A Darkened Theater - The Loew's Kings
The Loew's Kings theater has been
positioned on the side of Flatbush ave in Brooklyn, NY for over 80
years now, and it has spent nearly half its lifetime in disuse.
Ornately designed and elegantly appointed, the Kings theater was one
of five “Loew's Wonder Theaters” constructed in the greater New
York city area. The theater originally showed films as well as
vaudeville acts, complete with an orchestra pit and built-in pipe
organ. Eventually the decline in popularity of live performances led
to the theater's conversion to a film-only venue. As time wore on,
the theater fell out of popularity and eventually shuttered in 1977.
We first entered this theater through a
small barred window lined in rust, which deposited us backstage.
Minding our footing as we walked past the decaying curtains and
fallen light fixtures, we made our way out to the seating area. This
grand room, once full of light and sound welcomed us with absolute
silence and darkness. With only our flashlights to guide us, this
decayed theater seemed much more akin to an underground cavern than
anything made by the hands of man. Even the floors had long since
disappeared, covered now in the greyish-white residue of decomposing
plaster. We shine our lights out toward the rows of seats, which
illuminates some 25 feet of or so, and provide us with only a hint at
the sheer size of the chamber we were now standing in. This room was
built to sit over 3,500 people, now it just houses seemingly infinite
rows of rotting red velvet chairs.
The room is so large, and so full of
darkness, that we are completely unable to cast light upon the
opposite wall or even the ceiling directly above our own heads.
Thankfully we were here with an individual who was familiar with the
old theater, and who had been here before us on a previous occasion.
He told us to stay where we were, then immediately took off through a
far doorway into the blackness. We did as asked, and spent some
minutes pondering amongst ourselves where he had gone off to, and
what was through those doors. Not long after that we heard a
commotion in the darkness, and watched as he emerged from the
shadows. In hand he hoisted a large utility lamp and stand, the kind
you often see at construction sites. Apparently a few lamps had been
left behind after a failed renovation project several years prior.
Even more astounding was the fact that a far-off room was still on
the power grid, again an artifact from the renovation which never
happened. After walking about and collecting some several-hundred
feet of extension cord from various places in the theater, we were
finally able to properly light the room.
Words cannot convey the experience of
clicking on those lamps. The blackness that had hung thick around us
since we entered, and which had given the theater an almost
claustrophobic feeling, was gone in a single instant. With that
single click of a button the room became bathed in light, and the
true scale of things hit you so hard that for a moment it stole your
breath. We knew the place was huge, but to actually be standing in
the midst of it was something altogether different. This room has sat
in almost perpetual darkness since its closing in the late 1970's.
The intense humidity and heat of the summer, as well as the extreme
cold of the winter months, has caused a lot of damage over those
nearly forty years. Still, the magnificence of this place is easily
seen, primarily because of the extreme care and creativity put into
its design back when it was first constructed. We found ourselves
glancing upward toward the massive vaulted ceiling. It was then that we first saw the forms, many of them, staring bleakly back at us. Large
faces decorated the canopy, and in those faces the passage of time
was somehow more bitter, as if they were trying to communicate what
they have seen over the past century.
Typically, this would be where the
story ends - A sad tale of grandeur falling to ruin, and then finally
lost to decay and neglect. This theater is a rare exception however -
For the show is not yet over for the Loew's King. A few years after
our visit renovations once again began at the aged theater, and this
time they were realized. The Loew's Kings has once again been
returned to its former glory through a $95 million dollar renovation.
Renamed the 'Kings Theater', it has returned to its roots as a
live-performance venue. Beyond the events now held therein, public
tours are regularly held so that people may see, experience, and
appreciate what architectural and historical preservation can mean.
