Curzon Mayfair Cinema

Details

TQ 2880 SE CURZON STREET, W1
(South side)

1900-/80/10102 Curzon Mayfair Cinema

GV II

Includes: Curzon Mayfair Cinema HERTFORD STREET
Cinema with restaurant, offices and flats. Designed 1957 (exhibited at Royal Academy), built 1963-6. Sir John Burnet, Tait and Partners, architects: H G Hammond designer and job architect; Ove Arup and Partners engineers. Steel and reinforced concrete frame clad in Portland stone panels in an intricate pattern with narrow horizontal bands, and with vertical bands of brick to Hertford Street. 542 seat cinema entered from Hertford Street raised on first floor over restaurant, foyer and garage; over it are two floors of offices and seven apartments. An elegant facade with continuous bands of black anodised aluminium double windows to upper floors, those to bathrooms with inner opaque glass lining. Flats with continuous balconies under projecting flying parapet. Below the cinema is denoted by broad blind storey and sign 'CURZON' to side of double-height ribbed glazing to office entrance. Ground floor restaurant with renewed glazing. Offices entered under canopy, which continues down Hertford Street to cinema entrance. Black anodised aluminium glazed screens house advertisements.
The interior of the cinema is the most elaborate and best surviving of the post-war period. Glazed doors lead to long, narrow foyer lined in marble, with sliding fibre-glass screen by William Mitchell and Associates that can be rolled across the box office when not in use. The lavatories lined with marble effect panels. Auditorium reached via two vomitories leading from the central stair, with anodised aluminium rails. Cinema has two private boxes each with six seats set overhead in the rear corners, with central projection suite, otherwise it is a stadium plan. Vast 43' by 20' screen on to which patterns of light are made to play in the intervals, an important architectural effect. Coffered 'waffle plate' ceiling of fairfaced plywood relieves effect of 70' slab roof spanning the space. Wall murals of fibre glass by William Mitchell and Associates reflect lighting and help disperse sound, whilst giving a glowing cave-like impression in rich primary colours. The carpets, seating and other fittings have been carefully maintained true to their original finishes and colours. The interiors of the restaurant flats and offices not of special interest.
This building replaced a prestigious art house cinema by Francis Lorne of Burnet, Tait and Lorne, built in 1933-4 for the Marquis de Casa Maury, an interior designer turned pioneer art-house impressario. The design of the replacement was a distinctive and deliberate contrast to the simple, Dudokian lines of the much-loved original. The universal adoption of safety film from the mid 1950s made it possible for the first time for large cinemas to be built within blocks of offices, etc., but nowhere else was the quality of cinema design and commercial architecture combined to such a high standard, with such an elegant and confidently expressed plan as here. The finest surviving cinema building of the post-war period, it is also the least altered.


Listing NGR: TQ2862680248

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

468792

Legacy System:

LBS

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