Nostalgia: The great Cork cinemas

CORK cinemas have been teeming with patrons over the last week with the release of the long-anticipated Oppenheimer and Barbie films.

To mark the occasion, this week’s Nostalgia is a look back at some former Cork cinemas.

Amongst the most notable of Cork’s bygone cinemas was the Savoy Cinema, which heralded a new era of entertainment for Leesiders when it opened its doors to the public on May 12, 1932.

It was officially opened by the then lord mayor Frank Daly.

The front page on the following day of the then titled Evening Echo captured the sense of excitement in the city: “The whole proceedings were marked by wonderful enthusiasm, coupled with very apparent manifestations of civic pride in this latest acquisition to the city’s attributes.”

Large numbers of people descended on to Patrick Street hours before the opening in great anticipation of the historic event.

“Crowds of people collected before the new cinema as long as two hours before the opening was due to take place, and by the time the doors were opened there was such a gathering on the street as impeded traffic, and numerous Civic Guards had a busy time regulating the numbers seeking admission.”

In his address to the assembled crowd on that first night, the lord mayor noted that the development was worthy of the capital of Ireland — adding to great applause that it was not too much to hope that Cork might one day become the new capital.

The glory days of the Savoy Cinema began to decline in the 1970s as television became more popular and the cinema eventually closed in January 1975.

More than 10 years prior another popular Cork cinema had closed its doors.

The Coliseum cinema, with 700 seats, opened in 1913 on what was then called King Street.

It shut on the subsequently re-named MacCurtain Street/Brian Boru Street corner facing Summerhill North half a century later in 1964, when the curtain came down for the last time on April 4.

“‘The Col’, by which the Coliseum is affectionately known, was the first actual cinema to be built in Cork and cinemagoers throughout the city will feel saddened and nostalgic at its enforced closure,” the Evening Echo reported that day.

“Why has ‘The Col’ to close down? The answer comes in one word — television.

“This medium hit cinemas generally, but the Coliseum obviously took the hardest knock.

“From the first days of television in the South, in fact, attendances began to drop off and it has now reached a stage where it is no longer possible to keep going. And so the sad closure.”

Cork lost another important part of its cinema history in July 1991 when the Classic Cinema on Washington Street was demolished.

The same site was formerly the home of the Washington and Ritz cinemas which pioneered cinema — as one Evening Echo article from July 5 noted: “The old Washington Cinema pioneered Cork cinema when it first opened in the days of the silent films in the late 1920s.

“The building contained a grate in the basement where a fire was fuelled to heat the premises.

“The Washington burnt down in the late 1930s and several adjoining buildings were purchased for the new, larger Ritz Cinema.

“This was later the Ritz before it closed.”

More recent years have seen the closure of the landmark Capitol Cinema on Grand Parade and CinemaWorld in Douglas.

The Capitol Cinema closed its doors in 2005 while CinemaWorld shut in 2019 after trading for more than 25 years, with an Aldi store there now.