Loew's Valencia Theatre

Jim Mannix, I will look forward to you posting your mother’s memories. “Gorgo” must have been awesome, on the Valencia’s huge screen, and booming sound system ! My dad was going to take me to see it at the Ridgewood Theater (which see on this site), in the Queens neighborhood of the same name, where we lived, but I was only six, and he was afraid I would be scared, so he didn’t.

Good comment about the ceiling ! The Valencia was one of those extremely ornate movie palaces in which, if the film was of insufficient interest, one could always enjoy looking at the decor !

My dad remembers the Valencia’s beautiful ceiling, as does a friend of mine, age 56, who, as a small boy, thought it really was the sky !

gb My own Valencia Excerpt

My grandmother and mother used to take me to the Loews Valencia on 165th St. Jamaica Avenue. I don’t remember much about our trips. The last involvement my mother had was when she sent me with my buddies and the oldest brother; Vic, Ant and Johnny. Johnny was older; he was about 16 and knew the security guard. We kept the money for food.
I remember the smell of beer and weed. The food was great; the rest rooms were better kept ten I expected. My mother also took me regularly to Radio City Music Hall at Rockafeller Center, for under $3.75 back then. There, and the Valencia were my favorites. The movie we viewed was a Karate flick, where they completely dismembered their victims in mid air. I don’t remember the name.
The last flick I remember seeing was with Ant and Vic. It was King Kong. We admired the gold fish, ate our pop corn, and walked back home. The afros were thick, the velvet black art was popular, Evil Kenevil was on the model Zenith System III, and Fly Robin Fly was the hit, followed by Twenty-Five Miles from Home… Sneakers were only $8.99, for the popular Keds, the Uptown model…
Then it seemed that crime was taking over and the economy was loosing. Radio City Closed down, I kept the program. The Valencia closed. I was just a kid and didn’t know why. Then The Jamaica Tabernacle of Prayer opened up, starting a new development trend that is still booming. We all know Radio City doesn’t have a show with a movie anymore, and the price all over town jumped. The little spot in front of the store, for the man to display a cardboard box with cologne, is worth $400 per month this year 2004.
The Jamaica Tabernacle is rollin’… Community service, outreach, ministry, in beauty… I understand there are historians who would expect other forms of maintaining the edifice. Now, this is me thinking, why don’t you pay for the work to be done? Otherwise, it is still a church. I don’t know about the finances in this church or your church, but as a visiting deacon who visits many churches, even the rich churches have their finances limited.
Santa Monica Church by York College was demolished, but they preserved the face of the building to be the entrance of what I believe will be the nursery. Mario Cuomo was an alter boy there, and I was baptized there. I remember the pews and furnishings had hand carved paws for feet.
Presentation of the BVM Church on Parsons Blvd. once boasted the best pipe organ with music I used to hear when I walked by. I know it’s not only expensive to maintain as an instrument, but the temperature and humidity had to be maintained as well. The pipes are velvet coated from the interior, as you experts know, and for it to work properly, the environment had to be perfect.
I plan to visit the Jamaica Tabernacle this coming month, July. It started about 9 am, praise and worship started when the first person showed up and grabbed the mic. By the end of two hours, the whole choir and band joined in. Then the first speaker was an hour. Offertory was an hour, where you get a chance to eat. I snuck out for a street shish-ke-bob, or a hot Jamaican beef pattie in cocoa bread.
Then the next speaker had about an hour, before the main speaker came out. Pastor Ronnie Davis is a mighty man of God. You may think that’s long. We’d get out at about three or for in the afternoon, but it was a blessing. After all, it is a Sabbath “day”….

GeorgeBrown19662hotmail.com

The splendor of the Valencia stood in stark contrast to the drab and uninviting Alden directly across the street. What disappointment we felt when a picture we wanted to see was booked at the Alden! After the long bus ride from Bellerose, and the permanent gloomy twilight under the Jamaica Avenue el, we often abandoned our plans and went to the Valencia, regardless of what was playing. The Alden used to sponsor special showings for kids sponsored, I guess, by local merchants. We were never too eager to attend, knowing we would sit there in the dank auditorium and dream of the Valencia, so near and yet…

While the VALENCIA was not Eberson’s greatest work, it still stands as one of the largest and nicest former movie palaces in the nation, and when I saw the modern color photos of it on page 188 of David Naylor’s “American Picture Palaces: The Architecture of Fantasy” I was intrigued to see the draped plaster figures of ladies inside niches forming the vault of the proscenium arch, but horrified by the treatment of the giant chandelier then suspended directly above the balcony rail, just as though it were hanging in nothingness from the ‘sky.’ They may not use the little electric ‘stars’ anymore, but the very least they could have done when installing the scaffolding to drape the figures and hang the chandelier, was to paint on the ceiling an angel with his hand outstretched to appear to be holding up the chandelier!! Without this little touch, the huge fixture just falsifies the interior. Church or not, they could do something as small as this to retain some of the imagination of the artists who conceived the place. By the way, Naylor’s book can sometimes be obtained at www.Amazon.com or via Inter-Library Loan at most libraries.

