Repost this day 2019:
Must say I never really noticed the #RegentTheatreMelbourne growing up even though I spent a bit of time in the city – prob because it was closed and abandoned in the 70s; the basement #PlazaBallroom was added to the #CitySquare when it opened in 1980, but all that was left was the elaborate ceiling. Anyway, it’s great! Lots of nice classical detail in stone-coloured render. #RegentTheatreMelbourne, 1929, #CedricBallantyne. Managed to catch it between shows, without banners. So many stories here, but the best one is how it was saved from #demolition (for a high rise hotel looking over a #citysquare) in the 70s by union #greenbans, lying unused for 26 years. Then in a complicated deal with #DavidMarriner involving the state govt buying half the theatre from the @cityofmelbourne, Marriner purchasing half the city square from council for a hotel development, with the two lots of purchase $ redirected by council to the restoration of the theatre for live shows, costing $25 mill, reopening in 1996, and still going strong. Thank goodness for the revival of large scale musicals.
2021 update : Marriner got a permit from #heritagevictoria in early 2019 to extend the balcony, which happened in 2020; fair enough since it was built for cinema and the balc is such a long way from the stage, and from the images I could find you can hardly tell.
31 July 2024
Just a few shots of the street lobby which is full of great details too, though swapping to Gothic with a Spanish Baroque flavour; this kind of extreme eclecticism, mining different periods for anything that was exotic and elaborate was pretty much how every ‘picture palace’ was designed in the 1920s, and dozens of similar old theatres like this still exist in the US.
Repost 2019:
Something from the archives : a photo of the interior of the #RegentTheatreMelbournd in Nov 1991 from Trust News during a @nationaltrustvic open day, revealing something few had seen for 20 years – for which I prepared an info brochure, learning all about 1920s #PicturePalace history in the process. I remember hordes of people, and dust, and how it was just cavernous ! Only a couple of years later #DavidMarriner did a complicated deal with the #CityOfMelbourne and State Govt involving the #CitySquare as well, and at least we got the theatre back, with a pretty complete restoration where: “Every inch of the interior is treated by scumbling; using a transparent oil and wax glaze, coloured to impart either a translucent result or near opaque finish for strength and structural detailing.”, the work and photos from @mulhollandrestorationanddec, completed in 1996. Always been annoyed that the speakers and stage lighting were a bit intrusive. And yes it’s currently being done over again, various things refreshed, bars enlarged, and moving the front of the balcony forward 3 rows, which can be done without it looking any different, to be completed next year for #MoulinRougeTheMusical.
2021 update : that was going to premier last week, then came Lockdown 6. Also found photos of the recent extension of the balcony by @visionornate_plaster, cute little speaker things, but also an area of very plain plaster ?
2 January 2021:
Aha ! Knew I’d seen this before – our 1929 Regent Theatre auditorium is pretty much a copy of the long-demolished Capitol Theatre in New York !Photo seen while flicking through my big fat ‘New York 1930’ book. It was built in 1919, as the largest perhaps in the world with 5320 seats, and designed by theatre specialist #ThomasLamb as the flagship for Loew’s (silent) movie chain. You can see the arrangement of boxes, proscenium, the columned wall with curtains, the ceiling arrangement of one big dome surrounded by many smaller ones, even the detailing all looks the same. It’s another example of picture palace copying here – the Capitol in Sydney is a match for our Forum, and though supposedly by different architects both are really by US cinema specialist, John Eberson. So Regent architect #CedricBallantyne was either told to copy the NY Capitol or came up with that idea himself. I wonder if he got the plans or worked from photos ?
Storey of Melbourne 