Former Rialto Cinema And Cafe De Paris

Cinema with basement restaurant. Built in 1913 by Hippolyte J Blanc with F E B Blanc; interior decorations by Horace Gilbert of Gilbert and Constanduros. Red brick and stone with tile and asphalt roofs. The building follows an oval plan with the cinema on two levels over an oval restaurant below. Designed in the Edwardian Baroque style, it is three storeys high and one bay wide.

The Coventry Street frontage is dominated by a full-height glazed semi-circular arch with a large keystone, hollow-moulded architrave, and carved impost bands featuring lions' masks and bay-leaf festoons. A dentilled cornice runs along the ground floor and continues to the balustraded parapet, which is surmounted by an aedicule pediment.

The Rupert Street façade is two storeys, constructed of brick over a rusticated stone ground floor. The oval cinema rises above, marked by an enriched stone frieze and tall brick chimney stacks with rusticated stone capping set behind staircase towers. These towers have keyed semi-circular arched windows set into slightly-projecting bracketed stone bays, each crowned by a carved stone panel depicting a Greek helmet and trophy flanked by scrolled brackets. The ground floor features a Greek-key frieze with pilasters and a bracketed cornice framing fielded panels; square-headed doorways include one to the left with a bolection-moulded architrave.

The interior contains Baroque-style plasterwork, panelling, and a coffered ceiling in the stair hall. A marble Imperial staircase of three flights features a decorative cast-iron balustrade in classical style. The cinema auditorium is oval with a balcony, defined by a segmental arched proscenium flanked by paired Corinthian columns. Baroque-style plasterwork with cartouches adorns the balcony front; bolection-panelled walls frame the space, with roundels and festoons alternating with Ionic pilasters surmounted by cartouches. These form springers to enriched ribs that frame a domed ceiling with a central star-pendentive feature. The Cafe de Paris is similarly oval with a small stage in a central sunken area reached by an Imperial stair and defined by six pairs of Corinthian columns set within a cast-iron balustrade. The Rialto is probably the most sophisticated cinema design produced in Britain before 1914.