ULSTER MODERN: Modern Movement architecture in Northern Ireland, 1921-1949

Description

Hardback 11 pages (hardback) 22x17cm

EXTRACT

“The first locally born and locally trained architect to emerge as one committed to Modernism for almost his entire career was John McBride Neill of Belfast, who first came to public notice with his remodelling of the Savoy Hotel, Bangor, Co Down, in 1933. This large four-storey flat-roofed building with rounded corners and a strong horizontal emphasis in its banded glazing, was one of the earliest and most streamlined examples of modern architecture in Northern Ireland. That same year, 1933, saw Neill design his first cinema of note, the Apollo, Ormeau Road, Belfast, the first purpose-built ‘all sound’ or ‘talkie’ cinema in the city. Its opening marked the beginning of a new boom period for cinema in Northern Ireland, in response to the changeover from the ‘silent film’ age, while its modernistic step-form façade, in white cement with panels of rustic brickwork, heralded a new stylistic treatment for its cinema buildings. In place of the old classical revivalism of the Edwardian era was a new up-to-date Modernism.
Neill’s design for the reconstruction of the Picturedrome, Mountpottinger Road, Belfast, the next year, 1934, was also in a modernistic style, its broad rectangular façade finished white, with bold horizontal brick bands, and zigzag patterns in the decorative glazing around the entrance, while step-form motifs were dominant inside the auditorium.
The comparative novelty of this modernist architectural styling for exteriors combined with his growing expertise in the essential field of interior acoustics saw Neill firmly established as a specialist cinema designer with commissions for new cinemas all over Northern Ireland, although the majority were in Belfast. The Tonic cinema in Bangor, Co Down, designed in 1935, with a seating capacity of 2,250 was the largest in Northern Ireland and the second largest in the whole of Ireland when it opened in July 1936. It was an impressive example of modern architecture of the time, with white cubic masses finished in ‘Snowcrete’ – a comparatively new type of white cement resistant to discolouration – and streamlined horizontals formed by bands of rustic brick at the parapets. Inside, the auditorium was an accomplished example of a form of modern interior treatment only recently introduced to British cinema design by the London architect Robert Cromie, in which big lighting troughs, streamlined plenum grilles, and smooth lines were combined to create a dramatic effect, while the wall surfaces were decorated with sprayed textured metallic paint and bars of colour in a style described at the time as ‘futuristic’.”

— Paul Larmour