You wouldn’t know it to walk down Steinway Street today, but this main shopping artery of Astoria was once a major entertainment center. After 9/11, the last of the Steinway theaters, The Astoria, shut its doors and the marquee went dark. Now this stalwart of Steinway entertainment is home to a Duane Read and New York Sports Club, but you can still see that the building was once a theater. The ornate archway of the old main entrance, along with a new, but useless marquee advertising the businesses in the building, rather than the latest action film, attempts to honor the building as the great theater it once was. We won’t see the likes of the Astoria Theatre again along Steinway, but once upon a time, the night time scene was aglow with blazing marquees announcing delights of vaudeville and Hollywood.
The crown jewel of the street was Loew’s Triboro Theater, an elaborate movie palace which opened late in the Steinway’s theater history, 1931, located at 2840 Steinway. This classic Mayan Revival theater designed by Thomas Lamb, was one of the last giant Loew's atmospheric theaters to be built. Demolished in 1974, the site is now two family housing with retail on the street level, and there is no evidence that the most stunning theater of Queens was ever gracing the street. The loss of this great building had everything to do with dirty politics. Although nearly 8000 citizens signed petitions to make the Triboro a landmark so that it could not be torn down, the Queens Borough president was anti-preservationist and when voting time came, the Queens Borough board members voted along with the president and very few voices of opposition were present. The street went down hill with the loss of the theater. Strangely, the Queens Borough President became involved with a scandal and committed suicide two years after the theater came down.
Opening day was February 21, 1931, with the film, Reducing, starring Marie Dressler. The presentation included six acts of vaudeville topped by Mitchell and Durante (no relation to Jimmy). This was a big auditorium that could accommodate over 3000 patrons. An unusual feature were two large elevators that could handle 55 people each. Also, the theater had a Wurlitzer organ, which was just for fun, since the days of silent movies were over. The theater had trouble from the beginning, because it was considered too close to Manhattan to receive first run bookings and also the resident population wasn’t big enough during the Depression to keep the huge house filled. Shortly, the theater dropped its vaudeville program for double features and by the end of the decade, business was improving. The theater did fairly well, changing programs twice a week, through the war years and the 1950s. The theater’s demise was typical of the many downtown theaters across America. As the downtown business got older and the resident population moved to the suburbs, the economics of America’s Main Streets fell apart. By the late 1980s a new renaissance of downtown districts started to happen and one by one, surviving theaters have been remodeled and reopened. Some of them have saved facades, but do not function as a theater anymore. Others have become combination film and live music or theater venues. Steinway isn’t so lucky.
At the moment, the old Steinway Theatre, still standing at 31-08, is for sale. Up until recently it contained a Dr. Jay’s clothing store. This was the first theater to be built as such on the main shopping street of Astoria (an earlier theater, Horak’s Opera House, was part of Jackson Hall and converted into a theater), opening it’s doors in 1914 as the Casino Garden Theater. The 900 seat theater featured a regular vaudeville program along with visiting symphony concerts. Like all vaudeville houses, the theater turned to movies and ran a second run, double feature program into the 1950s. If you stand across the street and down the block from the building today, you can see the fly space rising up over what used to be the stage of the theater. Likewise, the Astoria Theater is very recognizable as a former theater. The others have all vanished completely.
Of the vanished variety, the Arcade Theatre (1914-1929) at 30-90 Steinway had an airdome on the roof that opened in spring and summer. The same address was previously the site of Horak’s Opera House (1893) owned by Czech immigrant Rudolph Horak. However, actual opera never played the “Opera House,” but a resident company of actors appeared in plays until Horak sold the building and it became the Arcade. The house had 600 seats, but was never a financial success, serving as a meeting hall in later years. News paper reports at the time of Horak’s death in 1930 said that the Horak Opera house was the first theater built in Queens. The building was demolished in the 1920s to make way for retail development.
Located at the north west corner of Steinway and Astoria Blvd. was the 470 seat Arena Theatre. This was a small wooden building that did not survive past the silent film era. The site vanished in the widening of Astoria Blvd. and the building of the Grand Central Parkway.
The Cameo Theatre, located at 25-15 Steinway Street, opened in 1941. This was a small, cheaply built theater located across the street from the much grander Triboro and Astoria Theaters. Last run movies were the rule, but the addition of this theater gave Steinway it’s temporary reputation as major entertainment and shopping district. Trolly cars clanged up and down the drive making for a busy and lively “downtown” for Astoria. Even in 1941, the Steinway Theatre down the street was still offering a live stage revue, “Stars Over Broadway,” featuring Glenn and Jenkins, Robert Field, the Byrne Sisters, the Gonzales Trio and Elsie the Cow.
The day after 9/11, my roommate and I decided to go to the movies and so we walked up to the Astoria and saw a war film of all things, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. By the end of the year the theater was closed. The grand interior was already long gone as the space was broken up into six screens. Designed by Thomas Lamb with 2,900 seats and opened in 1920, the theater was owned by the vaudeville chain of Ward and Glynne. It was purchased in 1923 by Loew’s. In 1940, Skouras Theaters took over, that company eventually turning into United Artists Theatre Circuit. Since the theater had a proper stage and could handle vaudeville acts, the Marx Brothers appeared live when they were trying out scenes for A Night at the Opera in order to perfect the comedy routines before committing them to film. In the 1960s, high school graduations were held on the stage of the Astoria. So, the theater was an important part of the community, lasting to the bitter end when the Kaufman Astoria Cineplex opened at 35th Avenue and 38th Street, attracted all the business. Truth be told, the Astoria Theatre experience was pretty bad in those last years. The staff was barely friendly, the place was a rambling collection of uncomfortable and plain theater spaces and the best that could be said about it was that it was tawdry. Still, it was sad to read on the marquee one day, “1920-2001.” Had the auditorium not been destroyed to make a multiplex, perhaps the Astoria would have been worth preserving. The entrance has been basically preserved as if to say, “On this spot once stood a great theater, the likes of which we shall never see again.”
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