Queens Loses a Street and Gains a Slice of Hollywood

Courtesy of Kaufman Astoria Studios Paris in the foreground; Astoria, Queens, in the background. This was the scene along 36th Street in the summer of 1929 as “The Gay Lady” (retitled “The Battle of Paris”) was being filmed.

Dust off the Duesenberg. New York is getting two new studio gates.

David W. unlap/The New York Times A detail of the original 1920 Astoria studio building.

The gates will close off a one-block stretch of 36th Street in Astoria, Queens, allowing Kaufman Astoria Studios to consolidate its complex on either side of the street. This will allow the studio to create â€" in the former roadway itself â€" a 34,800-square-foot back lot, almost exactly where many outdoor scenes were filmed in the 1920s and ’30s for movies that are themselves long forgotten.

“When you think of going to a studio, you expect to pull up to a gate,” said Hal G. Rosenbluth, the president of Kaufman Astoria. “This will become an iconic symbol for the area.”

The historical heart of Kaufman Astoria complex is an enormous studio building on 35th Avenue that was opened in 1920 by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, the predecessor to Paramount Pictures. Directly behind this building was a b! ack lot, now occupied by soundstages and offices, that was used for dozens of movies produced or distributed by Paramount until 1939.

The last great exterior set built at Astoria was for “One Third of a Nation,” an adaptation of a rabble-rousing Federal Theater Project play, said Richard Koszarski, author of “Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York From Griffith to Sarnoff” (2008). The director, Dudley Murphy, originally planned to shoot on location on the Lower East Side, Mr. Koszarski said, “but because the script called for the character played by young Sidney Lumet to burn down one of these tenements, Murphy decided to construct his own slum on the Astoria back lot.”

Another memorableset was a Parisian streetscape, complete with kiosks, for “The Battle of Paris” (1929), about an English singer in Paris during World War I. Originally titled “The Gay Lady,” it starred Gertrude Lawrence and featured original music by Cole Porter. Filming began on the outdoor set every evening at 8 o’clock, The New York Times reported.

“Night work was imperative in such a scene because of the available silence that reigns in Astoria between dusk and dawn,” The Times said. “Sometimes the company remained at the studio until 7 in the morning, continually working, with but a few moments’ rest for a sandwich.”

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The original studio building, at 35th Avenue, is on the National Register of Historic Places. A gate will be built on 36th Street, at the right of the photo. The original back lot was directly behind this structure, on 34th Avenue.

The new back lot will be 60 feet wide and 580 feet long, running from 35th Avenue to 34th Avenue. Studio executives and city officials envision it as an alternative to some of the location filming that snarls neighborhoods and tests New Yorkers’ patience. It would offer filmmakers a controlled outdoor environment on which temporary sets could be constructed, stunts and car chases could be staged and large-scale equipment could be used.

“The working back lot will crate a totally unique production opportunity in New York City that will allow Kaufman to continue to attract world-class films and television series,” said Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Kaufman Astoria rents its studios to producers. (All Saints Hospital from “Nurse Jackie” occupies Stage G, for example, while “Sesame Street” can be found on Stage J.) It has not been affiliated with Paramount Pictures for many decades. It will lease this one block of 36th Street from New York City and effectively control it until 2049.

As a technical matter, the 36th Street segment has been closed â€" or “de-mapped” â€" since June 2012. In 2015, Kaufman Astoria will begin paying rent; it will start at $140,000 annually and escalate every five years. It has already begun making payments to the city in lieu of real estate taxes. These began at $33,137 annually and will increase every year.

Rockwell Group/Archtagon A rendering of the planned main gate to Kaufman Astoria Studios. It will close 36th Street to the public from 35th Avenue to 34th Avenue. The building at right is the Museum of the Moving Image.

Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, whose district includes the studio, asked Kaufman Astoria not to shut off the street to traffic until it was ready to start construction. The studio agreed.

“Obviously, we’d never take lightly the closing of a public street,” Mr. Van Bramer said. However, he added, it was important to accommodate the studio because Kaufman Astoria “really began the rnaissance of 35th Avenue,” an area he said he remembered from his childhood as all but abandoned.

The look of the new gates, by David Rockwell of the Rockwell Group, was approved last month by the mayoral Design Commission. Tracy Capune, the vice president of Kaufman Astoria, said the main gate, on 35th Avenue, would include a steel truss 40 feet above the street that can double as a working catwalk for outdoor productions.

Mr. Rosenbluth, the studio president, said the gates should be completed this summer. He estimated the total cost at $2 million to $3 million, following a protracted government review that included an initial rejection by the Design Commission.

Mr. Rosenbluth and the studio’s developer, George S. Kaufman, have dreamed of a gated studio complex since the 1980s. They once produced a rendering of an arched entryway that closely resembled the celebrated Bronson Gate at the Paramount studios in Hollywood.

“We got a cease-and-desist order from Paramount,” Mr. Rosenbluth said, now able to laugh at the memory.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The portion of 36th Street that will be closed to the public and turned into a back lot includes the main entrance to the Kaufman Astoria Studios headquarters, at right.