An imagined open courtyard inside a movie palace: tiled roof silhouettes, ornamental arcades and a midnight ceiling above the collection.
The Loew's Valencia at 165-11 Jamaica Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, was built in 1928 and opened in 1929 as the first of the five Loew's Wonder Theatres. Architect John Eberson, inventor of the atmospheric theater, gave it 3,554 seats and a brick and glazed terra cotta facade in the Spanish Baroque manner. It entertained Queens for half a century. Since 1977 it has housed the Tabernacle of Prayer for All People, and the city designated it a landmark on May 25, 1999.
Source · NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, LP-2036 ↗
Historic atmospheric auditorium; Spanish-inspired ornamental facades; terracotta detail; sky ceiling. 1929-inspired exhibition, not the present congregation’s interior. Mood: 1929 atmospheric fantasy. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.