The RKO Keith's Theater was an RKO Pictures movie theater at 13535 Northern Boulevard in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City. It was designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb and built in 1928. While the RKO Keith's had a plain three-story facade, its interior was elaborately designed in a Spanish Baroque Revival style. The theater had a square ticket lobby and an oval grand foyer, which led to the double-level auditorium. The auditorium was designed as an atmospheric theater with a blue ceiling and gilded-plaster decorations; it contained 2,974 seats across two levels. There were also four lounges and a mezzanine promenade.
The theater was developed by Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Albee of the Keith–Albee vaudeville circuit, which bought the site in 1927. The Keith–Albee Theater, as it was known, opened on Christmas Day 1928 and originally operated as a vaudeville theater. In the 1930s, the theater was renamed the RKO Keith's and began showing movies. The theater continued to prosper after World War II in spite of a decline in New York City's large neighborhood movie palaces during that time. It began to decline in the 1960s and was eventually divided into a three-screen multiplex in 1977. The RKO Keith's was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated most of the theater as a New York City interior landmark in 1984, but the New York City Board of Estimate curtailed the LPC's designation to cover only the ticket lobby and grand foyer.
Despite the landmark designations, the RKO Keith's closed after local developer Thomas Huang acquired the theater in 1986. Over the next three decades, it went through several efforts at redevelopment. After the theater was partially destroyed in 1987, Huang was forced to stop work on his project, and work stalled for over a decade. During this time, the RKO Keith's interior continued to deteriorate, and residents and politicians raised concerns over Huang's treatment of the theater. The RKO Keith's was sold to Shaya Boymelgreen in 2002, then to Patrick Thompson in 2010 and Jerry Karlik in 2014; all three men unsuccessfully tried to redevelop the site. After Chinese developers Xinyuan Real Estate bought the theater in 2016, most of the theater was finally demolished from 2020 to 2021. Xinyuan made plans to replace the theater with a condominium development, which would preserve the theater's ticket lobby and grand foyer.
Description The RKO Keith's Theater was at 13535 Northern Boulevard, at the intersection with Main Street, in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City. The site, at the northern end of Main Street, is near Flushing's central business district. , most of the theater was being demolished and replaced with 269 condominium apartments, developed by Xinyuan Real Estate. The ticket lobby and grand foyer were temporarily removed and are planned to be reinstalled in the condominium development's lobby.
The theater was designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb in a Spanish Baroque Revival style and opened in 1928. The RKO Keith's was originally conceived as a venue for vaudeville, which in the late 1920s was competing with films; as a result, the design was more elaborate than that of older theaters. The building's facade on Northern Boulevard was relatively plain, with a curved marquee facing Main Street (later replaced with a horizontal advertising board). The ground story had storefronts, while the other stories had a brown facade, with marble spandrel panels between the second- and third-story windows. Inside, a ticket lobby and grand foyer led to the double-level auditorium. Four lounges also existed in the theater: two from the ground-level foyer and two from a mezzanine promenade below the auditorium's balcony. The interior was ornately decorated in plaster and wood.
Ticket lobby and grand foyer The ticket lobby is a double-height space, square in plan. The room measures . Along with the grand foyer, it is the only part of the theater that is preserved. Originally, there was a ticket booth at ground level. The ceiling, of flat plaster painted blue, is supported by carved columns, designed in the Spanish Baroque Revival style.; , plans call for a retail elevator vestibule to be built east of the ticket lobby, with two elevators. A circular stair, leading up to retail spaces on the mezzanine level, will also be built east of the ticket lobby. A sloped glass facade will be installed in the base of the condominium building, overlooking the ticket lobby.
The grand foyer is also a double-height space, oval in plan;; it measures wide. There was originally a marble fountain at the center of the grand foyer. Live goldfish swam in the fountain, which was topped by a sculpture of Cupid flanked by dolphins. This fountain was subsequently replaced by a candy concession stand. The east wall of the grand foyer contains a terracotta drinking fountain with polychrome tiles. The north wall contained gilded plaster doorways to the auditorium's orchestra level; these doorways were sealed by the 1980s. The 2017 plans for the site call for a mail room and a residential lobby with three elevators to be built behind these doorways. The ceiling was also painted blue and had an arched vault.
