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With the success of his 1913 venture, exhibitor Frank West ventures into
the big-time with a new cinema for the central south-coast of New South Wales.

WEST’S

PICTURE-THEATRE

NOWRA – NSW

By Robert Parkinson

block of land on the north-east By November the structure was
Acorner of Junction and Berry nearing completion and cinema patrons
Streets had been purchased by Frank were asked to be patient with “removal
West in December 1901 but it was not of some material from our old theatre
until mid 1918 that readers of the (in Berry Street) to our new Cinema
Shoalhaven Telegraph were informed House, in Junction Street, which will
that he was “having the wooden soon be completed”.
buildings… (opposite the Post Office) A possible breach of regulations
pulled down, with a view to having where exit doors along Berry Street
erected on the site a new and up-to-date might block the footpath seems to have
picture show and theatre. The new been overcome since the new operation
structure will be an architectural opened under the banner of Crown
improvement to the town”. Theatre on Saturday December 21,
1918 claiming to seat 1000 people.
While a 1926 health inspection
reported there were 1500 seats in two
levels of a brick and iron-roofed
building, a more accurate number
seems to have been about 800 and even
this was noted in 1936 to have been
reduced to 636.
Although the proprietor had a
number of difficulties with authorities
over cleanliness of the building and
projectors, unsanitary conveniences and
provision of sufficient women’s
conveniences, he seems to have finally
complied with regulations.
Then in 1929 an ambitious plan by
architects Bohringer, Taylor and
Johnson to widen the building, slightly
raise the walls and increase seating to
1200 was abandoned as too costly.

Photographs Top to Bottom:
* Frank and Martha West.
* Corner block selected for the new theatre.
* West’s original 1913 Crown Theatre in
Berry Street. Open-air but roofed within
two months.
* The new 1918 Crown in Junction Street.

8 2011 CINEMARECORD