Photos: Inside Jamaica's Historic Movie Theater-Turned-Church

JAMAICA, QUEENS — "Did nobody say, 'Wow'?" Sister Forbes asked as she led a tour down the red-carpeted center aisle of the 4,000-seat Valencia Theater, which turns 90 years old this year.

Silence answered. She had lost her audience's attention to the decadent sights before them.

"Wow," after all, is practically the Valencia's last name: The landmark movie theater, nestled between clothing stores on a busy commercial strip of Jamaica Avenue, is the largest of five Loew's "Wonder Theaters" in the New York area.

Nowadays, the theater goes by the Tabernacle of Prayer for All People. It is open only on Friday evenings and on Sundays, when its Pentecostal owners host religious services. This tour, led by the New York Adventure Club, is one of a few exceptions.

The theater is otherwise in the hands of its three caretakers, who share the charge of maintaining the building's grandeur. The Valencia doesn't look a day past 90, though the church will admit she had some work done in 1977, when the Loew's Corporation donated the theater.

American architect John Eberson designed the Valencia as an atmospheric theater, transporting moviegoers to a re-creation of an ornate Spanish villa.

Atmospheric would seem an understatement for a theater whose intricate flourishes hide in every corner of the building, calling for at least an hourlong tour.

In the main auditorium, gold terracotta carvings stretch to a pale blue ceiling that forms a star-studded sky. A member of the congregation flips a switch and the theater goes dark but for a hundred twinkling bulbs.

"This was all in one man's mind," Sister Forbes said. "There were no computers to help him think of this stuff."

The church has made some changes since it acquired the Valencia. Nude Roman gods and goddesses once lined the theater's proscenium, just below the sky. The church added robes to make them decent and wings to make them angels. The windows along the entryway once held coming attractions. They now hold scriptures.

Gold lion's heads cover the lobby's ceiling as a nod to Marcus Loew, whose surname comes from the German word for lion. To the Pentecostals they symbolize Satan, but the church chose to let sleeping lions lie.

The Valencia's carved facade barely hints at its extravagant interior. It's no wonder the landmark theater is one of Jamaica's best-kept secrets.