Yoga, Kung Fu, movies?

Almost 100 years before you were rolling out your yoga mat, Brisbanites were flocking to 963 Stanley Street  East in East Brisbane to check out the latest flicks.

Yes, back in the 1920s, it was a cinema and the place to be seen.

Loads of people have asked me about the history of the beautiful building where we practice yoga, so here it is.

The current building was built as a picture theatre, the Triumph Theatre, in 1927. It was designed by Arthur Robson, a well-known architect at the time, who also designed many of Brisbane’s suburban cinemas, including the El Dorado at Indooroopilly.

The cinema operated from the 1920s until 2000. It is listed as one of only three heritage buildings that have survived ‘inter-war’ picture palaces in Brisbane. However, the Triumph or Classic, as it was known in the 1980s and 90s, is the most decorative and ornate.

Many of the original features that warranted the building’s heritage listing are visible, including the Terrazo front entrance, the elaborate facade and the stained glass casement windows upstairs.

The area currently used to practice yoga was the projection room. There are large windows behind the pictures, which look down over the theatre below.

In the 1970s, the cinema was known as the Capri and screened mostly R-rated and ‘blue’ movies. I was too young to watch these movies here, but some of your fellow yoga students weren’t.

In the 1980s, it was renamed the Classic Cinema and showed art house movies until it closed in 2000.

Prior to this building, an open-air cinema was located on the block from the 1890s until it burned down in the 1920s.

So there you have it: people have been feeling ‘good’ at this site for over 100 years.

For more info, check out the Heritage Register

Monica xx