Cinema Kings Highway

If anyone has any stories about going to/ working at this threatre in its adult days, I would love to hear them. I am chronicling the histories of adult theatres in the US. Please contact me at Thanks!

Excerpt from Village Voice article:

Speaking of “social” moviegoing—in an abandoned-looking building next to the Kosher Hut in Gravesend lurks Brooklyn’s last living porno theater, the Kings Highway Cinema (711 Kings Highway, Brooklyn). Marquees and poster displays blacked out, the only clue to the theater’s ongoing operation is a computer printout in the window that reads “Box Office Inside.”

Paying $12 in a small lobby decorated with decoy posters of art house titles, the curious pass through an ominous turnstile and into history. Thanks to the 1995 zoning law that requires purveyors of XXX to devote 60 percent of their floor space to nonpornographic material, the two larger theaters, both empty and reeking like humidors, were playing a biopic of French gangster Jacques Mesrine and a Two and a Half Men.

The big houses are flanked by two theaters of some 15 seats each, screening, respectively, gay and straight hardcore. These are linked by a back passageway that’s a hive of private booths, an intermediary zone suggesting a fluid sexuality—though given the age of most of the patronage, sex might be purely theoretical.

The most off-putting element here: the concession area, which consists of hot-water carafes, Styrofoam cups, and a sign reading “Ask Cashier for Hot Chocolate Package.” Before its Deco interior was gutted by a fire in the 1960s, the Kings Highway was—as the Jewel Theatre—one of Brooklyn’s first art houses, frequented by a young Woody Allen.

Here’s a 1980s tax photo of the exterior: lunaimaging

I don’t know (or remember) how to hyperlink.

saps, thanks for that link. OMG, what an Art Deco jewel (no pun intended)!

I saw some beautiful pictures of the theatre on www.cinematour.com The place was a beautiful Art Deco jewel. What a shame.

Thanks for the info, saps. I enjoyed in the documentary how they revisited the theatres of Woody’s youth.

A longtime Brooklyn resident, I was never inside, so I’ve learned something I didn’t know about the interior space of the Cinema. All I know about the theater is by reputation, through friends. I won’t belabor the point, but the payphone in the theater was heavily used, as were the payphones on Kings Highway near the famous notorious municipal parking lot at East 13th Street, several blocks to the east of this theater. In my day, in the 70s and 80s, this strip of Kings Highway was a famous cruising area, which I can testify to personally.

Originally known as the Jewel, this cinema has always been considered one of the masterworks of architect Ben Schlanger. I don’t think the listing should be removed, though comments relating to intimate sexual matters should be discouraged.

Tinsel, this “theater” has long been a seedy dump, with no histoirical value whatsoever, so why not delete the listing for always, if people are using this site for hookups

can we meet at your place.jeff leave your email.

HEY JEFF HAVE YOU BEEN AT THE FAIR LATELY LOOKING SEXY? GET BACK TO ME OK.