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With the recent loss of the former Garfield Theater, the Milwaukee area has fewer surviving classic movie houses than ever. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
One example that has endured in good condition is the former Paradise Theater, built in 1929, at 6229 W. Greenfield Ave., in West Allis.
This Art Deco gem – designed by one of the most colorfully named Milwaukee architects, Urban F. Peacock – is part of a large structure on a high-profile corner of the six-points intersection of Greenfield and National Avenues at 62nd Street.
It was built with a theater, seven storefronts and 16 second-story offices.
The Paradise – where I can remember seeing a few films during its 1980s and ‘90s art house era, including one of my all-time favorites, “The Life of Brian” – closed in 1996. But, fortunately, then-owner Dan Baldwin of Creative Community Solutions continued a restoration that was already underway.
In 2012, the theater was purchased by Epikos Church, which made some changes and did more work, but the bones and much of the ornamention inside the building remains.
I went inside for a look, but first, a little history.
The 1,239-seat Paradise Theater was erected at the tail end of a theater construction boom that was brought to a halt first by the Depression and then tempered by the growing popularity of radio, World War II and the arrival of television.
Other theaters built around the same time in Milwaukee that survive include the Oriental (1927), the Riverside (1928), the Warner/Grand (now the MSO’s Bradley Symphony Center, 1930) and the Rosebud (aka Tosa, 1931).
If you go nosing around Milwaukee theater history, don’t confuse the West Allis Paradise with the short-lived Paradise Theater that occupied the former Toy Theater at 2nd and Wisconsin from 1916 to 18.
While that one came and went quickly, the West Allis Paradise has been a feature of the landscape for nearly a century now.
Architect Peacock, a Columbia University graduate, designed a large triangle-building that fused Classical elements with then-in-vogue Art Deco ones in the building, with a striking mottled tan terra cotta detailing outside.
The building is, according to ceramic artist, educator and author Ben Tyjeski, "one of the final grand movie palaces with terra cotta," and in his book, "Architectural Terra Cotta of Milwaukee County," he wrote, "the orange dark buff brick contrasts the use of terra cotta on the exterior. The glazed surface is smooth, semi-gloss pulsichrome of light peach and orange hues.
"Pilasters are spaced out between every window. The ones along the tower extend beyond the roofline and finish with ancones. The capitals are shaped as polygons and are decorated with vases filled with a full bouquet of flowers. Great attention was given to their naturalistic detail. The units along the base exhibit a striking pulsichrome glaze with jade green and black hues."
Peacock added opulent detailing inside, with floral and fruity motifs and unusual balustrades on the main lobby’s staircase up to the balcony that, depending on who you ask, contain dolphins, dragons, seahorses or some sort of mash-up of them all.
Mining a similar motif, Peacock's vent grates in the auditorium have sea serpents at their base.
The theater’s opening day program described the auditorium decor as “an adaptation of the French Renaissance style.”
Atop the point of the building is an ornamental copper dome.
“It is a very good example of a 1920s theater whose design goal was general opulence rather than adherence to any particular architectural style,” noted a 2015 WisDOT survey prepared by Heritage Research, Ltd.
Peacock designed other theaters in the city, too, including the Bay/Lake (1925) – with then-partner Armin Frank – which still stands on Delaware Avenue in Bay View.
Peacock & Frank also designed the lovely, lost Venetian and Egyptian Theaters (both 1927), as well as work beyond Brew City, including the still-operating Capitol/Paramount Theater (1928) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Ground was broken for the Paradise in April 1929 by Bartel-Maurer Co. And A. C. Guetzkow was the general contractor.
You can see footage of the construction of the theater here:
The opening of the Paradise was a big deal for its West Allis neighborhood and on the day it opened – Thanksgiving 1929 – the Six Point Advancement Association took out a full-page ad in a daily newspaper marking the occasion.
“In celebration of the gala opening of the magnificent new Paradise Theater Building Inc, the Six Point Advancement Association will hold a mammoth motor parade this afternoon, starting at 6 o’clock from the City Hall, West Allis,” the ad noted.
