a moving display of local news. (Alpern Acanthus page 26) 201 West 42nd Street
In 2001 an architectural tribute to Candela was revealed in the Reuters office tower at Three Times Square, occupying the former site of Candela’s Rialto Theater Building. The architects Fox & Fowle incorporated into their design for the new tower a visually-arresting curved corner storefront whose jazzy Art Deco elements echo the design Candela produced for the Rialto 65 years earlier. (Alpern Acanthus page 27)
In 1935, as the executive head of Rialto Times Square Inc., he was responsible for tearing down the old Rialto Theatre, developed by Paramount Pictures and located at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. After Campagna demolished the theatre, he rebuilt it on a smaller scale and dedicated the rest of the building to shops and office space. (source)
Rialto Theater at 201 West 42nd Street
Architect: Thomas Lamb & Rosario Candela
The Rialto Theater on Broadway at the corner of 42nd Street has had several iterations. It was first created in 1916 with “the remains of the lavish turn-of-the century Victoria Theatre,” which had first anchored the street as “an entertainment zone.” McCarthy says “Broadway impresario ‘Roxy’ Rothapfel slashed the insides of the Victoria and re-opened the venue as a class act movie spectacle house, seating 2,000 for flicks like The Good Bad Man played by Douglas Fairbanks and The White Raven starring Ethel Barrymore.” When Paramount leased the theater in the 1930s, it was demolished and rebuilt again, this time with a lobby decorated with “ghoul murals and life-sized mummies,” thanks to Arthur Mayer, known as the “Merchant of Menace.” Mayer also had “a woman in a white nurse uniform” around just in case patrons “got weak of heart” in the middle of What Price Vengeance or Lady Behave. The 1970s saw adult films, and WOR-TV studios later moved in upstairs, programming daytime talk shows. Today, the site is very Times Square-y, occupied by a Skechers shoe store at the street level and Reuters office tower above. Remembering the Lost Theaters of Times Square’s ‘Deuce’ By Jessica Dailey Oct 8, 2014
Originally on this site stood Oscar Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre which opened in 1899 and was demolished in 1916. It was replaced by a new movie theatre designed by Thomas Lamb which opened in 1916 as the Rialto Theatre and was closed and demolished in May 1935. (Cinema Treasures has two individual pages for these theatres) This second Rialto Theatre was built in 1935. The new Rialto Theatre was one of the new Art Deco style movie houses built in New York City. The theatre was also outfitted with a TV studio that was used by everyone from Geraldo Rivera to Montel Williams. The theatre’s fortunes were often in sync with the vitality of Times Square for better or for worse. By the 1970’s, the Rialto Theatre became an adult house and then clung to life for the next two decades, finally operating as the Cineplex Odeon Warner Theatre from 1987 to 1990. Finally and sadly, the theatre was razed in 1998 to make way for the 30-story Reuters building. Rialto Theatre 1481 Broadway, New York, NY 10036
This is the building where the “Howdy Doody Show” was filmed during the 1950s. The TV studio at the theater also saw the filming of talk shows led by Montel Williams and Geraldo Rivera. The structure was always a reflection of the Times Square neighborhood, through good times and bad, before being replaced by the 30-story Reuters building. It is from this Art Deco style Rialto that OGT rescued the beautiful glass tiles with a textured finish. These classic tiles are 6 in. x 6 in. raised glass squares, priced each, and include the original certificate of authenticity signed by the architecturologist who salvaged the pieces. Pieces of History — Reclaimed Glass Tiles from the Rialto Theatre at Times Square NYC January 23, 2017 by Abigail Swire
The Old Rialto Theater February 2, 2009
Italian-born law-school graduate and builder Anthony Campagna, now 40, visited Joseph and Dr. Charles V. Paterno in his 20s, was offered a construction job, gave up his law career, built the Rialto Theater on 42nd Street in 1916 among other commercial structures. The New York Chronology: The Ultimate Compendium of Events, People, and Anecdotes from the Dutch to the Present by James Trager
CAMPAGNA BACKS TIMES SQ. PROJECT; Builder Heads Syndicate Which Plans Modern Structure on Rialto Site. New York Times November 22, 1934
ANIMAL FILM OPENS NEW RIALTO TODAY; Frank Buck’s ‘Fang and Claw’ Is First Offering of Theatre — Programs to Be for Men. New York Times Dec. 25, 1935
“Candela’s commissions suffered — lowering to just one in 1931 from 26 in 1929 — and he was forced to shutter his Madison Avenue office, which once employed 50 draftsmen.
While he was able to draft and complete apartment buildings in later years, “[they] never approached the scale seen in the 1920s,” wrote Christopher Gray of The New York Times.
The architect’s decline was severe, but he made do.
“He didn’t have family money to fall back on,” Alpern said. “He did whatever would help to sell his services, and if it meant designing in an art deco style, then he’d do that.”
Candela worked out of his home in Harrison in Westchester County, where he died in 1953 at age 63.” How an immigrant with $20 to his name redefined the NYC luxury apartment By Zachary Kussin May 22, 2018