Warren, you’re right about the placement of the console. It was in the far left portion of the orchestra pit. The pit had a concrete floor built over it, but if you went down under the stage, you could still get through a small doorway into a chamber under the floor which was where the orchestra lift and the organ console lift were still extant. The console was there, although in very poor shape. The pipe chambers up in the auditorium were on either side of the stage in the large structures that resembled Spanish Villas. The chamber on the left was entered from backstage, but the one on the right had to be entered via a door on 165th Street.

I was an usher at the Valencia in winter of 1952 to June of 1953 with my twin brother. The movie playing was “Moulin Rouge”, “I Love Melvin!” and numerous others I have since forgotten. Mr “Z” was the Manager. We were both freshmen at Boy’s High in Brooklyn. In July of 1953 we both worked at the Astor and Victoria theatres in Times Square. Stayed there until graduation in 1956.. Great time!

The following information concerning the whereabouts of the Valencia’s Wonder Morton was found on the Garden State Organ Society’s web page.

“This article appeared in the American Theatre Organ Society Web Journal Wednesday, April 09, 2003
One more of the five Wonder Mortons is going to a new home. The 4/73 organ originally installed in the Loew’s Valencia Theatre in Jamaica, Queens, New York will be installed in the Balboa Theatre in San Diego.
In 1966, the late Peter Schaeble purchased the organ from the theatre and had it installed in an addition to his Long Island house. After his death in 1996, Jasper Sanfilippo acquired the organ and stored it with the idea of installing it in the carousel building on his properly. This did not come about.
The Balboa Theatre Foundation intends to restore the theatre which once had a smaller Robert Morton organ. That organ was removed in 1931 and installed in another San Diego theatre where it remains today. The Balboa Theatre Foundation has purchased the Wonder Morton from Sanfilippo to install in the restored theatre. The restoration will take about two years.”

The Valencia’s “Wonder Morton” organ was last played in 1965.
It was bought from Loew’s and was to be removed to a studio in Rosedale, Queens to join the Wurlitzer (?) from Loew’s (Sutphin Blvd) Hillside Theater. The movie that was playing on the day the cables were to be cut was “Those Magnificent Men And Their Flying Machines”. Before the theater opened we greased the blower bearings and turned on the current. Oddly enough, after almost 20 years or so of silence, it came to life with only a few dozen cyphers. We stopped the pipes to silence them and one fellow squeezed throught the door to the console (which was buried under the floored-over orchestra pit. A cable was dropped to the console for earphones so that he could hear the organ in the auditorium above. When the house opened and a few cusotmers came in the organ roared forth with the movie theme and segued into the start of the movie. We played it between the main feature and shorts for a good portion of the day. I remember going into the lobby and the elderly lady behind the candy counter asked me, “Is that the organ playing? I haven’t heard the organ in years- I thought it was gone!” and she went over to the auditorium doors to listen. There were many comments from patrons who received a healthy dose of nostalgia that day. The organ was completely restored and spent many years in Rosedale (I lived a short distance away and played it frequently). It was subsequently sold and shipped to Barrington Hills, IL where it was absorbed by the behemoth in the Music Palace.

I was the one who mentioned Tentacles and Squirm at The RKO madison. I think though that this may have been after RKO dropped the theatre and it reopened for a short time as an “indie”.

Thank you Warren. I may post that and other comments, like the date of the image of the active Hillside theater in Jamaica, Queens, on nycsubway.org.

Thanks for the info, Warren. Rechecked the books today, and we DO have articles about the Valencia’s opening. I believe I was reading about the Kings, perhaps. (four of the five theatres would then have been correct now, wouldn’t it?)

The Loew’s Valencia, one of the 5 Loew’s “Wonder Theaters” in New Jersey and New York, opened on September 28th, 1929. It was actually the 4th of the five theaters to open. Loew’s Paradise and Loew’s Kings were the 1st and second Wonder Theaters to open, both on the same day, September 7th, 1929. The Beautiful Loew’s Jersey was the third Wonder Theater to open, on September 28th, 1929. The Valencia opened the next day, on the 29th. Loews 175th was the last and final Wonder Theater theater to open, in 1930.