The Fifth Avenue church that used to be a neighborhood vaudeville and silent movie theater

New York is a graveyard of former theater houses, and in recent years these vacant venues have been repurposed into retail shops, boutique hotels, a workout studio, and even a Starbucks. So why not a one-time dramatic stock and vaudeville theater transformed into a church? A Pentecostal Christian congregation currently occupies what was once the Mount Morris Theatre, a three-story brick, white granite, and terra cotta beauty on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 116th Street. Originally constructed with 1,500 audience seats and designed by the firm Hoppin & Koen, this vaudeville palace was built by the Ancient Order of Hibernians as a business venture. Day-to-day operations were turned over to a subcontractor called the Fifth Avenue Amusement Company, which would be in charge of presenting “bills of moving pictures and vaudeville acts,” the New York Times reported in 1913, the year the Mount Morris opened. With its three-door entryway, decorative wreaths, and the series of lion heads with…