Loew's Oriental Theatre
1832 86th Street,
Brooklyn,
NY
11214
1832 86th Street,
Brooklyn,
NY
11214
26 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 75 of 259 comments found
Thanks Vinny Bklyn for the image , I got chills when I saw it.
I loved the loews, to me it was so cozy, you know the balconies, marble staircases, water fountains in the marble walls, it was an awesome theater. I saw Star Wars, Grease, The Warriors, and countless other movies there. To me the Loews is still there because its massive frame still exists. The only thing that stunk was the sticky floors, but now I wish I had those sticky floors back.
No, it’s a gvmt. computer system. Super security, Big Bush is watching, might be Al Qaida, etc., yadda yadda.
Hey Vinny Bklyn, I got that image of Loew’s Oriental, printed it, showed it to my dad. He enjoyed it. Thanks again !
Pkoch, your computer won’t let you access photobucket?
Hey PKoch, If you would like me to email the pic to you, get in touch with me at my Email. Its
Thanks for posting the link, VinnyBrooklyn. Unfortunately, it’s blocked at my PC. My headache, not yours.
Thanks, Bloop, for your reminiscence.
ooops!, heres the link to the pic again:
View link
The link didn’t work.
Here’s a nice front view pic I took in either the summer of ‘97 or '98:
<img src=“http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a253/Brooklyn00/LoewsOriental2.jpg” alt=“Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket”>
My grandparents lived off of 86th street (around the corner from the Benson). My grandfather only took us to the Oriental once in 1972. We saw a peculiar kids adventure movie called “Flight of the Doves”. It was a British movie about orphans finding there real parents, and a menacing uncle with a hawk tattooed on his hand was after them. The theater seemed gigantic to me! I love reading all these posts/stories/folk lore. Really haunting and sad… P.S. the above poster who was there when the seats were being tossed in a dumpster—did you take one??????? I would have!
This is a recent photo of Marshall’s, formerly the Loew’s Oriental Theater.
While parking would be necessary for a store such as Marshalls, the difference between a theater and a store is that while with a store you have lots of people coming through the doors over the course of let’s say a day, you don’t have them all coming at the same time, and all parking at the same time as you would with a theater.
Yeah John, remember “The Godfather” at the Oriental very well. Went on a Sunday night in May of 1972 with my friend Mike McG-don`t want to reveal his last name, and his brother Sean.Since they are Irish, I had to tell them what all those Italian expressions ment! The theater was so packed that we had to sit in the first row, center stage.A great night at the movies.
The Oriental was a terrific theater. I grew up six blocks from it and saw many films there. Hercules with Steve Reeves,Visit To A Small Planet, Tarzan The Magnificant, Thief of Bagdad, Wakiest Ship In The Army, Cinderfella, The Cardinal, The Commancheros,Exodus, Guns of Navarone, Von Ryan’s Express,King of Kings, Hey Let’s Twist, Mad Dog Cole, Morgan The Pirate, GI Blues,Blue Hawaii, Of Human Bondage (Kim Novak verison), Amorous Adventures fo Moll Flanders, Five Easy Pieces, In Like Flint, The Train, Stagecoach (1966), Reds and many others. Last fil m I saw there was Leagl Eagelsin 1986.
I remember well when the The Godfather started playing there. The crowds were around the block! The entire neighborhood went. Even my parents who had not been to a movie theater in years.
The theatre, if booked right and the place was cookin', on a Friday or Saturday night would draw far more customers at any given time than Marshalls can, particularly now that there few theatres left in Brooklyn – hence, the parking issue. There’s a Marshalls over here by me and you could throw a bomb in there and not bother anybody…. Besides, Sony was not interested in the theatres – they were just part of the the baggage they got when they took over Columbia Pictures. Once they discovered they owned them they decided to use them as a petri dish for their experiments with cinema audio equipment and development of SDDS.
Curiously, “a lack of available parking” deterred Sony from converting the theatre into a multiplex but didn’t seem to bother Marshall’s. Where do its customers park, or do they all come there on roller skates or public transportation?
Incredible-isn`t it. Parking was never an issue for the almost 70 years the Oriental was open for. They just gave up on it, gutted it and opened a Marshalls.I quess the future of Bensonhurst will be more stores and many, many more of those so-called “Cookie Cutter” houses that are spreading like wild mushrooms throughout the neighborhood on almost every vacant lot there is. Call it “borough improvement” if you like. I call it a blight-and an eyesore that is even worse than the closed Oriental theater and the surrounding stores that were near it.The nearest theaters that are still open are the UA Sheepshead and the Alpine. The less said about these, the better.
Yes Mr Feuer, Marshall’s really enhanced the district. Real upscale.
NY Times May 28, 1995
“Former Brooklyn Movie Palace Is Sold; For 3 Screens, The End
Shopping in a big-box store is a popular entertainment of the 90’s. So perhaps it’s fitting that the purchasers of the Oriental Theater, which was built in 1927 as a 2,700-seat movie palace on 86th Street between Bay 19th and Bay 20th Avenues in Brooklyn, hope to lure such a tenant into the 35,000-square-foot space on Bensonhurst’s main shopping street.
Sony, which sold the theater and an adjoining 10-store blockfront for $1.6 million, declined to identify the purchaser.
But Barry Rosner of Williams Real Estate, which represented Sony in the all-cash sale, said that the buyer was a group of foreign investors and that big-box retail was their goal. The property needs “substantial reinvestment,” Mr. Rosner said.
The empty theater, converted to a triplex several years ago, could not compete with a nearby multiplex and closed in February. The 10 stores on 86th Street have been vacant for some years, said Howard Feuer, district manager of Community Board 11. “It was almost an eyesore,” he said.
Mr. Feuer said that Sony had considered converting the theater into a multiplex but dropped the idea because of a lack of available parking. “I have mixed emotions about the sale, because it’s the end of an era,” he said. “But if a good-quality tenant comes in, it could enhance the district”.
Thank you, Patrick, for addressing the issue ! You see, boys, we’re not alone ! DOWN, Warren !!! SIT !!! QUIET !!!
Good points, Theaterat and Bway, and so, so apropos to Election Day !
As we approach Veterans Day, let’s stop running both the “bad movie”, as Bway called it, and end the war within Cinema Treasures.
I agree it’s time for this movie engagement to end, its the same movie in so many theaters…. it’s been playing in so many theaters on this site already….pretty impressive even for theater that have been closed to showing movies….
Time to take those letters off the marquee and move on, and get back to what we are all here for (and it’s not this bad “movie”).
Friends, Romans, countrymen, etc,etc, etc, Lets stop the personal attacks and senseless accusations. This is a website devoted to theaters and infomation on them be it past or present.After all, we did have enough of that during the election campaign with all those cheap and negative ads from the politicos from BOTH parties! Lets not carry that over to Cinema Treasures!
Warren, it’s not your job to worry about whether an image has copyright issues. Leave that to the people who run this website.
As you can see, attacking the contribution of another user is pretty counter-productive. And, personally, I’m pretty tired of dealing with the same argument, over and over, on multiple theater pages.
Your contributions are welcome. But, if you can’t get along with other users on this site, or at least stop baiting people with negative comments, we may be forced to suspend your posting privileges for a while.
From Warren: <<If “Mark W” needs to contact me, my private e-mail address is displayed (and always has been) at my membership page. There is no need for him to post complaints to the webmaster, if he really has.>>
If Warren had only followed his own advice more often, think of all the space we might have saved on these pages not having to waste bandwidth on the bilge about the bilge! G whiz!