Fox Kew Gardens

Having lived in neighboring Forest Hills all my life I never knew of this theate. Thanks for an intersting discovery.

Fantastic! I live on the block next to this site. I knew there had been golf courses around there but never a movie theater. It is technically the last block in Forest Hills but i guess they didn't want to have two theaters named "Forest Hills" so they chose Kew Gardens.

My apartment complex was built in 1939 and i have seen photos of the area at this time. I would love to dig up some pics of this.

If anyone ever finds photographs of the interior of the Fox Kew Gardens, please let us know. I suspect that the auditorium may have been "atmospheric." A newspaper report of the golf course said that there were stars and clouds on the ceiling, and I doubt that they were installed for the renovation. They were probably part of the original decor. If true, that would give Queens five atmospheric theatres instead of the believed four (Queensboro/Elmwood, Keith's Flushing, Loew's Valencia and Triboro).

Warren, belated thanks for your postings on this theater. I lived in Forest Hills for many years. As a kid, I always wondered about that building... my dad, Corona born-and-bred, had told me it had never opened. I guess the stock market crash erased memories of its short life!

I found a 1932 exterior picture of the already-derelict theater on Queenspix.com, FOR 118.

Here's a 1929 ad for the short-lived Kew Gardens Theatre and its more successful sibling, the Forest Hills. Later that same month, the Wall Street stock market "crashed" and sent the KG to its doom:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/127-2784_IMG.jpg

Here are two opening day ads. Sadly, less than a year separated the two events. The Kew Gardens probably had the shortest operating history of any cinema ever built in Queens:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/132-3259_IMG.jpg
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/132-3262_IMG.jpg

Shuttered and never to be re-opened:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/kewgdns.jpg

The Kew Gardens Theatre and its water tower can be seen at the center of this photo taken in 1936. Even though it was seven years after the theatre opened (and quickly closed), much of the surrounding area was still waiting to be developed. The elaborate stonework at the right of the photo is the Queens Boulevard underpass of the Interboro Parkway: www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/kew36.jpg

A Picture History of Kew Gardens, NY website gives the location of the Kew Gardens Theater as Queens Blvd & 78th Ave. I don't know if that will help to find an address or not.

If the Queens Boulevard and 78th Avenue location is correct, a large office building now occupies the site. The address range of the office building is 118-01 to 118-25 Queens Boulevard. That address range would be located on Queens Boulevard between 78th Avenue and 78th Crescent. As an example, if you insert the following address into Google maps, switch to satellite view and zoom in, you will see a large office building. You might even be able to figure out which of those addresses was the entrance to the theater.

11801 Queens Blvd
Queens, NY 11375

The Kew Gardens was apparently troubled from the start. A short news item on the front page of the May 31, 1928 issue of the Forest Hills-Kew Gardens Post says that the theatre, which had only recently completed construction, was "sold at auction last week in pursuance to an order of the Queens Supreme Court. The sale was conducted by Alwin A. Haack of Jamaica on the steps of the Queens County Court House, and the amount paid was $153,000. David Steinberg of Manhattan was the purchaser and will take over all mortgage liens and other outstanding encumbrances." I believe that Steinberg represented the S&S Circuit, which would soon be taken over by Fox Theatres. It wasn't until September, 1929, that the theatre finally opened, as the Fox Kew Gardens.

The Kew Gardens Theatre and its rooftop water tank can be seen in the center background in this photo of an eastbound traffic jam on Queens Boulevard in the summer of 1935. In those days, the boulevard had only three lanes in each direction. The wide dividing space between them would eventually be converted into more lanes. The Skouras circuit, which now owned the shuttered theatre, derived some income from adjoining stores and from billboards on the exterior walls of the building:www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/kewg035.jpg

After being demolished, the theatre was replaced by the Pickman Building, which uses the current address of 118-21 Queens Boulevard. Couldn't that also be used for the address of the theatre, instead of the unspecific "Queens Boulevard near Union Turnpike," which doesn't even identify which side of QB?

The long-closed theatre, as well as adjacent stores, ended up the property of the NYC Board of Transportation, which owned the underlying ground as part of the Kew Gardens/Union Turnpike subway station. On June 30th, 1947, the entire Queens Boulevard blockfront, along with 21 other Board of Transportation properties in the boroughs, was put up for sale in a public auction at the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan. I don't know if the Kew Gardens site sold that day or not, but at least another decade passed before demolition and re-development started.

Not sure if this is the same photo Warren posted in 2006, but here's a 1936 photo of Queens Boulevard at Union Turnpike/Interboro Parkway, with the Fox Kew Gardens on the right.

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc241/MRLINDEL/UNTPKEQB1930S.jpg

Due to changes in the alert system, I wasn't aware of the post of 3/25/09 until just now, when I went to the listing to make a new addition of my own. Here's a new link to the photo that I displayed and described on 11/29/07, which is different from the one linked by "mp775" on 3/25/09: http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/kewg035.jpg

In November, 1945, the Kew Gardens Theatre made front-page news in the Queens newspapers when a home owners association headed by Isadore Federbush proposed that the building be converted into a bus terminal to end traffic jams on Queens Boulevard during commuter rush hours. Eight bus lines dropped passengers at that point to transfer to the Kew Gardens subway station. Federbush claimed that the theatre had been closed for 13 years and seemed unlikely to ever be reopened. This proposal might explain how the theatre ended up under the ownership of the NYC Board of Transportation, which instead auctioned it off in 1947 (see my post above of 6/11/08).

Thanks to mp775 and to Warren for the fabulous photos. Having lived in Kew Gardens for many years before moving to Manhattan, I still have great fondness for this neighborhood. It is astounding for me to see the area so undeveloped! It makes you think "What were they thinking" when they built this theater in the middle of nowhere. But I guess the answer is that everyone expected the good times of the roaring 20's were going to go on forever and that the area would quickly develop.

Here is a shot of the theater from the other side of the Boulevard circa 1935. Warren made the ID of the building from NYPL collection image which I located.


http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=423339&imageID=733519F&total=1184&num=600&word=Transportation&s=1¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&imgs=20&pos=605&e=w