RKO Keith's Theatre
135-35 Northern Boulevard,
Flushing,
NY
11354
135-35 Northern Boulevard,
Flushing,
NY
11354
51 people
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Aha! There IS info on that page, under Related Photos. Apparently this is part of a set of photos related to the arrest of Rudolf Abel for espionage in August 1957. I’ll have to check further, but I vaguely recall that he used the RKO Keith’s as a meeting place (in fact, there may even be reference to this in one of the millions of posts above; probably easier to just look it up…)
Is there any info on WHY that particular photo appeared in Life?
As for interior damage I found this info on the Meyer Theatre web site (Green Bay – pop. 102,000 Flushing – pop. 655,000) one of many similar stories on theatre restoration/revival:
The Meyer Theatre’s story began on Valentine’s Day 1930 when it opened as one of the many Fox Theatres blossoming around the country. Fox Theatres Inc. spared no expense creating the lavishly-equipped vaudeville house and movie palace. The company was forced into bankruptcy in 1933, but the theatre survived and was operated as the Bay Theatre until 1998.
Some of the performers who have graced the stage over the years include Lawrence Welk, Liberace, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash. But most memorable to Green Bay residents are the life events that have taken place here. Whether it’s a stolen kiss in the balcony, sing-alongs at intermission or graduation from high school, it happened at the Meyer Theatre.
The theatre is an eclectic blend of colors and styles that can best be defined as Spanish Atmospheric. Heavily textured plaster, decorative columns with gold leaf, intricate painted designs and statues adorn the building.
In it’s conversion to a triplex cinema, much of the décor of the theatre was hidden or lost. The restoration meant uncovering what was originally there and carefully recreating those things destroyed. A major task was returning the midnight blue sky and installing the fiber optic lighting to give the illusion of stars overhead.
Your welcome Dave, thanks for posting those Thomas Lamb prints!
This one locates a detail from one of the cast iron store front windows.
SWC thanks for those was-is images, they are very poignant indeed. I am amazed so much still remains, though so much has been ruined. Also thanks for those brightened images that were originally dark, I tried this myself in Photoshop but could not achieve the clarity you did.
Almost forgot: part of the interior shot used for the comparison is from last year and thanks to an extraordinary and extremely rare set by [url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/rkokeiths/[/url] for a not so easy to get in and take pictures situation. The Thomas Lamb drawings were posted here thanks to davebazooka for taking the time to go up to Columbia, unroll and photograph those prints. The under-exposed photo was posted here by Mike69, another commendable effort to get in and take pictures.
The above should read:
[quote]
[img]http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d3/jpm55/rkokeiths0668-1.jpg[/img[/quote]
All you need are the items in square brackets exactly as shown, with the full path name of the photo in-between, only the closing square bracket needs to appear right after the last “/img”
Jeff,
Never underestimate what is captured on film, just about any photo can be enhanced. Case in point a couple of years ago this image of the left side of the stage was posted here. The top is the original:
Unfortunately photobucket deletes images over time so many of the links here are stale.
Your unaltered photo, on original server can be posted as:
All you need are the items in square brackets exactly as show, with the full path name of the photo in-between.
Here, once again, is the color-challenged scan of a slide taken outside at my I.S. 61 graduation in 1968. (And I have no idea how to get the image to show up here):
http://tinyurl.com/3eha6n
Yes, there were pictures taken inside. Unfortunately, when I looked through them I discovered, to my dismay, that they were all closeups of people sitting in seats, or distant shots of people on the stage, with the background entirely dark — no visible architectural details. It’s been a few years since I checked, so I will look through them again just to be sure, but I think I would have posted them if I’d found anything decent.
Well I’ve posted 3 pictures here: the first is 5,000 x 5,000 pixels or 15.09Mb and the last one is 720 x 583 pixels or 239Kb. so size is independant…if you host your own images. Of course you can see these on [url]http://swc-biogon.smugmug.com/[/url] (in Flushing Gallery) but posting them with comment works directly. The website does not allow for image upload so “embedding” in this case is nothing more than a displayed link. I wish there were more photos out there (and I’ve seen everything from Rodan to the Alien at this theatre and never thought to bring a camera) but other than those blue plywood entrance images on photobucket/flickr nothing much so
far. They used to have graduation ceremonies at the RKO, so there has to be something out there.
An interesting WAS – IS comparison with original drawing in the background: The size of the embedded image is up to the poster. However I was hoping to generate some interest in getting more state of affairs interior shots to compliment the almost non-existent interior pictures of the RKO in its heyday (now that the condo concept is defunct)
I don’t understand this photo-linking debate. I have seen many examples now of photos added directly into posts, and I don’t see that the pages are loading any slower. I also like this approach because it saves me the time of redirecting to links which might be dead or password protected.
An intresting WAS – IS comparison with the original drawing
The ability to add photos directly to posts has always been able to be done, however, I read that the webmasters don’t want us to do that, and they do usually remove them. It’s probably so that the pages aren’t weighed down with loading. I believe they want us to just link to them as we have been doing. I have read that somewhere on the site, but forgot where.
