Anyone who has been inside a contemporary movie theater in Brooklyn, say, the infamously icky Pavilion Cinema, might find these Library of Congress photos of the cathedral-like Fox Theatre a bit ostentatious. But that was the whole point. (Its contemporaries, like the gorgeously restored Loew's Kings Theatre, looked similar.) The grand motion picture theater, which stood at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Nevins Street in Fort Greene from 1928 to 1971, was one of the largest theaters ever built in the U.S., and its auditorium could seat 4,305 people. Designed by the Detroit firm C. Howard Crane & Associates, the Fox's design was a mish-mash of baroque, Art Deco, and East Indian architectural styles. It reportedly cost $10 million to build, a figure equivalent to $139.1 million today.
Rachel B. Doyle
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