Village East Cinema
Coordinates: 40°43′51.3″N 73°59′10.4″W / 40.730917°N 73.986222°W
The Village East Cinema is movie theatre in the East Village section of New York City. One of New York's last remaining Yiddish theatre buildings, it is a New York city designated landmark.
Originally named the Louis N. Jaffe Theater (also called the Yiddish Art Theatre (after its first tenant) and later the Yiddish Folks Theatre), the structure was built in 1925-26 by Louis Jaffe, a developer and prominent Jewish community leader, at 12th Street and Second Avenue in the Yiddish Theatre District. Jaffe built the theatre to house Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, which Schwartz had founded 1918 to present serious Yiddish drama and works from world literature in Yiddish.
The theatre was designed in the Moorish Revival style by Harrison Wiseman; William Pogany consulted on the interior design. The design incorporated Moorish motifs with Judaic references (Yiddish writing outside the lobby and a large Star of David in the ornate dome remain to attest to the building's origins).
In his new theatre, Schwartz continued to produce shows, including a production of "Yoshe Kalb" which ran for 300 performances. According to legend, Walter Matthau briefly worked at the theatre's concession stand as a youth.
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