page_title: History of Stroud Green
section_title: Scala Cinema
hierarchical_section_title: History of Stroud Green / Interesting (but absent) Buildings / Scala Cinema
caption_attribution_description: English: The Scala Cinema, Stroud Green, London, N4, was opened in 1914 and closed in 1924. It was one of London's earliest cinemas. It was demolished without any fuss in June 2008.
context_page_description: Stroud Green in London, England, is a suburb adjacent to Finsbury Park in the northern part of Greater London. While most of the area is in the London Borough of Haringey, a very small part is in the London Borough of Islington. The Stroud Green Road not only forms the boundary between the two boroughs but is also the area's principal thoroughfare and a busy local shopping street, with many popular restaurants and bars.
  The Stroud Green Road also represents a border between the ancient ecclesiastical parishes of Islington and Hornsey. At one time, this part of Hornsey parish, and thus Stroud Green, stretched into what is now Hackney, following the present-day Blackstock Road as far as the junction with Mountgrove Road, all beyond the Seven Sisters Road that today forms Stroud Green's eastern boundary. Here in that former part of Stroud Green was the site of the Eel Pie House, a tavern on the New River then the New River ran above ground at this point. This was originally in a wooden, lead-lined aqueduct - known locally as the Boarded River - but eventually that wooden construction was replaced by a raised earth embankment, atop which the river ran.
context_section_description: North of the present-day Wells Terrace bus terminus at Finsbury Park station, is a small industrial estate that replaced the former Great Northern Railway Coal and Goods depot.
  The old brick building that was immediately on Stroud Green Road (officially 15 The Parade) and until 2008 in use as a factory trading under the name Peter Phillips, was the Scala Cinema (architect H. W. Horsley). It opened in 1914 (replacing the former Stroud Green Hall), and sat 700 people. The auditorium ran parallel with the road, with the rake provided by the gentle, natural drop of the land. In 1920 it was renamed the New Scala Cinema, but closed in 1924.
  Since closing as a cinema the building had a chequered history: billiard hall, wartime factory, Irish dancing school, and whist hall, before being turned to light industrial use. It was suddenly demolished without any "fuss" in June 2008. The site is now (April 2013) a block of flats with a Sainsbury's supermarket beneath.
caption: The Scala Cinema (1914), Stroud Green, as it appeared in April 2008.
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