Flatbush Pavilion

was built by silent film funnyman John Bunny, who also built the now-closed Nova. Throughout its history, it was an indoor mini-golf course, a XXX house called the Plaza and then it was revived as a first-run house called the Plaza and then the Plaza twin before being sold to the owner of the Pavillion Theater. To my knowledge it is the oldest operating movie theater in NYC.

According to a story in Newsday, the Flatbush Pavilion closed down on May 22nd, 2004. Officials of Screen Arts Corporation, which operated the theatre, declined to comment on its future. It first opened in 1912 as the Bunny Theatre.

I was suprised to hear that this theater closed and that Screen Arts gave up on it after only a few years.

also, this theater was never a triplex, but a twin that used the third line on the marquee whenever they were playing two films on one screen.

Was at the pavillion park slope with the family yeasterday. While there I spoke with the manager who told me that the Flastbush pavillion closed due to lack of patronage. The theater did okay on weekends but during the week it was a ghost town. It just couldn't keep up the rent and taxes. So don't expect the oldest operating movie theater in NYC to come back to life soon, if at all.

The marquee still advertises "Van Helsing" and "Man on Fire" so it must have been a quick decision to shutter it. With its closing Flatbush Avenue which once had nearly 20 theater buildings from end to end, no has only the Kings Plaza Sixplex.

Got inside this theater today and everything has been removed. All the seats. The projection and the sound equipment. The ticket machine. The screens remained intact and the concession stand--albeit empty--stood akimbo to its usual postion. Oddly the lights in the screening rooms were still on.

I was there on the last day of business, May 23 and saw Van Helsing. The place was in pretty much good shape, the seats fairly new, the carpets clean, the staff was pleasent, the sound and pictue quality great. It's a shame this theatre had to close, now all we have is the Park Slope Pavillion (formerly the Sanders).

Here's a link to a brief piece running in today's NY Times, recounting the recent closing of the Flatbush Pavilion -

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/nyregion/thecity/27movi.html

Between the Marboro UA/Regal Theater and now the Flatbush Pavillion theater it is just terrible that old Screen Gems like these theaters are going out of operation. I remember when the Elgin theater on 8th Avenue in Manhattan became the Performing Arts Space for the Joyce Theater Company. I went to the Elgin when I was a teenager and loved to watch all the Janus movies and 16mm and 35mm classic art pictures from Europe. The Pavillion should be re-opened somehow and it's audience re-vified.....maybe by showing the "Night of the Living Dead" or a horror "Clone" movie....which has yet to appear on the horizon.

Does anybody a script for the first and foremost "Clone" Horror Movie?

Yehudah Rubenstein
yrubenstein2004@yahoo.com

Hello all...

I and my company would be very interested in this theater. Does anyone have contact information on the previous owners? We are interested in opening an Art House/digital distribution house.

Please contact me
Ralph Scott
indie_house2003@yahoo.com

thanks in advance

Any updates on this theatre?

Still closed, with Man on Fire and Van Helsing still on the marquee.

And this listing should probably go back to Plaza, as it seems that was its name for most of its life.

A current real estate report lists this address as a two story store/office building built in 1913. I did a search from 312 to 350 Flatbush Ave and not one building is listed as a movie theater.

314 Flatbush Avenue, Crown Heights, New York 11238

Block & Lot #: 01057 - 0014
Building Class: Store Building, Two-Story Or Store/Office (K2)
School District: 13 map/schools
City Council District: 33
Police Precinct: 78 (Crime Statistics)
Political Contributions: search
BUILDING CHARACTERISTICS
Zoning R7A
Building Size (F x D): 131.25ft x 51.58ft
Lot Size (F x D): 131.25ft x 167.25ft
Building Height: -
Total Gross Area of Building:
Year Built: 1913
Historic District?: No
Corner Lot?: No
Has Garage?: No
Number of Floors: 2
# Units: 0
FAR as built: 1.50
Allowable FAR: 4.00

I talked to an employee of the health club next door. She told me they bought the theater and are going to build a swimming pool in the space:
http://www.dailyheights.com/archives/2005/03/van_helsings_42.html

2005 is another bad year for classic theatres closing. It's very sad.

The ALSO KNOWN line at top should also read "THE BUNNY"

Was it attractive?

The Film Daily Yearbook, 1930 gives a seating capacity of the Bunny Theatre as 450 and lists it as 'closed'. By the 1941 edition it still has the same seating capacity, but has been re-named Plaza Theatre.

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/291880p-249908c.html

They're converting it into a pool!!!

A link to some history and photos of the Flatbush Pavillion,Plaza/Bunny.
http://www.bijou-dream.com/

Is the marquis still up?

yes.

