The corner where Darlinghurst Road meets Victoria Street is the real Kings Cross, the actual "cross" that gave the place its name. From April 1916 to the early 1960s that corner belonged to Frank Waddington's Kings Cross Theatre. It was a picture palace that pulled Sydney up William Street to the movies, then had a wild second life as Surf City, the beat-music hall where Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs made their name. It came down in the mid-1960s for the Crest Hotel and the railway, and the building on the corner today is the Omnia apartment tower. My original notes and photos come first, followed by the full story.
If you know “the Cross,” you know the junction of Darlinghurst Road and Victoria Street — and for nearly fifty years the building that owned that corner was the Kings Cross Theatre. It opened 14 April 1916 on Frank Waddington’s picture-house circuit: a lavish suburban cinema seating about 1,600 (some accounts say over 2,000), with orchestra and (from 1928) a Wurlitzer organ. For half a century it was the landmark entertainment address at the top of William Street / Darlinghurst Road.
The cinema closed in 1963. After a brief nightclub turn (the Birdcage), John Harrigan’s Surf City beat venue occupied the stripped auditorium from 1963 to 1966 — short-lived, but a famous chapter in Australian popular music. The theatre came down in 1966 for the Scandinavian-style Crest Hotel (opened 1967). The Crest was partly demolished in 2016 and remodelled as the multipurpose Omnia apartment and retail complex, completed in 2018. Kings Cross railway station, which opened beneath the corner on 23 June 1979, also remade the underground and streetscape around it.
Photographs here recall the theatre corner and its hotel-era replacements. The building is gone
Kings Cross Theatre - At The Junction Of Darlinghurst Road & Victoria Street
What A Wonderful Place This Would’ve Been. Way Before I Was Born. I’ve Stood There And Tried To Visualise How It Would’ve Been. So Sad.
The Kings Cross Theatre sat on the corner of Darlinghurst Rd and Victoria St and opened in 1916. Part of Frank Waddington's chain of picture houses, the cinema seated about 1,600 (some accounts say over 2,000) and was described as 'particularly lavish'.
A 'junior' nightclub called the Birdcage, run by radio compere Peter Bergin was open briefly in the venue in 1963 after the theatre closed, and was soon replaced by John Harrigan's Surf City, that occupied the building from 1963 until 1966 when the building was demolished, to be replaced by the Crest Hotel.
The Crest Hotel was a Scandinavian style 14 storey hotel (council papers say 17 storeys) and it had the famous "Goldfish" bar at street level. The building was partially demolished in 2016 and remodelled as the multipurpose apartment building Omnia, completed in 2018, which houses 132 apartments (it was approved for 131 in 2015), a new commercial offering at ground and first floor, including a supermarket and associated parking within the existing building basement.
The Full Story of the Kings Cross Theatre
Before the Theatre: A Hilltop of Villas and Windmills
Long before there were neon signs, this ridge was Woolloomooloo Hill. Mark Dunn's Kings Cross history in the Dictionary of Sydney tells how Governor Darling handed out villa grants along the ridge from the late 1820s, and six of those estates fell inside what we now call Kings Cross. They were James Dowling's Brougham Lodge, Alexander Baxter's Springfield Lodge, Augustus Perry's Buona Vista, Thomas Macquoid's Goderich Lodge, Thomas Barker's Roslyn Hall estate with its windmills, and Edward Hallen's grant, which he never built on.
Brougham Lodge is the one closest to our corner. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was built in 1831 on Dowling's 1828 grant "near the crossroads that were to become Kings Cross", and its map pin sits only a few dozen metres from the theatre site.
The crossroads itself came about through a fight among the neighbours. Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell wanted William Street to climb the hill on the easiest grade, but that line would have cut across the land of the miller Thomas Barker and close to Colonial Secretary Alexander Macleay. While Mitchell was away surveying, Macleay had the road pushed straight up the steepest, shortest line from Park Street to meet Victoria Street and Darlinghurst Road at the top. The Dictionary of Sydney calls the junction one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the city for the next 140 years, until the Kings Cross tunnel opened in December 1975. Still, it did make a cross, and that cross gave the area its name.
