Boston MA – Acentech Inc., Bond, and Elkus Manfredi Architects announced that the firms jointly provided consulting, design and construction services for Emerson College’s Paramount Center project in Boston’s Downtown Theater District.
“The opening of the Paramount Center complex marks the completion of our Boston residential campus, offering students a unique living, learning and performing venue in the heart of the Theater District,” said John Walden, construction director at Emerson College. “This new facility provides Emerson College students, and the Boston arts community at large, with a new and vibrant performance space of which we should all be proud.”
The Paramount Center is a mixed-use development comprising the existing and historic art deco–style Paramount Theatre, and a new building constructed on the site of the former Arcade Building on Washington Street. Built in 1932 as a 1,700-seat movie house, the Paramount Theatre was renovated and reconfigured into a 590-seat live performance venue.
Historic finishes were restored, and the art deco architectural features from the original were repurposed, such as a beautifully painted rococo “fan” that once permitted organ music to waft into the movie house that now functions as an acoustical reflector above the forestage. The new theater serves students and faculty at Emerson College as well as the larger Boston community.
The Paramount Center’s other program elements include a 170-seat film screening room, a black box theater with an audience capacity of 125, a sound stage, a scene/prop shop, rehearsal studios, practice rooms, classrooms, and faculty offices; 60,000sf of new dormitory space for housing of 260 students fill the upper four floors of the nine-story complex. In addition, the building program also includes new space for a 150-seat tenant restaurant on Washington Street, and a dedicated student cafeteria on the lower level. The Paramount Center project adds 180,000sf of new/renovated construction and completes a key component of Boston’s Midtown Cultural District.
