Five Towns Theatre
253-01 Rockaway Boulevard,
Rosedale,
NY
11422
253-01 Rockaway Boulevard,
Rosedale,
NY
11422
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Built as part of the Five Towns Shopping Center, this Century house started first run but spent most of it’s life as a discount house. Like some of the other Century bargain houses, the price was always the last two digits of the year.
Contributed by
robertr
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Recent comments (view all 26 comments)
I’ve been using local.live.com a lot to try and identify and pinpoint locations for some of the theaters I used to frequent as a youth. The Five Towns Theater is particularly difficult to pin down because it was buried so inconspicuously within the shopping mall that even from this aerial shot you can’t make out a possible outline for the auditorium.
The one possibility is the sort of square slightly raised structure that sits towards the back behind the Modell’s (which is immediately to the left of the large Big K store that used to be the TSS – and Mays prior to that – anchor). Still, that structure seems pretty far back from the entrance… I don’t recall the lobby/foyer being so deep and long to get to the auditorium way back there.
Anyone have a clearer memory than I do?
Century (today its part of AMC.Ruined this house by turning it into a discount house.
I remember seeing The Sword and the Sorcerer there in 1982. They had a trailer for Cannibals in the Streets, and I was dying to go and see that. My memory is that the Cannibals film was set to play, was listed and all but the theater had already closed. I also saw Clash of the Titans there. I believe you had to enter the mall in order to enter the theater.
The Five Towns roadshow run of “Fiddler On The Roof” began on June 21, 1972, the same date on which UA also opened it in Paramus, Upper Montclair and Woodbury. The original NYC run, at the Rivoli, opened seven months earlier. This, to my knowledge, was the only time a film had five simultaneous NYC area runs of the same film as a hard ticket roadshow attraction.
Why? Was Five Towns not equipped for magnetic playback?
The Five Towns was located in the Pathmark/Pergament (now K-Mart) shopping center on Rockaway Boulevard near Brookville Blvd (aka Snake Road).
Some of you may be confusing it with The Lawrence, which was located less than a mile east in a small triangular shopping plaza (~3 stores) on Rockaway Turnpike just east of TSS (now Costco) and west of Falcaro’s. IIRC it was a twin, and is now a kosher market.
In high school in the 1970’s I lived in Rosedale and frequented both.
Chris
I recall this shopping center being anchored by a TSS when I used to go to the Five Towns. Also seem to remember a Garden World type of nursery over in the far right part of the mall. And to answer formerprojectionist’s post from December 12, 2009, the theater had a direct entrance from the outside. In fact, all the stores in this strip had individual entrances… there was no indoor mall aspect to this shopping center at all.
The Five Towns was a single screener. The RKO Twin was down the road heading east on Rockaway Turnpike and on the right side where Peninsula Blvd intersects.
Anyway, I also see that the address has been updated to identify the town as Rosedale, but I wonder if that’s correct. This was always listed as being in Woodmere in the newspaper ads and under Nassau County in the ads and movie clock listings. Rosedale is in Queens.
I concur with Ed on this. But, there may have been a post office change which resulted in this “correction”. Due to a postal reallignment the Bellerose which was in Bellerose since it was built in 1927 is now in Floral Park.
Many stores have come and gone in that location. TSS was indeed there, before moving further east on Rockaway Blvd., where Costco is now. IIRC before that it was Mays department store. As a small child I remember shopping at a supermarket there, before it was Pathmark. Hills, maybe?
I think the confusion is that there is a small and somewhat ramshackle residential area directly across Rockaway Turnpike that runs several square blocks. I’ve heard it called “Meadowmere Park” and I believe a portion of it is included within a weird little hook in the Queens County borderline that is serviced by the Rosedale Post Office. The Five Towns Shopping Center is actually in the village of North Woodmere, which I do not believe is incorporated. Even still, the center is in a sort of isolated no-man’s land, since the rest of North Woodmere is on the other side of the Golf Course that sits across some backwater behind the shopping center. Definitely an odd little corner of Nassau County.
To this day there’s still terrible flooding on the road that runs past (Rockaway Blvd.), so it must be in Rosedale… ;)