Paramount Ballroom
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The Paramount Ballroom was the largest and a notorious ballroom in the city of Shanghai during the decadent era before the People's Liberation Army established control over the city in 1949.
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[edit] Pinnacle of High Class Society
The Ballroom was constructed in 1933 by a group of Chinese bankers in the style of Art Deco and was a meeting place for wealthy elite of Shanghai society. The Ballroom lasted under its original owners before going bankrupt in 1936. In 1937, it was converted into a taxi dance hall featuring Chinese dance hostesses, which it remained until 1949.
[edit] Prominence
Chinese playboys frequented the venue who were escorted by prostitutes and dancing girls. In 1941, a dancing girl was killed by a gunman, whether she refused to dance with a Japanese man or because she was suspected of espionage.
[edit] Communist Management
In 1949, the Paramount was converted into a cinema, screening a program of Maoist propaganda films. As a result of the cultural revolution, the building became defunct and obscure.
[edit] Modern Day Management
In 2001, Taiwanese investors spent $3-million to refurbish the venue and reopened it as a ballroom in the old glamorous style, with red-and-gold décor.
In December 2006, the Paramount's Taiwanese owners announced the ballroom was losing revenue so the owners decided to convert the second and third floors into a disco. Only the fourth-floor ballroom will remain in the old style, and preservationists have expressed concerns that the structure could be damaged by the reverberations of the disco.
[edit] Accident
On a rainy day in 1990, part of the structure's façade collapsed and killed a passerby on a sidewalk.
[edit] External links
- Deco Theatres
- Globe and Mail - Dancing the dreary decades away
- China on Camera - The Paramount Ballroom
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