Heritage-listed cinema in Brisbane, Queensland
Regent Theatre was a heritage-listed cinema at 167 Queen Street, Brisbane, Australia. It was designed by Richard Gailey, Charles N Hollinshed and Aaron Bolot and built from 1928 to 1929 by J &amp; E L Rees and A J Dickenson. It was one of the original Hoyts' Picture Palaces from the 1920s. It is also known as Regent Building. The auditorium interior was largely lost when it was converted into a 4 screen complex in 1979–1980, but the building, including the surviving entrance and main foyer, was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
History.
The Regent Theatre in Brisbane was constructed as the first and only American-style picture palace to be built in Queensland. It reflects the opulence and grandeur of the great Hollywood era and was one of many operated by Hoyts in Australia.
Other significant Regent Cinemas around Australia were the Regent in George Street, Sydney (now demolished), the Regent on the Rundle Mall in Adelaide which is now converted into a shopping mall and the Regent Melbourne on Collins Street, restored in the 1990s and now a major successful live theatre for Melbourne. The Regent Theatre, Dunedin in New Zealand was adapted for live performances in the 1970s and continues to be used for those and as a cinema. Smaller Regent cinemas include the Regent in downtown Ballarat, Victoria, now remodelled into a multi-screen complex.
The picture palaces were built to imitate Hollywood's Golden Era and were designed to function as a cinema and theatre. The Regent in Brisbane was designed by the Melbourne architect Charles N. Hollinshed, with assistance from the Brisbane-based Richard Gailey Junior and Aaron Bolot. It was erected in 1929 and opened on 8 November. Construction costs totalled £300,000. 
The first feature presentation shown at the Regent Theatre was Fox Movietone Follies of 1929.
The Regent Building comprises part of the original Regent Theatre complex constructed on land between Queen Street and Elizabeth Street, between 1928 and 1929. It includes a basement, four levels of tenancies at 167 Queen Street, two street-level shops, and the ornately decorated entrance hall and grand foyer, which led into the original 2500-seat Regent Theatre. While the office building was completed late in 1928, and tenanted from April 1929, the theatre opened to the public in November 1929. The building was redeveloped in the late 1970s, with four cinemas installed in the space originally occupied by the 2500-seat theatre and opened in 1980 as the Hoyts Entertainment Centre. This development retained the four levels of tenancies, the basement, two street level shops, the entrance hall and grand foyer. One of the four cinemas, known as the Showcase Theatre and located on the lower level of the complex, was constructed to recall the design of the original Regent Theatre. Its vestibule was also a re-construction recalling the vestibule which had been on a mezzanine level of the original theatre. The entertainment centre was closed for further redevelopment in June 2010.
Situated in Brisbane's main thoroughfare, Queen Street, between Albert and Edward Streets, the Regent Building was located within the city's central shopping, business and entertainment precinct. It was constructed on a number of contiguous land parcels with one long, narrow lot (2/RP49279) having frontage to both Queen and Elizabeth Streets, and a number of contiguous lots facing Elizabeth Street. The shape of the allotments, determined the theatre's plan. The narrow Queen Street lot comprised the entrance hall and grand foyer, giving the theatre a prestigious Queen Street address, while the auditorium was constructed on the broad part of the site in Elizabeth Street. The Queen Street lot had been acquired in the 1850s by Patrick Mayne. Its ownership later passed into the possession of two of his children; Dr James O'Neil Mayne and Mary Emelia Mayne. The Elizabeth Street lots, where the original theatre was constructed, comprised three additional lots; one of which had also been acquired by Patrick Mayne in the 1850s (L217/B11826) and passed to his children after his death. The remaining two lots (L1/RP574 &amp; L1/RP575) that comprised the theatre site were purchased by film director and entrepreneur J. C. Williamson in 1928 and transferred to Hoyts Theatres Ltd in June 1929. Dr James Mayne leased the Elizabeth Street allotment and part of 2/RP49279 to Capitol Theatres Ltd for 50 years from 1 December 1927, which transferred both leases to Hoyts in September 1932. After James and Mary Mayne died in 1939 and 1940 respectively, their estate was left to the University of Queensland as the sole beneficiary.
Approval to build a lavish Regent Theatre in Brisbane, which would accommodate all classes of theatrical entertainment from opera to vaudeville and films, was granted by the Brisbane City Council in 1926, at a time when "picture palaces" were gaining popularity worldwide. In central Brisbane, the Regent was to join a substantial cohort of theatres and theatre-cinemas which formed the basis of a vibrant cultural and social hub. By 1930, apart from the new Regent, Queen Street between Albert and Edward Streets housed His Majesty's (opened 1888), the Wintergarden (opened in 1924), and the Majestic (opened 1915, rebuilt as Odeon 1957). Three other venues had operated in Queen Street but were closed by 1923: the Pavilion and Strand De Luxe Theatres between the site of the Regent and Albert Street, and West's Olympia at the corner of Queen and North Quay. Nearby in Albert Street were The Tivoli (built as a theatre in 1915 and converted to a cinema in 1927), the Empire (opened 1911, renamed St James in 1933, and the Paris in 1965), and the Lyceum (1909, remodelled as the Elite in the 1920s and substantially rebuilt in 1965 as the George Twin Cinema) in George Street. Elsewhere were the Theatre Royal in Elizabeth Street (opened 1881, demolished) and Centennial Hall in Adelaide Street (opened 1888, later Coconut Grove dance hall and Guild Cafe Theatre, which closed 1949). One of the last to be constructed within the same street block as the Regent was the 1937 Metro Theatre in Albert Street. Some of these were demolished in the 1960s and by 1986 only the George Cinema and the Metro, remodelled as the Albert Cinemas, remained.