Thanx dailyheights

A photo of the marquee can be seen here:
http://www.dailyheights.com/images/PassionOfTheDead.JPG

Some tricksters/PR people for a new restaurant rearranged the letters on the marquee to read "revel in fish in non glaring semen from Havana." Passed it by a few days ago; made me want to cry, and reminded me of the last days of the old Times Square, when titles of movies were rearranged into "poetry."

http://www.gawker.com/news/brooklyn/immature-english-majors-continue-to-amuse-themselves-128733.php

http://www.picpatrol.com/category.php?category=18

Now the word is the store will be an American Apparel. Wonderful.

http://www.picpatrol.com/entry.php?category=18&entry_id=1163&page=0

A 2005 marquee photo of the Flatbush Pavilion can be seen here.

This website has a page of photos of the Flatbush Pavilion. Click each thumbnail to expand it.

This theater was also advertised as the Plaza Twin Cinema. Shouldn't that be another aka name? This website has it listed as Plaza Twin Cinema. Also, there was a Kung Fu Fest in November of 2000 at the Plaza Twin Cinema which can be seen here.

Current May 2006 photographs I took of the Flatbush Pavilion (including one of the former auditorium):
http://flickr.com/photos.kencta/183326058/
http://flickr.com/photos/kencta/183328319/
http://flickr.com/photos/kencta/183328664/
http://flickr.com/photos/kencta/183329070/
http://flickr.com/photos/kencta/183329495/

The ex-theatre was prominently mentioned in the August 6th, 2006 issue of The New York Times, in an article by Paul Berger entitled "On a Mom-and-Pop Block, the Big Boys Arrive" on page 1 of The City section. It can probably be read at the NYT website. Berger describes how this site and a nearby Crunch Gym have brightened up the neighborhood, especially at night with their glaring lighting displays.

Here is the online version of the article mentioned in the above comment. In case the link should expire, the following is the text from the article:

Street Level | North Flatbush Avenue
On a Mom-and-Pop Block, the Big Boys Arrive
By PAUL BERGER
Published: August 6, 2006

"FOR 40 years, people made the pilgrimage from across the city to Christie’s Jamaican Patties, on the northwest corner of Sterling Place and Flatbush Avenue, for savory pastries stuffed with spicy beef and chicken. A line of customers often trailed out the door of the shabby-looking shop, which sat on a cheese-shaped wedge on the end of the block.

Still, when an outcry arose among patrons after the owner, Paul Haye, announced that he had lost his lease, he was surprised.

“I didn’t know so many people cared about me,” Mr. Haye said in a soft Jamaican lilt.

The customers, it turns out, will not go hungry. Mr. Haye now has a bright new shop one block south and across the street from his old location. But the episode was not easy. Wearing an off-white apron and a small white baker’s hat, Mr. Haye recounted the story of how his family business was uprooted from the block and said, “It has been extremely stressful.”

Flatbush Avenue between Park Place and Sterling Place stands out among the genteel, tree-lined streets of Park Slope and Prospect Heights, which it divides. The avenue is a four-lane melee of screeching brakes, car horns and exhaust fumes. The chipped and gum-pocked sidewalk is often strewn with litter. And many of the drab storefronts are sorely in need of a face-lift.

But early this year, the streetscape on the Park Slope side of the block began to change.

First, the company that owns Park Slope Sports Club, which takes up the second floor of a building that spans much of the length of the block between Park Place and Sterling Place, bought the national gym chain Crunch Fitness. Soon, a canary yellow canopy for Crunch was installed.

Next, the building housing the Flatbush Pavilion movie theater, which had sat forlorn since closing in May 2004, reopened this spring as a spacious store for American Apparel, a Los Angeles-based maker of trendy T-shirts.

By day, the contrast between the newcomers and the old-timers is stark. Crunch’s neighbors include a worn-looking pizzeria, a cramped deli that sells lottery tickets and a no-frills nail salon.

But by night the contrast is literally glaring. Dozens of bulbs in an array of brilliant colors radiate from American Apparel, while the Crunch awning lends a crisp generic air to the scruffy mom-and-pop block.

Next to the vacant former home of Christie’s Jamaican Patties is a 99-cent store, Plaza Discount Deals. Nowadays, handwritten signs advertise a “blow-out sale,” with 30 to 60 percent off the prices of scrubbing brushes, underwear and hangers. A co-owner, Abdoul Jaiteh, explained that the store had not been invited to renew its lease in February.

His store and Mr. Haye’s old shop lie on the ground floor of the two-story building occupied by Crunch, and both men suspect that the chain plans to expand the gym into vacated spaces. Marc Tascher, chairman and chief executive of Crunch Fitness, said that he would like to expand the club but that no deal with the landlord had been completed. Sol Goldman Investments, landlord for the building block, did not return at least 10 calls for comment over several weeks.

•On the opposite side of Flatbush Avenue is the tiny Prospect Perk cafe, its front door adorned with posters opposing both the war and the proposed Nets arena complex near Downtown Brooklyn. The storefront is painted a soft green, with wooden benches that are often crowded with young parents and strollers.

Sitting on a bench the other day, the cafe’s owner, Mary Cohen, said that Flatbush Avenue was “a hellhole” 30 years ago with a “bunch of bars up and down the street servicing some questionable types.”

