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La Scala Cinema 29 Leeds Street, Footscray, VIC

The end of an era

Ruby Di Lallo writes - The impact of the settlement of Italians in Australia lead to a development of ‘Little Italy’s’ that were pop-ping up all over the larger cities. Footscray developed such a large number of Italian communities, businesses and social clubs, there were many places for the Italian migrants to find comfort by being around people from their homeland in the same circumstances of moving country and starting new life. A prime example of this being La Scala Theatre.

La Scala Theatre is located at 29 Leeds St, Footscray, the original building still intact. However, nowadays, the theatre is no longer in use. In its prime throughout the 1950s and 60s, La Scala was a booming social hot spot for many of the Italian migrants living in the area. The theatre not only held Italian language film screenings for its community, but also housed small coffee bars and cigar cafes beneath for further inter-action and entertainment. The theatre was an iconic and incredibly important scene for the Footscray Italian com-munity during these decades of transition into Australian.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -