Dying Light

The auditorium floor of Marina Picture Palace catches what remains of the light: a purple wash from a grimy window settling across worn red carpet, picking out dark patterned wallpaper and a patch of yellow graffiti reading T21 beneath a boarded-up opening. Overhead, a section of ceiling has given way entirely, exposing timber beams and the debris of years. A soiled board leans against the far wall beside what appears to be a movie poster, left in place long after anyone stopped coming to see films. Marina Picture Palace opened on 28 May 1927 at 409 Gardeners Road, Rosebery, a corner site at Gardeners Road and Sutherland Street. The building was designed by architect William de Putron in 1925, the same year he left his long-standing architectural partnership. De Putron was not simply hired to draw plans; he was a member of the consortium that built and owned the theatre, alongside builder William Henry Rumble and cinema entrepreneur Eric Christensen, who held Exhibitor's Licence No. 1 for New South Wales and placed a gold sovereign in the brickwork during construction. The building is Inter-War free-classical in style, constructed of brick with a rendered and painted facade. The auditorium featured a large rectangular proscenium in the classical style, flanked by columns, with a pressed metal Wunderlich panel ceiling that was later replaced. A Bakelite screen was installed on 26 November 1955, moved forward approximately 2 metres inside the proscenium. Walls were painted deep mushroom on the pillars and misty lilac between panels; the ceiling, midnight blue. The cinema changed hands several times across its life. Mascot Theatres Pty Ltd, part of the Snider and Dean circuit, acquired it in January 1939. Chris and Chaniglia Louis of Louis Film Company purchased it in 1967, running Greek-language and continental films in the years before SBS television. The Marina closed as a cinema on 8 February 1984. The stalls area became a video shop, then that too closed around 2002. By 2019, the carpet was worn through, the ceiling was open to the structure above, and the wallpaper had darkened with decades of neglect. This photograph is what remained.