Former Majestic Cinema

Former Majestic Cinema

A former cinema and restaurant, later used as a bingo club, built in 1921 and designed by architect Pascal J Stienlet. The building is constructed of 'Marmo' terracotta, an imitation marble material manufactured by the Leeds Fireclay Company of Burmantofts. It features a steeply-pitched slate roof with bull's-eye dormer windows and ridge railing.

The cinema occupies a prominent corner site on City Square, Leeds, with a curved entrance facade. The building has two storeys with basement and attics. The main twelve-window facade faces City Square with a central entrance, while eight-window facades with end entrances address Wellington Street and Quebec Street. Later twentieth-century alterations have introduced brick cladding and modified the entrances.

The architectural style is Classical Beaux Arts. Decorative detailing includes surface finishes imitating banded rustication, keyed round-arched windows, Greek key pattern framing recessed panels on the returns, a modillion eaves cornice, and a blocking course with the raised date 1921 flanked by triple bull's-eye windows and a vase balustrade. Moulded terracotta swags feature above the windows, and elaborate panels depicting musical instruments ornament the first floor centre.

Much of the interior's fine original structure and decoration survives, though obscured by cladding, partitions and an inserted ceiling. The basement contains a ballroom and restaurant. A rear entrance from Wellington Street opens into a hall with a staircase rising to a tea lounge and galleried circulation area featuring an open circular well. Original flooring, handrails and balustrades remain. Glazed double doors open into the former circle seating. A ribbed and panelled dome with a Classical frieze of repeated groups of horse riders and chariots (based on the Parthenon) has a diameter of approximately 10.4 metres, though it has been damaged by rods supporting the inserted ceiling. Original decorative features include fluted Ionic columns, moulded cornices and wall panels, pilasters framing doorways, a recess for an organ, moulded plaques and scrolls to the balcony front, and oval wall plaques with Classical figures.

The architect made effective use of the difficult site, employing a wide fan-shaped auditorium with the main entrance at the screen end. The seating capacity was 1,600 below and 1,200 in the balcony, making this one of the 'super-cinemas' built just before and after the First World War. It was contemporary with the Piccadilly Picture Theatre in Manchester and the Regent in Brighton.

Stienlet was an established cinema architect who continued to practise until the 1930s. Marmo was an imitation marble developed in the early twentieth century and particularly suited to the plainer architecture of the 1920s and 1930s; other examples in Leeds include Nos 50 and 51 Briggate and Atlas House, Nos 1 and 3 St Paul's Street, though these date earlier. The cinema opened in June 1922 and closed in July 1969. Original proprietors were Leeds Picture Playhouses Ltd; from 1922 to 1927 Pathe Freres Cinema Ltd held ownership.