The broken windows and a weathered front door that hangs slightly ajar fade don't matter when Drew Levinson looks at the vacant, red-brick building at 1727 Boulevard of the Allies.
Perched along The Bluff above the Monongahela River, the Paramount Pictures building is the last vestige of "Film Row," where major motion-picture companies once screened films for theater owners as part of the industry's distribution process.
"I know most people in Pittsburgh don't know anything about film history here, and they definitely don't know about Film Row," said Levinson, 21, a Squirrel Hill native who lives in Zelienople. "It's a real shame. If this building gets torn down, it will be like that history never happened."
To keep the history alive, Levinson recently nominated the Paramount Building for a city historic designation.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which acquired the building when it took over Mercy Hospital in 2008, has not decided what to do with it, said UPMC spokeswoman Linda Ross, but "the building is in significant disrepair."
The nomination, co-sponsored by Dan Holland of the Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh, bars UPMC from tearing down the structure until City Council decides whether its architecture or history makes it worth saving -- a process that could take eight months.
The city's Historic Review Commission will discuss the nomination June 3.
Paramount, Columbia Pictures, MGM, Universal Pictures and United Artists built film exchanges along the Boulevard of the Allies from the 1920s to the 1950s. The Paramount Building, with the company's "Majestic Mountain" logo on the facade, is the only one not razed or converted into another use.
"There are a lot of buildings in Pittsburgh that have a lot of historical or architectural value, but not many with the attributes and combination of this building," said Holland, founder and director of the preservation group.
Film exchanges, owned by movie studios, housed offices, film libraries and screening rooms but did no production. Pittsburgh was one of the country's first movie distribution hubs, said Michael Aronson, a University of Oregon film professor and University of Pittsburgh graduate who in 2008 wrote "Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies 1905-1929."
Pittsburgh's earliest known film exchange opened in 1903, Aronson said. Fire hazards from nitrate film pushed the exchanges to the Boulevard of the Allies, then somewhat isolated.
The former Warner Bros. film exchange houses Duquesne University's Tamburitzans. Harry Davis & Co. Real Estate, located next to the Paramount Building, occupies the former offices of 20th Century Fox, RKO Pictures and Disney's Buena Vista.
Paramount opened a Pittsburgh office in 1914. It built and moved into the Boulevard of the Allies office in 1926. The structure exhibits 1920s classical architecture with egg-and-dart molding, pine cone finials and half shells under its cornice line. Its entrance is framed with decorative scrolls, urns, diaper work and winged heads.
"There are lots of beautiful old buildings," said Carl Kurlander, a screenwriter, film professor and co-founder of Steeltown Entertainment, who grew up in Shadyside and lived in Hollywood for 20 years before returning home. "But when I see the Paramount Building, I see a part of history that has been forgotten."
Film exchanges became obsolete with video cassettes in the 1980s. The property today is valued at $147,300.
"Sometimes you see something and there's just something there you need to find out about," said Levinson, who noticed the building when he was 15. "That's the way I felt about this building. I feel some sort of connection with this building."
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