Paramount Pictures

Paramount Film Exchange is a building at 1727 Boulevard of the Allies in the Uptown or

Bluff neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, designed in 1926 by R. E. Hall Co. architects

from New York City. In 2010, the building was bought by arts-oriented local entrepreneurs who

founded the Paramount Film Exchange (PFEX), Inc., to redevelop the then-abandoned building

in a historically sensitive manner.

“Film exchanges” were, in the words of film historian Max Alvarez, “agencies engaging in the

practice of renting or trading motion pictures” and in the early part of the 20th century, they

served as “full-service stores for theater owner/managers.”[2]

exchanges and used them to screen their films for potential exhibitors in a local market. Once

videocassettes came into use in the 1970s, it was no longer necessary to screen a film in a

screening room, and film exchanges fell out of use. The Paramount Film Exchange, which

belonged to Paramount Pictures, was one of several film exchange buildings in the area. The

Duquesne University Tamburitzans occupy the former location of the Warner Bros. exchange at

1801 Boulevard of the Allies, and the auction and real-estate firm Harry Davis & Co. is located

next door, at 1725 Boulevard of the Allies, in the building that once housed 20th Century Fox’s

exchange.[3]

The Paramount Film Exchange was the subject of a contentious battle over historic

preservation[4]

core. Initial attention to the Paramount Film Exchange came in 2008, when 21-year-old Drew

Levinson entered and won a video contest sponsored by the Young Preservationists Association

of Pittsburgh (YPA) with his short film on the Paramount Film Exchange. Levinson’s video

rallied support behind saving the Film Exchange from sale or demolition by then-owner

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). In 2009, YPA proposed the Paramount Film

Exchange for official historical designation by the City of Pittsburgh. The Historic Review

Commission of the City of Pittsburgh granted landmark designation in early 2010 based

on “the importance of a particular place to Pittsburgh’s heritage.”[5]

site’s historical significance to its status as the last remnant of Pittsburgh’s “film row”.[6]

and the Exchange’s other large institutional neighbor, Duquesne University, both opposed

landmarking the building, while Rick Schweikert and his co-investors in PFEX, Inc. did not. The

proposal moved to City Council, which in a preliminary vote on Jan. 20, 2010, approved historic

designation for the Exchange by a 8-1 margin. [Wikipedia]

Motion-picture studios owned

in Pittsburgh, which is redeveloping many of the older neighborhoods in its urban

The YPA attributed the

UPMC