Valencia Theatre
The Valencia Theatre is a church and former theater at 16511 Jamaica Avenue in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City. Designed by John Eberson as a movie palace, it opened on January 11, 1929, as one of five Loew's Wonder Theatres in the New York City area. The theater has been occupied by the Tabernacle of Prayer for All People since 1977. It is a New York City designated landmark.
The Valencia Theatre occupies an L-shaped site and is divided into two sections: the lobby section and the auditorium. The lobby section, decorated in a Spanish and Mexican Baroque style, has an elaborate brick-and-terracotta facade with a marquee and ornate finials. The entrance leads to a lobby and foyer, which are also decorated in Spanish styles. The auditorium has 3,500 seats on two levels, with an elaborately decorated proscenium arch, walls, and ceilings. Like the other Wonder Theaters, the Valencia Theatre featured a "Wonder Morton" theater pipe organ manufactured by the Robert Morton Organ Company, though the organ has since been removed.
In December 1926, the builder Ralph Riccardo acquired the site and leased it to Paramount-Publix. Allied Owners Inc. took over the theater site and developed it starting in 1928, leasing the venue to Loew's Theatres. The Valencia Theatre originally presented films and live shows, and it had a regional monopoly on the first runs of films. The live shows were discontinued within five years of the theater's opening. The theater slowly declined after World War II, and it closed in June 1977 due to high costs and low attendance. The Tabernacle of Prayer took over the theater for a nominal fee and spent $250,000 on renovations, moving into the theater in October 1977. Since then, the Valencia has functioned as a church. Over the years, the theater has been praised for its architecture.
Description
The Valencia Theatre is located at 16511 Jamaica Avenue in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City. It consists of a narrow lobby section along Jamaica Avenue, as well as an auditorium and stage house in the rear. The L-shaped site wraps around another building at 16517 Jamaica Avenue, extending half the length of the block toward 89th Avenue. The building has a frontage of on Jamaica Avenue to the south and on Merrick Boulevard to the east. The theater abuts the 165th Street Bus Terminal immediately to the north.The theater was one of five Loew's Wonder Theatres in the New York City area, along with the Jersey Theatre in Jersey City, the 175th Street Theatre in Manhattan, the Paradise Theatre in the Bronx, and the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn. The Paradise and Valencia, along with the Lane Theater on Staten Island, are the only atmospheric theaters in New York City designed by John Eberson. Similarly to the Paradise Theatre, the Valencia is decorated in a Spanish style.
Facade
The brick-and-terracotta facade is decorated in a Spanish and Mexican Baroque style, similarly to the facades of the Indiana Theatre in Indianapolis and the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio. The metal-and-glass doors are recessed slightly from the facade, and an octagonal ticket booth protrudes from the middle of the entrance. The booth has cast metal columns topped by finials, as well as a fret motif near the bottom. The doors are flanked by volutes, which support a metal panel with foliate decorations on its soffit, though both the volutes and panel are covered by signage. There is a marquee above the entrance, which originally spelled the name "Loew's Valencia" and had decorative motifs made of zinc; the marquee has also been covered up.The upper stories of the Jamaica Avenue facade are clad with yellow brick and are divided vertically into three bays. There are terracotta decorations such as cherub heads. In the outer bays, the bricks are laid in a diaper pattern, with protruding bricks that form diagonal lines; there are lighter-colored bricks where the diagonal lines intersect. There are also lancet windows in the outer bays at the second story. The center bay has a large opening with a terracotta frame, which is divided into a central window measuring five panes wide and a pair of outer windows each measuring two panes wide. The terracotta pilasters on either side contain decorations like swags, cherubs' heads, volutes, and half-shells. Above the outer windows are spiral volutes, which in turn flank a central window with a curved gable. The gable is topped by terracotta panels with floral motifs and sphinxes. At the top of the facade is an elaborate curving parapet, with three finials above the center bay and a single finial above each of the outer bays. A vertical sign is also attached to the facade.
The Merrick Boulevard and northern elevations are also visible from the street. On Merrick Boulevard, the facade is made mostly of red and black brick, although the water table at the bottom of the facade is made of stone. Some of the bricks are laid so that their header surfaces face outward; these bricks are stacked vertically to give the impression of rectangular brick panels. There is a fire stair leading from the balcony level, as well as an emergency-exit doorway with six doors at ground level near the south end of the facade. At ground level, the middle of the Merrick Boulevard facade contains a brick niche, with a grate leading to a sidewalk vault; in addition, there are three rectangular blind openings and two more emergency-exit doors. The northern end of the Merrick Boulevard facade has two archways, as well as a two-story service annex with a garage door and windows. The northern elevation is also covered in red and brown brick, with rectangular brick panels; the service annex protrudes from the bottom of the northern elevation. There is a water tower atop the building, which is visible from the north.
