Plaza Cinema
71 The Kingsway,
Swansea,
SA1 5JD
71 The Kingsway,
Swansea,
SA1 5JD
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The Plaza Cinema was a grand imposing building on Swansea’s Kingsway. It was the largest cinema to be erected in Wales and it opened on 14th February 1931 with Paul Whiteman in “King of Jazz”. The cinema was equipped with a Christie 3Manual/10 Rank cinema organ which was opened by Tom Jenkins. It was equipped with a Western Electric(WE) sound system. The proscenium was 48ft wide. There was a café for the use of patrons.
In 1953 it became the first independent cinema in the UK to be fitted with the then new CinemaScope and Stereophonic sound processes.
It was closed in April 1965 and soon demolished to be replaced by the then very modern looking Odeon which opened in May 1967 (it has its own page on Cinema Treasures).
Contributed by
Ian Howells
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For a close-up view of the Christie organ in front of a set of splendid house tabs, scroll down to Page Thirteen here:
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The architect was Howard Williams of Cardiff. He seemed to specialise in poured-concrete cinemas with the projection suite located deep in the balcony void with the central section of the latter omitted. The Plaza at Port Talbot and the Maindee at Newport have the same construction and projection arrangements. He used the same projection arrangement in Cardiff at the Olympia, when he remodelled an existing building.