We took a day trip into York when we were down south. The city was littered with Art Deco.

This cinema was on the road in from the Park and Ride. We walked back out so that I could take the photographs. (It’s not that far outside the old walls, just beyond Micklegate Bar actually, and we passed a second hand bookshop on the way which consumed some time.)

It used to be the Odeon but seems to be named the Reel cinema now.

The new camera has a wide angle lens and seems to give tall or long buildings a tilted or curved look.

This is from the left hand side, lovely sweeping curve here. The windows, here, above the door and on the right hand side have been replaced by modern ones but reasonably in keeping with what the originals must have looked like.

It’s similar in style but not detail to the Odeon in Chester.

There’s something about the brick, though. It could be so much more. Wouldn’t this building look really fantastic rendered in concrete and painted white with pastel highlights?

Pan, 2006, 307p.

This is a collection of Miéville’s shorter fiction culled from various previous publications, with some original to this book.

Looking for Jake. After an unspecified disaster has depopulated London an unnamed narrator goes looking for his missing friend Jake. The very Art Deco Gaumont State cinema in Kilburn is given several mentions and an image of it appears on the book’s cover. See also the picture at the end of this post.

In Foundation a First Gulf War veteran haunted by his experiences there is known as a house whisperer because he talks to buildings. Their foundations talk back.

The Ball Room, a story written along with Emma Bircham and Max Schaefer, has the eponymous play area of a furniture warehouse not entirely dissimilar from IKEA cause its clientele to experience strange and compulsive goings on.

Reports of Certain Events in London is a typographical riot of fonts, scripts, reports, “handwritten” letters, interpolations and transcribed pamphlets and employs an unusual framing device. Narrator “China Miéville” inadvertently opens a package delivered to his address but intended for a Charles Melville and finds himself fascinated by the contents – the proceedings of a group devoted to tracking the shifting location of, and combats between, London’s feral houses.

Familiar has a witch making a familiar out of a mixture of his own body fluids. It disgusts him and he gets rid of it but it comes back to haunt him. Ho-hum.

Entry Taken From a Medical Encyclopædia is errr…. an entry from a medical encyclopædia. Complete with footnotes and references. The infection described is caused by pronouncing a word in a certain way, which thus propagates itself in the victim’s brain.

In Details a young boy takes food every week from his mother to an old woman who keeps herself close, in the dark, barely opening her door before snatching the food, closing it again and getting him to read to her. She once saw something nasty, not in the woodshed, but in the details of a brick wall. She has been hiding from the patterns out to get her ever since.

Go Between sees a man receive from a mysterious organisation messages concealed inside his purchases. He fails to deliver the final one and wonders if he did the right thing.

An old man buys himself a seventieth birthday present, an old window with stained glass. He discovers he can see Different Skies through it, but there are potential horrors on the other side.

An End to Hunger has a genius computer programmer infuriated by the eponymous charity’s campaign. He works to expose its sponsors’ hypocrisies. They don’t like it.

In ‘Tis the Season Christmas and its accompanying paraphernalia have been privatized. Yuleco owns the rights and so Christmas^TM, Santa^TM, Mistletoe^TM, Rudolph^TM etc are all under licence – even tinsel is illegal without one, never mind a tree. An unnamed father has won a prize to Yuleco’s official party. On the way there he and his daughter get caught up in the anti-privatisation protests. Slight, in a fun way. I just hope it doesn’t give anybody in power any ideas.

Jack in Mieville’s city of New Crobuzon, familiar from Perdido Street Station and The Scar, is a Remade. Altered as a punishment – feathered wings for arms or oily gears for innards and skin changed, or otherwise bizarrely surgically changed – Remades are looked down upon by the “normal” citizens. Jack Half-A-Prayer fights the system, standing up for the underprivileged. The city can tolerate so much as a release valve – but Jack goes too far.

On The Way To The Front is a graphic short story illustrated by Liam Sharp which would take longer to describe than it did to read. The reproduction is in black ink and might have benefited from colour (which would obviously have been too expensive.)

The Tain is much the longest story in the collection, a novella set in the aftermath of Earth’s invasion by the creatures who live behind mirrors, the Tain of the title. A Londoner is strangely immune to their attentions and sets out to parley with their leader. One of the Tain is also a viewpoint character. Not your usual alien encounter story.

While not every story hits the mark, as a whole the collection illustrates Miéville’s range and writing ability. It also highlights his fascination with London and his recurring theme of otherness, the not-quite-identical.

And here is the majestic (in that monolithic, Stalinist kind of way) Gaumont State Cinema.

Just further along South Street from the Woolworths I mentioned in my previous Bo’ness post we came on this stunning building. An Art Deco Cube.

It was designed by Matthew Steele. It has been a bakery but is now disused I think. Great detailing on the columns and the glazing. The flagpoles are good too. This is the view from the North Street side.