Interior
The interior is adorned in Spanish Colonial and pre–Columbian styles, with a gold, ruby, cobalt, and turquoise color scheme. The main lobby measured across, and its ceiling was nearly four stories high. The center of the ceiling was flat, while the sides of the ceiling were splayed outward, with trusses made of iron and wood. Pieces of Spanish pottery were placed in niches on either side of the lobby. A marble-and-wrought iron staircase ascended from the lobby, and there was a stone fountain with multicolored tiles next to the stair. Next to the lobby was a two-story foyer with Spanish-style columns supporting a set of arches and a vaulted ceiling. The foyer was illuminated by soft blue lamps and also had a carpet. There was also a goldfish pond in the foyer.The auditorium itself seats around 3,500 people and is decorated to resemble a Spanish garden. The seats are split across an orchestra level and a balcony, with 2,500 seats on the orchestra level. The auditorium walls are adorned with statues, parapets, and towers, asymmetrically arranged, while the ceiling remains unadorned. The proscenium arch is decorated in a Spanish style and is topped by a large niche with a sculpture inside. There are smaller backlit arches on either side of the central niche above the proscenium. The side walls have decorations such as windows, railings, balconies, and turrets, which were intended to give the appearance of 17th-century Spanish buildings. The decorations are arranged in sloped tiers and are designed in the Churrigueresque style. Statues of nude figures are placed high above the walls. On either side of the proscenium is an organ loft.
The rear walls of the organ loft are painted blue to resemble the sky, and the ceiling is mostly painted blue, giving the impression that the auditorium is open-air. The ceiling also has painted stars. There was also a cloud machine, which generated cloud-like mists that moved across the ceiling, but the machine had broken down by the 1970s. Three chandeliers were hung from the ceiling. A fourth chandelier with 360 lights, measuring across and high, was installed in the 1970s; this chandelier was imported from Greece.
Like the other Wonder Theaters, the Loew's Valencia Theatre featured a "Wonder Morton" theater pipe organ manufactured by the Robert Morton Organ Company. The organ featured a console with 4 manuals and 23 ranks of pipes. The organ was disassembled in the 1960s and relocated to the Balboa Theatre in San Diego, where it was restored and debuted in 2009.
History
became common in the 1920s between the end of World War I and the beginning of the Great Depression. In the New York City area, only a small number of operators were involved in the construction of movie palaces. These theaters' designers included the legitimate-theater architects Thomas W. Lamb, C. Howard Crane, and John Eberson. By the late 1920s, numerous movie palaces were being developed in outlying neighborhoods in New York City; previously, the city's movie palaces had been concentrated in Midtown Manhattan. The five Wonder Theatres were developed by Loew's Inc., which at the time was competing with Paramount-Publix. In 1927, Loew's president Nicholas Schenck agreed to take over five sites from Paramount-Publix, in exchange for agreeing not to build competing theaters in Chicago; these five sites became the Wonder Theatres.Development and opening
In December 1926, the builder Ralph Riccardo acquired a site at the northwest corner of Jamaica Avenue and Merrick Road from A. L. Werner and Steuart/Hirschman. According to a contemporary advertisement, the site had previously contained a wooden residence. Riccardo soon sold half of the site to Paramount-Publix, which reportedly paid $1 million for the site. In exchange, Paramount-Publix was required to build a theater on the site. Allied Owners Inc., which was established in 1927 to develop the Kings, Paramount, Pitkin, and Valencia theaters, took over the site at Jamaica Avenue and Merrick Road as part of an agreement with Paramount. In March 1927, Paramount-Publix announced that it would build a theater at Jamaica Avenue and Merrick Road. The Jamaica theater was planned to cost $2.25 million with about 2,500 seats. The theater was one of nine that Paramount-Publix planned to develop in outlying New York City neighborhoods, though the company later dropped plans for four of the other theaters. Riccardo also hired Rapp and Rapp to develop a six-story commercial building abutting the theater.Paramount-Publix reassigned its leases of the Kings, Pitkin, and Valencia theaters to Loew's in November 1927. Loew's took over the site in February 1928, after the blueprints had been approved. Loew's was still required to develop the site as a theater. For the theater's construction, Loew's Inc. agreed to pay Allied Owners Inc. $19,000 a month for 181 months, in exchange for receiving financing from Allied Owners Inc., and Paramount-Publix agreed to guarantee the Valencia Theatre's construction. Loew's Inc. was to have taken ownership of the property in 1945, once the bonds had been paid off. Loew's announced in early 1928 that it would begin constructing four of the theaters, including the theater in Jamaica. The Thompson-Starrett Company began erecting the theater in June 1928. John Eberson's son Drew, who assisted in the theater's construction, sketched out the stars on the auditorium's ceiling by copying an issue of National Geographic magazine. By that August, the theater was known as the Valencia; this name, derived from Spanish, was chosen because it sounded exotic. The theater was to be Long Island's largest cinema with 4,000 seats. A furniture store, Ludwig Baumann & Co., leased the neighboring commercial building.
The Valencia opened on January 12, 1929, and was the first of the five Wonder Theaters to be completed. Its first-ever patron had waited several hours to buy her ticket. Loew's invited officials from every town and reporters from every newspaper on Long Island to the theater's dedication. The first film to screened there was the 1928 talking film White Shadows in the South Seas, accompanied by vaudeville performances on stage. Initially, the Valencia hosted stage shows and films that had been shown at Manhattan's Capitol Theatre, which cost between 25 and 65 cents a ticket. The theater accommodated 17,000 patrons on opening day and 33,000 in its first week.