Downstairs

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 2.5 sec · ISO 1250
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Graffiti reading "T:15" marks light blue render at the foot of a concrete staircase. Ornate damask wallpaper peels from the upper walls in long curling sheets. A single black cable trails down the centre of the landing past scattered debris. Dim light from a timber-framed window barely reaches the lower steps.

Edition

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Downstairs
Series: Marina Picture Palace
Catalogue: MPP-006
Process: Pigment inkjet, archival
Captured: 31 March 2019
Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 2.5 sec s
ISO: 1250
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

A concrete staircase descends through the interior of the Marina Picture Palace on Gardeners Road, Rosebery, its walls still carrying ornate damask wallpaper that peels away from the render in long curling sheets. Graffiti reading "T:15" is sprayed onto the light blue render at the foot of the landing. A single black cable trails down the centre of the stairwell past scattered debris on the steps below. Dim light enters through a timber-framed window on the left, barely reaching the lower treads. The Marina Picture Palace was designed by architect William de Putron and built by William Henry Rumble, with cinema entrepreneur Eric Christensen as the third member of the consortium. The building application, for a "picture palace-shop-dwelling" quoted at £6,000, was submitted to Mascot Council in 1926. Construction was delayed in late 1926 by a shortage of steel girders. The cinema opened on 28 May 1927. De Putron's design followed the Inter-War free-classical style, the same vocabulary he had applied at the Vanderbilt in Potts Point in 1925. The building was intended, in the words of the 1927 *Building* magazine article, to read as "a place quite separated from the everyday quality of the surrounding suburban development." Interior spaces included a foyer with twin stairs to the dress circle, a large rectangular proscenium auditorium with pressed metal Wunderlich ceiling panels, an orchestra pit, and dressing rooms beneath the stage. Ownership of the Marina passed through the Ward brothers, Snider and Dean's Mascot Theatres Pty Ltd from January 1939, and then to the Louis Film Company in 1967. The cinema closed on 8 February 1984. The Louis family converted the stalls to a video and DVD shop, which operated until around 2002. The building has stood vacant since. The Marina Picture Palace is the only surviving pre-war cinema in the former Botany Bay district. The staircase photographed here in 2019 is part of the interior fabric assessed as substantially intact in the 2018 heritage study, though the building's redevelopment, approved with facade retention only, has not yet commenced.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Inside the Marina Picture Palace on Gardeners Road, Rosebery, a concrete staircase descends past walls where ornate damask wallpaper peels away in long curling sheets. Graffiti reading "T:15" marks the light blue render at the landing's base, and a single black cable trails down through the dim light cast by a timber-framed window. Designed by architect William de Putron and opened on 28 May 1927, the Marina Picture Palace is the only surviving pre-war cinema in the former Botany Bay district. It closed as a cinema on 8 February 1984 and has stood vacant since around 2002.

Brett Patman

The series

Marina Picture Palace

2019 · 20 photographs

Marina Picture Palace opened on 24 June 1927 on the corner of Gardeners Road and Sutherland Road, between Mascot and Rosebery. The architect William DePruton, who was also one of the original owners, designed it as a 1,210-seat single-screen picture palace, opening with a double bill of Mary Pickford in *Sparrows* and John Barrymore in *The Beloved Rogue*. The Snider & Dean Circuit ran the cinema from 1939 until the early 1960s. After a series of openings and closings under independent operators, the building reopened as the Rosebery Cinema on 1 October 1982 and closed as a working cinema for the final time on 8 February 1984. The stalls were converted into Videomania, a video shop that traded with much of the cinema's original decoration intact, until that closed by 2002. The building was converted to 47 apartments in the 2010s.

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05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

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