Lost Heritage Buildings, Structures, Theatres & Cinemas

[Rodney Bourke]

There has been many Lost Heritage Buildings, Structures, Theatres & Cinemas from Around the World in Modern Times.

https://www.archdaily.com/873843/13-...d-architecture


A New DVD released, shows how Melbourne from the 1850 to early 1900's was the richest City on the Planet, because of the Victorian GOLD RUSH.
And with a new wealth came an amazing city of Stone buildings, in the style of Ancient Greece & Rome.
During WW1 and WW2 in Europe, many Heritage Buildings, Structures, Theatres & Cinemas were destroyed, but amazingly were all rebuilt back to the same style.
During the 1950's & 1960's many Europeans migrated to Australia, imagine their Shock and Horror seeing all this amazing Heritage Deliberately being destroyed before their eyes.

https://www.australiandesignreview.c...ts-demolition/

[Ken Finch]

It is the same all over the world Rodney, and thanks to so many “streaming” and satellite channels so many cinemas are no longer patronised. Thankfully here in the u k we have the Cinema Theatre Association which has managed to save quite a large number from being demolished. They may be converted for different purposes but retain much of the external and internal original decor as possible.

[Ken Finch]

Following on from my last post, it seems that it is the small independents that are likely to survive. The big multiplexes of the large cinema companies were losing custom before Covid. The Weatherspoons pub chain have taken over some cinemas and have retained much of the original decor. Others are now used as churches and all the original decor retained. Strangely, when a cinema closes there is often a large local public outcry but when many are questioned about the last time they visited it, the response is so often many years ago!! If you don’t use it, you lose it. The CTA organises various visits to cinemas or former ones all over the country. I have in the past been on these in London, Kent, Essex, Surrey and Sussex areas having been a member now for very many years.

[Graham Ritchie]

Ken that's a good point about public outcry but when asked when they last went to support it it was years ago, its no wonder they close. A few years ago I received this excellent DVD "The Last Projectionist" basically its about The Electric in Birmingham released in 2012. I thought I would google it the other day to see how its getting on. Sadly the news does not look good. The previous owner who had invested a lot of money into it, was hit hard from Covid having to close. After Covid it was sold to new owners who again invested a lot into the place, sadly the 88 year lease of the place has now expired and as such is closed. The future of the many of the buildings including The Electric is uncertain, hopefully it can be saved but that I guess that will depend on the lease holders.


Sometimes you come across a cinema that's very pro-active in its survival this one up in the North Island in New Zealand is doing just that. The theatre just had its 92nd Anniversary as shown below.

[Ed Gordon]

In Seattle we have saved two classic movie palaces, the 5Th Avenue and the Paramount, which have been fully restored and re-purposed to host touring broadway shows. The oldest theater, the Coliseum (1916) was re-purposed as a retail store. The exterior was restored, but the interior was gutted.


The interior had been radically remodeled in the 1950's so all the original plaster decorative features were long gone. The store only used the lower floor, so the original balcony is still there.

It could be re-opened as a theater but I doubt that it could survive economically as a movie theater.

[Ed Gordon]

The Orpheum theater in Seattle was demolished in the late 1960's

A FINAL CURTAIN CALL: Seattle Repertory Theatre actress Pauline Flanagan recalled treasured memories of a passing era in show business as she bade a fond farewell to Seattle’s 40-year old Orpheum Theatre, already fast crumbling to the wrecker’s ball. As often happened in theatre end-of-life stories, the demolition of the Orpheum, originally scheduled to take only a few days, lengthened into weeks. Some of the stage’s greatest luminaries had trod the Orpheum boards, among them, Charles Laughton who made one of his last public appearances here before his death. Soon the curtain would rise on a new scene.

[Rodney Bourke]

Melbourne losing its great Buildings, Structures, Theatres and Cinemas
is similar to New York, with a huge list of a Lost Heritage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._New_York_City

[Rodney Bourke]

Old architectural wonders that were destroyed


https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other...dc20f413&ei=77

[William Ferry]

That Seattle Orpheum Theater photo was reminiscent of the LIFE magazine photo of Gloria Swanson standing in the ruins of the Roxy Theater in NYC.

[David M. Leugers]

It wasn't just the wonderful films that made going to the movies such a memorable experience.

[Ed Gordon]

From the Smithsonian (and narrated by Gene Kelly), a documentary showcasing the Great Picture Palaces that rose in the 1920s and 1930s, their heyday and what happened to them

This video is poor quality, but interesting. It is in two parts, but only runs less than 30 minutes.

The second part:

Another highly rated documentary, Going Attractions The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace, is available on YouTube.

The image above is from the website https://www.goingattractions.com/

You can buy the DVD there.