Local historian Peter Stanhope has been in touch about a photograph we carried in Yesterday Once More a few weeks ago showing Fossgate sometime at the turn of the last century.

The photograph, which was supplied Press reader Bryan Thornton, was particularly interesting, Mr Stanhope said, because "it shows the shops which were pulled down to make way for the Electric Cinema, the very first permanent moving picture theatre in York which opened in 1911 on that site."

Mr Stanhope then kindly sent us a photograph of the Electric Cinema (later the Scala) on its opening day, June 3, 1911, showing the owner, manager and staff standing proudly in front.

"The guy on the right with the silk topper and the carnation in his button hole may be the joint owner - Managing Director Ronald Hill, of the National Electric Theatres Ltd. of London," Mr Stanhope wrote.

"In his opening speech, attended by the Lord Mayor, Mr. Hill said 'In these theatres the tired ones can find comfort, those afflicted with ennui could be resuscitated to new life in fresh surroundings and the drunkard made to forget the existence of the public house!'"

We speculated, describing Mr Thornton's original Fossgate photograph which prompted Mr Stanhope to get in touch, that what look like cobbles lining the surface of the road may actually be wooden blocks. Not so, Mr Stanhope said. "The roadway is more likely to comprise of rectangular granite setts than wooden blocks."

The Electric Cinema is now, of course, MacDonald's furniture shop. "Though thankfully they have kept the impressive, very decorative facade since they took over the property in the 1950's," Mr Stanhope said.

York Press:
The photo of Fossgate which prompted Mr Stanhope to write in