Early View of the Brooklyn Paramount

Motion Picture News, December 25, 1926, featured an article on the new Brooklyn Theatre currently under construction. Designed by Rapp & Rapp, it would open November 23, 1928 as the Brooklyn Paramount.

 "Rapp & Rapp have designed a most striking structure for erection at DeKalb Avenue and Flatbush Street [sic] in Brooklyn N. Y. An office building of 30 stories will surround a 500-foot tower, the whole being designed in modern adaption of the later Spanish Renaissance.
"The building will enclose a theatre with a seating capacity of 4,500 and will be designed in the style of Old Spain, embodying the  spirit of the Spanish carnivals and fetes of that race. Features and novelties new to theatre architecture will be employed to further inspire the amusement-loving world."

The completed structure featuring a rococo-designed theatre with a seating capacity 4,124*.

Photo: New York Theatre Organ Society

               

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* Seating for the Brooklyn Paramount has been given variously as 4.084, 4,144 and 4,500. The larger number could be based on the original design.
The New York City Department of Buildings list capacity as:
Orchestra: 1,983
Mezzanine: 411
Balcony: 1,730
Total 4,124

Cezar Del Valle is the author of the Brooklyn Theatre Index, chosen 2010 Best Book of the year by the Theatre Historical Society.

He is available for theatre talks and walks in 2014.

Bardavon 1869 Opera House, 35 Market Street, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

The 19th-century  Collingwood Opera House modernized by the Bardavon Theatre Corporation with William J. Beardsley as architect.

Excerpts from the Poughkeepsie Eagle News, November 20, 1922:
"The new Bardavon Theatre, which has majestically risen on the site of the Collingwood Theatre is rapidly being rushed to completion and will open to the public for its first performance on New Year's Day."

"The marquee at the entrance will be a blaze of brillancy which will follow through the entire 77-feet lobby to the main auditorium. The lobby decorations will consist of ornamental plaster ceilings with brilliant cove lighting, antique verde marble and tile flooring. In the big foyer, twenty feet square, will be a brilliantly lighted dome, while to either side patrons will be able to see the massive marble stairways leading to the mezzanine and grand balcony."

"The decorative scheme of the main auditorium is a brilliant exhibition of the work of the master artists. The immense dome in the ceiling measuring nearly forty feet in diameter, is finished in azure blue, brilliant gold stars dotting the blue field. Around the dome are ivory-toned figures and designs, giving the whole a massive and decidedly rich appearance.  
"The immense proscenium arch and the proscenium boxes on either side are massive in appearance and magnificently decorated in mulberry, azure blue and Roman gold.
"Directly over the proscenium arch is a beautiful painting depicting the Bard-of-Avon, from the studio of Mr. Sielke and picturing Shakespeare, the Bard, on the banks of the Avon getting his inspirations for his most widely known plays, beautiful visions of these plays appearing in the background. This painting is fifty-six feet long  and over twelve feet high, all brilliantly lighted in colored tones by a battery of colored electric lamps hidden in the recesses of the border of the sounding board."

"Off the main auditorium on the north is an open decorated arch which leads to the ladies rest room and a similar arch on the south side leading to the men's smoking room. Both of these are to be furnished for the utmost comfort of the patrons of the theatre." 

"The furnishings on the big stage will be thoroughly modern and complete and the size of the stage more than adequate to accommodate the biggest productions."

  The 1944 seat theatre opened on January 1, 1923 with a one-day performance of  Leo Carrillo in Mike Angelo:

From the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle

The Poughkeepsie Eagle News, May 12, 1926:
"Mr. [Ely]  Elting has acted as president of the Bardavon Theatre Corporation, a million dollar combination holding the Bardavon, Stratford and Liberty theatres. At the present time these theatres are being operated for the Bardavon theatre group by the Publix Theatres, a branch of Famous Players picture corporation."  


Closed in 1975, the theatre was scheduled for demolition but rescued by the organization Concerned Citizens to Save the Bardavon.
It is now one of the oldest continuously operating theatres in New York State and the only one between New York City and Albany to still have its original pipe organ. The Bardavon listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


Postcard: Theatre Talks LLC Collection

Cezar Del Valle is the author of the Brooklyn Theatre Index, chosen 2010 Best Book of the Year by the Theatre Historical Society.

Fox and Paramount, North Platte, Nebraska

Merely Colossal* by Arthur Mayer, Paramount director of advertising, exploitation and publicity:
"...we acquired a seven-hundred-seat theatre in North Platte, a prairie town with a population of twelve thousand souls which also had a smaller independent theatre. William Fox, powerfully entrenched in the Rocky Mountain area, regarded this as the first step in an invasion of his God-given territory, and in retaliation ordered the construction of a palatial new theatre which could well have graced Broadway or State Street. On hearing this, [Adolph] Zukor reacted as he would to the rape of the Sabine women and declared an unprovoked assault had been made on one of his towns.
In order to teach Mr. Fox and all his other competitors a lesson, he issued instructions that regardless of expense we should build an even larger and more deluxe playhouse. We did. Before the competitive battle was over, North Platte had three beautiful theatres, all losing money."    

*Merely Colossal: The Story of the Movies from the Long Chase to the Chaise Lounge by Arthur Mayer, published by Simon and Schuster, 1953.






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Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Fox survives today, vertical sign intact, as the Neville Center for the Performing Arts.
Both the Paramount and the Fox were built by Keith Neville, a former governor of Nebraska. His daughters sold the Fox to the North Platte Community Playhouse for a dollar in 1983.
The former Paramount building also survives but closed as a theatre on February 6, 1963.



Links:
Fox Theatre
Paramount Theatre

And the Fox is haunted.



Above postcard from the collection of Theatre Talks LLC

Cezar Del Valle is the author of the Brooklyn Theatre Index, chosen 2010 Best Book of the Year by the Theatre Historical Society.