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| Contact the Paramount |
| The Historic Paramount Theatre |
| 17 South St. Middletown, NY |
| Call (845) 346-4195 or Email Us |
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Ticket Office Hours
Monday - Friday
12:30 pm - 4:30 pm
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Theatre Facts
Opened:
June 12, 1930
Architects:
C.W. & George L. Rapp
Capacity:
1502 (1095)
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| Learn more about the 2007 ATOS Grand Organ Tour |
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The Middletown Paramount opened with a big celebration two weeks before its sister in Peekskill. On Tuesday June 10 the Middletown Times Herald published a Special Paramount Edition on the Paramount Publix Corporation and the new theatre. On Wednesday May Clarence Van Fleet threw the switch that illuminated the huge electric sign over the theatre. Opening dday, Thursday, began with a noon parade. The doors opened at 6 P.M. for the first of two shows--all on film--which included a welcome film by Buddy Rogers, star of 1927's Best Picture, Wings, a music selection by the Paramount Symphony Orchestra, Paramount News, a short feature on Middletown and its best known citizens, and then the feature film, The Big Pond, starring Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert.
The theatre remained under the management of Paramount and its successor corporation, ABC, until it was sold on March 30, 1973, to Hallmark Releasing Corporation. After a succession of operators, it closed in 1978. The city of Middletown took ownership of the theatre for back taxes in Febraury 1979, and sold it in January 1981 to the Arts Council of Orange County, who restored the theatre and opened it as a performing arts center in September 1985. The stage was enlarged by adding an apron on the front and a pavilion was added to provide dressing rooms ans wing space. The New York Theatre Organ Society installed the Wurlitzer from the Clairidge Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey. The console of the Middletown's original Wurlitzer is now a part of the organ in the Orpheum, Phoenix.
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