Rainbow Theatre, former cinema

Rainbow Theatre, former cinema

This building, constructed in 1930 as the Finsbury Park Astoria, was designed by Edward A. Stone. The architect's name and date are recorded in a panel to the right of the entrance. The interior decoration was undertaken by Tommy Somerford and Ewen Barr.

The exterior presents a distinctive wedge-shaped frontage at the corner of Seven Sisters Road and Isledon Road, clad in white faience with green faience dressings. The rear is built in red brick, with the roof obscured by a parapet. The front façade rises three storeys, displaying five windows along Seven Sisters Road and seven along Isledon Road. At the corner stands a tower with a broad canted three-storey bay. This bay features a flat-arched entrance with impost bands of palm leaves and an awning (a replacement). Above is a green faience panel, with flat-arched windows on the canted sides serving two storeys, divided by a metal spandrel between upper and lower levels. The bay steps back progressively to the parapet. The rest of the tower is detailed with vertical panels of green faience, two flagpoles bracketed on lions' heads, and stepping progressively back to the parapet, with a low central pediment at the top. The wings display flat-arched entrances and windows at ground level on Seven Sisters Road, with small flat-arched windows on Isledon Road. Upper floors have flat-arched windows on both facades, with those to the first and second floors linked vertically within a single architrave and separated by a metal spandrel. A cornice and parapet complete the composition.

The interior is conceived as a Hispano-Moresque fantasy. An octagonal arcaded foyer contains bowed balconies of the upper foyer projecting into a two-storey centre, with a tiled fountain beneath a painted dome. Octagonal columns support the arcade with fantastic brackets at first-floor level, originally the Tea Room Balcony. Throughout the foyer and cinema are well-preserved doors featuring stencilled ornament on one side and nail-head decoration on the other. The passage to the auditorium has a decorative plaster ceiling with star-like lighting recesses and ornate plaster frames for posters. The upper foyer features modernistic metal railings with chevron ornament, a frieze of interlaced work, original ceiling lights with embossed roses, ornate plaster frames for posters, and towards the auditorium, a massive shallow many-foiled arch with spandrels decorated in imitation of embossed leatherwork. The crush hall is fitted with bracketed eaves and a tiled roof running entirely around as if forming a Spanish courtyard.

The auditorium contains a four-centred proscenium arch with eight stages of imitation stepped brickwork, the spandrels filled with arabesques and coats of arms. To either side are chamfered bays with round-arched entrances decorated with chequerboard patterns and coats of arms. The stalls are served by an aisle running behind an arcade of shallow ogival arches carried on chamfered antae with capitals bulging with rams' horns. The two bays nearest the proscenium arch on either side feature a plaster frieze of rampant lions. A projection box is slung across the auditorium beneath the gallery. Above the proscenium arch, the canted bays, and extending back for the first four tiers of the gallery, is a detailed and romantic stage-set representation of a Spanish town. This design continues along the gallery side walls as a steeply raked arcade of barley-sugar columns and stepped parapet bearing urns, vases and exceptionally naturalistic foliage. At the rear of the gallery are flat-arched entrances with shouldered arches, with an arcade of elliptical arches on squat columns between them, supporting a frieze that incorporates part of the lighting system. The ceiling was originally blue and powdered with electric lights as stars, though it was not visible at inspection due to lack of light.

When completed, the Finsbury Park Astoria, with a capacity of 4,000 seats, was one of the largest cinemas in the world.