December 2025
While many over the decades have come to the Hamlet of Woodbourne and surrounding area for a relaxing summer vacation in the Catskills region of Upstate New York, entertainment was also a big part of experience. One of the venues for entertainment was the Center Theater.
The two-storey Art Deco/Streamline Moderne-style theatre, designed by prominent local architect Abraham H. Okun, opened on 30 June 1939, as a venue for vaudeville acts, orchestras and motion pictures. It was the first air-conditioned theatre in Sullivan County.
The building featured an entrance pavilion, consisting of the foyer and lobby, with a 650 seat auditorium to the rear, the largest auditorium in the area. High school graduations wee also held at Center Theater in the 1940s and 50s.
By the early 1970s, the theatre was known as the Peace Palace, run by a group of business partners attracted to the area by the Woodstock Music Festival. As Peace Palace, the theatre hosted cult movies and live music. A distinctive feature of this era was a prominent “Woodstock Peace Painting” above the foyer. The painting combines both the Art Deco style of the original building and the psychedelic art that was popular in the early 1970s.
Center Theater fell into disuse in the 1980s, remaining abandoned and crumbling until 2003, when the Sullivan Performing Arts Association, which bought the theatre in 1995, began the process of restoring the dilapidated building. Regrettably, little became of the restoration and by 2005, all work had ceased.
A sign on the east side of the old theatre, appearing sometime after 2008, advertises “Woodbourne Commons,” a proposed medical facility, with a pharmacy and other retail. Nothing became of this redevelopment either and the theatre remains abandoned and rapidly deteriorating.
Center Theater was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
Sources: Center Theatre in Woodbourne, NY – Cinema Treasures, Center Theatre (Woodbourne, New York) – Wikipedia, Center Theatre | After the Final Curtain, Woodbourne’s Center Theatre on the mend.
