Music
Paradise on the Grand Concourse, a Bronx Movie Palace Returns
The Bronx movie palace that once hosted Cab Calloway is coming back as the city's second largest stage
Look up inside the Loew's Paradise and the ceiling is meant to be the sky. Stars twinkled. Clouds drifted. That was the trick when the theater opened on the Grand Concourse in September 1929, and it is the trick its new operators are working to bring back. The Bronx landmark is reopening as the Paradise Performing Arts Center, a nonprofit with about four thousand seats. That makes it the second largest theater in New York City, behind only Radio City Music Hall.
The news, announced this week and reported by the Bronx Times, gives the borough something it has gone without for a long time. A big, ornate room for live music, comedy, and stage shows, right on its own main boulevard at 2403 Grand Concourse.
A Palace With Many Lives
The Paradise was designed by John Eberson, an architect who built more than five hundred theaters. According to BroadwayWorld and Secret NYC, he considered this one his crown jewel. It was one of Loew's five original Wonder Theatres, the chain's showpiece movie palaces around New York.
In the early years, films shared the bill with live stage shows and a full orchestra. The center's own history lists Cab Calloway, Eddie Cantor, George Burns, and Bob Hope among the acts who played there before Loew's dropped live performances in 1935. For a while, a night out on the Concourse meant a movie, a band, and a ceiling full of stars.
Then came the long middle chapter. In 1973 Loew's began carving the auditorium into separate screens. A third followed in the mid seventies and a fourth in 1981, turning the palace into a multiplex and hiding most of the original interior. The theater closed in January 1994. The city designated its exterior a landmark in 1997 and protected the lobbies and auditorium interior in 2006.
For a while, a night out on the Concourse meant a movie, a band, and a ceiling full of stars.
The music came back once already. After a long restoration, the Paradise reopened as a live event venue on October 29, 2005, hosting concerts and community events with a strong following among Latino audiences. In 2012 the building was leased to World Changers Church of New York, the congregation led by the televangelist Creflo Dollar, as The Real Deal reported at the time. According to the center's own history, the theater has stood vacant since 2023.
The People Bringing It Back
The new center is run by three people with deep New York stage and nightlife experience. Scott Perrin, the executive director, is a theatrical producer whose events have ranged from Bill Clinton's presidential inauguration to Grammy Awards celebrations. Peter Martin has owned the Triad Theater in Manhattan for more than twenty years and has produced shows including Celebrity Autobiography and Forbidden Broadway. Charles Piazza comes from commercial real estate and has owned and booked entertainment venues, including the Cotton Club.
Perrin has framed the project as a matter of fairness between the boroughs. "Every borough of New York City has major performing arts centers except The Bronx," he said in the announcement, as reported by BroadwayWorld and the Bronx Times. It is a pointed line, and a hard one to argue with.
The restoration is aimed squarely at the old glamour. The atmospheric ceiling, with its stars and moving clouds, is being brought back. The historic signs are being restored and lit again. The Irwin Seating Company is restoring the seats. There will also be new pieces the original Paradise never had, including an outdoor performance stage on the roof, a restaurant, a bar, and a gift shop. The ornate lobby is already available for weddings and corporate events.
What It Means After Dark
The programming plan is broad. The center says it will present concerts, live stage shows, stand-up comedy, dance, film, family shows, and educational and community events. Its stated mission, as quoted by the Bronx Times, is "to present a range of artistic voices that mirror the community and expand access to the arts to the widest possible audience." No headliners have been named yet.
For the music calendar, a four thousand seat room in the Bronx changes the map. Theater-sized tours have plenty of options in Manhattan and Brooklyn. A restored palace on the Concourse, reachable without a trip downtown, gives the northern end of the city its own address on that circuit. It also gives Bronx audiences a big night out close to home, under a ceiling built to look like the sky.
A rooftop stage is its own promise. Picture a warm evening, a set in the open air, and the lights of the Concourse below. That is still a plan on paper, but it is the kind of plan that makes a borough's nightlife bigger.
The public gets its first look on Tuesday, November 10. The center is holding a press preview and community welcome that day, with food and drink from local Bronx businesses and self-guided tours of the building. A first season is meant to follow. For more on the people keeping the city's late screenings alive, read our story on cinema at midnight.
The Paradise has been a movie palace, a stage-show house, a multiplex, a concert hall, a church, and an empty shell. Nearly a century after it opened, it gets to be a stage again. Somebody is about to switch the sky back on.