Eighty-eight years on Baylis Street
A cinema, then a carpet showroom, then eleven years empty, and now a supper room with card tables where the stalls used to be.
Four lives of one address
It opened as a picture theatre with a Wurlitzer that lasted nine months. The organ went; the deco plaster stayed.
A carpet showroom took it in 1994 and, mercifully, did nothing more destructive than screw pegboard over the walls. Everything behind the pegboard came through intact.
We opened in 2023 after two winters of scraping. The terrazzo in the foyer needed nothing at all, which felt like being handed a present.
- 1938
- Built, opened, and immediately too big for the town.
- 1987
- Last screening; the lamp house was never relit.
- 2023
- Reopened with tables instead of seats.
Four decisions we stand by
- The neon gets repaired, however much the sign man charges, because it belongs to the street.
- No screens went back in. Not for sport, not for anything.
- Supper is cooked to order in twenty minutes or it does not go on the menu.
- No game in this building is ever played for money, and that will not change.
Questions from people who remember it
Where did the seats go?
A hall in Junee took the lot in 1992. Some are still in use.
Is the Wurlitzer still here?
It left in 1939 and nobody seems to know where to.
Can we see the projection box?
Not while the stair is what it is. Ask again in a year.
Are the ceiling lights original?
The two big ones are. Everything else is a good copy.