Grosvenor Picture Theatre

The Grosvenor Cinema opened on 3rd May 1921 with a seating capacity of 1,337. There was a main narrow entrance which had a white tiled faience, located at 194 Byres Road in the Hillhead district of Glasgow’s West End.

Seating inside the auditorium was provided in stalls and circle levels, with a a series of boxes located at the rear of the stalls. When the Grosvenor Cinema first opened it was operated by an independent operator and had a café as an added facility for patrons. Taken over by Associated British Cinemas(ABC) in October 1929, it remained a popular cinema for many years.

ABC sold the Grosvenor Cinema to Caledonian Associated Cinemas in May 1976. They remodelled the cinema in 1980, closing off the original Byres Road entrance (which became a restaurant) and creating a new entrance on Ashton Lane. Two new luxury auditoriums were created in the former stalls area, named the Ashton and the Kelvin. They opened in December 1980 with seating capacities for 276 and 285. In the mid-1990’s plans were proposed to add further screens in the former circle area, but these did not materialise.

In June 2002, the Grosvenor Cinema was closed for rebuilding. Only the roof and three of the original four walls were retained as a new façade was added on Ashton Lane. Two luxury screens on the ground floor, each seating 104 opened on 28th November 2003. Upstairs, the original ceiling of the Grosvenor Cinema has been restored and the space is now a restaurant.

It was closed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. During closure it was remodeled, recreating the auditoriums in the original style of the building. It reopened as the Grosvenor Picture Theatre in May 2022.

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garypainter on June 4, 2023 at 6:03 am

Closed for refurbishment just prior to the pandemic, and re-opened in May 2022. It now calls itself The Grosvenor Picture Theatre. The two small auditoria, which were in contemporary style when it was drastically remodelled in 2003, have been completely redesigned in a retro barrel-vaulted Edwardian style very similar to the same operator’s Scotsman Picturehouse in Edinburgh. Alas, this conversion seems to have removed the projection boxes and replaced them with an upper seating level, with roof-mounted digital projectors above.