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On weekends, Jeff Gottlieb can often be found at the movies. Instead of catching the summer's latest action flick, this 61-year- old is preserving the memory of some of Queens' oldest movie memorabilia - its theaters.
"I noticed that a lot of movie theaters that I've known in my youth - the Valencia on Jamaica Avenue, the RKO Keith's in Flushing, the Drake on Woodhaven Boulevard - were closed," said Gottlieb, 61, president of both the Central Queens Historical Association and the Queens Jewish Historical Society. "I wanted to know why they were closed ... what made people quit these beautiful theaters."
In his spare time, he searched for lost movie houses by rummaging through old records, researching publications and talking with people in the community.
In 1992, Gottlieb discovered that 32 Queens theaters were gone, including the Jerome on 101st Avenue in Ozone Park, now an Indian Sikh temple; the Kew Gardens Fox on Queens Boulevard, now an office building; and the Loews Hillside on Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica, taken over by the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Many of these theaters were built before World War II. Seating 500 to more than 3,500 people, it cost as little as a nickel to be transported to a world where the good guys always got the girl and the bad guys always lost in the end.
"Every theater has a character of its own which reflects the community," Gottlieb said. "People equate their neighborhood through its movie theaters. I remember there may have been 20 movie theaters on Jamaica Avenue between Nassau County on the east and Brooklyn on the west. Until they built the new multiplex in downtown Jamaica, there were none left. I think it loses something. A sense of community, a place where you can actually see people you know."
One of the most prominent theater architects was Thomas White Lamb. Between 1910 and 1942, he...