Janice Theatre
Main Street,
Flushing,
NY
Main Street,
Flushing,
NY
1 person
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The Janice was reportedly the first theatre built in Flushing, and occupied the ground site of an old mansion known as Fountain House. It opened on November 24, 1914, and closed early in the sound era. Around 1925, the Janice was “modernized”, with the installation of a new screen, projection equipment, marquee, and a $15,000 Wurlitzer organ. The latter was played by Charles Rogers, who’d previously been organist at the Strand Theatre in NYC.
More information about the Janice Theatre’s history, including a contemporary address of the site, is needed. I believe that it was on the east side of Main Street, one block or possibly two south of Northern Boulevard.
Contributed by
Warren G. Harris
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Recent comments (view all 7 comments)
This 1920 image shows the original marquee. Newspapers of the time gave an address for the Janice Theatre of Main Street & Broadway. However, in 2005, there is no Broadway in dowtown Flushing, so I don’t know the current name of that street. But there are still many old buildings on this part of Main Street. The next time that I visit Flushing, I’ll take this photo with me and see if portions of the Janice or surrounding buildings might still exist:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/janice.jpg
It turns out that Broadway was the previous name of Northern Boulevard as it passed through downtown Flushing. So that now makes it easy to place the Janice on the east side of Main Street and just south of the corner with Broadway (now Northern Boulevard). I believe that there was a store, or maybe two, at the corner, and then the entrance to the Janice.
If still standing, the Janice would probably have the address of 36-09 Main Street. I visited the site yesterday, and found a modern office building which uses the address of 36-09 for all the stores at street level. The entrance to the Janice was probably just next to the current corner store known as Kennedy Fried Chicken:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/janice1.jpg
Hi,
The Janice Theater stood where “Goulds Records” was on the eastside of Main St. very near the corner of Nthrn Blvd. If you have a photo or scan of the eastside of Main St. looking Nth and that shows Gould’s Records, look at the tops of the bldgs, they are the same as the ones in the Janice Theater photo. Interesting stuff. I recently acquired two tickets to the theater on Ebay.
Vic Annaloro Flushing NY
The Wurlitzer theater organ was an opus 859 style 135 installed on 8/6/1925.
The Janice can be seen in this photograph:
http://tinyurl.com/ykkwnmo
Can’t fix the google map location, since we don’t have an address, but I was able to correct the street view to an approximate location just south of Northern Blvd on the east side of Main Street. This is based on Warren’s comment from 2005 that the former theater site is now part of the storefronts at the base of the modern office building that occupies that corner. This also reconciles with the vintage photo linked by kencmcintyre, which claims to have been taken from the Northern Blvd (then known as Broadway) looking south along Main Street.