Location: 1501 Broadway between 43rd and
44th Streets, New York, New York
Architect: C.W. Rapp and George L. Rapp
Date Completed: 1926
The American Architect warned in 1924 that given a large avenue site, "and
designing according to the letter of the setback law, there would result a commonplace
suggestion of one box paced on top of another. These boxes may be cubes or higher or lower
boxes, but if nothing further is done to them, they will remain, in suggestion, as simply
one box on another and they cannot in the mass suggest a unified design."
Two years later, in a similar vein, DeWitt Clinton Pond observed in Architecture
that the first generation of pyramidal buildings were "characterized by an almost
severe treatment of cornices or parapets."
The Paramount Building was one of the more pleasing pyramidal towers. Built on the
west side of Broadway between 43rd and 44th Streets, it continued the tradition of
building theaters on relatively cheap side-street lots, while devoting the valuable
Broadway frontage to an office block.
The Paramount completed the large scale reconstruction of Times Square begun almost
twenty-five years before. While Rapp's twenty-nine story pyramidal mass applied the
zoning requirements quite literally, they added some ornamentation -- stubby obelisks atop
each of the eight setbacks, a glass sphere at the top, and a huge clock.
Paramount Building
