The Metro Theater (formerly Midtown Theatre), ca. 1994.

This landmarked, Depression-era theater has since closed, and, as of March, 2016, is slated for retail conversion.

The Midtown Theater was completed in 1933, replacing the seven-story tenement building which had occupied its site. Described by the Landmarks Preservation Commission as “a rare surviving small Art Deco style neighborhood movie theater” with “one of the finest facades of its type in New York City,” it recalls a specific era of theater construction, when 1930s austerity led developers to eschew the grand theater architecture of the previous decades.

In Edmund Vincent Gillon’s 1994 photo, the marquee advertises showings of “The Client,” a legal drama starring Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon, and Brad Renfro.