Cinemas/leakestcafe.html
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Leake Street Cafe
Part of the Princess Theatre (cinema) complex, and so dealt with here in the cinema section, as a convenient way to show some photos of the area between the cinema auditorium and its former Market Street entrance in Princess Chambers.
Opened in Leake Street in late 2015, the cafe was the invention of Wade Drummond, who was seen on Masterchef. It was run until 2022 by Michael and Lucy Dellers. At the end of 2023 it has become Two Fat Wombats, under new management. Don't watch this space for updates.
The Cafe is in a tiny space between the Princess Chambers office building on the corner of Leake and Market Streets and the former Princess Theatre auditorium, which takes up a quarter of the northern side of Leake St. The Princess Chambers building is on the corner of Leake and Market Streets. It was built in 1912, and closed as a cinema in 1969. The entrance to the cinema was where Kakulas Sister now trades, and some of the theatre masonry can still be seen in the shop.
There are two ways to get in to the Cafe. When Kakulas Sister is open, one can walk to the back of the store (through what was once the grand entrance to the cinema) and out of the northern side to find the Cafe in the tiny outdoor space there. When the grocery is not open, early in the morning, one has to go in through the alleyway off Leake St, and through Kakulas' normally concealed rear storage area.
The front of the grocery store. The sign has now faded so as to be unreadable, but Michael Finn assured me 19 May 2020 that he was going to have it repainted when he can find a signwriter with heritage skills.
The grand interior entrance.
And this is the side entrance, showing also the large cinema auditorium.
The sign says that you can get to the Cafe through here between 0730-0900. After that, go through the grocery. (A standing sign, put on the street corner, says 0700-.)
Looking back at the Leake St entrance. Note the pressed-metal ceiling. Note also two bricked-up sections in the wall on the right-hand side: they would have been ingresses to the cinema as such.
Looking in the other direction, before turning right to get out to the Cafe, one sees a 'ghost sign' indicating that a billiards saloon was once in what is now obviously Kakulus' rear storeroom. Barely visible in the next photo is what appears to be the signwriter's signature and perhaps a (valuable!) date, underneath the fullstop after the word BILLIARDS. I can't make it out, and shall have to go back and take a closeup. Other than the sign, I have no information at all about the billiards room.
Agnieshka Kiera at what was thenDellers Cafe. The door rear right leads through to Kakulas Sister store. Thanks to Agnieshka for the Facebook photo!
References and Links
The Strategy Agency - also in the building
Princess Theatre pages
Ghost Signs site
Dellers photos (top) courtesy Roel Loopers.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 3 January, 2016 and hosted at freotopia.org/cinemas/leakestcafe.html (it was last updated on 6 December, 2023). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.