Moving back along North Street I spotted the rear of what looked like a deco cinema. The roundedness, flat roof and whiteness all suggest it.

Round the corner again into Hope Street and this is the side view.

That cupola made me unsure. It’s not a deco feature.

But this is the front of the Hippodrome.

The doors have been updated; but well. The glazing is right. The lettering and neon on the Hippodrome name sign are perfect. The Scottish cinemas website says it has been recently refurbished. It is a working cinema. Good on the owners.

It was designed by the same Matthew Steele as above (a native of Bo’ness) but built in 1912 – too early to be true deco – but it certainly prefigures the style.

This is how it looked in the past (picture from the Scottish cinemas website.)

The left hand side has undergone some change since then!

Back to the car and I spotted this past the roundabout.

Another cinema, the Star. Formerly a church and converted into a cinema, when presumably the deco facade was added. Now a storehouse.

Bo’ness. The (Art Deco) centre of Scotland!

Worcester was the first big place we went on our recent trip. We took the Park and Ride as the easy option.

I noticed this Odeon Cinema on the way in just before the drop-off point and so took the opportunity to photograph it a bit later. Unfortunately there were works of some sort going on on the road outside it so you can’t see it all properly.

Just across the road from the Odeon and a few yards up is the former Gaumont Cinema which now has Gala Bingo emblazoned on it. The whole thing was too long to get a direct frontal shot.

The facade looks like this close up:-

Researching these on the internet I also came across this beauty at cinematopia.co.uk. It’s called the Northwick (an area of the city apparently.)

Histories (and photos) of these and other non-deco Worcester cinemas can be found here.

This is more or less how I first glimpsed it. It’s in North Street, just off the main shopping street, which is now pedestrianised.

This is the front view.

I’m not sure if it’s still a snooker club. The damaged sign and general dilapidation argue against it.

The stained glass (what survives of it) is nice. And the detailing above them.

This is the view from the west.

We strolled along the road (St Aldate’s?) which led to Christ Church College and I pointed out the Cornish Pasty Company’s outlet. Pasties being in the news the good lady said, “Do you fancy a pasty, then?” I assented and we bought pasties for the first time since we were in Cornwall nearly 20 years ago. She had a pork and apple and I chose lamb with mint. Very nice they were too. A bit pricey mind. I wouldn’t want one for lunch every day.

Here’s another Art Deco building I found.

Then there was this blocky Odeon Cinema.

Its brick built nature reminded me of the former Embassy Cinema in Braintree.

The window above the entrance is striking. The frieze above that seems to have lost its surrounding (and Fanatical its F.)

Down the lane past the entrance was a square with a market. In one corner was the deco-ish Old Fire Station.

The picture is from the Scottish Cinemas website.

This building’s main claim to fame is that the Beatles once played there. I think it was when they were just on the cusp of fame. I wasn’t around at the time. (Not in Fife anyway.)

Like many cinemas it failed to survive the changing times and is now demolished.

Shame it’s gone, though.

The above image is from Scotland’s Places where there are four more pictures of the former cinema.

I just missed photographing this one for myself. By the time I started blogging it had been demolished. It’s a pity they couldn’t find a way to retain the facade.

A photo of the cinema in its heyday (taken from Burntisland.Net) is below.

Also in that Burntisland.Net link is a photo of the single remaining stained glass window which was removed before demolition plus two pictures relating to its post-cinema use.

More photos can be seen on the Scottish Cinemas website, including 65 of the interior prior to demolition.

A few years there was a proposal to fill the gap with a shop and flats. I’ve not been to Burntisland recently so don’t know if anything came of it.

When in St Andrews we don’t usually stray much beyond South Street and the bit of Market Street that has the most shops. Last time but one though we wandered down North Street and I noticed that the cinema, which is adapted from an old building, actually has a Deco style extension in behind it.

Lured by the promise of a book sale we also ventured into the part of Market Street that leads towards the Bus Station and came upon this combination of buildings, something to do with the University now – the Careers Office? – which has a deco style facade. The photo is a stitch of two.

Judging by the pictures on Google Maps it seems to have been refurbished recently.

I took these a month or so ago.

This is the former Gaumont (later Odeon, Classic and De Luxe) Cinema, Mill Street, Alloa.
According to the Scottish cinemas website it was the last Gaumont to be built pre-war, and the only purpose built Gaumont in Scotland.

Below is a photo of the upper level of a building on Primrose Street, now sadly unoccupied.

At the junction of Shillinghill and Mill Street you can see this:-

Perhaps not really deco but the bits that resemble chimneys have the look.

As part of my quest to photograph old Woolworths premises here is the Alloa variety. It’s right next to the former cinema and has been taken over by Poundland. Not deco, it looks of 1960s or 70s vintage to me.

A couple more pictures of these buildings are on my flickr site.