Paramount Theater
426 S. Salina Street,
Syracuse,
NY
13202
426 S. Salina Street,
Syracuse,
NY
13202
1 person
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The Paramount Theater was operating prior to 1941. There is very little information about this theater. It was torn down in 1967 along with its neighbor, the RKO Keith’s Theater, but may have ceased operation a year earlier. Like the Keith’s, the Paramount Theater remained a first-run house until it closed.
Built before the Loew’s State Theater, the Paramount Theater started as a vaudeville theater. It may have been a Thomas Lamb-designed theater, as were the Loew’s State, RKO Keith’s and the Strand. But the Paramount was not as large as those three. The Paramount Theater may also have been substantially modernized when it become the first Syracuse theater converted to Cinemascope in late-1953.
Contributed by
George
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Here is a December 23, 1953 ad from the Syracuse Herald Journal:
http://tinyurl.com/7dnp4o
From the 1920s a picture postcard view of the Paramount and Demitt Theaters in Syracuse.
From what I’ve been able to puzzle out from a number of fragments in a long list of sources, a theater called the Temple was built on this site by a William Cahill in 1914, and was designed by a local architect named James A. Randall. In the late 1920s, it was leased to the Schine circuit, and in 1929 it was either remodeled or rebuilt to plans by Thomas Lamb, and became the Paramount.
The office building in front of the theater was called the Cahill Block, and dated from 1913-1914. The Temple Theatre’s auditorium seated about 1,200, so at the very least it had to have been expanded if it was converted into the larger Paramount. At least one source implies, though doesn’t state explicitly, that the Temple was demolished and replaced, while other sources imply, but don’t explicitly state, that the Temple was only remodeled.
I’m hoping somebody will be able to come up with other sources that solve this puzzle. I’ve pretty much exhausted the sources available on the Internet.