Paramount Center
549-59 Washington Street,
Boston,
MA
02111
549-59 Washington Street,
Boston,
MA
02111
18 people
favorited this theater
Showing 226 - 250 of 266 comments
The photo is from 1945 and is described here.
Here’s another 1945 photo of the same scene, but taken from the opposite direction. It is described here.
The “RKO Keith’s” theatre shown in both photos is now the Opera House, though if recent news reports are to be believed, it may soon be renamed the Citizens Bank Theatre.
Between the RKO Keith’s and the Paramount in both photos is a marquee and entrance for the original B. F. Keith’s Theatre, which by 1945 was no longer part of the Keith circuit and been renamed several times. In these photos, you can just barely make out the words “NEW NORMANDIE” on top of its marquee. This theatre was torn down in the early 1950s, but the entrance building still stands today.
Can be seen on the left of this photo along with the Keith:
View link
Someone should update the description and photo at the top of this page, as both are now out of date.
Here’s Emerson’s official press release about the Paramount.
For a local discussion and some photos of the Paramount and its surroundings, take a look here:
ArchBoston.com forum: Emerson College to redevelop Paramount Theatre
(you’ll need to continue to page 2 of this discussion forum to see the photos)
What the article refers to as the “Arcade building”, at 543-547 Washington Street, used to contain the Bijou Theatre and an entrance to the B.F. Keith’s Theatre. I believe the ‘vacant North Lot parcel’ is the former site of the Keith’s.
Here’s a recent photo and description of the 543-547 Washington Street building.
Some good news in today’s Boston Globe!
Emerson College to redevelop Paramount Theatre
The long-awaited renovation of Washington Street’s Paramount Theater moves a large step closer to reality today, with Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s planned announcement of a new partnership with Emerson College. The $70 million Paramount Center project would redevelop the Theater District landmark and two neighboring properties to provide two theaters, rehearsal rooms, student residences, and restaurant space.
Menino plans to join leaders of Emerson College, Millennium Partners-Boston, the American Repertory Theatre, and other local arts groups today to announce the project. Loosely projected to open in 2008, it would include the Arcade building at 543-547 Washington St., next to the Paramount, and a vacant parcel called the North Lot, behind the Arcade.
…
Emerson’s trustees voted Monday to take on the project and to earmark $70 million for it, bringing the college’s investment in Theater District properties to more than $350 million, according to board chairman Ted Benard Cutler. Millennium Partners acquired the Paramount as part of its deal with the city to develop nearby Millennium Place, and it has already spent $1.6 million on repairs.
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Emerson is working with Elkus/Manfredi Architects on preliminary designs. Plans are sketchy but will probably include a theater seating about 450 and a smaller, 75- to 125-seat black-box theater. One of Gund’s designs had featured a 700-seat space, and BRA spokesman Susan Elsbree said yesterday that the final size will depend on the needs of the nonprofit arts groups that the city wants to include.
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The project still faces substantial challenges. Built in 1932 as an Art Moderne movie house, the Paramount has a shallow stage — just 11 feet deep — and a nearly flat auditorium floor that creates some bad sightlines. Most of the theater’s original details have not survived its long, slow spiral, which bottomed out in the building’s last incarnation as a porn theater before closing in 1976.
Here’s a nice photo of the Paramount façade and marquee as it appears today.
I thought it was a group of airplanes flying in military formation…
More likely a bleed through of stains on the back of the original.
Are those UFOs in the sky above the theatre? I should send this to Art Bell….
Here’s a 1949 photo of the Paramount and surrounding businesses. The photo is described here.
There is a black & white photo of the interior of the Aurora Paramount on page 160 of “American Picture Palaces” by David Naylor, and it is indeed the same design as shown in the architects renderings of the Boston Paramount mentioned in Mr. Newman’s post of 2/23/05 above.
I remember seeing the Boston Globe in the late 60s or early 70s where the General Cinema directory ad listed the Paramount. Wasn’t the area known as “the Combat Zone” back in the early 70s? If so, that’s probably why GCC closed the Paramount – not enough people bringing their kidlettes to the area to see ‘101 Dalmatians’.