“This will be a torchlight procession with a bewitching snake dance, fireworks and fitting decorations.”
Two 48-piece bands were on hand to provide music and both West Allis Mayor Delbert Miller and Associated Advancement Associations of Milwaukee County Secretary – a Mr. Zimdar – planned speeches.
“The Six Point Advancment Association, organized 10 years and composed of 100 business and professional men of this progressive community, (is) proud to welcome the beautiful, modern Paradise Theater Building of West Allis,” the ad continued.
“Along with the opening of the new building these men (the executive committee) are gratified to announce that Greenfield Avenue is now completely paved to Madison, thus enhancing the the facilities for growth of this progressive district.”
Four hours before the torchlight parade, the theater was officially opened with a 2 p.m. screening of, “the Fox All-Talking Picture, ‘Big Time,’ with Lee Tracey, Mae Clark and Stepin Fetchit.
“This handsome theater, perfectly appointed in every detail, was especially designed for talking pictures. This gorgeous amusement palace is a unit of the great chain of Fox Theaters throughout America.”
All that beauty, and floor space, was erected at a cost of about $200,000.
“The auditorium was marked with a giant central dome of rectangular proportions, and the proscenium had a similar dome in a long ellipse, both being fitted with three colors of cove lights,” wrote the late Jim Rankin on Cinema Treasures. “These coves were the only major illuminants in the room, there being no chandeliers.
“To show how difficult cost constraints often were in such buildings, the architect did place a wide proscenium cove around the arch, but then evidently had no money for the cove lights to be put into it! The gold and leaf green color scheme had few ornaments to enliven it, the fruit and flowers festoons along the lines of the walls and ceiling were the principal ones.
“The side walls were divided into six equilateral blind arches, the four rearmost of which were draped with a golden crepe and overdraped with a fringed swag and swaged legs in a dark velour,” Rankin continued. “The pendentives topping the arches contained stencil work in an acanthus pattern.
“The organ screens, behind which were the pipes for the Barton theatre pipe organ, were fronted with similar draperies but forefronted with balconettes cantilevered (not having supporting brackets or columns) as mere platforms without parapet to support a single vase of flowers behind which were the up-lights cast upon the scrim cloth of the screen itself. This odd design having a fascia of five facets of rectangular frames, had led some to believe these were originally seating boxes, but the fact that there was no access to them nor seats on them belies that notion.”
While the fruit and flower festoons survive, as do the coves, decorative grilles and the domes and the original seats (though recovered) and standards – and the original screen, which hangs up un the fly loft – the organ pipes, organ and cantilevered balconettes are gone.
Up in the center of the main dome is a decorative plaster panel showing a sun.
“For a while you could see the real sun up there,” says Epikos Church Paster Tommy Hutchison, “because there was a big hole up there.”
The main lobby has that beautiful staircase, a nook where the concession stand was once located and, around the back and beneath a balcony staircase, another set of stairs leading down to the original restrooms, concessions storage area and smoking lounge.
The ticket lobby has a ceramic tile floor in earth tones and in the center is a ticket booth with an exterior window. The space also has decorative moldings.
These moldings, like all the decorative (and the original plain) plasterwork was done by Walish-Dufton Co. The same company did the plasterwork in the Peacock & Frank-designed Ambassador Hotel, too.
When I visited, Don Goeldner, who works as a caretaker of the building with which he has a long association, pointed out an especially worn-out spot where the ticket lobby meets the main lobby.
The lobby barrel-vaulted, had two crystal chandeliers, ticket lobby has ceramic tile floor in earth tones. The exterior box office survives but is not used.
“Everyone bought a ticket at the box office,” he says, “and they’d come here with their ticket and the doorman would stand right here (at the lobby entrance) they would give him their ticket. Look how ground down the (floor) is here from all those people standing there.”
Goeldner and Hutchison show me around the theater and we check out the stage, where some employees left dated graffiti in the wings, mostly in the 1960s; we could down below to see the old orchestra pit; and we climb the stairs to check out the floors of stacked dressing rooms.
