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Bijou Theatre 217 Bourke Street, Melbourne, VIC

PHOTO - J.W.LINDT

Originally called the Academy of Music, the Bijou Theatre was built in 1876, and designed by architect Joseph Reed as a playhouse for Melbourne businessman Joseph Aarons and his lessee, G.B.W. Lewis.

A small ‘jewel of the theatre’ built over a shopping arcade and holding only 1500 patrons, it was badly damaged by fire in 1889 and rebuilt by George Johnson.

By the 1930s the Bijou was acquired by showmen Ben and John Fuller who, in competition with the Tivoli, advertised the Bijou as a ‘house of clean vaudeville’. The Roxy Theatre Talkies was a cinema in a part of the Bijou Theatre, formerly known as the Gaiety. Before the Bijou’s demolition in 1934 both venues showed films. [Source : Remembering Melbourne.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -