Timber Corridor

The stairwell at 409 Gardeners Road, Rosebery is a narrow, enclosed space: damask wallpaper pressed against brick, its pattern still legible after decades of damp and grime have worked their way into the surface. Light enters through a small window at the foot of the stairs, catching the dust and the grain of the timber floorboards on the landing, which have split open along natural fault lines in the wood. A handrail on the right wall has pulled away from its fixings, leaving the descent unguarded. The corridor is still, the kind of stillness that comes after a building has been empty for a long time. These stairs served the dress circle of the Marina Picture Palace, the upper tier of an auditorium that once seated over a thousand people. The Marina was designed by architect William de Putron in 1925, the same year he left the partnership that had produced some of Sydney's more substantial Inter-War buildings. Construction followed in 1926, delayed at one point by a shortage of steel girders, and the building opened on 28 May 1927. It was an independent house from the start, built by a small consortium rather than either of the major cinema chains of the day. Over the following decades the Marina passed through the hands of the Ward brothers, the Snider and Dean suburban circuit, and finally the Louis Film Company, which purchased it in 1967 and operated it as a venue for continental and Greek-language films through the era before SBS television. The cinema screened its last film on 8 February 1984. The stalls were later converted to a video and DVD shop, the dress circle taken out of use. The building has stood vacant since around 2002. The Marina Picture Palace is the only surviving pre-World War Two cinema in the former Botany Bay local government area. This photograph was made in 2019, with the building still standing at the corner of Gardeners Road and Sutherland Street.