Paramount Studios Building No. 1 (Kaufman Astoria Studios)

35-11 35th Avenue | also 34-12 36th Street | Astoria | built 1919

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The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1921

    February

    Famous Players-Lasky completes its Astoria studio around a vast main stage

    Work on the studio started in August 1920 and finished in February 1921, with the Fleischman Construction Company handling both design and construction. The reinforced concrete building has a three-story 35th Avenue front with a five-bay, double-height porte-cochere that served as the stars' entrance. Inside, offices, rehearsal rooms and smaller stages ring a Main Stage roughly 120 by 127 feet and 41 feet high, which the landmark report describes as reputedly the largest sound stage on the east coast.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1921

    Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and W.C. Fields act on the new studio's silent-film stages

    The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, forerunner of Paramount Pictures, opened the building as its eastern production headquarters, billed as the biggest film plant under one roof anywhere. Between 1921 and 1927 it turned out more than 110 silent features, with Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, W.C. Fields, Harpo Marx and Dorothy Gish among the performers. By 1926 it made about thirty pictures a year, roughly forty percent of the company's output, and employed 1,500 people.

    “Over 110 feature silent films were produced at this studio between 1921 and 1927…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1929

    Jeanne Eagels stars in The Letter, the first feature-length talkie made at the Astoria studio

    The studio shut temporarily in 1927, and on May 27, 1928, Jesse L. Lasky announced it was being fitted with movietone sound equipment and soundproof stages. The Letter, starring Jeanne Eagels, followed in 1929 as the first full-length sound feature produced here. Claudette Colbert, Edward G. Robinson, Tallulah Bankhead and Burns and Allen soon worked at the studio, where Broadway director Rouben Mamoulian pushed filmmaking forward with mobile cameras, and more than thirty-five sound films were made within four years.

    “The first feature length sound picture produced at the Astoria studio was "The Letter," starring Jeanne Eagels, in 1929…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1932

    Paramount leaves for California and independents film Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones here

    In 1932 Paramount moved all of its studio work to California and handed the Astoria building to independent producers who released through Paramount. Of the more than twenty independent pictures made here, the most controversial was the film of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson, whose performance critics ranked among the finest of 1930s cinema. One Third of a Nation, a Works Project Administration film, was the last major feature shot here before World War II.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  5. 1942

    January

    The War Department takes over the studio as the Army Signal Corps Pictorial Center

    The studio passed to the War Department in January 1942, Army filming began within months, and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia attended the Pictorial Center's dedication that September. Training, indoctrination and propaganda films were made here, and Col. Frank Capra's Why We Fight series won the center an Academy Award. The Army Pictorial Center stayed until 1970, when military production ended and the building went to New York City.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  6. 1977

    A nonprofit foundation takes over the studio, and The Wiz is filmed here

    With help from the Mayor's Office of Motion Pictures and Television, the studio was leased again in the mid-1970s for films such as Thieves with Marlo Thomas in 1975 and The Next Man with Sean Connery in 1976. From 1977 the nonprofit Astoria Motion Picture and Television Center Foundation managed the building to revive it. The Wiz was shot here, along with location work around the city, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building on March 14, 1978.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 5 buildings with stories in Astoria