Former Carlton Cinema (Including Nos.18B & 18C)

The former Carlton Cinema, which includes Nos. 18B and 18C, is a building made of reinforced concrete, steel, and brick, featuring a facade of Doulton’s White Carraraware and bronzeware accents on the capitals and bases of its columns.

This four-storey structure has a symmetrical front with three bays, a painted ground floor, and end towers. The design includes ribbed domes, decorative swags and volutes on the drums, and scrolled pediments above columned aedicules that frame wreathed bull’s-eye windows. It is topped with a balustraded and solid parapet over a deep cornice decorated with dentils and an egg-and-dart motif. The central bay is flanked by Ionic columns in antis, featuring a semi-dome above a giant arched bow window that illuminates ironwork balconies inside, adorned with foliage spandrels.

The sides of the building have three levels of tripartite windows set within rusticated walls, supported by squat Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns, along with moulded and sculptured decorative panels depicting dancing putti. The outer ground floor bays feature large arched openings that are currently blocked, with panelled pilasters, foliage spandrels, and grotesque keyblocks. The centre bay has a recessed modern shop front.

Inside, the ground floor retains part of the columned treatment for an ovoid open staircase located at the rear of the shop, which was formerly the foyer. The rest of the interior used to have plasterwork on the gallery front and the barrel vault at the rear of the auditorium.