The Prospect Theatre

prospect theatre 1928
Prospect Theatre in Brooklyn, circa 1928.

The PATOS 3/19 Wurlitzer was originally installed at RKO-Keith’s Prospect Theatre in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. The theater was built in 1914 on the site of a former synagogue and three apartment buildings. It had 2,500 seats, boxes on two levels and its stage played host to the major vaudeville acts of the era. The Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges and Burns and Allen were all said to have performed there. Eventually, like most vaudeville theaters, it was turned into a movie house. It closed in the late 1950s as attendance declined with the arrival of television. In 1967, the building was sold and the ground floor converted to a Consumers Food grocery store. The rest of the theatre remained vacant until it was sold to developers in 1989 to be converted into residential condominiums. An article in the February 19, 1989 New York Times noted that conversion to condominiums was difficult because “workmen had to cut through brick walls two feet thick to install windows for the apartments.”

prospect theatre 1950
Prospect Theatre in Brooklyn, circa 1950.

Dedicated to the preservation of theatre pipe organs