Nicholas Hall

In 1938, the Nicholas family, of Nicholas Chemical Manufacturing Company fortune, funded the construction of Nicholas Hall for The Wesley Church. The building was designed by Harry Norris, a prominant Melbourne architect and the official architect of the Nichols group of companies. Designed in a Streamline Moderne style, but within its generally streamline appearance, there are elements of Gothic Revival style. The Nicholas Hall was officially opened in February 1939. It was constructed to accommodate the social activites of the church and Wesley Mission as a church, meeting place, cinema, church hall and office.

The southern wall of Nicholas Hall, which is of primary heritage significance and has an unusual presentation, is the surviving north wall of the 1888 Conference Hall. That building was demolished in 1970, (with its north wall retained as the south wall of the 1930’s Nicholas Hall) and replaced by a multi-storey office building known as Wesley House. The recent demolition of Wesley House revealed the original face of the former Conference Hall’s north wall, resulting in an unexpected discovery as part of the Wesley Place project and now provides Nicholas Hall a unique and characterful appearance in Lonsdale Street.

Nicholas Hall was used by many exhibitors on a casual basis over the years, but in the main, it was used by the Greek Community. Thousands of Greek migrants passed through this small theatre to view Greek films. In 1949 Stathi Raftopoulos imported the first Greek film into Australia, entitled “Voice of the Heart”. It was screened at Nicholas Hall. Stathis went on to become a traveling picture show man, showing Greek films to the Greeks in regional centres around Australia.

Nicholas Hall was a small theatre with 425 movable, rather uncomfortable seats and a projection box. During the early-1950’s it was used in the main by Stathis Raftopoulos of Dionysos Film and Andreas Papadopoulos of Olympia Films. The small hall belonging to the Wesley Church. Stathis was allowed to install movie projectors and a permanent screen. Since he only imported a few Greek films at the time, his screenings were irregular. Business increased so the partnership began importing films on a more regular basis and screenings progressed to twice a month.

Nicholas Hall was the only place you could see Greek films during that period. The hall was used by Stathis & Andreas until October 1958 when it was taken over by the newly formed company Cosmopolitan Motion Pictures chain which was made up of Messrs Reftopoulos/Papadopolulos & Yiannoudes who would run it until September 1965. The last films screened were “The Mothers Curse” & “People & Populace”. Information for this description has been taken from the notes of the late- Peter Yiannoudes.

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