You know that grand art-deco Metro Theater at 99th and Broadway that has been closed for a few years?

Yeah, its recent long tortured history (condo! restuarant!) is over. It will now be home to an Urban Outfitters. (New York Post, second item). Finally, local residents won't have to travel so far for their Toddland diver down hoodies!

City Room had an item on the Metro (originally called the Midtown, for some reason) in 2007:

From the outside, the landmark Metro Theater on Broadway, an Art Deco jewel box between 99th and 100th Streets, looks almost as exquisite as it must have in the 1930s, when movies were still known as “photoplays,” though no photo has played there for two years.

But the inside, visible to passers-by on a recent afternoon, has been gutted. Gone are seats and plaster and curtains and screen. Gone is a golden ceiling molding with a chain of floral bouquets. Gone are the sylph-filled niches. Gone is grillework that sprouted like corn stalks.

Here's a little more on the theater's past on Tom Fletcher's New York Architecture

The Midtown, designed by the architecture firm of Boak & Paris, opened in 1933. From 1948 through April 1972, it was part of the Brandt circuit, featuring sub-run foreign and independent fare starting in the 1950s. It exhibited films such as Belle de Jour, Shame (and just about every other Bergman movie), Breathless, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Repulsion, L’Avventura, Straw Dogs, and Gimme Shelter, though never in exclusive engagements. After Brandt's management, it operated as an adult film venue.

It was renamed the Metro in 1982.

FINALLY: Some good bar-related news

The Emerald Inn, the Upper West Side saloon that has been serving up drinks since FDR was in office, will live. And you can thank the recession for it.

In September, manager Charlie Campbell learned that rent would double to nearly $35,000 a month for its 800-square-foot space on Columbus Avenue near 69th Street. (Sidenote: How did he learn of this? He saw the location advertised for lease on the Web site of real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis. Nice!)

Anyway, according to the Times today:

Like so many other stalwart-but-doomed Manhattan holdouts that have lost their leases under the pressure of gentrification, the Emerald — as its habitués call it — was scheduled to close at the end of April; its rent was to more than double.

But the watering hole . . . has won a two-year lease extension thanks to “the whole down economy, where they can’t find a tenant who will pay that much,” said Mike Campbell, 77, the Emerald’s owner.

Indeed, the reprieve “has to do with the economy — and the kind of people the Campbells are,” said Mike Clarke, an owner of the A. J. Clarke Real Estate Corporation, which manages the five-story apartment building in which the Emerald resides. Mr. Campbell’s son Charlie, 49, manages the bar.

As one patron said, "Columbus Avenue has been turning into a strip mall, with chain stores and restaurants. Maybe the recession will help the mom-and-pops stay in business.”

Finally, a little history on the place via the Times:

Mike Campbell’s father (also Mike) opened the Emerald with his brother William. “Exactly when, we’re not sure, but it was 1943 or 1944,” Charlie Campbell said.

The Emerald has been an enduring link to the West Side’s raffish past, when Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues were populated by gin mills and where brawls among patrons, enthusiastically mediated by bruiser bartenders, were not unusual.

“We were called Spanish Harlem until the ’60s, when they put in Lincoln Center,” said Charlie Campbell. In recent decades, the clientele has gone upscale, to professionals who can afford Upper West Side housing, along with a sprinkling of loyal locals, some of them survivors of the era when “West Side Story” was a contemporary narrative.

Previous Emerald coverage on EV Grieve here.

When a beloved neighborhood bar relocates...

Do the regulars follow? On the eve of the P & G closing and moving, the Times looks into the issue...

[I]f drinking and dining have always been a moveable feast in New York, is charisma cartable? Can the character of everything from venerable pubs to palatial eateries migrate with their names and owners? This portability issue has gained new urgency in a season of economic disarray, when property owners are less willing to extend the leases of even the most beloved old-timers.

Loyalists can be fickle, and geography perilous. “New York is so provincial, three blocks is a huge distance,” said Patrick Daley, the owner of Kettle of Fish, the classic step-down barroom at 59 Christopher Street in Sheridan Square, in the space formerly inhabited by the Lion’s Head, a lionized writers’ pub, which closed in 1996.

Not in the article but worth noting: Sophie's moved from Avenue A to its current location on East Fifth Street in the mid-1980s.

Previously on EV Grieve:
An appreciation: the P & G Cafe

Hope for the Emerald Inn

Steve Cuozzo had this (third item) in his column yesterday:

All might not be lost for the Emerald Inn, the beloved Irish pub at 205 Columbus Ave. that's losing its lease in May.

As The Post recently reported, the cozy little bar, which has been there for 66 years, can't afford an increase to $350,000 year in rent - more than twice what it currently pays.

Owner Charlie Campbell and legions of regulars were heartbroken.

But Walker & Malloy broker Rafe Evans, who's negotiated scores of Upper West Side retail leases, said he's willing to help Campbell find another location nearby.

"They have expressed interest in keeping the legend alive," Evans said.

But it won't be on Columbus Avenue.

"They can only afford to be on a side street, maybe West 72nd Street," Evans said, where rents are lower.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Farewell to the Emerald Inn

Farewell to the Emerald Inn

This just makes me sick. The Emerald Inn on Columbus Avenue (near 69th Street) will be closing next spring. Rent for the bar, which opened in 1943, "is more than doubling" to $350,000 a year "for the cozy, 800-square-foot saloon."

And get this: Owner Charlie Campbell, whose grandfather opening the place when FDR was in office, "got the bad news when he saw the location advertised for lease on the Web site of real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis."

Here's some of the report from the Post:

The cozy inn, with a few booths and faded pictures on the walls, was once well known as a "beer and a shot" joint.

In the mid-1980s, Columbus Avenue was a rough stretch of blue-collar taverns, bodegas and hardware stores, with few of today's high-end boutiques and beaneries.

But the Upper West Side's whirlwind gentrification changed everything, and the Emerald Inn today draws mostly upscale customers.

Among them yesterday was Michael Morfit, 46, a partner in Lighthouse Financial, who said he comes in twice a week.

"We used to have all these ma-and-pa shops," Morfit lamented over a couple of Buds. "Now all you have is big companies like Circuit City and Best Buy, because smaller companies can't afford the rents."

Well, I'll spare you from yammering away about how much I like the Emerald Inn. It's expected to close in May. Go and enjoy while you can... and stop by the P&G while you're at it.

An appreciation: The P & G Cafe

Found myself on the Upper West Side late yesterday afternoon. So I stopped by the beloved P & G Cafe — the family-owned saloon that has graced the corner of 73rd and Amsterdam since 1942. Perfection. The front door was open. A small group of regulars were joking around with each other. The Yankees game was on. (Well, the Yankees are hardly perfection these days...)

Nothing new to report on the bar's fate. Latest rumor is still a Baby Gap. There has been talk of relocation. I didn't ask any questions. Was just there to enjoy it while I can. Like-minded fellows have also paid their respects in the past, including Jeremiah and Lost City.