Hey, how did you get that photo onto the page? Do we now have the capability to post photos directly?
Coincidentally, I was just reading about a proposal for Philadelphia’s historic Boyd Theatre:
PHILADELPHIA, PA â€" A local developer says he has a deal in place to buy the Boyd Theatre and plans to make it the centerpiece of a $95 million hotel and entertainment complex. Hal Wheeler of ARCWheeler expects to close the deal with current owner Live Nation by November 25, and intends to build a 30-story, 250-room hotel to the west of the theater.
Live Nation would book live entertainment into the theater about 60 nights a year, leaving it available for other events the rest of the time. Broadway-type plays would not be part of the plan, as the hotel would be built on land that was to be the site of a stage house for the Boyd under a previous proposal.
Wheeler’s development proposal, like Live Nation’s earlier plan to turn the Boyd into a Broadway roadhouse, would restore the theater to its original art deco glamour. But the project’s scope is far more ambitious, and aims to transform the 1900 block of Chestnut Street from a retail backwater into a Center City nightlife destination.
So it’s not impossible to restore & preserve a theater if the community and the developer understand how valuable it is. Unfortunately, the Boyd project is apparently waiting for the state to kick in a huge chunk of money, and in the current economy that’s probably unlikely — even moreso in New York, which depends on Wall St. But that also means nothing is likely to happen in Flushing for a while, and once the economy recovers, maybe somebody will finally see the light?
Great pix Warren, with that 1960 Impala parked in front!
and from last year:
“RKO FLUSHING the finest theatre on the North Shore"
The entire perimeter of that block is now store front or apartment now, so no more sneaking in by way of the fire escape on the Farrington Ave. side. But if you bought out the entire block and leveled it you could then bring in the heavy equipment to drive several hundred 100' piles, get below the adjacent water table from Flushing Bay and develop the bearing capacity to even build a 19 story condo!
Boymelgreen took out an additional $13.4 million mortgage against the property in April? And people wonder why there’s a sub-prime mortgage crisis!
Indeed,downtown Flushing residents do not seem a bit interested in preservation.
I think the bottom line is, if the Keith’s were in Times Square, Trump or somebody would be interested. But it’s in Queens. Of course, if it were in Times Square it could probably make money. In Queens, it would have to be part of some major redevelopment project. You know, like with a new baseball stadium, new stores, new housing… too bad there’s nothing at all like THAT going on nearby…
The same could be said about the Kings and The Brooklyn Paramount. The problem is that it has to pay for itself unless there are other funds available through grants and/or tax incentives. The only way a developer would take this project on is if he feels he can make enough from the project as a whole to pay for the restoration.
Unfortunately, the loudest mouths in the neighborhood usually wind up saying “it’s too big!, It’s too tall! There’s no affordable housing in it! Etc…”
I am a theater preservationist, but I am also a realist. It would probably cost at least $50MM to rebuild the Keiths. How is it going to be paid for? Trump is not doing it. The city has made clear that they will contribute capital funds to any developer of the Kings, but the the developer MUST have a viable plan for the theater to operate independently financially. No such claims have been made for the Keiths.
I hope there is a happy ending to this story, but I am not hopeful. I am hopeful, however, the the Kngs can and will be saved.
I recall some time ago that the city was attempting to rebuild the Wollman ice skating rink in Central Park, and of course it took several months to complete due to poor workmanship and planning, until developer Donald trump stepped in and got it finished correctly in half the time. This is exactly the kind of person we need to purchase the property and restore the Keith’s to its former glory.
One of the acts shown on that Hootenanny ticket is the Big 3. Members were Cass Elliot (later Mama Cass of Mamas & Papas0, James Hendricks (not Jimi) and Tim Rose.
I second your comments a million times over. It’s nothing more than an anti-green faux recycled press release.
That “press release” is one of the most unprofessional pieces of PR crap I’ve ever read — and I’ve read PLENTY of PR crap. They simply lifted whole sections out of Boymelgreen’s boiler-plate PR statements for THEIR plan, and recycled it to make it seem like there’s a plan “in place” — when, in fact, there is NO plan in place. The fact that the identical sentence about condo buyers being able to “use a portion of their unit as a home office” is repeated just a few lines apart, shows just how badly this release was put together.
It would appear that this piece of property just keeps attracting the bottom-feeders in NYC real estate.
Jeffrey….Vacant referes to the fact that there are no operating businesses or tenants on the site. I believe the prior plan by Boymelgreen was approved by the city and that the purchaser could proceed with the prior plan. I would hope that wasn’t the case since it appears that most of the theater would be lost under that plan.
However, it could be worse. A new plan could completely demolish the theater. Is half a theater better than none? My quick response is yes.
At the end of the day, it is not enough to say the theater should be completely rebuilt. Someone has to pay for it. Someone has to maintain it. In this current real estate climate it is not likely that a developer will take it upon himself to do a full restoration. The city would have to assist through grants/tax incentives/etc, just as they are trying to do at the Loew’s Kings in Brooklyn. Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn’s Borough President has been in the forefront of that effort.
Where is the Queens Borough President?