Cinema · 1928 – present
The Pavilion / Nitehawk
The movie palace at the park gate: opened as the Sanders in 1928, dark for two decades, reborn as the Pavilion, and gutted again into a Nitehawk dine-in cinema.
A Moorish movie palace
In August 1928, brothers Rudolph and Harry Sanders opened the Sanders Theatre at the foot of Prospect Park — a 1,581-seat single-screen movie palace with a Moorish-style interior and a Wurlitzer pipe organ to accompany the silent pictures. It was the grand neighborhood house, the place Windsor Terrace and Park Slope went to the movies.
Dark years
The Sanders closed in 1978, and the building sat empty for nearly two decades — a derelict landmark on the circle that neighbors complained about for years. It was finally renovated and reopened in 1996 as the Pavilion, a multiplex that eventually expanded to nine screens, though it earned its own reputation for sticky floors and broken seats.
Reborn again
The Pavilion closed in 2016, and after a two-year, top-to-bottom renovation it reopened in December 2018 as Nitehawk Prospect Park, a dine-in cinema with in-theater table service and bars. The restoration uncovered original 1920s plasterwork, marble stairs hidden under carpet, and the old balcony. Three names, four lives, the same walls — a near-century of the neighborhood sitting in the dark together.