Village East by Angelika
movie theater and former theater in the East Village, New York City
Village East by Angelika (also Village East, originally the Louis N. Jaffe Art Theatre, and formerly known by several other names) is a movie theater at 189 Second Avenue, on the corner with 12th Street, in the East Village of Manhattan in New York City. Part of the former Yiddish Theatre District, the theater was designed in the Moorish Revival style by Harrison Wiseman and built from 1925 to 1926 by Louis Jaffe. In addition to Yiddish theatre, the theater has hosted off-Broadway shows, burlesque, and movies. Since 1991, it has been operated by Angelika Film Center as a seven-screen multiplex. Both the exterior and interior of the theater are New York City designated landmarks, and the theater is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Village East's main entrance is through a three-story office wing on Second Avenue, which has a facade of cast stone. The auditorium is housed in the rear along 12th Street. The first story contains storefronts and a lobby, while the second and third stories contained offices, which were converted into apartments in the 1960s. The main lobby connects to another lobby along 12th Street with a promenade behind the auditorium. The auditorium consists of a ground-level orchestra and one overhanging balcony with boxes.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Village East by Angelika” is movie theater and former theater in the East Village, New York City. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Village, East and Angelika, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “movie theater and former theater in the East Village, New York City” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29097592. Authority coordinates are 40.731, -73.986. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 1926 and 1991.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Village East by Angelika” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.