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For Melbourne’s lovers of cinemas with lead-light, there were none finer than the decorative verandahs of the
Rivoli Camberwell (top) and the Empress Prahran (above).
Such emphasis on the under-face of a verandah is no coincidence: the theatres were designs from the same firm,
F. G. Richardson and Wood - completed almost a decade apart - the Empress in 1913 and Rivoli in 1921.
The Empress outlasted the Rivoli as a picture theatre by 20 years, but the latter retained its verandah for as long
as the building existed. The Empress was vandalised in the name of progress in the mid-1950s (see page 29),
but continued as a cinema until 1959. Both buildings were demolished in the 1970s.