Crest Theatre, Granville, Heritage theatre in Granville, Australia.
The Crest Theatre is a single-storey Quonset-style former cinema at 157 Blaxcell Street, Granville, with a vaulted auditorium of steel frame and concrete walls finished in stucco. Its corner entrance has two facades meeting at ninety degrees, joined by a tapered vertical pier with an art deco motif; a larger triangular concrete pier on Blaxcell Street holds five protruding circles that now spell BLOUZA. A curved cantilevered awning with a row of small light bulbs runs along the corner, and inside, two entrances to the main theatre retain their original deep red velvet curtains.
The Crest opened on Easter Saturday, 27 March 1948, screening "The Swordsman" and "Dangerous Years". It was built by Hoyts' Western Suburbs Cinemas Ltd on land leased from the Roman Catholic Church, the second of two Quonset cinemas in Granville. L. Nobby Clark managed it until 1956 and was recalled in 1963 to close it after the final programme on 24 August 1963.
The building's name changed with its uses: the five circles on the triangular pier held "HOYTS", then "BINGO" from the mid-1990s, and now "BLOUZA" after the Australian Blouza Association bought it. The association, made up of descendants of the Lebanese village of Blaouza, runs it as Blouza Hall, a community and function centre available for public hire.
The hall sits at 157 Blaxcell Street, on the corner with Redfern Street, where the entrance is set into the splayed corner beneath the curved awning. The hall is available for public hire through the Australian Blouza Association, which operates the building. The vestibule is reached through banks of six glass-paned doors on either side of the corner.
The building is one of only two remaining Quonset-style cinemas in New South Wales, showing how old military building styles were adapted after World War II for entertainment. This construction method was economical and quick to build.
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