Paramount Film Exchange, Seafarers International Union Building, City of Chicago, Department of Health, Environmental Health Clinic
Life Span: 1930-Present
Location: 1306 S. Michigan
1327 S. Wabash Paramount-Famous-Lasky Corp.
Architect: Anker S. Graven (Paramount)
Chicago Classified Telephone Directory (Red Book), February 1934
Paramount Picture Distribg Corp
1306 S Mich av. CAL umt-5740
Metro-Goldwyn Distribg Corp
1327 S Wabsh av. CAL umt-5700
A film exchange was a business in film distribution that rented out movies to theaters. They opened up all over the United States to handle film reels during the silent film era.
Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1930
BOUL MICH FILM EXCHANGE
A. S. Graven, Inc., is architect of the above film exchange building to be erected at the southwest corner of 13th and Michigan for use by the Paramount-Famous-Lasky-Publix theaters interests, at a reported cost of approximately $250,000. The street elevations will be of stone and will be flood lighted. It will have foundations capable of carrying a total of five stories. It will front eighty feet on the boulevard and 171 feet on 13th street. Work will start May 1, with completion set for Aug. 1. Paschen Bros. have the contract. Morris Hobbs made this picture.
Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1930
Contracts Awarded.
Film Exchange—1306 South Michigan avenue. $150,000.
1306 South Michigan Avenue was built in 1930 by architect Anker S. Graven. This sleek four-story Art Deco building, clad in limestone, was erected as the Paramount Publix Corporation as a film exchange, a venue for the presentation of films to the independent cinema operators throughout the Midwest who could rent them for exhibition at their theaters. The studio occupied the building up to about 1950, when it was taken over by the Equitable Life Assurance Company. In the 1970s it was known as the Seafarers International Union Building. The City of Chicago took possession of it in a tax sale in 1984, and used it for the Health Department’s Environmental Health Clinic. The building was acquired by Columbia College in 1999 for use as the school’s Dance Center. After extensive interior renovation and adaptation, the Dance Center opened its state-of-the-art educational and public performance facilities in the fall of 2000.
Chicago Tribune, July 22, 1939
Film Company Will Open New Building on Monday Twentieth Century-Fox will open its new $150,000 film exchange building at Wabash avenue and 13th street next Monday, it was announced yesterday. A testimonial dinner will be held Monday evening at the Congress hotel. Clyde W. Eckhardt, manager of the exchange, will be fêted by more than 500 motion picture executives and Chicago exhibitors on the occasion of his twenty-fifth year in the motion picture business.
Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1948
Universal Film Opens New Exchange Bullding
Universal Film Exchanges, Inc., has opened its new $400,000 film exchange building at 1232-34 S. Michigan av.
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