A potted history of a cinema of no particular note

It's just that I like solving the mysteries of identifying unknown buildings. I found this old 1968 Flemings supermarket and went on a hunt.

One of the nearby shops had a sign name 'Lidcombe', so I took a look around the CBD on Google Street View for a likely streetscape. By its shape, it had to formerly have been a cinema. Which it was.

The Hoyts Lidcombe Arcadia had been remodelled in Art Deco style (above) around 1940. Originally, it had been built in 1924 (below). Who knows when it went bust, but by 1968 it was that Flemings.

Then sadly it was derelict for years, and by the look of things on Google Earth it's now demolished.

Some of the Art Deco detailing could still be seen.

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Welcome, this site is all about Sydney 'then and now'..

The pics: Do click to enlarge the old photos as I've restored most of them from their faded small originals, and the details you'll often see in them can give an awesome insight into how ordinary people, your and my ancestors, actually lived.

Then: Where nothing today remains of a 'Then' scene, the Google Street Views of the 'Now' location have been verified through old maps and the NSW government's SIXMaps.

Sources: Most of the old photos have been collected over many years through the now-defunct Picture Australia and the original sources lost, but almost all are now found through Trove; variously from the National Library, the State Libraries of NSW and Vic, and the National Archives. Some are also via Flickr, so if you know the source of any, do let me know and I will add the credit.

Me: I'm Ross, a major oldsydneyphile (that's a word, really - well, now it is anyway). I grew up here from the 60s. Originally, I made the site in 2006-2008, and restarted it in 2018 using the 'now' scenes supplied by Google Street View.

A potted history of a cinema of no particular note

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