Paradise Theater - West Allis, WI - Flatirons on Waymarking.com

Excerpts from an article written by James H. Rankin

"Paradise is originally a Biblical concept, and now is different things to different people, but for the makers of movie palaces in the ‘Roaring Twenties,’ such theatres were to take on an aspect of fantasy or pleasure that was to connote Paradise to any moviegoer. Theater names were often exploited to connote a concept of pleasure to lure the patron from his daily worries.

As the decade of the ‘Twenties was drawing to its end, the building of new movie houses was reaching its peak and with the advent of sound movies to replace the 'silents,’ those built after 1927 often had the added cachet of promoting themselves as "built for sound," even though that usually meant that they merely added speakers back stage. The PARADISE in West Allis was one of these, but here it was in the downtown of a small suburb, so the stature of the theater was more of a neighborhood quality due to such a theatre getting second run after the downtown houses in Milwaukee. The PARADISE here, however, was benefited in having an architect of proven ability in creating theatres of great imagination. When Urban F. Peacock (1891-1965) left his partnership with Armin Frank in 1928, they left behind them a string of quality medium scale theatres in several states, among them being the EGYPTIAN and VENETIAN in Milwaukee, and the PARAMOUNTS in Waterloo and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This background may have been what led to Mr. Peacock getting the commission to spend some $200,000 on a theatre and commercial property on a triangular plot of land at the intersection of three streets. He completed the drawings in 1928 for a 1929 opening.

The PARADISE’S 1,300 some seats were not to be in as fantastic or exotic a design as the EGYPTIAN, for the smaller budget was to be spread over the seven storefronts on the first floor flanking the theatre’s entry, and the second floor of sixteen offices, as well as the theatre. Hence, architect Urban Peacock, a graduate of Columbia University, could only add the minimum of architectural decoration. The exterior of the brown brick building was adorned with fluted terra cotta pilasters in a mottled tan glaze and an ornamental copper tiled dome at the acute point of the triangular building and was said to be the largest commercial structure in the suburb at the time. His design for the auditorium was characterized as being "an adaptation of the French Renaissance style of architecture," as printed in the Inaugural Programme, in the typical ballyhoo so typical of that class of writing. The writer was somewhat generous in such a description, for the theatre has no one style of design, a commonplace attainment in the world of movie palaces where the goal was opulence, not style.

The auditorium was marked with a giant central dome of rectangular proportions, and the proscenium had a similar dome in a long ellipse, both being fitted with three colors of cove lights. These coves were the only major illuminants in the room, there being no chandeliers. To show how difficult cost constraints often were in such buildings, the architect did place a wide proscenium cove around the arch, but then evidently had no money for the cove lights to be put into it! The gold and leaf green color scheme had few ornaments to enliven it, the fruit and flowers festoons along the lines of the walls and ceiling were the principal ones. The side walls were divided into six equilateral blind arches, the four rearmost of which were draped with a golden crepe and overdraped with a fringed swag and swaged legs in a dark velour. The pendentives topping the arches contained stencil work in an acanthus pattern. The organ screens, behind which were the pipes for the Barton theatre pipe organ, were fronted with similar draperies but fore fronted with balconettes cantilevered (not having supporting brackets or columns) as mere platforms without parapet to support a single vase of flowers behind which were the up-lights cast upon the scrim cloth of the screen itself. This odd design having a fascia of five facets of rectangular frames, had led some to believe these were originally seating boxes, but the fact that there was no access to them nor seats on them belies that notion."

The theatre closed its doors in 1996 and was sold and reopened as a church.

Web Address: [Web Link] Current use of the building.: Church Date of construction.: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   03/11/2012 REUAHNESIE visited it