Staircases, decorated with bronze balustrades, flank the grand foyer and run between the ground story and mezzanine level. The tops of those staircases formerly led to the mezzanine promenade behind the auditorium. At the foyer's second story is an arcade supported by spiral columns. Behind the arcade was the mezzanine promenade, which was rectangular in plan. The promenade had spiral columns with Moorish-style arches, as well as wrought iron furniture. The wooden ceiling was carved; chandeliers made of cut glass were suspended from the promenade's ceiling. Further staircases and passageways connected the mezzanine promenade to the auditorium's balcony. The 2017 plans indicate that the mezzanine promenade will be replaced with a residential promenade, leading to the elevator lobby.
Auditorium The auditorium contained 2,974 seats across an orchestra level and a balcony. It was designed as an atmospheric theater, a type of movie palace in which projectors, architectural elements, and ornamentation were used to evoke a sense of being outdoors. It was one of Lamb's only atmospheric theater designs, as well as one of seven atmospheric theaters in New York City and one of 34 nationwide. The RKO Keith's auditorium was designed to give the feeling that the audience was in a garden, with Baroque, Gothic, and Moorish ornament in the style of Spanish architect J. M. de Churriguera. The balcony level protruded substantially, nearly reaching the proscenium opening in front of the auditorium. This was characteristic of vaudeville theaters, where the proximity of the audience to the stage was an important factor. The underside of the balcony had cut-glass chandeliers, which hung from panels shaped like eight-pointed stars.
The rear wall had an arcade of round arches with double columns. Each column was designed to resemble spirals made of leather and was topped by a capital depicting an angel's or a baby's face. The side and front walls had wooden screens and gilded plaster walls, which wrapped around to the proscenium. The wooden screens were decorated with arcades and broken pediments. The finials atop each screen reached the ceiling; these finials were designed to resemble a "romantic outline" against a sky. At the center of each screen was a mural within an opening of three arches, supported by spiral columns. Each mural panel was intended to symbolize a Spanish facade. These murals were flanked by gilded plaster walls with indirect lighting. The side walls also had doorways to exit halls, flanked by spiral columns.
The proscenium arch was made of wood and plaster and was supported by large piers on either side. At the top of each pier was a niche containing an urn. The top of the proscenium had a niche at its center, as well as a Baroque-style broken pediment with an urn. There were also organ screens next to each of the proscenium's piers. The screens had decorative detail such as spiral columns and niches. The screens surrounded a Wurlitzer organ, Opus 1975, which had 3 manuals and 15 ranks; the organ was donated to the College of the Ozarks in 1969.
In the theater's heyday, the auditorium's plaster ceiling was painted dark blue, and light bulbs were embedded in the ceiling to evoke the appearance of stars. When a film was being screened, projectors displayed images of clouds and stars onto the ceiling. In later years, ventilation grates were placed in the ceiling. At the RKO Keith's opening in 1928, Kelcey Allen of Women's Wear Daily said the ceiling was "a triumph of artistic illusion and ethereal atmospheric suggestions".
Lounges The theater contained four lounges, all designed in the Spanish or Mexican Baroque style. To the east of the grand foyer was a small space with a drinking fountain, plaster walls, and an overhanging lamp. This small space led to the ground-level men's lounge, which was square in plan. The floor was tiled, while the walls were decorated with moldings of gilded plaster. Each corner also had niches flanked by spiral columns. On one wall was a fireplace with a large hood; there were lighting sconces on either side of the fireplace. The 2017 plans call for the ground-level men's lounge to be converted to retail and mechanical space.
To the west of the grand foyer was a marble staircase with iron handrails, which led to a circular ground-level women's lounge. The floor was covered with carpets, while the walls were decorated with moldings of gilded plaster. The walls also had niches with gilded plaster surrounds. One section of the wall had a fireplace with a large hood. The plaster ceiling contained moldings, designed to resemble twisting vines. The 2017 plans call for the ground-level women's lounge to be converted to retail.
There were two lounges directly adjacent to the mezzanine promenade, directly above the ground-floor lounges. The women's lounge was to the east and the men's lounge was to the west; this was the opposite arrangement from the ground-floor lounges. In both lounges, a wrought-iron chandelier was hung from the wooden ceiling, and there were fireplaces with hoods. The fireplace in the women's lounge was next to an arched window overlooking the foyer. An arched doorway also led from the women's lounge to a restroom. Plans from 2017 indicate that the women's lounge will be replaced by a fitness center, while the men's lounge will be replaced by residential amenity space. South of these will be retail spaces.
Use as movie palace Movie palaces 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, the latter of whom popularized the atmospheric theater.; Furthermore, in the 1920s, the dominant vaudeville circuit on the East Coast of the United States was the Keith–Albee circuit, composed of Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Albee.
Development and early years