According to an unpublished draft manuscript by Douglas Shand-Tucci entitled The Puritan Muse (available in the Fine Arts room of the Boston Public Library), this was the only Washington Street theatre built exclusively to show movies, and the only one never to have a stage show.
The Paramount moved from the New England Theatre circuit to General Cinema in June, 1967.
Sorry about the link error; I was not saying that the views are to be seen at their site, only that this is the organization that was responsible for the Aurora photos and brochure of Conrad Schmitt’s restoration there.
As to why they appear on a site devoted to the Boston PARAMOUNT, I can only guess that it was a mix up at the advertising or web site producers' offices, or that they wanted to present the impression that their work would equal that done to the Aurora PARAMOUNT.
I’m convinced, especially now that I’ve looked at CinemaTour’s photos of the Aurora Paramount.
Now I wonder why Warren Freedenfeld & Associates would apparently misrepresent their (never-executed) project in this way.
That link doesn’t work. Do you mean www.ConradSchmitt.com ? I don’t see anything there about the Paramount Theatre in Aurora — only a Paramount in Anderson, Indiana.
Yes, the photos there are definitely of the restored PARAMOUNT in Aurora, Illinois. Those views are from the brochure about the theatre in Aurora by the restorers: the Conrad Studios outside of Milwaukee at www.ConradSchmittStudios.com
Ron:
The interior photos look to me like they are of the Paramount in Aurora, Illinois. I’ve never heard of a twin of that in Boston. Something is fishy there.
This page has two breathtaking photos of the Paramount’s interior. I don’t know when these were taken. If any of you have been inside, how do these photos compare with what you saw?
Unfortunately, the project proposed on that page never happened because FD Rich got into bankruptcy trouble and ‘Commonwealth Center’ was not built.
Not sure if it belonged to any chain when it was semi-porn.
When the Paramount showed porn movies, was it still a General Cinema? It seems quite out of character for that chain.
I went to see Flesh Gordon here during one of its numerous re-issues so the year is suspect but it was one of the last films to play there.
I was amazed how huge the place was and even though very run-down you could still see signs of a true movie palace.
I agree that the Paramount deserves renovation; it would appear that it is to be renovated sometime soon. I doubt that it would make a great “Broadway in Boston” touring-show kind of theater without a completely new stagehouse (like the nearby Keith Memorial/Opera House). Also, as previously noted above, the proscenium is quite narrow.
I think that the Paramount would be a good home for dance/ballet or possibly a film series, but it is unclear which groups will utilize the space upon renovation.
Many of the interior details are now gone, but could be recreated. Yet this would make it a very expensive renovation, restoring it to the art-deco glory it once was, so any new renovations may not resemble the old Paramount.
Someone needs to restore the Paramount!! I have been admiring it for years, and Boston could really use more historic theaters to perpetuate the Broadway in Boston movement. With the revival of the Opera House, the Paramount would be a great addition to Washington Street’s bustling shopping and dining areas!
Berklee College of Music gutted and modernized the Fenway Theatre in the mid-1970s. It is now a concert hall called the Berklee Performance Center.
As a kid who grew up in Brooklyn NY in the late ‘40s-early ‘50s, I visited Boston a few times in ‘49-’50 when an aunt lived nearly. I recall that at that time films at the Paramount played day-and-date with a theater named the Fenway, presumably located near the Fenway. When I visited Boston as an adult, I could not locate that theater. Had its name changed? I remember the Paramount vividly. One January day in ’50, we walked down Washington Street, gazing at all the theater lobbies along the way. “Samson and Delilah†was playing at the Paramount (and at the Fenway). I had just seen the film at NYC’s Rivoli, and I marveled at how studios could distribute their films simultaneously across the map of my universe. As a jaded college student a decade later, I visited friends in Boston, and we went to the Paramount to see a revival of “Samson and Delilah.†We sat in the balcony and made snide comments about Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr. A disgruntled patron complained about us to an usher, who told us to shut up or get out. For all its art deco, the Paramount bore stylized traces of French Renaissance enough so that the theater struck me as a smaller facsimile of the Times Square and Brooklyn Paramounts with their high, narrow prosceniums and sweeping balconies.