Numbers 19-22 (Consecutive) And Attached Boundary Wall

Numbers 19-22 on Fossgate, originally built as the Electric Cinema in 1911, now function as shops. The building incorporates a late 19th century structure at the rear and was remodeled in 1957. The attached boundary wall is of medieval, 17th, 18th, and 19th century origins. The materials used include cream-brown mottled brick in English garden wall bond, with some parts rendered. The cinema front features glazed tile and faience, while the rear building is made of orange-cream mottled brick with lower courses of orange-red brick. The roofs are slate, with a brick stack on the rear building.

The exterior showcases a full-height cinema front with three unequal bays, designed in a form resembling a Palladian arch in the Ionic order. The central arch has a ribbed elliptical hemi-dome supported by columns with moulded bases on tall pedestals, topped with a moulded modillion cornice hood that returns over the flanking arches. Above, a frieze rises to a segmental pediment with volutes and is capped with enriched moulded coping featuring a ball and pedestal finial. The frieze is decorated with a moulded mask and garlands of fruit. Behind the cinema front, the shopfront has glazed double doors flanked by plate glass windows in an arcade. The rear building has a two-storey, three-window front facing Black Horse Passage, though the openings have been altered.

Inside the shop, the walls feature pilaster strips moulded with floral and musical instrument designs beneath an impost band, supporting a plain frieze and a moulded cornice. The ceiling is panelled with flat plaster ribs, some adorned with moulded fruits. The boundary wall, attached to the northwest, is approximately 4 metres high and 30 metres long, constructed of red brick on the lower courses of magnesian limestone.

Historically, the Electric Cinema was the first cinema in York. The boundary wall incorporates remnants of the former precinct wall of the Carmelite Friary, which was suppressed in 1538.