Side Stair

A concrete staircase with exposed aggregate descends into a side room at the Marina Picture Palace in Rosebery. Two film projectors on wheeled bases stand near a box television on a metal stand, left where they were last used. Blue paint peels from the lower walls. Above a clear waterline of decay, ornate black and white floral wallpaper remains largely intact, pressed flat against the wall as though waiting. A white-painted timber door frame stands open to one side. The Marina Picture Palace opened on 28 May 1927 in Rosebery, on a corner site. Architect William de Putron designed the building in 1925 as a member of the consortium that built and owned it, alongside builder William Henry Rumble and cinema entrepreneur Eric Christensen, who placed a gold sovereign in the brickwork during construction. The Inter-War free-classical facade, with its stepped parapet, symmetrical fenestration, and ceramic tile detailing, was intended to read as a building set apart from the surrounding single-storey suburban streets. The theatre passed through multiple owners over its life: the Ward brothers from 1935, then Mascot Theatres Pty Ltd under Snider and Dean from January 1939, then Chris and Chaniglia Louis of Louis Film Company from 1967. The Louis family operated it as a Greek-language cinema in the years before SBS television, then converted the stalls to a video shop after the building's final screening. The Marina closed as a cinema on 8 February 1984, ending a last revival run by operator Paul Brennan that had begun on 1 October 1982. After the video shop closed around 2002, the building stood vacant. It is the only surviving pre-World War Two theatre in the former Botany Bay local government area. This photograph was made in 2019.