The Paramount Theater | Shannon via Flickr
The ornate movie palaces you can still see scattered throughout New York City are a monument to a different era, when theaters aimed to be as much a spectacle as the movies themselves. Staten Island’s Paramount Theater, located in Stapleton, now stands vacant; but for almost 50 years, it was one of the premier movie houses on Staten Island.
Run by Paramount Studios, the Paramount Theater once drew lines of people coming to see such classics as Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express, The Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Cecil B. Demille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster classic The Godfather, and many more.
When the place first closed down in the late 70s, it would later reopen as a concert venue. According to Scouting NY, bands like The Ramones, Metallica, the Dead Kennedys, and the B-52s played there — check out their article for many recent pictures of the building’s interior.
Thomas Altfather Good via Flickr
The Paramount once again closed in the late 80s, but it looks as if they’re trying to bring it back to life as an event hall — they have a “coming soon” list on their event calendar. If you happen to walk by it, take a gander at its beautiful architecture, an art-deco style that is not in fashion for movie theaters anymore.
