Loew's Valencia Theatre, Movie theater in Jamaica, Queens, US
Loew's Valencia Theatre is a former movie theater on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, New York, built in a Spanish Colonial style with ornate terra-cotta decorations covering its facade. The building has brick surfaces, decorative pilasters, and a large auditorium that originally seated over 3,500 people.
The theater opened on January 12, 1929, as the first of five Loew's Wonder Theatres built in the New York area. It showed films and vaudeville acts in its early years before eventually closing as a cinema.
The building now serves as a church, and much of the original interior decoration remains in place. Visitors who get the chance to step inside can see a mix of Spanish Colonial forms and pre-Columbian motifs that sit side by side in a way rarely found in New York.
The building sits on a busy street in Jamaica and is easy to reach by subway or bus. Because it now operates as a church, the interior is generally only open during services or special events, so it is worth checking in advance before visiting.
The building originally housed a Robert Morton Wonder organ with 4 manuals and 23 ranks of pipes, one of the largest instruments of its kind installed in a movie theater. The organ was later moved to the Balboa Theatre in San Diego, where it can still be found today.
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