Yoga, Kung Fu, movies? 88 years before you were rolling our 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 we practice yoga in so here it is.

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

The cinema operated from the 1920s until 2000. It is heritage listed as one of only three surviving ‘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 which warranted the building’s heritage listing are visible inculuding 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 see these movies here but some of your fellow yoga students weren’t…

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

So there you have it, people have been feeling ‘good’ at this site for 88 years.

For more info, check out the Heritage Register

Monica xx