Century's Prospect Theatre

41-10 Main Street,
Flushing, NY 11355

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robboehm
robboehm on April 19, 2009 at 8:50 pm

Sometime after the Propect returned to the Century Circuit it was twinned. However, both auditoriums opened at different times. The
ads ready “Twins, one at a time.” And then, subsequently there was another divide and then … …The Oceana, Tuxedo and Sheepshead reverted to Century at the same time as the Prospect, also the Plaza in Queens, I believe.

meredithlee
meredithlee on April 18, 2009 at 10:59 am

Eureka! That’s it, thank you all so much! It’s so hard to tell from most of the photos but there was one photo in particular posted by Ken Roe that has the elevated train steps coming down to the street near the theater. Exactly the shot in the movie.

meredithlee
meredithlee on April 18, 2009 at 9:43 am

Thanks Fred. I don’t see a Prospect Theater listed for the Bronx on this site. Was there one near an elevated train there that’s not here? In one of the pictures of this Flushing theater it does say that the elevated LIRR was a block away – maybe it’s that staircase?

fred1
fred1 on April 18, 2009 at 6:22 am

The 7 train goes underground at Main St. .The theater you talking abot is in Brooklen or the bronx

meredithlee
meredithlee on April 18, 2009 at 1:45 am

Does anyone know if this Prospect Theater is the same one seen briefly (once at night, once in daylight) in the 1982 Italian slasher film NEW YORK RIPPER? By pausing the frame and looking at any pictures found here it doesn’t really look the same, but it definitely says PROSPECT on the marquee in the film and doesn’t look like the other PROSPECT in Brooklyn. Also, in the film it looks like there was a store across the street from the theater called LONDON HATS. And there’s a long, elevated train staircase at the end of the block – the 7 train?

William
William on March 4, 2009 at 11:41 am

From bobosan’s post on Dec. 13th. 2008, The movie playing at the Prospect was MGM’s “Wife vs. Secretary” (1936).

robboehm
robboehm on March 3, 2009 at 9:56 pm

Warren G Harris are you out there? In a much earlier posting you said Century orginially traded the Prospect for the Avalon and Manor in Brooklyn. The name Avalon was retained. What did the Manor become since none is listed as such?

robboehm
robboehm on March 3, 2009 at 9:52 pm

And then Loews tried to buy out the Century chain. The theatre chains are like banks with the buys, sells and name changes.

PeterKoch
PeterKoch on December 15, 2008 at 2:22 pm

Thanks, bobosan. Horrible how that Wendy’s nearby was shot up in the year 2000. I ate there quite frequently in 1999.

bobosan
bobosan on December 13, 2008 at 6:04 am

Here’s a 1936 photo of the Prospect that I found:

View link

mp775
mp775 on March 25, 2008 at 10:58 am

The link I posted on 9/25/07 no longer works; use this instead:

Side wall of the Prospect in 1971

Ed Solero
Ed Solero on September 25, 2007 at 10:27 pm

Here’s a shot of the Bliss sidewall to illustrate Warren’s point. Not exactly the same when viewed side by side, but they do share that motif of lighter colored brick accents along the wall. I want to say there is a somewhat similar motif on the sidewall of the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan, but I might be mistaken.

PKoch
PKoch on September 25, 2007 at 4:48 pm

The Wyckoff Theater, at the eastern corner of Wyckoff Avenue and Bleecker Street in …. Bushwick ? Wyckoff Heights ? Ridgewood ? … Brooklyn, postal zone 11237, became a Jehovah’s Witnesses hall, before I had a chance to know it as a movie theater. My oldest aunt remembers it as a movie theater, however.

PKoch
PKoch on September 25, 2007 at 3:28 pm

Yeah, saps, I’ll bet.

Mike (saps)
Mike (saps) on September 25, 2007 at 3:21 pm

I kinda liked ALL the nudity in that sexually-charged movie.

PKoch
PKoch on September 25, 2007 at 3:06 pm

Slightly skewed nude teenage girls on that still-huge screen ! Hubba hubba !

Mike (saps)
Mike (saps) on September 25, 2007 at 2:34 pm

It was in the right side of the divided autditorium, but still a pretty big screen, even though the seats faced slightly to the left!

PKoch
PKoch on September 25, 2007 at 2:31 pm

“Porky’s” at RKO Keith’s Flushing ? All those nude teenage girls on that huge screen ? Hubba hubba !

Mike (saps)
Mike (saps) on September 25, 2007 at 2:27 pm

I saw some movies here around 1980 when I lived in Flushing; it was already a triplex then, and I remember a summer matinee show wherein the theater was icy cold and nearly emnpty. I was sorry to see it demolished some time later.

I also saw the ad and read the comments about Porky’s, which I saw at the Keith’s — it previewed at Prospect but opened at Keith’s?

PKoch
PKoch on September 25, 2007 at 1:34 pm

Great picture, mp775. Thanks. It feels like I’ve got those early 1960’s GM Fishbowl buses in my DNA !

mp775
mp775 on September 25, 2007 at 1:30 pm

The side wall of the Prospect can be seen in this 1971 photo of a B58 bus on 41st Road.

ACooke108
ACooke108 on August 20, 2007 at 10:53 pm

I think I saw “Altered States” with William Hurt here in 1980.

PKoch
PKoch on January 24, 2007 at 11:26 am

Thanks, Warren. These details are helpful and interesting.

Ed Baxter
Ed Baxter on January 19, 2007 at 9:41 pm

I saw quite a few movies here. Superman (78), Tootsie, Ghostbusters, Police Academy, Sharon Stone’s god-aweful debut, a low budget horror film Deadly Blessing just to name a few. I loved this place. It was a far cry from the Keith’s, but a lot of good memories. I was working in Flushing in the late 90’s up until 2003 for Verizon. I worked on Main Street pretty often. Because the block the Prospect was on was so radically changed, I couldn’t place the exact location of where the theater used to stand. That’s how diffent the block accross the street from the Public Library had become. Everything on that block was converted into various Asian shops. One day I had a job on that block and when I went into the basement of the buisiness I was working in I found stacks of the old metal theater chairs from the Prospect. I wasn’t sure what they were there for. I had thought the building had been demolished so I would have figured all of that stuff would have been dumped. Not an exciting find, but I knew then I was in the former site of the theater. There wasn’t a single thing in the building that would have tipped me off that was where I was. Had I not seen the chairs, I never would have known. Talk about erasing the past. That is what Tommy Huang would have loved to have done to the Keiths. Bastard.
If anyone has any pictures of the theater from the 70s-80s, inside or out, please post them. As hard as it is to find pictures of the Keiths from this period, they seem almost non-existant for the Prospect. Where the hell were all of our cameras back then. God if we only knew then what we know now.
Warren thanks for the 1970 pic, that brought back a lot of memories of how the place looked.