Center Cinemas
42-17 Queens Boulevard,
Sunnyside,
NY
11104
42-17 Queens Boulevard,
Sunnyside,
NY
11104
3 people
favorited this theater
Small neighborhood house has withstood the test of time. Originally twinned down the middle in the 1980’s. Then one of the sides was cut in half to make it a triplex. Then space was created in the basement for cinemas 4-5-6. The theatres are small but the great Queens Boulevard location gives it plenty of exposure. Once upon a time it played second run double features but now its all first run.
Contributed by
RobertR
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Recent comments (view all 33 comments)
This is a July 2008 photo.
The marquee is falling apart and there is terrible graffiti on the wall above it. I don’t know how the interior is but the outside looks really bad.
The marquee now proclaims this as an “ALL DIGITAL” cinema.
In the ribbon address at the top of the listing, there is no need for “Sunnyside” followed by “Sunny Side.” It should end at “Sunnyside.” The name of the neighborhood has always been one word, not two.
“Nearby theatres” should include the Bliss, Sunnyside, and Loew’s Woodside. The Monroe is across the East River in Manhattan, and the Rainbow in Brooklyn.
If you miss the charms of the classic grindhouse aesthetic of the 70’s & 80’s, this place is for you: dim, cramped interior with sticky floors and broken seats. Projection that continually blurs with an image-ratio that rarely fits the screen (though this may have been solved with them recently going digital). Bathrooms that are straight out of a horror movie and concessions I would never venture to eat. Add in an indifferent staff, sagging marquee, cheap ticket prices, and a quarrelsome audience and you get a recipe for a fun night out — provided you don’t care too much about what you’re seeing there. For films like 28 Weeks Later, Taken, & Resident Evil: Extinction this place is perfect. Seeing Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse double-feature was heaven — I felt like I would walk right out of the theater and into another era. I’ve missed this place since switching from Queens to Brooklyn.
ENDANGERED! The building the theater is housed in is up for sale: http://sunnysidepost.com/2012/09/22/queens-bld-building-up-for-sale-includes-historic-businesses/#comments.
All part of an extremely ill advised rezoning (upzoning) of Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside where the theater is located because various political figures wanted to preserve the residential side streets (but not the small-scale commercial district with many charms of its own).
Activated link to the previous posting: sunnysidepost
Sunnyside Center Cinemas is likely to be demolished in the coming years, since the Queens Boulevard-facing plot of land on which it sits was sold to an Astoria developer back in December for $6.675 million. The Sunnyside Post reports that the developer hasn’t yet decided what to do with the site—which includes a Dime Savings Bank, set to close this summer, and Irish pub P.J. Horgan’s, which has been operating for 40 years and has a lease till 2018—but guesses that it’s likely to be razed in the name of a presumably more lucrative residential project.
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/02/15/longtime_sunnyside_movie_theater_faces_closure.php#more
Always a pleasure to see the Center cinemas while passing it from the 7 train