Marina Picture Palace

The rust-coloured vertical fin above the awning at 409 Gardeners Road is the most visible remnant of a building that once read, in the words of its own era, as "a place quite separated from the everyday quality of the surrounding suburban development." The Marina Picture Palace was designed by architect William de Putron in 1925 in the Inter-War free-classical style: a symmetrical facade of rendered shadow-bands, stepped parapet with roundels, ceramic tiles, and expressed brick detailing. De Putron was not simply the architect for hire. He was a consortium member alongside builder William Henry Rumble and cinema pioneer Eric Christensen, who placed a gold sovereign in the brickwork during construction. The Marina opened on 28 May 1927 with a mixed programme: Mary Pickford in Sparrows, John Barrymore in The Beloved Rogue, a film on the Birth of Canberra, and a live performance by Bill Mason. Construction had been briefly delayed in late 1926 by a steel girder shortage reported by Botany Police. The building complied with the 1908 Theatres and Public Halls Act, a detail Building magazine considered noteworthy when it covered the Marina on 12 March 1927. The cinema changed hands several times. In 1935 the property was sold to William and Norman Ward after rates went unpaid. In January 1939 Mascot Theatres Pty Ltd, part of the Snider and Dean circuit, acquired the freehold. In 1967 Chris Louis of Louis Film Company purchased the Marina in honour of his wife, whose name was also Marina. The Louis family specialised in continental and Greek-language films in the era before SBS television. After the Marina closed as a cinema on 8 February 1984, the Louis family converted the stalls to a video and DVD shop. The shop closed around 2002 and the building has stood vacant since. It is the only surviving pre-World War Two theatre in the former Botany Bay LGA. In 2019, graffiti covered the rendered lower walls, a bent metal barrier lay on the footpath, and a modern building with green-tinted glass pressed close on the left. The fin still rose the full height of the facade above Gardeners Road.