A cinema frontage close to Harrow on the Hill, which has been covered over with a ghastly metal facade since the 1960s is starting to be revealed as the facade is restored as part of a property development.
The Safari Cinema, as it’s now known, opened in 1936 with a grand frontage of the type popular in that decade. However, when the cinema was renamed the ABC in 1962, the owners for some reason decided that art deco was offputting and covered the entire front in a facade of metal sheets.
It’s looked more like a warehouse than a cinema for the past 60 years.
The main cinema closed a while back, and the building was being used by a local evangelical church and a small Bollywood cinema, but now the site is now being redeveloped into flats, with the bulk of the site being cleared.
The good news is that they’re restoring the original 1930s frontage.
(c) If Architecture / Planning documents
The ghastly metal facade has been removed, and although the building site is still covered in scaffolding, you can see the art deco building underneath waiting for restoration.
The redevelopment of the site into flats will also see a four-screen cinema return to the site, with the cinema opening on the ground floor, along with a new cafe and community space. It’s also regaining its original name, the Dominion Cinema.
Although the new block of flats behind the cinema frontage will be taller and overlook it, the restoration of a lost art-deco cinema frontage is something that I think is to be looked forward to.
So pleased to see the cinema that I knew as a kid re-emerging
About time too. A blot of the landscape ever since the tin can facade was an erection — but not a very glamarous one, at that!!
Fabulous. So nice to see a restoration of one of our glorious art deco cinemas. Alas in my area, Golders Green, three major cinemas have been demolished over the years.