Through the late 1800s the big estates were cut up into terraces, shops and boarding houses. The Dictionary of Sydney counts 17 boarding houses in the Kings Cross area in 1890, 55 by 1905 and 165 by 1915, most of them run by women. So by the time the theatre went up, the top of William Street was a busy, crowded spot full of renters, which is exactly the crowd a picture show needs.
Queens Cross Becomes Kings Cross
The name is younger than the theatre's neighbours. According to the Dictionary of Sydney, in 1897 the junction of Victoria Street, Darlinghurst Road, William Street and Upper William Street was named Queens Cross for Queen Victoria's jubilee. It only lasted eight years. In 1905 the City Council changed it to Kings Cross, partly to avoid mix-ups with Queens Place (now Queens Square) near Hyde Park and partly because there was a new king on the throne. Not everyone caught on straight away. The undertaker Charles Kinsela was still advertising from "the top of William Street, Queens Cross" in November 1906.
Even in 1916 the newspapers weren't sure what to call the place. The paper that announced the new theatre put it "at the top of William-street, Darlinghurst". Today's planning papers file the same block under Potts Point. Wherever you draw the lines, it's the same corner.
Opening Night: 14 April 1916
On 2 April 1916 a Sydney paper (page 16, digitised on Trove) told readers that "the latest Waddington Picture Palace is the King's Cross Theatre, at the top of William-street, Darlinghurst". It said the theatre seated "over 2000 patrons", that "special attention has been paid to comfortable seating arrangements and decorations, the stage settings being particularly lavish", and that it would "open to the public on Friday week, April 14". The Dictionary of Sydney gives the same opening date, 14 April 1916.
It seems to have caught on fast. By 30 April the same page was reporting that "at one bound Waddington's King's Cross Theatre has leaped into public favor", praising the seating, the ventilation, the staff and the "select pictures". That week's program was a Mary Pickford drama, A Girl of Yesterday, from Monday to Wednesday, then the film of the novel David Harum. Shows ran every evening at 8, with matinees on Saturdays and holidays at 2.15 pm.
Frank Waddington ran a chain of picture houses, and the Dictionary of Sydney describes the Kings Cross Theatre as part of that chain. 1916 was a big year at the Cross. The same history notes that six o'clock closing for pubs came in that year, so a night at the pictures had a lot less competition.
Inside the Picture Palace
Cinema Treasures lists the theatre's style as Neo-Classical. For a sense of the inside, the best pictures we have are a pair Sam Hood took in July 1940, now held by the State Library of NSW. They show a grand foyer with a sweeping staircase and a comfortable ground-floor lounge, built to make a night at the pictures feel like a night out at the theatre.
The Wurlitzer and the 1937 Makeover
Picture palaces of the 1920s were judged on their organs as much as their films. Cinema Treasures records that on 11 August 1928 the American organist Joseph Wayne opened a newly installed Wurlitzer organ (two manuals, ten ranks) at the Kings Cross Theatre. Stanley Cummins and Denis Palmistra also played it in later years.
Cinema Treasures also says the theatre was remodelled in 1937, and that the organ was moved to the Savoy Theatre at Hurstville. It doesn't say exactly when the organ went.
The Hub of the Cross
The Dictionary of Sydney credits the theatre with starting the area's life as an entertainment strip. It says the 1916 opening "marked the start of the area as an entertainment precinct", with cafés and restaurants soon opening to cash in on the crowds. By 1925 there was the Paris Café and John Psaltis's fish and oyster saloon in Darlinghurst Road, and in Victoria Street there were Samuel Lever's Refreshment Rooms, HS Gilkes's wine saloon and Mrs Payton's dining rooms. The same history says billiard rooms, oyster saloons and cafés were all trading within a few doors of the theatre.
