[All photos via Vulture. Click through for more.]
As the Loew's Kings Theatre prepares for its long-awaited grand reopening on February 3 (with Diana Ross!), Vulture takes a look back at the history of the gorgeous, once-crumbling movie palace.
The theater first opened in 1929, with the silent film Evangeline, and as one of the largest auditoriums in the borough (it comfortably seated 3,600), the Kings hosted high school graduations and other community events in its almost fifty years in operation, finally closing in 1977 with "a cheap Bruce Lee biopic."
[The Kings marquee, 1930]
[The Kings marquee, 1966]
[The Kings marquee, 2006]
[The fully restored Kings marquee, 2014]
The theater laid fallow since then, with copper pipes and other fixtures of value scavenged and the interior wet and crumbling. Beginning in early 2013, the city's Economic Development Corporation and the Kings Theatre Redevelopment Company has spearheaded a massive, $94 million overhaul, with architectural firm Martinez+Johnson actually performed the restoration. ACE Theatrical Group is set to run the space.
· Photos: The Most Beautiful Old Movie Palace in Brooklyn, Back From the Brink [Vulture]
· Kings Theatre [official]
· All Loew's Kings Theatre coverage [Curbed]
Loading comments...