Boston's Paramount Theater performs acts of education

The 596-seat Paramount Center at Emerson College, Boston, occupies the footprint of both the original Paramount Theatre, which opened in 1932 as a movie house, and the Arcade Building adjacent to the original Paramount. The Building Team of Auerbach Pollock Friedlander, Elkus/Manfredi, acoustic consultant Acentech, R.G. Vanderweil Engineers, and engineers Ammann & Whitney transformed the buildings into a 180,000-sf complex with nine studios, including a 2,300-sf flexible space theater, a 125-seat black box theater, a 180-seat screening room, and a 1,500-sf, double-height sound stage where students work on equipment used in major motion picture sound stages. A 4,500-sf scene shop provides woodworking, metalworking, and painting facilities to support performance spaces.