Odeon Buildings and Odeon Cinema

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 9 December 2024 to amend the architect's name and text reformated to display correctly on NHLE.

SJ 4066 NW 595-1/1/292

CHESTER CITY (IM), NORTHGATE STREET AND ROW (west side), Nos. 1-5 (consec) Odeon Buildings and Odeon Cinema

(Formerly Listed as: NORTHGATE STREET Odeon Cinema)

07/02/89

GV II Cinema and five lock-up shops. 1936. Designed by Robert Bullivant of Harry Weedon and Partners for Oscar Deutsch and the Odeon group of companies, adapted in detail to harmonise with its setting. Steel frame on reinforced piers clad in hand-made brick; green glazed-tile roof to Hunter Street.

EXTERIOR: on a prominent corner site, the entrance, foyer and south side of the auditorium are to Hunter Street and the shops with two storeys of ancillary rooms above are to Northgate Street. The fronts to both streets are of blue brick with banded rustication to entrance canopy level, and largely buff brick above. A tower at the street corner one storey higher than the rest of the building and towers at both ends of the auditorium have shaped vertical ribs; the south face of the auditorium has raised brick bands above canopy level, surmounted by the glazed tile roof between the false towers.

The entrance and foyers, between the corner tower and the auditorium, has four pairs of plain glazed double doors, a canopy with programme advertisements and a tall window to the upper foyer of seven rows of three panes in a raised brick panel. The south side and west end of the auditorium each has two pairs of exit doors; three tiers of triple three-pane windows in the false tower west of the foyer; three tall narrow windows of seven panes in the Hunter Street face of the corner tower.

The shops, one in the corner tower facing Hunter Street and four facing Northgate Street, have modern shop fronts of no interest. Each of the two upper storeys to Northgate Street had four horizontally proportioned windows of three lights of three broad panes.

INTERIOR: the foyer survives little altered with Art Deco solid bowed balustrades and partitions and ceiling light fittings. The auditorium has been divided, principally affecting its lower parts; the large upper auditorium retains the full former dimensions in plan, the original lighting, Odeon clocks, wood veneer dado, decorative ventilation grilles and proscenium reveals.

Listing NGR: SJ4042266549