The first half of the 20th century saw an explosion in cinema development. York audiences had their first chance to see animated pictures at the Theatre Royal in December 1896. Over the following years film shows were also staged in the Opera House, the Festival Concert Rooms, the Exhibition Buildings and the Victoria Hall.
The first building dedicated to film arrived in 1908 when the former Wesleyan Chapel, New Street Hall, was converted to a cinema. And York’s first purpose-built cinema came soon after when in 1911 the excitingly named Electric Theatre was opened on Fossgate. It lasted several decades, becoming the Scala in 1951, and the unusual building decorated with theatrical figures can still be seen today.
Electric Cinema; now shop: boundary wall attached to rear building. 1911, incorporating late C19 building at rear; remodelled 1957. Boundary wall medieval, C17, C18 and C19.
MATERIALS: cream-brown mottled brick in English garden wall bond, part rendered, with cinema front of glazed tile and faience; rear building of orange-cream mottled brick in English garden wall bond, with lower courses of orange-red brick: slate roofs, with brick stack to rear building.
EXTERIOR: full-height cinema front, of 3 unequal bays, treated as form of Palladian arch in Ionic order. Central arch is ribbed elliptical hemi-dome on columns with moulded bases on tall pedestals, beneath moulded modillion cornice hood, returned over flanking arches. Frieze above rises to segmental pediment terminated by volutes and capped with enriched moulded coping with ball and pedestal finial: frieze filled with moulded mask and garlands and swags of fruit. Shopfront behind cinema front has glazed double doors between arcaded with plate glass windows. Rear building: 2-storey, 3-window front to Black Horse Passage: openings altered. Boundary wall attached to north-west, approximately 4 metres high and 30 metres long.
INTERIOR: of shop: wall pilaster strips moulded with drops of flowers and musical instruments beneath impost band and plain frieze support moulded cornice. Ceiling panelled with flat plaster ribs, some enriched with moulded fruits.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: boundary wall red brick on lower courses of magnesian limestone.
HISTORICAL NOTE: the Electric Cinema was the first cinema in York. Boundary wall attached to rear building incorporates remnants of former precinct wall of Carmelite Friary, suppressed 1538.