Paramount Court, Tottenham Court Road
Miss Archer moved into flat 78, Paramount Court on April 23rd 1940, living there throughout the war years. I like to imagine that she worked at the War Office, perhaps spending her days in a dark basement off Whitehall: uniformed and headphoned, sliding little models of fighter planes around on a map. Riding the smoky top deck of an omnibus through a darkened Trafalgar Square and on up the Charing Cross Road. Perhaps once in a while meeting her Spitfire pilot boyfriend for supper before getting home.
Home was one of the smartest new developments in London, just south of the Euston Road. War with Germany had been declared the previous September, but this was right in the middle of the period known as the Phoney War. London had yet to see the start of the Blitz, so life five floors up probably still felt safe enough.
Paramount Court, a seven floor L shaped apartment block running along the east side of Tottenham Court Road and turning along University Street, still sits on a plinth of shops. Taking up the space between the two arms of the L back in 1940, was the part of the scheme which probably made residency in the building seem pretty glamorous to Miss Archer. The Paramount Theatre was a 2,568 seat cinema, the third biggest in London and where Britain first saw the glories of Cinemascope.
The scheme, by Verity and Beverley a practice founded in 1871 on winning the competition to design the Criterion in Piccadilly Circus, was opened in 1936. It was one of the last in a run of theatres they designed for Paramount in a great age of cinema construction that had started in the 20’s. The practice was riding on the coat tails of a style which for almost thirty years was fashionable in London. Art Deco and cinema were made for each other. In its most theatrical form, it could be gaudy and brash; sometimes improved by restrictions in use of materials brought by site and surroundings. On the other side of Fitzrovia, Broadcasting House and the RIBA headquarters are good examples.
The north end of Tottenham Court, long a mish-mash of architectural styles and typologies didn’t offer any site restrictions to Verity and Beverley. The black and white photographs in The Builder of February 1936 only hint at the Technicolour world that had percolated from film to architecture. Beyond lobby and pay-box, a double height cafe-lounge with five floor to ceiling strips of glazing on the curved elevation to the street was decorated with pink walls and a green and grey carpet. In the auditorium things became almost baroque. Deep coving domes curved to the proscenium which in turn reversed the same curve and reflected it back in four steps above the screen, each seemingly supported by a plaster column on each side. Massive gilt organ grilles flanked both sides, and the multicolour theme continued: copper, ‘marina’ green, ‘Italian’ blue and ‘Chinese’ orange.
The apartment building next door was designed to a slightly quieter script. Brickwork is uniformly red, although diapered patterns are visible on the upper floors. Balconies and corners curve like the radiator grilles of streamlined American cars. At the entrance Portland stone faced walls curve in either side of black terrazzo steps. It feels more New York than London.
Back then a continuous canopy connected the two parts of the building. There’s only one small section left now, marking the entrance to a lap-dancing club in the basement. It holds the clue to another residential benefit for Miss Archer: the ‘gentlemen’s club’ was once a restaurant for the tenants above. Paramount Court was a full service block: diners could attend in the usual way, but if you were socially disinclined, inept or just too busy, the meal could be delivered to a two-way hatch outside each apartment door. In 2017 these hatches are finally disappearing as the building is being refubished. Thankfully, the ‘technicoloured’ interior design schemes to the corridors are being extinguished too: going out floor-by-floor like the lights over 1930’s London.
The cinema is long-gone. Purchased by Odeon in 1942, it finally closed in 1960, a victim of falling box-office demand. After demolition the site became a ‘temporary’ car park for several decades, utilising the lower sections of the auditorium walls as a boundary. Now a vast concrete lined hole; the biggest excavated basement in europe, in a few years it will project beams of another kind: as the UCH proton beam therapy centre.