Paradise lost

In a recent piece on movie houses old and new, the New York Times published a photo of the interior of Loews Paradise Theater in the Bronx. The only adequate response to the photo mixed disbelief, laughter, and regret in just about equal measure. The Paradise is one of those architecturally giddy American movie palaces of the 1920s and 1930s-rococo, barocco, and perhaps just plain loco-that once prospered in downtowns across the country. In New York City, these extravagant confections rose even in neighborhoods far from Manhattan, the city's ofFcial entertainment heart. In the midst of the drab and the everyday, a space was cleared for the fantastic. Up the walls of the Paradise, for example, an astonishing floor-to-ceiling assemblage of arches, portals, nooks, crannies, statues,...