A Perfect Marriage of Old, New: Emerson's 'Replication' of the Paramount Theater (Boston)

Robert Campbell, the Boston Globe's architecture critic, apparently loves everything about Emerson College's restoration of the Paramount Center. What's not to like?

Note: Emerson was a recipient of a $200,000 Getty grant in 2006 and Emerson's full report back to the Getty is available on SCUP's Campus Heritage Preservation Network (CHPN) web site.

Some stories have a happy ending. The new Paramount Center on Washington Street is one of the triumphs of recent Boston architecture and urbanism.

The center, which was scheduled to host its first performance last night, is the perfect marriage of the right client and the right place. The client is Emerson College, which brings the kind of vital youthful activity that can regenerate a neighborhood. The place is the Paramount Theatre, a classic movie palace designed in 1932, at the height of the Art Deco period, but abandoned since 1976.
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This is also a marriage of old and new. The old is the Paramount Theatre, now lovingly restored to its original seductive glamour. The new is all the amazing and exciting modern stuff that’s been added to it. Some of that is in the Paramount Theatre itself, and some is next door in the center’s other building, known as the Arcade. There’s a black-box theater, a film screening room, rehearsal and practice rooms, a new backstage with a truck dock, lobbies, classrooms, offices, a student cafe, you name it. There’s even, up above everything where the views are, a top hat of dorm rooms for 262 future students.

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This is what makes good cities: the juxtaposition of new and old in one place, so you feel connected to history while you look forward to the future. Paramount Center embodies the wonderful urban paradox in which memory meets invention, the old and new converse with each other. The Paramount interior looks all the more 1930s because of its contrast with the neighboring architecture of 2010.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Town & Gown: Things Go Better With Some Sugar

Lesley University, in Boston, recently made some news with its elaborate courting of its neighbors in the planning process for a new student housing project. Jack Stripling writes about that town and gown "partnership" in the context of its location in a difficult town for such things: Boston, MA:

As the Boston Globe recently reported, the partnership marked a departure from what have sometimes been contentious negotiations between residents and Boston College, Northeastern University and Harvard. Far from stifling the project, however, the neighborhood committee approach ended with Lesley getting support for a larger project that included two buildings, instead of the one building initially proposed.

“I think the lesson is if you’re a university planner is talk to your neighbors early and often,” Meyer said. “Don’t wait; get them involved in the process. Tell them what your needs are, and listen to what their needs are … and you may get more than you dreamed from the neighbors.”

In February, Lesley officials drew up a plan for a five-story building that would house about 80 students. But in order to accommodate the neighbors’ desire to shield a parking lot from public view and to include retail space on the first floor, the project grew to two buildings that will serve 98 students. That required changes in zoning, and neighbors actually petitioned city officials to make that happen.