Our story begins in 1927—the last hurrah of the Roaring Twenties, the dusk before the dawn of a new modernism, a crucial marker of a period that was the precursor to the Golden Age of Hollywood. Of course, we only know this in hindsight. For the ones who experienced it, 1927 was the year of the talking picture, or a “talkie”, popularised by the new sound-on-disc technology that would transform the silent spectacle of cinema into an even more staggering one. The prescient chiefs at Paramount Pictures, sensing the brewing revolution and stiffer competition, commissioned the Brooklyn Paramount Theater in the same year, making it America’s premier film theatre built for sound. 

Designed by the prolific architect brothers Rapp and Rapp, with over 400 theatres to their credit, it was aptly self-described as an 11-storey palace of entertainment, located in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn’s entertainment district in New York. The theatre opened its doors to the public amid tremendous fanfare on 24th November 1928, with the premiere of the part-talkie Manhattan Cocktail by Dorothy Arzner, Hollywood’s sole female director at the time. 

The venue married the tendencies of American optimism with French Baroque style, elevating the drama of cinema to an operatic level. Visitors entered the space through the Grand Foyer, a whopping 147 feet long and 42 feet high, laden with chandeliers in gold finish and goldfish swimming inside fountains. But that was simply the prelude. In the main hall, over 4,100 audience members sat in the plush burgundy seats, facing the stage draped with 60 feet long curtains, adorned with satin-embroidered pheasants. To match the fantasy playing on the screen, the lighting from the famed visual artist Thomas Wilfred’s colour organ, a self contained unit used for artistic ambience, would ricochet off the latticework ceiling.

Even through the Great Depression, the Brooklyn Paramount was a huge success, overshadowing any and all competitors in the borough. But the theatre’s achievements lay not in its profits, but its vigorous support for newer art forms that would go on to make a mark on the American cultural scene. In 1931, a dapper gentleman introduced his 15-member jazz orchestra and their swinging music to New York through the theatre. His name? Duke Ellington. Post Screening speakeasies would accompany performances by jazz legends such as Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Miles Davis and Bing Crosby. After the Second World War, when practical austerity had replaced indulgent opulence, and Brooklyn’s downtown and Victorianera buildings were being abandoned by their white landlords, an entirely new form of music found a worthy address in this anachronistic movie palace—the rock-and-roll extravaganza. Despite being sold to Long Island University (LIU) in 1950, the Paramount was kept alive through this period by the unifying power of music. From 1955 to 1960, the legendary disc jockey Alan Freed produced more than 20 revues at the theatre, which featured stars like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Little Richard. The revues became etched in American history as some of the first public concerts with a desegregated audience. In her memoir, A Natural Woman, noted singer-songwriter Carole King recalls witnessing a racially integrated crowd of teenagers for the first time at these shows, becoming “aware of a new kind of music that spoke to me and for me.” Journalist Jeff Greenfield retrospectively affirmed in a 1971 article for The New York Times, “To journey to Brooklyn was not simply going to a show: it was an act of faith.” 

The change of hands finally came into effect. The theatre screened its last film Hatari!, starring John Wayne, in 1962. Soon, LIU had officially moved in and the theatre’s offices were converted into classrooms, its Grand Foyer and staircase became the cafeteria, and the seats of the main hall were replaced with bleachers for the gymnasium. In the 1970s, the theatre became a rather ornate home to Brooklyn Blackbirds, the university’s basketball team. The relics of the Paramount, however, lived on in its overhead guilloche patterns, unused fountains and chequered marble floors, leaving athletes and faculty members awestruck. The most tangible of these vestiges was the ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ Opus 1984, a 4/26 theatre organ with 257 stops controlling 1,838 pipes, used to give music during intervals. It continued to be used in the decades after the theatre shut down. Preserved by the New York Theatre Organ Society, this gargantuan instrument was the first of only two Publix 4-style instruments built and the only one of its kind that exists today.

At the turn of the new millennium, as the Paramount stood silent, Brooklyn’s façade and spirit were undergoing a tremendous change. The borough’s old theatre district had been rezoned under the Downtown Brooklyn Redevelopment Plan of 2004. The Blackbirds found a new home in 2006, leaving the theatre to be used for graduation ceremonies and sponsored events. Jazz historians including Phil Schaap and musicians like Eddie Bert, who had played at the Paramount in its heyday, started hailing it as a mecca of the golden age of jazz music. The city longed to hear music in the theatre again. 

In 2015, LIU leased out the theatre as part of a deal that would restore its interior and the Wurlitzer organ. Dormancy befell the theatre in 2017 and it was in 2023 that the live entertainment company Live Nation, along with Dutch design firm Arcadis, took over the renovation plan. The process involved painstakingly recreating the theatre’s original Rococostyle architecture, while enhancing its audiovisual components to cater to contemporary musicians and audiences as a state-of-the-art concert venue. 

On 27th March this year, the curtains rose again on Brooklyn Paramount’s second act as reggae scions Damian and Stephen Marley became the first artistes to perform at the theatre in 62 years. Audiences who had never witnessed its original grandeur entered an upgraded, 21st-century version of the storied site. With its seating removed, the main hall can now accommodate 2,700 concertgoers on a sloping surface for optimal viewing. An eclectic range of artistes have graced the stage in the last nine months alone, including singer-songwriters St. Vincent and Liam Gallagher, rappers ScHoolboy Q and Sean Paul, and Sting and Fontaines D.C. With a VIP lounge modelled after Ella Fitzgerald’s speakeasies, and an updated shimmering logo, the theatre is no longer a fading relic. The story of the Brooklyn Paramount is a story of cultural resilience—a story that is nowhere near over.