Scotland’s Art Deco Heritage 13. Perth
Posted in Art Deco, Cinemas at 2:00 pm on 19 October 2009
I took several photos in Perth last week. The first two are of the Playhouse Cinema.
The street seems to double as a bus station so there’s a bus in this first one.
The bus had moved on by the time I took the second.
Typical Deco styling here, lots of vertical/horizontal interplay. It’s a strange mixture, though, of brickwork and white rendering. Both the Chester cinemas I featured a while back have features in common with this.
Here’s a picture of The Playhouse on flickr. And another.
This is just down from Perth Museum And Art Gallery (which is worth a visit by the way.) It was probably originally a mill building. It runs along Mill Street, anyway. This side is clearly Deco.
As is this side as far as the third windows along. Note the flagpole.
No idea what this last one, on South Street, used to be. It’s a Co-operative Travel shop now, obviously.
Bill Malcolm
December 30, 2009 at 12:14 am
Hi Jack
I thought you might appreciate i bit more info on a couple of the above photos?
The building which is close to the museum was indeed an old mill. It originally belonged to Pullar’s of Perth and was part of their dye works. The deco part of the building which you have photographed would have been added at a later date. I seem to recall it being the General Accident Assurance Company’s print works. I assume this would have been used to produce their headed paper, pre printed forms etc. I’m sure that the large ground floor window was originally a loading bay.
The co-op travel building was at one time the co-op shoe shop. My mother would take me there for my shoes in the early 60′s.
Hope this has been of some help
Regards
Bill
Jan Thomas
February 11, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Hi Jack
The large ground floor window replaced a loading bay The windows below the flagpole was the Sheepskin and Glove department, where my mother was Supervisor. There was a staircase that ran down the right handside of the building into the loading bay, where as a child, I used to meet her at her morning break.
I think the Co-op travel was the Lesser Co-op hall, but I am not sure
Best regards
Jan
jackdeighton
February 11, 2011 at 8:19 pm
Thanks for the info, Jan.
It’s always good to hear about the previous use(s) of these buildings.