In the basement, Hutchison shows me the corridor that runs the entire length of the building, which means you can go down there from the far end of the stage and walk all the way to the cafe at the opposite end of the building. He takes me in to see the former storefronts, too.
We don’t, however, visit the offices upstairs, as those are now home to a children’s program.
We check out the lobby and the area down below where the smoking lounge and restrooms were located.
Goeldner shows us an odd-shaped closed with a narrow opening tucked under a second staircase to the balcony. In here, the walls have even more graffiti, but older. These seem to date mostly from the 1940s.
The shelves, Goeldner says, once held the letters for the marquee outside.
At a time when the Downtown movie houses typically nabbed first-run films, the Fox-operated Paradise spent much of its time focused on second-run pictures, which was not atypical for neighborhood cinemas of its era.
Goeldner and his father projected many of those films.
“My dad was here first,” he recalls. “He was projectionist here, and so I started coming here when I was 14. And then later on I wanted to do the same thing he did.
"There was a projectionists’ union here in Milwaukee and to get into that you had to have someone teach you. So it's usually a father/son type of deal.
“So I apprenticed two years under my dad, in 1967-68. When I finished my apprenticeship here, the union sent me to another theater. It was on a seniority basis.”
But, soon, Goeldner was back at the Paradise and served as projectionist there from 1971 to 1975 before going to another theater.
Fittingly, up in the projection booth is a small, washed out photo of Goeldner’s dad at work.
He’s been back at the theater for more than a dozen years now, doing maintenance and other work.
“I saw the theater was always closed,” he says. “(I) was always looking in the windows. Then I saw that they wanted to tear it down and then Epikos bought it. So I called up to their office and that's how I started.”
Now, Goeldner is also the institutional memory of the place, says Hutchison.
“It’s fun,” the pastor says. “He walks through, he's guy who's always fixing every chair so he can tell you about everything. He's the one who showed me some of what I like to call the history spots.”
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society’s architectural inventory, “Restoration efforts were begun by Charles Tennessen, who managed the theater from 1989 to 1996. The lobby was restored to a tan and gold paint scheme and the original chairs in the auditorium were reupholstered.
“The owner in 2002, Dan Baldwin of Creative Community Solutions, continued those restoration efforts,” though Goeldner suggests not much was accomplished during this era, owing to lack of funds.
But that all changed with Epikos Church, which started on Milwaukee’s East Side in 2005.
“That grew so rapidly and so quickly by a bunch of college students and retired people,” says Hutchison. “It's the most unique combination of people. They were like, ‘we don't know what to do.’ So they went through lots of different ideas, tearing down that building, doing a lot of different things. And so they started looking throughout the city, as well.
“And they walked through this building and the group that walked through it was split whether or not they wanted to actually purchase it. As I understand it, it was a couple million dollars to bring it back up to speed, but they walked out and they decided soon thereafter to purchase it. It took almost a year to renovate it, and we've been in it ever since.”
Hutchison says the church bought the building for about $60,000 from the City of West Allis.
“We restored the whole thing to back to as much as we could,” he says. “We tried to get some of the original colors, some of those types of things. It was completely run down. There were holes in the ceiling when it would rain, it would rain in the building.”
The nondenominational church has continued to grow over the past 20 years and now has campuses around the area, including in Sherman Park and on Mayfair Road. The original Belleview Place church is now used strictly for offices.
“I've been here three years and it's fun,” says Hutchison. “You walk in and you’ve got everybody from people riding a bicycle to driving a Beamer and everything in between. You've got the homeless guy next to the CEO next to everything in between.”
The building isn’t open to the general public except on Sundays, when there are services at 9 and 11 a.m. At that point, anyone can stop in Hutchison says.
“You can grab a coffee at the cafe next door and you can come inside and see. It’s open to everyone.
“The building's awesome. It kind of has that wow factor when you walk in. It has the same charm that you would expect an old theater to have. It makes a lot of fun.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
