Savoy Cinema

Tender placed with Meagher & Hayes, Drinan Street, Cork, at a cost of £80,000 in 1928, Marble work for new cinema by C.W. Harrison & Sons. Architect Michael John Scott employed to survey damage after fire of 1938, the work being supervised by John Joseph Higginbotham, as the Corporation’s surveyor of Places of Public Resort. This work carried out prior to AIC/ABC’s sale to the Elliman Group in 1939.

As a regular attendant to Sunday afternoon matinees i look on it as a crime that the beautiful venetion acrhitecture was destroyed during the renovation. It could have been covered over and made availible to later generations to enjoy. To try to replicate it today would be prohibitably expensive. I can still see it in my mind.

The largest cinema here was host to a heated special meeting of the Bank of Ireland last Friday, with overflow accomodation used to seat the generally disaffected shareholders. This might be a relatively profitable new line of business for large cinemas, but the RTE TV 6p.m and 9p.m. news carried extensive film coverage showing the meeting, and by default the cinema interior. This news coverage should still be available, for a time, on the RTE news website.

A close-up of the entrance to the Savoy Cinema as seen in June 2006:
http://www.moviebunker.com/savoy_cinema_dublin.htm