Crown Theatre

Theatre, later converted to cinema, then bingo hall, currently disused and closed as of December 2003. Dated 1898 and opened in 1899, built to the designs of architects Campbell and Horsley for Richard Flanagan. The building is constructed in smooth red brick with red terracotta dressings and detailing executed in Renaissance revival style.

The theatre occupies a prominent corner site with entrance fronts to both Church Street and Mather Street, both elevations detailed in matching style. The Church Street elevation is 4 storeys high with 5 bays. The left-hand corner is detailed as a tower with corner pilasters and a low curved parapet above a moulded cornice. The ground floor is painted with an altered entrance canopy below 3 tall semi-circular arched first-floor windows with mullions and transoms, the arch heads featuring moulded decoration. These windows and 2 tiers of small rectangular openings are set between shallow pilasters which define the bays. Above these are 3 circular lights within moulded surrounds with flanking scrollwork and swags. The right-hand end bay has small window openings, some staggered at different levels. The left-hand corner features a 2-light mullion and transom window with decorative cresting and apron to the first floor. Above and below the tower parapet are moulded terracotta decorative panels. The return elevation to Mather Street is similarly detailed, with the corner tower featuring staggered windows lighting a staircase, 3 single doorways with shallow bracketed canopies, and numerous shallow arch-headed windows, all now blocked. The 4 upper-floor circular lights are set in plain surrounds below a shallow parapet. A canopy to Church Street is supported on cast-iron columns.

The auditorium rises the full height of the building. The timber ceiling is exposed, having lost its plasterwork. Three balconies are supported on cast-iron columns whose decorated capitals reflect their relative status, with mouldings reserved for the dress circle. The uppermost balcony, known as the Gods, retains Adamesque floral plasterwork to its front and bench seating, but this has been pierced by the insertion of a brick projection box in the 1930s which removed the central section. The balcony front to the upper circle is obscured by an inserted false ceiling, though timber boarded balustrading and some tip-up seating survive. Seats and a single box remain in the dress circle, the box set back with moulded cornice. The upper part of the proscenium survives, with stencilled decoration of flowers and swags. The front of house area is very small but features a broad staircase with decorated cast-iron balustrade leading to the dress and upper circles. The flytower has been partly demolished, and the stage has been rebuilt.

The building originally opened as the Lyceum Theatre in 1899, later becoming the Grand Theatre and Opera House. It was converted to a cinema in 1932, becoming the Crown Cinema in 1955 when stage use ended following conversion to Cinemascope. In 1963 it became a bingo hall and closed in the 1980s.

The theatre is included as a rare surviving example of a suburban working-class theatre that still retains the original form of its auditorium and front of house. The Lyceum/Crown was large but never lavish, and while it did not form part of a major circuit, it hosted many of the leading variety artists of the early twentieth century.