Midtown’s beloved Paris Theater in danger of closing

Cinephiles may soon be saying goodbye to yet another of the city’s threatened independent theaters: Deadline reports that the Paris Theater, a single-screen movie house on 58th Street, is “expected to shutter in late July.” (h/t Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York)

The theater’s website currently has tickets available for the Ron Howard documentary Pavarotti, but does not list any screenings beyond the end of its run on June 27. There also aren’t any new movies listed in the “coming soon” category.

The 71-year-old theater is operated by the City Cinemas brand, but is located in a building owned by developer Sheldon Solow, whose headquarters is nearby at 9 West 57th Street. Solow is currently at work on a 19-story condo tower at 7 West 57th Street, which abuts the Paris’s building at 4 West 58th Street, but there is no indication (from plans on file with the Department of Buildings) that the two are related. A representative for Solow Building Company did not immediately return a request for comment.

If the theater does indeed close next month—Deadline says it will shutter “unless something dramatic happens”—it would be the latest in a long string of losses for the city’s indie theater scene. In the past few years, New York has lost the Ziegfeld Theater (which was located just a few blocks from the Paris), Landmark’s Sunshine Cinemas, and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, which have been or will be replaced with an event space, an office building, and nothing, respectively.