page_title: Hyde Park Picture House
section_title: Present day
hierarchical_section_title: Hyde Park Picture House / Present day
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of the ticket booth and entrance hall at Hyde Park Picture House, Headingley, Leeds
context_page_description: The Hyde Park Picture House is a cinema and Grade II listed building in the Hyde Park area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Built by Thomas Winn & Sons, it opened on 7 November 1914. It features many original features, such as an ornate balcony and external box office, and is the only remaining gaslit cinema in the United Kingdom. Following the installation of "comfier seating", the Picture House has a capacity of 275, down from around 400 on opening.
  After being threatened with closure in 1989, the cinema was taken over by Leeds City Council, who created the Grand Theatre and Opera House Limited, an independent company within the council which looks after the Picture House along with the Grand Theatre and Opera House and the City Varieties. An initial National Lottery grant was awarded in 2016 to partly fund a restoration of the building, build a cafe, improve accessibility and add a second screen in the basement. Planning permission was approved in June 2018 and a £2.3 million National Lottery grant was awarded in January 2019 to pay for the project.
  A varied programme plays at the cinema, from arthouse movies to big new releases.
context_section_description: Along with Cottage Road, the Hyde Park Picture House is one of only two surviving original single-screen cinemas in Leeds, down from peak numbers of between 60–70 in the 1930s. The Picture House retains many original features, including an external ticket booth, decorated barrel-vaulted ceiling and balcony adorned with a frieze of plaster festoons, brackets and shields. It is also the only cinema in the UK to retain "modesty" gas lights, designed to avoid complete darkness in the auditorium. The original screen, painted directly on the wall and surrounded by golden cherubs, remains intact behind its modern successor.
  The cinema has seen several changes since it opened in 1914, notably a reduction in the capacity of the auditorium from 587 on opening to 275, following the installation of "comfier" seating, with the present seats having been salvaged from the Lounge cinema in Headingley after its closure in 2005. The Cinemeccanica Victoria 8 projectors also came from the Lounge, while the clock to the right of the screen was taken from the former Gaumont cinema, which occupied the building now used by the O2 Academy Leeds. The fireplace, which originally sat in the hallway, has been replaced by a kiosk.
  In 2016 the cinema was awarded an initial National Lottery grant of £122,000 to explore conservation work and an expansion of the venue. It was announced that the money would be used to restore the building, including the terrazzo foyer floor and gas lights; build a cafe/bar so that customers no longer have to queue outside; install disabled toilets and improve accessibility; add a second screen in the basement; and make the cinema's archives available to the public alongside educational workshops, tours and archival screenings. Planning permission for the project was approved in June 2018, and a further National Lottery grant of £2.3 million was confirmed in January 2019. The work, dubbed the Picture House Project, is costed at £3.6 million and, with additional funding from the Garfield Weston Foundation and Leeds City Council, is scheduled to begin at the end of February 2020.
  The Picture House plays an eclectic programme of films, from arthouse and independent movies to big new releases. Along with regular double bills and annual Christmas showings of It's a Wonderful Life, the cinema also hosts "Bring Your Own Baby (BYOB)" events, for children and their parents or carers, featuring lower volumes, subtitles and raised light levels. This mixed bill attracts a varied audience of local residents, graduates and students at the cities universities and "not just Guardian readers".
  Actors, such as Paddy Considine, Masanobu Ando and Adam Buxton, have been interviewed at the cinema and film critic Mark Kermode has hosted several question and answer sessions. Kermode is a "champion" of the Picture House, describing it in his book The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex, as "a beauty; a proper old-fashioned picture palace" with a clientele that are "enthusiastic, attentive and apparently more interested in films than in their mobile phones".
caption: The Hyde Park Picture House retains its original external ticket booth and terrazzo foyer floor.
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