Overview

The 4,000-seat Loew’s Paradise Theatre opened in early September 1929 with The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929)  starring Warner Oland, in addition to vaudeville acts on the stage and organist Harold Ramsey at the console of the “Wonder Organ”.

The theatre was originally commissioned by the Paramount-Publix theatre chain and was going to be called the Venetian Theatre, however Paramount-Publix withdrew from the project before construction started and the project was taken over by the New York-based Loew’s theatre chain. The design was adapted by Loew’s to become one of their five “Wonder Theatres”, the others being:

• The Valencia Theatre  in Queens (designed in the Atmospheric style by John Eberson).
• The Kings Theatre  in Brooklyn.
• Loew’s Jersey Theatre  in Jersey City.
• 175th St Theatre in Washington Heights, now known as the United Palace Theatre .

The $4 million theatre was designed by John Eberson, creator of the Atmospheric theatre style. It has been said that the Paradise Theatre is perhaps the greatest example of his work to survive since the demolition of the Paradise Theatre in Chicago in 1956.

Live stage shows and vaudeville acts ceased at the theatre not long after opening, owing to the Great Depression (six weeks after opening?). From that time onwards the theatre was a first-run movie house.

In the late 1940s a concrete slab was installed over the orchestra pit, providing for an extra four rows of seats but rendering the orchestra pit, and the organ console it contained, unusable. The organ console and the rest of the organ was extracted in the 1960s and moved to Loew’s Jersey Theatre.

In 1973 the auditorium was duplexed (split into two separate auditoria) by building separating walls and drop ceilings within the auditorium. Two years later it was triplex’d, and in 1981 it become four separate screens.

In 1994 the theatre closed and lay dormant for six years. Work began on a restoration in 2000 however due to some disputes was not completed for five years. In 2005 the restored theatre opened as a live theatre and special events venue, appealing to the large Latino population of the neighborhood and showcasing Latin, pop, and urban music concerts as well as special events such as boxing, comedy, and children’s variety shows.

In 2012, the building was leased to the World Changers Church New York. In 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the church ceased services. They subsequently moved to a new location and the theatre has stood vacant since then.

The auditorium was designed to represent a 16th century Italian Baroque garden, bathed in Mediterranean moonlight, with stars twinkling in the ceiling as clouds passed by. Hanging vines, cypress trees, stuffed birds and Classical statues and busts lined the walls. The safety curtain was painted with a gated Venetian garden scene, which continued the garden effect around the auditorium when it was lowered.

The theatre’s organ was a 4-manual, 23-rank Robert Morton “Wonder Organ”, one of five such models built for the Loew’s Wonder theatres. The organ was donated to the Garden State Theatre Organ Society  in the late 1990s, restored over a period of 11 years, and installed into the Loew’s Jersey Theatre where it was dedicated in 2008.

The theatre was leased in 2012 for use by the World Changers Church International  in New York for founding a local congregation.