The Wallaw Cinema

The Wallaw Cinema

This streamlined Moderne cinema opened in 1937, designed by the Newcastle upon Tyne practice of Percy Lindsay Browne, Son and Harding, with Charles Alfred Harding as job architect. The building is constructed in brick and cement render with a concrete parapet. Plasterwork was executed by Webster Davidson and Co Ltd of Sunderland, and the streamlined Moderne lighting fixtures were supplied by Devereux Moody and Co Ltd of Newcastle.

The exterior presents a distinctive composition with the auditorium set back and ranged at a ninety-degree angle to the main facade. The entrance features four sets of original doors arranged in a 1+2+1 rhythm sheltered by a canopy. Above, three vertical windows at first-floor level sit within cut brick surrounds with rendered and moulded sills and lintels. The facade is crowned by a rendered parapet with three main steppings and a central forward projection. The right return wall rises three storeys with central, symmetrically placed horizontal windows and a prominent pylon feature to the left housing a narrow triple-height window. This element terminates in an emergency stair tower expressed by another triple-height window turning the rear wall.

The interior is richly detailed in Moderne style. Four sets of entrance doors lead to steps flanked by five handrails, the three middle rails featuring Art Deco styling. The double-height foyer contains two symmetrical flights of stairs rising to a landing. Solid balustrades with a central metal section over the stalls entrance carry symmetrically positioned stylized 'W' monograms for Wallaw. Three bands of Moderne plaster moulding ornament the flank walls. The coved ceiling features a central panel with scalloping and a triple-stage Art Deco pendant light.

Beyond a small lobby lies an eccentric shaped space with a circular ceiling cove suggesting a rotunda, fitted with streamlined Moderne light fittings and an Art Deco grille concealing the radiator. Original Moderne doors access the inner stalls foyer, which features Moderne ceiling mouldings and matching streamlined light fittings.

The double-height auditorium contains raked stalls and a stepped balcony. The rectangular proscenium is flanked by Moderne pilasters, the left one incorporating a clock. All lighting is indirect, sourced from fibrous plaster coves. The ceiling features principal and subsidiary coves above the balcony with a continuous streamlined Moderne plaster feature in the middle cove incorporating ventilation ducts. Three vomitories in the balcony are decorated with streamlined timber batten detailing. Original doors from the foyer landing access the balcony foyer, which is enriched with Moderne ceiling and cornice decoration and leaf and rosette relief plaster patterns on the rounded wall cheeks at the vomitory entrances.

During the 1980s, the rear of the stalls was subdivided to form two separate small auditoria. The cinema closed in 2004 following a screening of The Passion of the Christ and has remained empty since. The practice established by Percy Lindsay Browne in 1911 was one of the most prolific designers of cinemas in the north east of England, and this building is understood to represent their best surviving work.