Mayfair Cinema

In 1916, the New Plymouth company Taranaki Amusements Ltd commissioned the Everybody's Theatre Auditorium in Devon Street West. It was designed by the Auckland architects Hugh C. Grierson and Kenneth W. Aimer and built by Sydney Chappell & Woolley contractors, for an estimated cost of £5,283. The construction of the theatre was supervised by Thomas Herbert Bates, an architect newly arrived in town. The first screening in the new theatre was on 15 December 1916. The new theatre was described as “one of the finest picture theatres in New Zealand” at the time. The Grecian-inspired interior features Ionic columns and a grand elliptical dome, giving the whole space a sense of grandeur. The seats…

Mayfair Cinema is a two-storied reinforced concrete Art Deco building with geometric motifs decorating the window heads and parapet. It contains shops on the ground floor and hall above. The theatre's main entry is deliberately set off‑centre, framed by an elegant arch, crowned by a cluster of tall, fluted columns, and wrapped in the confident ornamentation of the Art Deco tradition. The theatre's traditional Art Nouveau Grecian-inspired interior had white plaster, Ionic columns, and a great elliptical dome that lifted the whole space with a sense of grandeur.