Loew's Bay Terrace
213-29 26th Avenue,
Bayside,
NY
11360
213-29 26th Avenue,
Bayside,
NY
11360
6 people
favorited this theater
Located in the Bayside section of Queens. In the mid-1990’s, Loew’s built a new multiplex in the same shopping center and gave it the same name as the former house. This was a free standing house built in the early-1960’s. It was twinned in the 1970’s down the middle, and the two auditoriums were still spacious with balconies.
Contributed by
RobertR
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Recent comments (view all 45 comments)
Queens is not a city, town, village, or hamlet. I don’t understand how it got into the City Search engine, unless by accident. The computer apparently registers any names that appear just before the state. I also don’t understand why there is such an urgent need to get all Queens theatres displayed together. You can’t do that that for “Long Island” theatres, either collectively or for Nassau and Suffolk Counties. A theatre’s location always comes up in the introductory remarks or in the postings that follow. Why is it such a calamity that some Queens theatres are not designated as such? I would be more concerned about why Loew’s Bay Terrace has only one listing, when there were obviously two different theatres and with two different addresses.
I can see that this thread is going to die a slow death. The search engine is limited to three types of searches. Theater name, city and zipcode. The zipcode search isn’t accurate because many people fail to include the zipcode when they submit their theaters. Maybe the next version of this software will have a better search engine. Until that time, adding Queens to the address isn’t hurting anything. It actually makes finding these theaters easier for people. This conversation was about NYC and Queens in particular. Nassau and Suffolk are counties. You asked in a comment above why Richmond wasn’t used instead of Staten Island. Richmond is a county, Staten Island is a borough. Kings is a county, Brooklyn is a borough. County names are not required by the postal service in NYC or on L.I.. You can continue to make a mountain out of a mole hill if that makes you happy, but I have other things to do.
Little by little the addresses are being updated and a search of Queens theaters now returns 82 theaters.
Here’s an aerial shot of the former Loew’s Bay Terrace from the Windows local.live site:
View looking South
If you use your mouse to “grab” the image (click and hold down the left mouse button), you can slide it over to the left and get a partial glimpse of the back of the newer multiplex that replaced this twin (and former single screener). You can also click on the directional arrow on that palette to the left to change the view of the structure. In the view to the south I provided above, you are looking at what was the lobby wall. I seem to recall the building was a light almost white color with the entrance on what would be the lower left corner of the structure in the image above. I’m almost positive the doors actually were on the side wall at the corner facing Bell Blvd which runs north and south to the left of the building. I also seem to recall the 1st story of the lobby wall having much more glass allowing daylight into the foyer. The theater ran to the south (you can see the building tapering towards the screen wall) and featured a balcony. When it was twinned, a wall was constructed right down the middle and some of the seats in the front orchestra were lost to allow proper orientation of the screens toward the audience. This resulted in a pair of 600 seat twins, each with its own balcony.
I’m working on gathering some information to post a listing for the newer Bay Terrace 6 (which I believe opened under the Sony Theaters banner), unless you’re working on that already Lost? Warren? If not, I’ll post what I can gather by tomorrow and trust you guys will fill in any gaps in my information.
The new Loews Bay Terrace 6 has been posted on CT. Meanwhile, I took some photos of the former original Loew’s Bay Terrace the other morning:
View of rear screen wall from 26th Ave near Bell
View from Bell Blvd towards former theater entrance
View from shopping center parking lot
Rear of current multiplex from taken from same spot
Current multiplex pylon sign
The facade of the building was originally white – the current brick face look was applied to the entire shopping center at the time the new multiplex was opened in 1993 to unify the mall’s appearance. I seem to recall that there was a 1960’s era sign on the upper facade that sort of stylishly spelled out “Loew’s Bay Terrace Theater” in pastel colored letters… I believe it was near the front corner of the building facing Bell Blvd. I think there was a long but shallow canopy marquee that ran along the front facade depicted in the 2nd and 3rd image above. I can’t remember if that pylon sign was used by the old theater or if it was constructed expressly for the new multiplex. It is possible it dates back to the original, since the theater’s marquee faced away from the busy intersection of Bell and 26th Ave and I don’t recall an auxillary marquee on the rear wall.
Back in Sept 2005, Warren posted that this theater opened on April 8, 1964 with the Albert Finney film “Tom Jones”, which would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture a few days later. Here’s an ad for the “New” Bay Terrace theater about 6 weeks into “Tom Jones” run:
Tom Jones – LI Star Journal 5/18/64
This really suprised me that in this 1966 ad for the wide run of “My Fair Lady” this theatre is advertised as a Fabian Theatre. I thought Loew’s built it, but I guess they aquired it later on.
View link
Re Fabian, please see Orlando Lopes' post above dated 1/23/04.
Thanks I missed that
I grew up in Great Neck, not too far away. The only movie I ever saw at this theater was STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME in 1986.