Queens Boulevard at 78th Road Looking West: IND Queens Boulevard Line
Negative documents Queens Boulevard at 78th Road as part of the construction and maintenance of the IND Queens Boulevard Subway Line. Camera set on north curb of Boulevard, looking west. Also shows building entrance, man standing at door of building, billboards, automobiles, and trolley tracks.
New York Transit MuseumEntrance to the Kew Gardens Indoor Golf Course, at the east corner of Queens Boulevard and 78th Avenue; October 10, 1930.
This Queens Boulevard oddity opened to the public in September, 1929, as the Fox Kew Gardens Theatre (even though it sat squarely on the Forest Hills Side of Union Turnpike). Unfortunately, the 1,287-seat theatre's run was to be short lived: the rapid residential development of Queens was disrupted by the crash of 1929, and the Kew Gardens Theatre shuttered in December of the same year.
Undeterred, Fox turned to a new kind of recreation to draw patrons: miniature golf. The defunct theatre was retrofitted and reopened in August, 1930, as the Kew Gardens Indoor Golf Course — billed here as "America's Finest." A full rounds of 18 holes cost 50 cents.
Miniature golf proved a difficult a sell in tight economic times, and the course was closed again. The building was demolished in the 1950s, after about two decades of vacancy.
Urban Archive