100 Third Avenue (New York City, New York)

 mixed-used building  Add category

8-story contemporary modern mixed-use building originally completed as a 5-story tenement in the mid-1800s. A restaurant opened in the ground floor in 1880, later becoming a music hall. In 1910, the building began life as a theater called the Comet, and later the Lyric. It became the Jewel Theatre, which played all male films, in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the place was renamed the Bijou, according to Cinema Treasures, and continued to show XXX fare. In February 1989, City officials closed the theater.

A lengthy reconstruction project began in 2009 to alter the building, adding new floors to the top. It was preliminarily finished in 2012, with a new, sleek, almost featureless facade of silver metal panels. The 2nd-4th floors have four bays of single-windows, while the 5th-7th floors have two bays of wider triple-windows. The 8th floor and mechanical penthouse level are set back. The lower part of the facade was renovated again in 2016, covering that part of the facade with a screen of black, vertically-oriented metal rods. The windows were hidden on the 2nd floor, and those on the 3rd & 4th floors were given short secondary panes below the main window panes (except for the north bay at the 4th floor). The ground floor has an aluminum-framed glass door at each end, and a set of double-doors in the middle. The lower two floors houses Nevada Smiths sports bar from 2013-2015, and VNYL nightclub from 2016-2022. They are now occupied by Ichibantei Japanese restaurant.