The stunning Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, is one of the best-preserved and last-remaining Art Deco cinema palaces in the nation. Built in the early 1930s before the throes of the Great Depression, the Paramount served its community by boosting morale and distracting poverty-stricken patrons from their daily troubles. The Oakland Enquirer at the time said: "...a knockout for pessimism, for gloomy doubt."