Thespians have held curtain calls under the twinkling chandeliers and midnight blue ceiling of the Paradise Theater. Film stars have lit up its silver screen.
Boxers have battered each other at the historic Grand Concourse venue. Rockers and rappers have made its stage shake.
Bronx power brokers staged a political coup at the city landmark, where a cornered gang banger once shot himself in the head.
The 83-year-old theater in Fordham has served many purposes and masters, and for its next act, the Paradise will play a mega-church.
The World Changers Church of New York, headed by controversial Georgia-based televangelist Creflo Dollar, has signed a lease to occupy the venue, as first reported by the Riverdale Review.
Built in 1929 to resemble a heavenly paradise, the theater will offer its new congregants just that. World Changers Church preaches “prosperity theology,” a worldview that equates piety and wealth.
“This is the highest and best use for the theater,” said Ruth Furst, a real estate broker who handled the deal for property owner Gerald Lieblich.
But some Fordham residents and longtime Paradise patrons believe the theater should remain an entertainment venue.
“There are plenty of other sites for churches,” said Vic Peters, 65, a building superintendent who remembers watching movies at the Paradise decades ago.
Designed by architect John Eberson, an Austrian immigrant, the 45,000-square-foot Paradise was one of five New York “wonder palaces” operated by Loews Theater.
With an elegant facade, murals of cherubs, a cloud machine, a marble staircase and a sweeping balcony, the 3,855-seat movie and play house was a sight to behold when it first opened, and a favorite spot for young couples to canoodle. It cost $4 million to build and showed films such as “Gone With The Wind,” said Lloyd Ultan, Bronx historian.
“It was very opulent,” said Peters. “You walked into the Paradise and it took your breath away.”
But the colossal theater struggled to turn a profit as the television era dawned and the Bronx suffered from urban blight. Divided into a multiplex in the 1980s, it shut down in 1994 and sat empty for several years.
Lieblich, part-owner of the Russian Tea Room, bought the rundown Paradise for $4.5 million in 2003 after a restoration attempt by local developer Richard DeCesare stopped short of the finish line.
Two years later, the beloved theater reopened as a live entertainment venue with refurbished Greco-Roman style statues, new seats and new paint.
The reopening of the Paradise was celebrated as a milestone in the resurrection of the Bronx and under Lieblich the theater has played host to popular acts such as Rick Ross and The Killers and countless boxing bouts.
Now the mercurial building is due for yet another change. World Changers acquired the space Oct. 20. Two weeks later, hot metal from construction work ignited a two-alarm blaze, causing smoke damage.
Phone calls to Lieblich and World Changers weren’t returned.
Because the theater is a landmark, World Changers won’t be allowed to remodel the space substantially, Ultan said. But Peters called the fate of the Paradise “sad.”
“The use should match the history of the site,” he said.
Not everyone in Fordham is so nostalgic, however. Herman Mendez, 67, who recalls catching flicks at the movie house in the 1960s, shrugged off the news.
“There are memories here,” Mendez said, tipping his hat to the grand old theater. “But what can you do? Those memories are gone with the wind.”
dbeekman@nydailynews.com
