De Luxe Odeon

The Theatre De Luxe, later the Odeon, was converted from Goddards Assembly Rooms in Northgate in 1909 to become Gloucester's first full-time cinema. It had 300 seats and an organ until 1921 when it was rebuilt on a grand scale. The new Deluxe could seat over a thousand people and above its imposing entrance had a pleasant café from which tea could be brought to your seat in the auditorium. In 1929 the Luxe was the fourth cinema in the country to be wired for sound. For the first film - Al Jolson's 'The Singing Fool' - combined rail/cinema tickets were snapped up by audiences from Birmingham and Bristol. It was so popular it had to be brought back for an extra week.

After 1934, when a Wurlitzer organ was installed the BBC Midland Region broadcast regularly from the theatre and Wyndham Lewis, the resident organist (who was also the manager) used to show it to visitors on Monday mornings.

In the early hours of Monday 30^th January 1939 fire broke out and the cinema was destroyed. Plans for its rebuilding were shelved because of the war, and it remained an empty site behind a blackened façade until 1959 when shops and a bank replaced it.