Fans of the Paramount Theatre will have one last chance Monday night to pay a visit to the historic venue before it closes for a nearly yearlong restoration project.
The theater will host its Last Call Open House and Happy Hour from 5-8 p.m. Visitors can see progress on the renovations so far, enjoy discounted drinks and see an artifact from the theater’s earliest days — a hand-painted fire curtain dating back to the theater’s opening in 1915.
The curtain was used to separate the stage from the audience in the event of a backstage fire. Discovered in the rafters in the 1970s, it is believed to be among the oldest surviving fire curtains in the country.
The 11-month restoration project is the first major overhaul of the theater in more than five decades, Paramount Theatre CEO and Executive Director Jim Ritts told Austin Signal. The plan includes accessibility improvements, overhauling sound and lighting systems, and refreshing ornamentation on the walls to more closely resemble the theater’s original décor.
“When you are in our inner lobby or you’re in the auditorium, she is absolutely beautiful, but she needs a little work,” Ritts said. “Freshening, changing some colors to make it consistent with when the Majestic Theatre became the Paramount Theatre.”
The last major renovation project was in the late 1970s. Ritts said the restoration is long overdue.
“We’d love to have done it seven years ago, but when the pandemic hit, it hit all of us and it took us two or three years to recover,” he said. “The reason we’re doing it now is it’s time. We’re so fortunate that the theater has held up as well as it has, but we need to do some of the things some people don’t think of as sexy.”
That includes upgrading seats and the HVAC system, which Ritts said is necessary to preserve the ornamentation from temperature and humidity fluctuations.
The project will also include finishing a ballroom that was included in the original 1915 blueprint for the theater. The room has, for years, been used as office and storage space.
“It took us 110 years, but we are finishing the original plan,” Ritts said.
In the meantime, Paramount’s programming will be hosted in the neighboring State Theatre, as well as other partnering venues including the Bullock Museum, Austin ISD Performing Arts Center and Radio/East.
The Last Call open house is free to attend with an RSVP.