By 1924 Ciro's cabaret at the top of William Street and Maxim's in Darlinghurst Road had joined in. Then in 1939 came the Minerva Theatre in Orwell Street, an Art Deco live theatre that MGM later turned into the Metro cinema. Through the 1930s and 40s, then, the Kings Cross Theatre was one of two big screens at the Cross, at the busiest crossroads in Sydney. From 1937 thousands of people also packed the junction every New Year's Eve.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
The Last Picture Show and the Birdcage
Trams stopped running through the Cross on 10 July 1960, and the Eastern Suburbs Railway was back in the planners' sights. The theatre itself shut as a cinema in 1963, according to both the Dictionary of Sydney and Cinema Treasures. The Dictionary of Sydney says a "junior" nightclub called the Birdcage, run by radio compere Peter Bergin, opened in the building for a short time after that.
Surf City: 1963 to 1966
Then came the chapter most people remember. Jake Ollett's 2020 history of Surf City in the Dictionary of Sydney gives its address as 111–127 Darlinghurst Road. Music promoter John Harrigan took over the old theatre, and the conversion was simple: they "simply tore out" the seats to make room for a dance floor. The club was officially licensed in December 1963, but it had been running for months before that. Its own posters called it "Australia's finest teenage cabaret".
At first it was surf bands, The Atlantics, The Vibratones and The Nocturnes among them, all playing to kids doing the stomp. Then beat music took over. Billy Thorpe teamed up with the Aztecs, Harrigan became their manager and they became the house band, playing up to seven or eight sets a week. Ollett says that in June 1964, the week the Beatles arrived in Sydney, the Aztecs' "Poison Ivy" was at the top of the Sydney charts. Ray Brown and the Whispers and The Missing Links were regulars too, and the Dictionary of Sydney's Kings Cross entry adds The Easybeats.
The crowds were enormous. Ollett gives the venue a capacity of 5,000 and, quoting Thorpe, says 15,000 to 20,000 people would come through between Friday night and Sunday evening by December 1963. The papers weren't impressed. Surf City was accused of "breeding delinquents", and in August 1965 Alderman LE McDermott complained the place was "badly lit and the band plays extraordinarily loud" after a girl's jaw was broken in a brawl. Thorpe saw it differently. He remembered it as "neutral territory", where rockers and surfies who'd fight anywhere else shared the dance floor.
The last night was Sunday 6 March 1966, with most of the bands that had made their names there. Today three bronze plaques in the footpath near 127 Darlinghurst Road, laid by the City of Sydney in 2004–05, mark the spot. They read: "Surf City & Billy Thorpe. Everyone did the stomp to big stars and hopeless one-hit wonders".
Demolition, the Crest Hotel and the Railway
The Dictionary of Sydney says the building was demolished in 1966 to make way for the Crest Hotel, and that the old theatre site was also needed for the underground railway station. It describes the Crest as a "Scandinavian style 14 storey hotel", built in 1966–67, which opened on 27 September 1967. Kings Cross station, on the Eastern Suburbs line, didn't open until 23 June 1979, and the Kings Cross road tunnel opened on 15 December 1975.
Billy Thorpe never forgave the place. In a 1998 quote posted on Cinema Treasures he said the underground station "sits directly beneath where Surf City stood" and called the hotel above it one of the ugliest buildings ever put up in Sydney.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
From the Crest to Omnia
The Crest had a long run as a hotel. Then in September 2015 the City of Sydney's planning committee approved turning it into apartments, shops and a supermarket. The council's papers describe it as a 17-storey building at 111–139 Darlinghurst Road and 224–226 Victoria Street, Potts Point, on a site of about 1,629 square metres. The Dictionary of Sydney says the building was partly demolished in 2016 and reworked as Omnia.