The architects responsible for the design of the 1929 Regent Theatre Building worked in association. They were Charles Neville Hollinshed, a Melbourne-based architect, and Richard Gailey Junior, a prominent Brisbane practitioner who, among other commissions, had designed the nearby Brisbane Arcade for Dr James Mayne in 1924. Hollinshed was involved with other large theatre projects, including a number in Melbourne such as the Fitzroy Regent, the Comedy Theatre and the refurbishment of Her Majesty's. Aaron Bolot, then an employee of Gailey, also worked on the project. Their designs were featured in the Architecture and Building Journal of Queensland; first in June and July 1927, later through 1928, and into 1929, where the scale and splendour of the building were amply described. The Queen Street section - occupied by April 1929 - comprised a basement, a street-facing shop, four levels of commercial tenancies, the entrance hall, and the grand foyer. It was originally to be the Capitol Building, which is why there are intertwined CBs on the front facade. The theatre was constructed on the larger Elizabeth Street site and included six shops at street level and a 200-space basement car-park, accessible from Elizabeth Street.
The brick shell of the theatre building on Elizabeth Street enclosed a composite steel and concrete frame with ancillary timber framing used to support the floors and ceilings and their decorative features. The Regent in Brisbane reflected the evolution of the picture palace concept devised by Samuel Lionel "Roxy" Rothapfel's 1913 Regent Theatre in New York which created a fantasy interior where audiences could lose themselves within an evocatively decorated atmospheric picture palace. This style was perpetuated by Hoyts in a chain of Regent theatres built across Australia in the 1920s, in Melbourne, South Yarra, Ballarat, Perth, Sydney and Adelaide. Two more were built in New Zealand in Auckland and Palmerston North. The Brisbane Regent's interiors were a blend of Gothic, Baroque and Classical themes. Two building contractors were employed on the Brisbane Regent: AJ Dickenson for the theatre component and J &amp; EL Rees for the Queen Street section. Construction and fit-out costs, including furnishings (some of which reputedly were antiques collected from overseas), paintings, the main chandelier, Belgian carpets, a Wurlitzer organ, and a state-of-the-art air conditioning system, amounted to around £400,000.
Almost a year after the tenancies on Queen Street were completed, the Regent Theatre opened on 8 November 1929 being described as "palatial", "rich in detail" and "strikingly beautiful". Seating more than 2500 patrons it was one of the largest theatres in Australia and comprised an extensive stage with fly tower and a large movie screen and stage, modern lighting facilities, three talking machines, and a £25,000 Wurlitzer organ from New York. A large dome stretching above the stalls featured a one-ton bronze chandelier in the centre of an oval ceiling medallion set within a "sunburst" surround. The elaborate decorative plaster work was prepared by Picton Hopkins and Son Pty Ltd in Melbourne with some involvement by the local Decorative Tile Company in its installation, which also completed the marble tiling. The ornament moulds were designed and cast in Melbourne. The final plaster pieces were cast in situ in Brisbane and then fixed into place and painted. A new proprietary board product known as "Craftex" was used to replicate stone and marble on the walls. The Mollocco Brothers of Sydney created the marble work on the staircase. The furniture and artworks used throughout the building had been selected by the Managing Director of Hoyts, Frank Thring Senior, during his travels in Europe. He had been a Managing Director with JC Williamson Films Ltd before it merged in 1926 with Hoyts Pty Ltd to form Hoyts Theatres Ltd. Thring went on to make the first Australian "talkies" with his company Efftee Film Productions in 1930-31.The Regent tenanted office building operated successfully from April 1929, when its first tenant, a dressmaking academy was soon joined by hairdressers, estate agents, accountants, a costume designer and the Western Electric Company which provided sound reproduction equipment. A cafe was located on the ground floor facing Queen Street and in 1949 tea rooms operated on the second floor. Hoyts had offices in the basement level, which ran the entire length of the building.
The Regent, like other theatres of the time, offered a temporary escape from the harsh reality of life during the Depression. The theatre also showed newsreels, keeping audiences informed of current events, which was particularly important during World War II. The introduction of drive-in theatres from the mid 1950s and television from 1959 in Queensland were largely responsible for the decline in attendances at these large picture theatres. From the 1970s, cinema companies began constructing multiplexes to cater for smaller audience numbers watching a wider range of films.
From late 1969 Hoyts and the trustees of the Mayne Estate began devising proposals to redevelop the Regent Theatre. The manager of Hoyts Queensland revealed these plans in "The Courier-Mail" in January 1973 which prompted the National Trust of Queensland to investigate the historic value of the theatre and include it on the organisation's heritage list from July 1974. In view of the looming date of 1977, when the lease granted to Hoyts over the Mayne estate land would expire, it was decided that the best option for the continued generation of income was to replace the existing theatre with a number of smaller cinemas. The local architectural firm commissioned by the trustees to complete the design for this proposal was Lange L Powell, Dods and Thorpe. The National Trust made an objection to a preliminary application lodged with the Brisbane City Council and succeeded in postponing the project. In the meantime the organisation presented alternative plans, which were eventually deemed economically unviable. A final application was approved by the Brisbane City Council in June 1978 for a scheme that retained the entrance hall and grand foyer, cafe and offices but replaced the auditorium with four cinemas and a shopping arcade. An active local "Save the Regent" campaign began the following month, just after the National Heritage Commission announced that the theatre would be included on its National Register.
The final