Old Theaters Find New Lives

The Drake Theatre, today a catering hall.

By Theresa Juva

Film viewing began with nickelodeons and evolved into movie palaces before morphing into megaplexes. In Queens, close-knit communities transformed into burgeoning centers for new populations as greater technology wove itself into everyday life—and movie theaters reflect this shift. One-screen movie houses have grown to encompass two dozen jumbo screens with surround sound, a development that has altered the movie experience from an intimate pastime to a larger-than-life cinematic sense shocker.

Ross Melnick, the director of research and curator of collection at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, said with so many competing activities, going to the theater is no longer a nightly habit; people often go to see a movie, not to enjoy the actual venue.

The Eagle, formerly the Earle in Jackson Heights.

“Movie palaces were the architecture of fantasy,” he said. “The movie theater was part of the experience. You were already in the show. The show started on the sidewalk” with the flashy marquee.

Melnick said Queens is home to some of the “most beautiful theaters in the country,” such as the Valencia in Jamaica, which has been preserved and converted into a church.

Melnick said people aren’t loyal to their neighborhood theater anymore and opt to support their favorite movie instead. Small theaters cannot produce the same profit as the monstrous movie complexes, and as a result, they are turned into another business. He said the theater’s beautiful design can be saved if it becomes a church or music hall, but many times a retail store takes over and destroys the building, like the theater on Continental Avenue in Forest Hills that is now a Staples and Duane Reade. Melnick said the trend of super-sized theaters will continue mainly because of money.

“In the end, those mega-plexes are better business models,” he said. “It’s an expensive proposition, but they can be profitable.”

But there are still places in Queens where you can rewind the film and step into a movie experience from the past.

The floor inside of the Victory.

Once a porno house, The Eagle in Jackson Heights is now home to Bollywood films, which are movies imported from Bombay, India. According to a New York Times article from 1995, the theater at 73-07 37th Road was shut down after Health Department inspectors discovered sex acts. The article noted that the theater, formerly known as the Earle, was the second one in the City to be shut down in an effort to control the transmission of HIV/AIDS, a disease that was beginning to gain notoriety in the United States.

Today the Eagle is open at nights and features Bollywood films as well as an occasional flick from Pakistan or Bangladesh. It sits next to the Roosevelt Avenue Jackson Heights subway station and a wholesale music store. The corroded front marquee shows the theater’s age, but the Bollywood posters offer no clues into its X-rated past.

The former Victory Theatre, now a presbyterian church.

On a quiet street in Bayside next to a pizza parlor, what used to be known as Victory Theatre is now a Presbyterian church at 199-03 32nd Ave. Hidden below the stained-glass-like paintings on the front door, the theatre name is written in tile on the floor at the building’s entrance. According to Cinema Treasures.com, the theater once sat 1,274 people and hints of its past can be found on the back of the building where there is a faded “New Victory” sign and balcony fire escape. Two women in the Native New Yorker hair salon across the street said it became a bingo hall and flea market before it was a church. They said the theater was there for 30 years, and the Victory sign stayed up even longer.