Curzon Mayfair Cinema

Curzon Mayfair Cinema

A cinema with restaurant, offices and flats located on Curzon Street and Hertford Street in Mayfair. Designed in 1957 (exhibited at the Royal Academy) and built between 1963 and 1966, it was designed by the architects Sir John Burnet, Tait and Partners, with H G Hammond as designer and job architect, and engineered by Ove Arup and Partners.

The building has a steel and reinforced concrete frame clad in Portland stone panels arranged in an intricate pattern with narrow horizontal bands. Vertical bands of brick face Hertford Street. The facade is elegant, featuring continuous bands of black anodised aluminium double windows to the upper floors, with opaque glass linings to bathroom windows. The flats have continuous balconies beneath a projecting flying parapet.

The 542-seat cinema is entered from Hertford Street at first-floor level, raised above a restaurant, foyer and garage. Above the cinema are two floors of offices and seven apartments. The ground floor contains a restaurant with renewed glazing. A broad blind storey marks the cinema entrance, with the sign 'CURZON' displayed beside a double-height ribbed glazed opening to the office entrance. A canopy continues down Hertford Street to the cinema entrance, housing black anodised aluminium glazed screens for advertisements.

The cinema interior is the most elaborate and best-surviving cinema interior of the post-war period. Glazed doors open into a long, narrow foyer lined in marble, with a sliding fibre-glass screen by William Mitchell and Associates that can be rolled across the box office when not in use. Lavatories are lined with marble-effect panels. The auditorium is accessed via two vomitories leading from the central stair, with anodised aluminium rails. The cinema follows a stadium plan with two private boxes, each containing six seats, positioned overhead in the rear corners. A central projection suite is located above. The vast 43-foot by 20-foot screen is notable, with patterns of light played across it during intervals as an important architectural effect. A coffered 'waffle plate' ceiling of fair-faced plywood relieves the visual effect of the 70-foot slab roof spanning the space. Wall murals of fibre glass by William Mitchell and Associates reflect lighting and help disperse sound, creating a glowing cave-like impression in rich primary colours. Carpets, seating and other fittings have been carefully maintained to their original finishes and colours. The interiors of the restaurant, flats and offices are not of special interest.

This building replaced a prestigious art house cinema by Francis Lorne, built in 1933-1934 for the Marquis de Casa Maury, an interior designer turned pioneer art-house impresario. That earlier cinema had distinctive, simple Dudokian lines and was much-loved. The replacement was designed as a deliberate and distinctive contrast to the original.

The universal adoption of safety film from the mid-1950s made it possible for the first time to build large cinemas within blocks of offices and other buildings. Nowhere else was the quality of cinema design and commercial architecture combined to such a high standard, with such an elegant and confidently expressed plan. This is the finest surviving cinema building of the post-war period and also the least altered.