The Pagoda Theater

The Pagoda Theater at 11 East Broadway was opened on June 1, 1964. While other movie theaters in Chinatown were not explicitly constructed for film showing but were modified after the fact, the Pagoda Theater was designed to screen movies. The theater was owned by the Catherine Corporation, managed by Lucas Liang. Liang commissioned China-born architect Poy Gum Lee to construct the theater, the last building to be designed by Lee in New York City’s Chinatown. The theater’s first movie was an opera by the name of Chin Hueng Ling. The theater was among the first to close in the early 1990s and was quickly demolished after shuttering its doors in 1992.