Paramount Arts Center

The Paramount opened in 1931, planned as a lavish movie and vaudeville house by the Paramount-Publix chain even as the country sank into the Great Depression. Its architecture is full-throated art deco, with rich ornamentation, gilded surfaces, and the dramatic geometry of the style, meant to give ordinary people a taste of luxury for the price of a ticket.

In its heyday it was a showplace, drawing crowds downtown for films and stage acts. As the decades passed and moviegoing changed, grand single-screen theaters like it became expensive and hard to fill, and many were torn down. The Paramount reached the same crossroads, its future in doubt as downtowns emptied and multiplexes rose.

Rather than lose the theater, the Ashland community rallied to rescue it, and it reopened as a nonprofit performing arts center. Careful restoration brought back the deco detailing and the sense of occasion, so audiences today step into an interior close to the one that dazzled patrons in the 1930s.

The rescue is part of what makes the Paramount special: a small industrial city chose to preserve a piece of its shared past rather than let it fall. The building now earns its keep as a venue, but it also stands as a monument to civic pride, an ornate survivor from an age of grand cinemas that mostly no longer exist.

The Paramount carries a notable thread of country music history. Billy Ray Cyrus, who grew up in the Ashland area, filmed the music video for his breakout hit at the theater in the early 1990s, and the venue is closely associated with his rise. The nearby region also produced the mother-and-daughter act the Judds, tying this corner of Kentucky to a rich vein of country and Americana talent.

For a mid-sized theater, that heritage gives the Paramount an outsized cultural footprint. Music remains central to its programming, and the connection to homegrown stars is a point of local pride, a reminder that eastern Kentucky's hills and river towns have sent a steady stream of voices into American music.

Ashland grew as an industrial city on the Ohio River, its economy long built on steel, oil, and rail in the tri-state corner where Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia meet. The downtown reflects that history in its brick commercial blocks and civic buildings, of which the Paramount is a jewel.

The walkable center around the theater holds shops, restaurants, and the Highlands Museum and Discovery Center, which tells the region's story. For a traveler passing through the Big Sandy country of eastern Kentucky, the Paramount offers both a beautiful building to admire and, on the right night, a show in a setting almost a century old.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.