The extinction last year of the Loew's Paradise, the last big-screen movie theater in the borough, poses a question more familiar to sociologists than to local filmgoers: Is the dearth of movie theaters in the borough a sign that the movie industry has written off its love for the big screen?
The numbers provide a clue. Bronx residents have very little choice when it comes to movie theaters. There are only four in the borough -- the Bay Plaza, a 10-screen theater in Co-op City; the four-screen Interboro Quad in Throgs Neck; the Whitestone Cineplex, a 12-screen complex off Bruckner Boulevard; and the Concourse Plaza, a 10-plex on 161st Street.
For every theater in the borough, there are an average of 240,500 residents, easily the highest figure in the city. With 62 theaters, Manhattan averages 24,000 residents per theater.
To see films about their own neighborhood, like "I like it like that," about Puerto Rican life in the South Bronx directed last year by Morrisania native Darnell Martin, South Bronx residents have to travel to Manhattan. Some pile into cars and drive to sprawling suburban multiplexes in Yonkers or Westchester.
"I feel badly because a neighborhood should be complete," said Bernadette Watson, the director of Morrisania Revitalization, a housing and community advocacy group. "It should fulfill our entertainment, religious and spiritual necessities. And that should include movie houses."
Too often it doesn't, residents said. Unlike discount chain stores, banks and fast food outlets, movie theaters haven't kept pace with the surge of housing development over the last 10 years in the South Bronx.
First-run movie houses started closing in the 1960s when landlords started abandoning houses. In an era when multiplexes are sprouting along highways and in suburbs, only one new movie complex has opened up in the Bronx over the last 20 years -- the Concourse Plaza, which opened with 3,300 seats in 1991.
The closing in January 1994 of the Paradise on the Grand Concourse represented the end of the borough's golden era. Built before the multiplex age, the movie palace once drew capacity crowds of 4,000 to weekend matinees, many coming to admire the lobby's gurgling fountains and baroque statues.
"Theaters are things that should be saved," said John Robert, district manager of Community Board 2. "They're the kinds of things that give neighborhoods life."
For now, there are no plans to build any new theaters in the borough. A.B.I Property Partners, the Paradise's Delaware-based owner, recently scrapped plans to convert the grand old Loew's theater into a shopping center. It is considering suggestions from neighborhood residents to turn it into a performing arts center.
"I wish we had more of this in the South Bronx," said Lisa Martinez, a resident of West Farms, who was waiting in line for a movie at the Interboro Quad on East Tremont Avenue in Throgs Neck. "We don't have anything like this where I live."