Shuttered Famous Theater Could have Gone Up in Flames
A suspected Lithium-Ion battery fire broke out in a building adjacent to and behind the landmark Paradise Theater on September 14, 2024.-Photo by David Greene
By David Greene
Bronx Voice
September 25, 2024
BRONX - A suspected E-Bike fire in a building on Creston Avenue adjacent to the famed Paradise Theater was thankfully brought under control before the fire could spread to the landmark building.
According to fire officials, the blaze was reported at 11:24 a.m. on September 14, when a call to 911 reported fire and smoke on the 4th floor of a 5-story apartment building at 2390 Creston Avenue, between East 184 Street and East 188 Street.
The FDNY reported that 60 firefighters and EMS personnel from 12 units responded to the blaze that was immediately brought under control. EMS reported one civilian suffered a minor injury and was evaluated by paramedics but was not transported to a hospital.
Despite FDNY radio transmissions at the time requesting the department’s Hazmat unit for “multiple batteries” involved in fire, as well as a drum observed outside the building, often used to cart away E-Bike batteries, the FDNY told the Bronx Voice that the “cause remains under investigation.”
The famed Loew’s Paradise Theater opened at 2417 Grand Concourse shortly after construction in 1929 and was the movie jewel of the Bronx for decades. Hall of Fame singer Dion DiMucci of ‘Dion and the Belmont’s’ has publicly recalled meeting his girlfriend “Runaround Sue” Butterfield in the last row of the theater. The couple married in 1963.
The building was declared a New York City Landmark in 1997.
The theater closed in 1994 and was refurbished and reopened in late 2020. For the next several years the theater held special screenings, rap concerts and boxing matches. In 2012, the building was leased to World Changers Church, but the congregation shut its doors and the theater has remained closed since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
A call to the building’s owner, real estate mogul Gerald Lieblich of Broadway West Enterprises was not immediately returned. His secretary was unaware of a fire in the adjacent building.
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