Paramount Theater
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Originally called the “Majestic,” this theatre was erected in 1915 by businessman Ernest Nalle (1876-1950). Designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Eberson, Fugard, and Knapp, it was constructed under the direction of local architect George Endress. During the 1930s, the theatre was renamed the “Paramount” and was lavishly remodeled. Since its opening, the theatre has been a showcase for traveling vaudeville shows, dramatic and musical stage productions, and motion pictures. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -- 1976
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Businessman Ernest Nalle built this downtown Austin theater in 1915 as the Majestic, designed by a Chicago architectural firm and raised under a local architect's hand. Renamed the Paramount and lavishly remodeled in the 1930s, it hosted traveling vaudeville, stage drama, musical productions, and motion pictures across generations. It remains one of Austin's enduring landmarks of live and screen entertainment.
Why it matters
Grand early-20th-century theaters like this were the cultural heart of American downtowns, and the survivors preserve a shared civic memory of how communities gathered for spectacle.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years around 1915, the grand downtown theater was the beating heart of American civic life. Before radio filled every home and long before screens followed people into their pockets, a night out meant gathering shoulder to shoulder under one ornate roof to see live performers and, increasingly, the flickering magic of motion pictures. Austin, a growing state capital, was ready for a showplace of its own.
This was the Progressive era, a time of optimism and building, when businessmen poured money into landmarks meant to signal that their city had arrived. A fine theater was more than entertainment; it was a statement of civic ambition, an announcement that culture and commerce could share the same downtown block.
The theater opened under the name 'Majestic,' a fittingly grand title for the kind of establishment that wanted to be the place everyone in town talked about. It arrived just as American popular entertainment was entering one of its liveliest chapters.
People & events
The man behind it was Ernest Nalle, a local businessman who lived from 1876 to 1950 and who erected the theater in 1915. Building a venue like this was a considerable act of confidence — a bet that his city wanted, and would pay for, first-class entertainment.
Nalle reached beyond Texas for the design, engaging the Chicago architectural firm of Eberson, Fugard, and Knapp. The actual construction was carried out under the direction of a local architect, George Endress — a pairing of big-city design talent with hometown know-how that gave the building both polish and roots.
In the 1930s the theater took the name it still carries, the 'Paramount,' and was lavishly remodeled to match the tastes of a new decade. Across all these years its stage and screen kept busy: traveling vaudeville troupes, dramatic plays, musical productions, and motion pictures all passed through, and in 1976 the building earned recognition as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Its place in the American story
The great early-twentieth-century theaters were the cultural living rooms of American downtowns. In an age before every form of entertainment was piped into private homes, they were where a community assembled — where a whole town could laugh, gasp, and applaud together in the dark.
Most of those theaters are gone. As tastes changed and audiences scattered to suburban screens, the ornate old houses were shuttered and, all too often, demolished. The ones that survived became precious, because each is a rare surviving chamber of shared civic memory.
That this theater has endured through vaudeville, live drama, musical spectacle, and the movies makes it a kind of time capsule of American entertainment itself. To keep such a building alive is to keep alive the very idea that a community deserves a beautiful, common place to gather — an idea worth defending in every generation.
If you visit
Look up and look closely. A theater built in 1915 and lavishly remodeled in the 1930s carries the fingerprints of both eras, and half the pleasure is reading those layers — the original grand bones beneath the later flourishes that gave the place its second name.
Think about everything these walls have held: the brassy energy of a traveling vaudeville bill, the hush before a play's first line, the swell of a musical number, the beam of a projector throwing images across a rapt crowd. Standing in a space that has done all of that, across more than a century, is a genuinely different feeling from watching something alone.
If you are wandering downtown, let this be an anchor point on your walk. It is one of the enduring landmarks of the district, and pausing to take in its facade — imagining the generations who dressed up and filed inside for a night out — connects you to a long line of people who came here simply to be delighted together.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ernest Nalle
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Walter Tips Company Building
Austin, TX
German-born Walter Tips came to America as a child in 1849 and, after Confederate service in the Civil War, took over his late brother's Austin hardware business in 1872. This handsome commercial block, designed by noted architect Jasper N. Preston and built in 1876–77, showcased Victorian Italianate style with Gothic touches, cast-iron interior columns, and an upper floor housing a Masonic lodge room and a 400-seat auditorium. Tips went on to the Texas Senate and helped found the Austin National Bank; his company occupied the building until 1927.
Stephen F. Austin Hotel
Austin, TX
Rising in 1924 on the site of the earlier Keystone Hotel, this Beaux Arts landmark was built by hotelier T.B. Baker to serve a growing capital city. Locals persuaded him to name it for Stephen F. Austin, the empresario known as the "Father of Texas," rather than the planned "The Texas." Designed by the noted Fort Worth firm Sanguinet, Staats and Hedrick, it gained five stories in 1938 and kept its classical detailing through a 2000 restoration.
Openheimer-Montgomery Building
Austin, TX
This commercial building went up in 1894 for Louis Openheimer, a Texas military, business, and civic figure, and was designed and built by John McDonald, who served as Austin's mayor from 1889 to 1895. In 1899 it was sold into the estate of 12-year-old Fannie Montgomery. Its Queen Anne styling—projecting second-story bay windows carried on jigsawn Victorian brackets—marks it as a fine example of late-19th-century commercial architecture.
Sampson Building
Austin, TX
Master builder Abner Cook completed this structure in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, to house the general merchandise store of George W. Sampson and Abram Henricks. After Henricks died in 1865, Sampson kept an office here and leased out the rest for other commercial and professional tenants. Its Italianate arched windows and fine stonework have watched over the street while the building stayed in the Sampson family for well over a century.