Payton's Lee Avenue Theater, ca. 1902.

This 1,600 seat theater was built in a former church as the Lee Avenue Academy of Music in 1882. By 1895, the theater became the Phoebus Theater, and sometime shortly after, the theater was acquired by Corse Payton. Payton, a veteran actor, renamed the venue: Payton's Lee Avenue Theater.

Corse Payton likened himself "America's Best Bad Actor," though despite this self-effacing name, he was quite successful in his career. In multiple billings at the Payton Theater, including "The Dancing Girl," and "The Prodigal Daughter," both Corse Payton and his wife Etta Reed performed on stage. Of the latter production, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported "electric fans kept the audience cool, in the face of the many exciting entanglements of the melodrama." The theater was razed in 1915, the New York Times reported that this was because "the BMT ran an elevated line through its balcony."

A new theater, the Roebling, was built on the same site in 1919. The Roebling sat 1,200 guests on one level, rather than in tiered balconies like the original structure. The building changed hands in 1937 and became the Wilson Theater before closing down for good in 1945. The building is now occupied by a Congregation Adas Yereim.