Paramount Theatre

Original seating for the Paramount Theatre was listed at 1241 and from looking at the size of the building I would say that that would be closer than the 900 listed in the header.

Hello everyone. Can anyone please help me find An Elvis Presley concert poster from his show at the Paramount Theatre? The date was 2/13/1956. I am willing to pay top dollar. Or if you guys could help me contact someone who might know where I could find one of these? An original? My contact info is:

Its a shame that the paramount is no more. My dad used to see elvis movies there all the time. Thanks for your time.

-Heather

Mr.Memory,you never fail to amaze.How the heck would you ever stumble across a 1965 year book page?Sometimes you’re scary.Not retired from the NSA?I guess you’d have to kill me if you told me.

lost memory, where did you get that picture of the pass? I may have donated a pass like that to the Newport News Historical Society

righter40

Here is an old pic
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Sadly the location today
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Thanks lostmemory for the opportunity to look at those old pictures of the Paramount, but the interior shot is incorrect. The Paramount never had atrue balcony. It was a true stadium seat theatre much like all of the new megapalexes of today. It had a huge main level and two stadium levels.

When I was 17 and an usher at the Newmarket Rockingchair Theatre(another awesome theatre) I was told to clean out some old boxes that the fire marshall deemed a fire hazard. What I found in those boxes were old pictures from the collection of R.D. Stallings, Manager at the Paramount, then Newmarket Theatres. I found old pictures, articles, blueprints, and an old seating chart(1931) of the Paramount that Stallings had kept and never retrieved when he retired. I later managed several theatres along the east coast, including the Rockingchair, and posted these photos in my office. Now all of this collection has been donated to the City of Newport News Historical Society. I hope it is not just lying in a box.

About two years before the Paramount was razed, I had a chance to enter the building and retrieve the old ticket box. Like a dummy I am I left it at the Rockingchair after I was transferred out of state and I never saw it again(probably got thrown out)

I don’t know if that interior shot is the old Academy of music, but it’s not the Paramount. Too bad there were no shots of the interior of the Palace.

The address for the Paramount Theater was:
3300 Washington Ave
Newport News, VA 23607

Sadly, about 1/1000th of the Paramount still remains…there’s a sad little course of terra cotta still stuck to the building next door (which, years ago, was “Paramount Florist”) to the north. A sad end for one of Virginia’s great theatres.

The Barton organ still exists, though. When the Paramount closed it was moved to the Virginia Theatre in Alexandria, and when that closed in the early ‘80s it was moved to the Granada in Kansas City, Kansas. It was the last theatre organ that the Barton company built.