Granada Cinema, Movie theater in Woolwich, England.
Granada Cinema is a listed movie theater in Woolwich, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, with a dark brown brick facade, a tall advertising tower, and five large windows set beneath an awning. The exterior follows a modern style, while the interior was decorated in a Gothic manner and originally held around 2,400 seats.
The cinema opened on 20 April 1937 and quickly drew audiences from across Woolwich and the surrounding area. It was later given listed status, which has helped protect the building to this day.
The name comes from the Spanish city, reflecting a fashion among 1930s cinema owners for giving their venues a faraway, romantic feel. Inside, the Gothic decoration still catches visitors off guard, since it is rarely what people expect when they walk into a neighborhood cinema.
The building is in Woolwich and easy to reach on foot from Woolwich Arsenal station. Anyone interested in architecture should look at both the exterior and, when possible, the interior, since the two parts of the building look very different from each other.
The interior was designed by Theodore Komisarjevsky, a Russian set designer known for his theater work, who gave the main hall a Gothic feel closer to a cathedral than a cinema. This made for an unusual contrast with the modern exterior, which was the work of architects Cecil Masey and Reginald Uren.
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