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"A theatre fit for a king," trumpets the playbill for the inaugural program of Loew's Kings Theatre on Sept. 7, 1929. The luxurious 3,676seat movie palace on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn was one of five Loew's Wonder theatres-named for the Morton Wonder organs installed in their auditoriums-built in the New York metropolitan area. On the opening program that Saturday night in 1929 were Singing Bill in an "organ and microphonic novelty," Wesley Eddy and His Kings of Syncopation, the Chester Hales Girls in the revue Frills and Fancies, and a personal appearance by Dolores Del Rio, star of the featured film Evangeline.1
More than eighty-five years later, on Feb. 3, 2015, Diana Ross was the star presiding over the reopening of the Kings Theatre following a $95 million restoration. While the New York Times reviewer described Ross as a "human sparkler," he also took care to point out the theatre's "spectacularly high, spectacularly ornate ceilings, carpet and curtains remade in their original style, and Art Deco chandeliers hanging elegantly from the ceiling."2
What happened in between these two events is a familiar tale of the downtown movie palace-a reign as sumptuous yet democratic neighborhood linchpin, followed by a long decline due to dwindling audiences, changing distribution patterns, and urban decay. Loew's Kings closed in early 1977, very briefly reopened under different ownership, and shuttered for good in August 1977. Its final feature offering was Bruce Lee: the Man, the Myth.
The City of New York has owned the theatre since the 1980s, and there were a number of proposals over the next two decades to repurpose the property. The Billy Rose Theatre Division's clipping folder on the Kings has items from 1978, 1979, 1986, 1990, 1992, and 1996 detailing restoration proposals, and one that got further than most, a 1999 plan for the Magic Johnson Theatres chain to convert it into a twelve-screen multiplex-which clearly would have destroyed the original design.3 Finally, the neighborhood-strengthening New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) got behind a restoration of Kings as a multi-use venue, completed between 2013 and 2015 under the supervision of developer ACE Theatrical Group and restoration architect Martinez + Johnson Architecture (now OTJ Architects), with Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group coming on board as a...