Odeon Cinema

TQ 1774 NE 204/101

HILL STREET Odeon Cinema

GV II Cinema. 1930 by Julian Leathart and W.R Grainger. Steel frame clad in brick with faience front. Plan of double-height auditorium with balcony at right angles to street reached via series of long narrow foyers, with offices over entrance foyer.

Three-storey, three-bay front in Art Deco style. Later C20 entrance doors. Art Deco chevrons to metal glazing of windows, which are set in recessed three-bay central feature articulated by giant order of piers with Ionic Art Deco capitals separating coloured panels with lion's mask features. This central feature is flanked by stepped bands which run beneath raised dentilled cornice; coved parapet with bead and reel beneath Art Deco cornice.

Interior: entrance foyer has piers with Mayan-style friezes and Art Deco Ionic capitals to scroll brackets and decorative cornice surrounding D-shaped ceiling; scrolled Spanish-style architraves to doorways. Other foyers have panelled Spanish-style doors, good original light fittings, moulded cornicing and scrolled Spanish-style plasterwork to architraves and wall brackets. Auditorium retains 'atmospheric' proscenium surround of a Spanish courtyard with seven elaborate metal grilles to centre, aediculed openings to sides and loggias with pantiles along auditorium walls; coffered ceiling with original lights.

One of only three surviving 'atmospheric' interiors in Britain, the others being The Academy, Brixton, and The Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park (q.v.).

Listing NGR: TQ1784774632