RKO Keith's Theater (Flushing, Queens)

About

The RKO Keith's Theater was an RKO Pictures movie theater at 135-35 Northern Boulevard in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City. It was designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb and built in 1928. While the RKO Keith's had a plain three-story facade, its interior was elaborately designed in a Spanish Baroque Revival style. The theater had a square ticket lobby and an oval grand foyer, which led to the double-level auditorium. The auditorium was designed as an atmospheric theater with a blue ceiling and gilded-plaster decorations; it contained 2,974 seats across two levels. There were also four lounges and a mezzanine promenade.

The theater was developed by Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Albee of the Keith–Albee vaudeville circuit, which bought the site in 1927. The Keith–Albee Theater, as it was known, opened on Christmas Day 1928 and originally operated as a vaudeville theater. In the 1930s, the theater was renamed the RKO Keith's and began showing movies. The theater continued to prosper after World War II in spite of a decline in New York City's large neighborhood movie palaces during that time. It began to decline in the 1960s and was eventually divided into a three-screen multiplex in 1977. The RKO Keith's was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated most of the theater as a New York City interior landmark in 1984, but the New York City Board of Estimate curtailed the LPC's designation to cover only the ticket lobby and grand foyer.