Paramount Hotel

History and architecture

The Paramount Hotel was constructed in 1927-28 as part of an extensive building and expansion drive in the Times Square theater district during that period. One of a very few hotels designed by noted theater architect Thomas Lamb, this building’s design reflects the theatrical nature of the neighborhood. New York in the 1920s was a popular tourist destination and this hotel was one of several built in the area that was intended to appeal to visitors coming to New York for its extensive night life. This hotel provided over 600 rooms, restaurants, lounges and a well-known nightclub in the basement. Thomas Lamb designed a large number of theaters in the area, particularly movie houses, giving them a variety of decorative treatments that suggested the fantastical interiors and variety of entertainments provided inside.

Lamb was a classically-trained architect, able to use a wide-ranging architectural vocabulary geared toward the specific conditions of the building. At the Paramount Hotel he employed flamboyant French Renaissance details, often over-scaled to create a dramatic presence on this smaller, bustling side street. He concentrated his ornament on the lowest levels, visible to passers-by on the street, and on the roofline, visible from a distance or from the windows of nearby buildings. The building displays a double-height arcade along the street, with each arch filled by glass windows allowing a view into the hotel’s activities. The two floors above this are highly embellished by terra-cotta moldings, keystones, volutes and swags, adding a sophisticated note to the streetscape.

Paramount Hotel The land on which the Paramount Hotel was built held a variety of small buildings in the early 1920s when the boom in activity and construction hit the Times Square neighborhood. Theaters and hotels clustered around Broadway and were only beginning to be constructed further west, on and near 8th Avenue. Aside from two large store buildings and a small hotel on the southeast corner of 8th Avenue and 46th Street, the immediate area was filled with small buildings. In 1925 the Spear Construction Company consolidated lots 8-11 and then sold them to the 235 West 46th Street Company in 1926. There was a tenement building on lot 8 while the others had small houses, some with back buildings

Shortly thereafter an announcement appeared in The New York Times that Isidore Zimmer, Samuel Resnick and Frank Locker would build on this combined lot, creating a hotel with a theater, with Thomas Lamb as architect. They projected an 18 story hotel with 612 rooms costing $3,500,000 that would “meet the demands of discriminating patrons who desire first-class accommodations at a moderate cost. This hotel will compare with the finest hotels in the city.” They planned a grill room “cooled by refrigerated air” with dancing and entertainment, styled as a Spanish patio, a large lobby with a mezzanine in the Spanish Renaissance style adjoining a dining room seating 22 people, and nine stores fronting on 46th Street.

The Paramount Hotel was part of a wave of development along 8th Avenue in 1928-29, encouraged by the Eighth Avenue Association. As subway construction progressed under that street, the increased accessibility made the area more desirable and many new projects were created there, including those by “some of the largest and best-known real estate and building promoters in the city.” By the time the Paramount Hotel was finished, the building was recognized as “a pioneer in a section which is very rapidly becoming the hotel centre of the city” and its owners received an award “as recognition of its contribution to the architectural beauty of this community and the city at large.”