Ms. Cohen, 61, said that mom-and-pop stores had made the block a more inviting place, but that she believed it was only a matter of time before they were replaced by boutiques and chain stores. Sharing that sentiment is her son, Josh Cohen, who was the co-owner of the popular barbecue joint Biscuit a few doors down, which closed last year after the owners fell out with their landlord.

Meanwhile, Mr. Haye, who spent $40,000 to renovate his current premises, sounds philosophical. “Obviously, the neighborhood will survive,” he said. “It will just be a less interesting place.”

I found this photo on nycsubway.org, but can't read the name of the theater. It says it's Flatbush Ave....however, I am not sure what theater it is, so I figured I'd start my search here....
Here's a photo of some theater on Flatbush Ave, when they were about to tear the old Fulton Elevated down....
Is this the Flatbush Pavilion?

http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?52097

And while we're at it, here's a phot of after they took the Fulton St Elevated down at Franklin and Fulton....is that a theater on the right?

http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?52499

Bway, the first photo is captioned "Rockwell Place". Rockwell is a short street that runs farther up Flatbush Ave near Lafayette and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The shot is definitely not of BAM, but must be one of the old downtown Brooklyn theaters and not the Flatbush Pavillion (which is further to the South near 7th Avenue). With that Ionian facde, it should be fairly easy to identify on this site. It's definitely not the Strand or Majestic (which were not on Flatbush Ave). Maybe the Albee? Or the Fox?

I believe that the theater on Rockwell Place was called the Orpheum Theater.

I don't think it's the Orpheum, because in the photo on the Orpheum, it doesn't seem to have the large Doric columns that the photo with the el has.
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/1924/

The photograph showing a theatre on Rockwell Place shows the Strand Theater, located at 647 Fulton Street and Rockwell Place. It's most interesting feature, still to be seen today is the Romanesque exterior facade. See... http://cinematreasures.org/theater/1407/

My guess was pretty good considering that I was doing it from memory only. That Ginkgo Biloba stuff really works. Actually, my first choice was the Strand but my bilge buddy Ed wrote that it couldn't be the Strand so I chose Orpheum instead. I think he wrote that on purpose just to confuse me. LOL You should post that photo link in the Strand theater listing Bway.

I think Ken and Lost (well, his first instinct anyway) are correct. The Ionic columns belong to the old Strand. But then, the subway site has mis-captioned the photo by locating it on Flatbush Avenue. The Strand is OFF Flatbush at the corner of Rockwell Place and Fulton Ave. Here's one of Lost Memory's favorite images of mine (clipped from the local.live site and highlighted for the mentally challenged - heh heh):

Aerial View of Strand

The angle of Rockwell Place to the theater's right matches up in both images, and you can make out a slight angle to the theater facade in the subway photo that matches up with the aerial view.

(Slipping on my architectural nerd beanie now...) Ahem! Bway - a Doric order column has no capital feature. The columns on the Strand evidence the opposed volutes (the scroll-like feature) at their capitals that define the Ionic order. Here endeth the lesson.

My error (again!) Rockwell Place angles in to Fulton to the theater's LEFT not the right.

Of course, now that we know the theater, if you look above the building across the street from the Strand, you can make out the V-shaped roof-top sign for the Brooklyn Paramount looming a couple of blocks away on the corner of DeKalb and Flatbush Aves. That should have been a dead giveaway.

The marquee is still up and it's still an American Apparel clothing shop (socially conscious, American and union made, sweatshop free).

The little pics above the marquee on the sides are no longer there but the "1, 2, 3" still is with messages on the side.

Here is a recent photo of the marquee.

A color photo of the marquee being used by American Apparel can be found on the front page of today's NY Daily News. The site happens to be adjacent to a subway station that was closed by this week's storm flooding.

Here is another photo of the marquee:
http://tinyurl.com/3275jh

Yawn.

The closeing of this dive was a mercy killing. The place was a horrid place to see a film. The lobby was dark and dank; the auditoria were even more forboding. The film presentation was beyond bad. In a day and age of 6 channel digital sound, this place was still sporting a mono system in both rooms.

It was a scouting exhibition just to find a seat that wasn't broken, and even those that were in decent shape were very uncomfortable.
The screens were placed much too high making the viewing angle very hard on the neck muscles. Because it was twined, the rooms were long and narrow, giving you the feeling that you were in a tunnel. This shape was detrimental to speech intelligibility, which sank to near zero; it was a good thing they ran lots of foreign films so you could read the dialogue.

This abomination is an example of just how terrible a movie theatre can be when it is tortured into more than one screen, even though it was designed as a single -- a sorry practice in the rush to multiplex. It is no wonder it drove patrons away.

Sadly, there are many, many theatres that should have been saved; this is not one of them.

B&W photo of the theatre when it was the Plaza.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bettyblade/225621367/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Here's a photo when it was Cinema Plaza in 1980:

http://americanclassicimages.com/Default.aspx?tabid=141&txtSearch=CATAdvancedSearch1%2c32%2c3%2c-1&catpageindex=6&catpagesize=50&ProductID=30620