Head to 175th Street and your eye may well be caught by the United Palace – yes, the building on the corner with the signs. What is it, I hear you ask? Good question, and one I asked too. The ornate, eclectic facade and curious shape gives little clue to identity; I read later that its architecture has been described as 'Byzantine-Romanesque-Indo-Hindu-Sino-Moorish-Persian-Eclectic-Rococo-Deco'. Seems fair.
Luckily it was Open House Day in New York, so the friend who lived locally and I could head in to take a look around. It was intriguing. A foyer lavish enough to rival an actual royal palace, a staircase grand enough for a Sunset Boulevard-style entrance. And a row of sayings plastered across one wall: 'Life takes from the taker and gives to the giver'; 'There is nothing so bad as a good excuse. The better the excuse, the worse it is.'; 'When you discover who you are, it doesn't matter what you've been.' I felt like I had stepped into a self-help book.
Turns out these, er, gems are the handiwork of Reverend Ike, a TV evangelist who bought the United Palace in 1969. Here's another of his nuggets of wisdom: 'The best thing you can do for the poor is not to be one of them.' It's capitalism-meets-religion, a sentiment that somehow seems to epitomise that very American 'fend for yourself' attitude, the idea that by wanting money enough, you will make the dollars flow in to your bank account. But his congregation flourished and his broadcasts reached 2.5 million people.
Perhaps it was inevitable that a TV evangelist would make his religious home in a former movie palace. The United Palace was originally an extravagant 3,000-seater theatre, which, for the best part of four decades from 1930, attracted audiences for films and vaudeville. Now, Reverend Ike's son owns the United Palace, and it's used as a church, live music venue and cultural centre. Bob Dylan has played there, so have the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle. Fantabulous, as Reverend Ike once said.
No comments:
Post a Comment