Flatbush Pavilion

saps on February 1, 2012 at 8:22 pm

After it switched back from porn, it played mainstream for many, many years.

Bway on April 16, 2009 at 5:09 pm

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

View link

CinemaDude on December 19, 2007 at 1:25 pm

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.

kencmcintyre on December 3, 2007 at 6:58 pm

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

lostmemory on July 6, 2007 at 7:36 pm

Here is a recent photo of the marquee.

Ed Solero on August 17, 2006 at 7:44 am

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.

Ed Solero on August 17, 2006 at 7:38 am

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.

KenRoe on August 17, 2006 at 5:59 am

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… /theaters/1407/

lostmemory on August 17, 2006 at 5:06 am

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

Bway on August 17, 2006 at 4:14 am

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

lostmemory on August 7, 2006 at 4:28 am

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.”

KenRoe on July 6, 2006 at 5:30 am

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/