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