Hollywood Cinema

The first building on the site, the Whau (later Avondale) Public Hall, officially opened on 13 November 1867. The Hall housed the local primary school for a short period, served as a library and by 1870 was being hired out to the community for entertainment and fundraising events. During the Boer War movies were shown in the Hall. In August 1900, the Edison Kinematograph Co. visited Avondale after a national tour and presented their Grand Boer War two-hour programme. The NZ Herald noted that another movie, The Patriotic Scenic Concert shown on 14 October 1901, had pictures of a royal visit to Rotorua and "comic trick and illusion films [which] mystified and amused the audience". The…

Scottish-born Henry Hayward came to New Zealand in 1905. He set up Hayward's Enterprises which in 1929 amalgamated with Fuller's to form Fuller-Hayward Corporation, the distribution-exhibition company that took over the lease on the Avondale Picture Theatre. By Christmas 1930, 'talkies' were being shown in Avondale and the Town Hall had been renamed Hayward's Picture House & Cabaret and was managed by Hilda Hayward the then-wife of Henry Hayward's nephew and film-maker Rudall Hayward. Fuller-Hayward struggled during the Depression, and this resulted in Henry Hayward splitting and forming Auckland Cinemas Ltd., which held the lease until 1966. A fire that broke out in the Cinema on 3 June…