26 old TIMES • AUGUST timer 4, 2016 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com Presented by the Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society THE LAST PICTURE SHOW IN WOODHAVEN The exterior of the Willard Theater. If you have any memories and photos that you’d like to share about “Our Neighborhood: The Way it Was,” write to The Old Timer, c/o Ridgewood Times, 62-70 Fresh Pond Rd., Ridgewood, NY 11385, or send an email to editorial@ridgewoodtimes.com. All mailed pictures will be carefully returned upon request. In the earliest days of motion pictures, movies were viewed as novelties with fi lms lasting just a few minutes. Over time, fi lmmakers began to enhance their editing and storytelling technique and fi lms became longer. Instead of a novelty to be viewed through machines in storefront nickelodeons, fi lms began to tell longer and more complex stories and theaters were needed to exhibit them. Today, there are no theaters left in Woodhaven. The last theater closed just over 30 years ago, but locals once had plenty of movie theaters to choose from, with programs that changed several times per week, sometimes daily. The fi rst two theaters in Woodhaven were opened in 1912 and are names that current residents are likely not familiar with: the Parkway and the Manor. Advertising itself as “Woodhaven’s Most Reliable Motion Picture House,” the Parkway Open Air Theater boasted that it could show fi lms both indoor and out. “Cool on warm nights, dry on rainy nights!” their ads claimed. The Manor Theater opened in August 1912 boasting a capacity of 500 with a ventilating system consisting of “one large indrawing fan and one large exhaust fan.” The seats were upholstered with Spanish leather and the exterior was quite fancy, with tall columns and hand-carved ivory decorations. Both the Manor and the Parkway changed features fi ve or six times a week and advertised how many reels each fi lm consisted of. For example, a two-reel fi lm (as was common in 1912) ran about 20 to 22 minutes and was the popular norm. Filmmakers incorrectly believed that people would not have the patience to sit through longer stories. By 1918 fi lms were regularly shown in fi ve or six reels, stretching up to an hour or more. As fi lms grew longer, patrons needed more comfortable surroundings and better theaters began to be built, putting the original theaters out of business. The Parkway Open Air Theater was the fi rst Woodhaven theater to fall victim to progress. The modern Forest Park Theater opened nearby on Jamaica Avenue and Shaw Avenue (80th Street) in 1914. It had 600 seats, with the rows placed 3 feet apart “giving ample space for one to pass without causing any disturbance.” Each seat was supplied with a hat rack and a foot rest. The Forest Park Theater also boasted an orchestra pit and two dressing rooms, one for the gents and one for the ladies, for those occasions when live entertainment was provided. Outside, seven panels of painted scenery adorned each side of the building and one large painting dominated the front. The opening of the Forest Park Theater hastened the demise of the Parkway Theater, which was just a block away. It was repurposed for another item that was changing the way we lived: the automobile. It became a garage for many years (for a long time going under the name Elmwood Garage) before serving as the warehouse for Lewis’ of Woodhaven (across the street from their 85th Street location). Today it is the location of a Duane Reade. The Roosevelt Theater opened on Jamaica Avenue and Dennington Avenue (88th Street) in 1921 and was the largest theater in Woodhaven at the time, boasting a capacity of more than 1,300. An interesting quirk about the Roosevelt was the fact that there was a stanchion for the elevated train outside the main entrance that went right through the theater’s marquee. Finally, the Loew’s Willard Theater opened in 1924 at Willard Avenue (96th Street) and sat more than 2,100 people and offered vaudeville acts in addition to big stage bands. For a short period of time that gave Woodhaven four movie houses (Manor, Forest Park, Roosevelt and Willard), but the stylish new theater doomed the nearby Manor Theater, which closed and was demolished shortly thereafter. A new building went up in its place; it was a supermarket for decades, and today the space where the grand Manor Theater once lived is now occupied by a Rent-A-Center. Woodhaven would have three theaters to choose from for the next 30-plus years except for a brief spell in 1936 when the Forest Park Theater closed for renovations before opening under new management and with a new name: The Haven. The late ‘50s and early ‘60s were tough for the local theaters (due in part to the rise of televisions in our homes) and in a short period of time both the Roosevelt and the Willard would close their doors. The Roosevelt Theater was purchased by St. Thomas the Apostle, renovated and rechristened as Monsignor Mulz Hall, named after the beloved priest who ran the church for many years. It has served as a community center and a gymnasium; in recent years, it has hosted graduation ceremonies and rummage sales. The Willard Theater was sold and converted into a huge banquet and catering hall and renamed Le Cordon Bleu. Today, it operates under the name of The Woodhaven Manor. When the new catering hall was renovating its exterior in late 2014, the fancy windows of the Willard were temporarily uncovered, giving residents of Woodhaven a brief glimpse at one of the legendary theaters of its past. As for the Haven, it hung around the longest, lasting into the 1980s showing second run movies and double features. It closed several times for brief periods due to vandalism and was also the tragic scene of a horrible incident in the early ‘80s in which a teen was knifed to death in the lobby. After it closed, the location became an indoor fl ea market for a while before settling down as a large 99-cent store. Woodhaven has been without a movie theater for decades and, in all likelihood, none will ever open here again. The experience of walking to a theater locally and sharing a fi lm with your friends and neighbors has been replaced by watching Netfl ix alone in our living rooms. More progress. If Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp knew what would become of the community theater-going experience, he would have shed a silent tear and walked slowly off into the sunset. The End.
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