The Paradise Theater in the Bronx:

from “a movie palace on steroids” to an evangelical church

by Pauline Bock

“It was like entering an Italian villa in the evening. We could hear live canaries singing in the lobby, and the water flowing in marble fountains. While we sat, the lights in the ceiling would turn to a red sunset. Clouds would slowly appear in a sky filled with stars. It was nothing more than an illusion, but it was incredibly done,” remembers Sam Goodman, a 62-year-old city planner in the Bronx Borough president’s office.

He’s not waxing romantic about a trip to an Italian opera house. Instead, he is recalling fond boyhood memories of the Loew’s Paradise Theater, a grand one-time movie palace on the Grand Concourse and 188th Street in the Bronx.
When Austrian-born immigrant John Eberson designed the Paradise in 1927, he called it an “atmosphere theater” and “a wonder theater,” the Bronx-born Goodman explained . “He wanted to transport the audience to a baroque villa courtyard under the moonlight.”

The theatre, built in 1929, still feels atmospheric and wonderful. Even the New York Landmark Preservation Commission agrees, designating the exterior as a landmark in 1997 and the interior nine years later. “The Loew’s Paradise is one of the most important atmospheric motion picture theaters to survive in the United States,” the landmark designation list states, considering it as the masterpiece of the Loew’s theater chain.
“Anyone who grew up here can remember it,” says Goodman with a smile, calling the theater “a movie palace on steroids.”

But since 2012, the Paradise Theatre — used to showcase movies, host graduation ceremonies and serve as a concert venue for decades — was purchased by the World Changers Church, the church of televangelist Creflo Dollar.
Cousins of the Paradise, Loew’s 175th street theater in Washington Heights and Loew’s Valencia Theater in Queens also are currently run by evangelical churches.

Xavier Rodriguez, district manager of the Bronx Community District 5, admits that the World Changers Church has done well in maintaining the facility and organizing good works. He adds: “But this would have made a terrific entertainment center!”
The purchase came following a renovation that involved dividing it into two, three, four movie rooms, before being restored back to the grand original one. It is not a theatre any more, but it’s still a show.

No more a theater, still a show

The star light bulbs are gone, but the colors still fade slowly before the spots turn to the stage, when one enters the Paradise Theater for services today. Letters on the marquee, which once advertised movie classics like “Gone with the Wind,” now list service hours. And instead of movie posters, photos of tele-evangelist pastor Creflo Dollar and his wife, Taffi, decorate the entrance. Bronze doors and security gates open to the grand lobby, where the pastor’s books are on display. The live birds and running fountains are now gone, but, the golden murals and ornamental chandeliers remain. At the auditorium’s doors, guards distribute small plastic cups of sacred wine.

“If you are new to our church, please stand!” asks Creflo Dollar on the lit-up stage,after the gospel choir finishes performing. Less than a dozen people stand up, out of the packed auditorium of 3,845 seats. Tonight, he will preach about salvation, that he calls “the package”. After the usual call for donations and a special one for a “television equipment update”, estimated at a 2 million dollars cost, the pastor addresses his audience: “Go outside, in the Bronx, and tell the sinners that they have been forgiven by Jesus two thousand years ago! Tell them to accept the package!” Each of his words receive a burst of applause. In the front rows, hands are raised in the air and people are praying. “Thank you Jesus!” whispers a woman. “Hallelujah,” Creflo Dollar cries, “This is awesome!”

The theater is used only for church services. For non-members, visiting the Landmark-designated interior is not an option. “The Church is not terribly receptive to the idea of people seeing the building,” Sam Goodman says. “It has become a sacred place.” As a Jew, Sam says that he cannot attend the open service to see the inside again.
A request for a tour and an interview with Creflo Dollar was declined by the World Changers Church.

“Broadway in the Bronx”

The Paradise Theater is the second largest auditorium in New York, challenged only by the Radio City Music Hall, according to a research on the theater from the Theatre Historical Society, by Michael Miller. Archives from the Bronx Borough President’s office state that it cost $4 million and two years to build and first opened on Saturday, September 7, 1929, one month before the historic stock market crash.
At the time, Loew, Inc. developers believed the Paradise would be the first of several projects that would “bring Broadway to the Bronx,” Goodman says.

On the premiere night, the Paradise screened The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu and presented a concert in the all-new orchestra pit. Archives mention a 60 feet-high stage and an organ console.
But it never competed with Broadway. “Eberson’s vision may have happened if not for the crash of Wall Street”, says Goodman.

The Bronx was not to be as prosperous as planned, but from 1929 to the 1970s, the Paradise Theatre was part of the community. “Anyone who grew up here can remember it,” smiles Goodman. “Working as an usher at the Paradise was a big thing!”
But the architect’s visions of grandeur for his movie palace were not to be. As Goodman put it, “enormity needs big resources, that’s the challenge of the building.” Through the years the building was renovated and updated.

In the 1940s, the orchestra pit was removed to add seats. The organ console left the stage in the 1960s; it is now installed in the Loew’s Jersey Theatre in New Jersey. The original ticket booth was sold — “the legend says it now is at Disney World Florida,” Goodman smiles, “but I’m not sure.” The statue of St. George slaying a dragon on the great facade clock has also disappeared. The dragon once breathed red light for fire each time the clock struck the hour. “How someone could climb the five-stories building and remove the statue, no one knows,” says Goodman.
By 1973, it became economically difficult to fill the house, the main auditorium was divided into two movie rooms. “They wisely constructed two rooms inside of the main one, without destroying anything,” says Goodman. In 1975, the movie rooms were subdivided again to three, then to four in 1981. And eventually, in 1994, the Paradise Theater closed down.

The restoration

In 1995, the Paradise was closed, and Sam Goodman was working at the Bronx Borough President’s office. The theater was owned by real-estate corporation, IMMIS. “There were water damages, repeated fires,” he recalls. “Every offer to save it proved false, and we thought, ‘Unless some good-willed soul could buy it, it’ll be lost.’”

The soul in question happened to be Richard P. DeCesare’s, a local developer, who envisaged a cultural purpose for the Fordham area’s growing Latino community. “He planned a $10 million budget, when we had estimated $15 to 20 million,” says Goodman. “He has begun restoring the lobby and was working on the auditorium when he ran out of money.” Richard P. DeCesare could not be reached for an interview.
The work was finally completed when IMMIS sold the Paradise to Gerald Lieblich, co-owner of the Russian Tea Room, who agreed to “restore the building to Landmark quality, as a theater,” Goodman says.

The Paradise reopened as a theater in October 2005 with a Hollywood-like opening night. “Everyone who is someone in Bronx county was there,” recalls Goodman, who was there. Since it has hosted live concerts — The Killers, The XX.
But the theater was still not profitable. In 2012, Lieblich was looking for a tenant again. “He called the office with ‘one good and one bad news’”, says Goodman. The good news: he had found someone; the bad news: it was a church, so the building would stop being a theater.
An interview with Gerald Liebliech could not be set for this article. He still owns the Paradise.

And so the Paradise became a sacred place, and closed its doors to the Fordham community. Sam Goodman has not entered the building in ten years. “In this economy, that is the best running of the theater,” he says. “From the Great Depression all the way until now, the theater has survived everything.”

Pauline Bock