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Paramount Theatre
Portland, Oregon
The outer lobby was particularly fine, with marble-paneled walls from top to bottom and a polychrome coffered ceiling. The Paramount ceased showing movies in the early 1970s, but hung on as a rock palace for another decade until the city stepped in and bought it. Following an extensive renovation, it reopened in 1984 as Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, known locally as "The Schnitz," the new home of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra.
The organ was sold at the same time as the furnishings; it became the nucleus of the Denver Organ Grinder instrument, which has since been broken up. The bolsters beneath the ceiling created the illusion of great height. While the auditoriums of the Portland and Seattle Paramount Theatres are virtually identical in all their essential dimensions, the Portland house seems much taller.Photos courtesy of the Theatre Historical Society of America |
Briefly called the Portland, this elegant house was one of only two Rapp & Rapp projects in the West; the other opened in Seattle a week before. Unlike its sister to the north, the Portland looked like no other Rapp theatre, and its basic form was used only once later, in the Warner Theatre, Milwaukee.
The theatre remained exceptionally intact until the mid-1970s when most of its furnishings were auctioned off. The original paint scheme was lost in the 1984 renovation, covered by a narrow palette of bland pastels thought to be more appropriate to its newly elevated status.
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