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 around 400 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 The fireplace, which originally sat in the hallway, has been replaced by a kiosk.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 a £2.4 million National Lottery grant.The money will be used to restore the building, including the terrazzo foyer floor; 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.
The Picture House plays an eclectic programme of films, from arthouse and independent movies to big new releases.Along with regular double bills and an annual Christmas showing 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 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".
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