Paramount Theater

Paramount Theater

Paramount Theater Roger Whitacre

Paramount Theater

1930, Temple Hoyne Buell. 1631 Glenarm Pl. (NR)

C. W. and George Rapp designed many movie theaters across America in the 1920s, including Denver's only surviving downtown movie palace. Temple Hoyne Buell, then a member of the firm, created this 2,100-seat theater as an Art Deco composition of precast concrete block sheathed in white glazed terracotta trimmed with black marble. The three-story Glenarm Place facade is divided into twelve bays of paired windows, with recurrent rosettes, feathers, and fiddleleaf ferns, which also sprout from the Art Deco interior, although the twenty-rank twin Wurlitzer pipe organs can steal the show. Pilasters are capped by fan-shaped frosted glass figures, and the sunburst ceiling and the chandelier create a starry effect. The grand, two-story theater entry lobby in the Kittredge Building to the west has been lost, and patrons now enter through the original exit doors on Glenarm Place.

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