Ireland's First Cinemas

The Phoenix on the Liffey

“Rational, interesting, intelligent and educative amusement,” Dublin’s Lord Mayor Lorcan Sherlock announced as he opened the Phoenix Picture Palace on Ellis Quay on Tuesday, 3 December 1912, “was to be given there to thousands of the working class people of that neighbourhood at very cheap rates.”

Ellis Quay was not suburban, but it was near the western periphery of the city as it pushed towards the Phoenix Park, after which the cinema was named. As such, the Phoenix is the first cinema on Dublin’s northside that opened considerably outside the city centre, which remained the location of such other forms of professional commercial entertainment as theatres.

In this more residential part of the city, observers other than Sherlock had little doubt about the kind of audiences the cinema would be serving. “The theatre will cater principally for the working classes,” columnist Paddy noted in the Bioscope. It was also, as Paddy further noted, “in a very fine position” that meant that it could rely on considerable passing trade from people using the trams that went by its door or on their way to or from such nearby destinations as the Royal Barracks, Smithfield Market, James’s Gate Brewery and Kingsbridge railway station. The cinema sought to encourage other patrons from other parts of the city to make that journey by advertising its special attractions in the city’s newspapers.

A residential population, passing trade and specifically attracted patrons were all needed because the directors of the Phoenix Picture Palace. Limited - A.T. Wright, David Frame, John Mackay and Henry Grandy - had speculated on a large and state-of-the-art building capable of seating 1,500 people. To further enhance its attractions, the directors hired popular stage comedian Cathal McGarvey as the Phoenix’s initial manager.

That capacity was challenged on 20 January 1913, when the proprietors ran a free show for the 2,600 pupils of St Bridget’s School in Dublin’s Coombe. During March 1913, the Phoenix exhibited From Manger to Cross, a life of Christ shot on location in Palestine which proved controversial when protest meetings were held against its showing