Brooklyn movie palace where young Barbra Streisand saw movies is again a glittering gem

NEW YORK, N.Y. – A once gilded Brooklyn movie palace that’s been crumbling for decades, with pigeons infesting its stage, is back — again a glittering gem from the 1920s.

Diana Ross headlined Tuesday’s opening night at the 3,200-seat Kings Theatre in the Flatbush neighbourhood, where a teenage Barbra Streisand spent afternoons enjoying double features.

The curtain rose to the 70-year-old Motown diva’s hard-rocking band, amplified by an impeccable sound system. Ross herself delivered a surprise entrance, walking down a centre aisle in a shimmering, teal gown and drawing a standing ovation from the roaring crowd.

The audience — a mix of races, ages and economic classes — stayed standing, dancing as she launched into some of her hit songs, including “Stop in the Name of Love.” She got spectators to sing along.

After a two-year, $95 million renovation, every detail from the theatre’s jazz-age 1929 incarnation came to life amid computerized sound and LED lighting. The theatre that first opened weeks before the Wall Street crash is now the largest in New York’s biggest borough.

“We don’t want to make it look brand-new; its character, its patina, is the glow and the warmth and the burnishing of the gold and the copperleaf, of the beautiful light fixtures, the seats, the carpet and the fabric — it all blends together so perfectly,” said David Anderson, president and CEO of the Houston, Texas-based ACE Theatrical Group selected to restore and operate the city-owned property.

“And yet,” he added, “if we can’t make it be a piece of successful commerce, we’ve wasted our time.”

In the next few months, programs will feature entertainers including Gladys Knight, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Sarah McLachlan — the first of about 200 live annual events being planned.

Gone are the pigeons that left years of droppings inches deep in a space that also served as a refuge for homeless New Yorkers. Balconies that had collapsed onto water- and mould-soaked floors are up again, complete with new red velvet seating.

The roof no longer leaks. And the 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) Art Deco lobby chandeliers — too heavy for vandals to strip — again exude splendor above the repolished entrance marble.

The theatre has a goal that reaches beyond its terra-cotta, ornamental facade: to be an economic engine for a once heavily Jewish neighbourhood now home to many Caribbean immigrants. Some are struggling in a community that has survived a roller coaster of crime and decay on its way to the current real estate renewal.

Most of about 100 jobs at Kings will go to area residents, with local restaurants and small businesses also benefiting.

“We’ll be catering to the immediate community, presenting shows that interest New Yorkers from the Caribbean culture,” Anderson said.

The 86-year-old venue, its decor inspired by France’s Palace of Versailles and the Paris Opera, was one of the five Loew’s “Wonder Theatres” in New York and New Jersey — sumptuous homes to a budding movie culture.

By 1977, when the theatre was shuttered, suburban multiplexes had replaced the grand, deteriorating inner-city palaces. Kings was acquired by the city in 1983 because of nonpayment of taxes, and it took two more decades to raise the $95 million for the restoration.