Durbach Block Jaggers, the architects, describe Omnia as an adaptive re-use of the Crest Hotel: an hourglass-shaped tower on a tiled podium, which they call "a pale green version of the Coca-Cola sign" across the road. Their figures put it at 132 apartments, with a communal garden between the podium and the tower. It was finished in 2018. So when you stand on the corner today, the bones of the 1967 Crest are still in there, sitting where the 1916 picture palace stood, with the railway station underneath.
Kings_Cross.jpg)
Darlinghurst_Road-1.jpg)
Kings_Cross_Station.jpg)
The Neighbours: Coke Sign, Kings Cross Hotel and the Fountain
The Dictionary of Sydney calls the Coca-Cola sign at the top of William Street one of the last survivors of the neon that used to light up the junction. The heritage-listed Kings Cross Hotel stands "diagonally opposite the old Surf City site", and the Dictionary of Sydney notes that live music carries on there.
A short walk down Darlinghurst Road, in Fitzroy Gardens, is the El Alamein Memorial Fountain. Its NSW State Heritage Register listing (quoted on Wikipedia) says it was designed by Robert Woodward with Phill Taranto, built in 1959–61 and turned on by Lord Mayor Harry Jensen on 18 November 1961. It honours the 9th Division at the battles of El Alamein. The listing says that in the 1960s and 70s it rivalled the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in tourist pictures of Sydney. It went on the State Heritage Register on 14 January 2011.
Kings_Cross_Hotel-1.jpg)
.jpg)
Alamein_Fountain.jpg)
Timeline
- 1828 – James Dowling granted land on Woolloomooloo Hill. Brougham Lodge built there in 1831.
- Early 1830s – William Street pushed up the hill to meet Victoria Street and Darlinghurst Road, forming the cross.
- 1897 – The junction is named Queens Cross for Queen Victoria's jubilee.
- 1905 – City Council renames it Kings Cross.
- 2 April 1916 – The papers announce Waddington's new King's Cross Theatre, with "over 2000" seats.
- 14 April 1916 – Kings Cross Theatre opens.
- 11 August 1928 – Joseph Wayne opens the theatre's new Wurlitzer organ.
- 1937 – Theatre remodelled. The organ later goes to the Savoy, Hurstville.
- July 1940 – Sam Hood photographs the foyer and lounge.
- 10 July 1960 – The last tram runs through Kings Cross.
- 18 November 1961 – El Alamein Fountain turned on in Fitzroy Gardens.
- 1963 – Theatre closes as a cinema. The Birdcage runs briefly, then Surf City opens (licensed December 1963).
- June 1964 – Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs top the Sydney charts with "Poison Ivy".
- 6 March 1966 – Surf City's last night.
- 1966 – Building demolished (Dictionary of Sydney; Cinema Treasures says 1969).
- 27 September 1967 – The Crest Hotel opens on the site.
- 15 December 1975 – Kings Cross road tunnel opens.
- 23 June 1979 – Kings Cross railway station opens.
- 2004–05 – Surf City plaques laid in the Darlinghurst Road footpath.
- 10 September 2015 – Approval given to turn the Crest into apartments.
- 2016–2018 – Crest partly demolished and rebuilt as Omnia.
Where the Sources Disagree
- How many seats? The April 1916 paper and the Dictionary of Sydney say "over 2000". Cinema Treasures lists 1,609, which may be the count after the 1937 remodel. That's my guess, and no source says so. As Surf City, with the seats gone, the Dictionary of Sydney gives a capacity of 5,000.
- When was it demolished? The Dictionary of Sydney says 1966. Cinema Treasures says 1969. Ollett's Surf City history only says it came down "in the following years" after March 1966. With the Crest opening in September 1967, 1966 fits best.
- When did Surf City close? The Dictionary of Sydney gives the last night as 6 March 1966. A commenter on Cinema Treasures says it ran until 1965.
- What replaced it? The Dictionary of Sydney says the Crest Hotel. Cinema Treasures says "the high-rise Chifley Hotel", and Billy Thorpe called it "the Crest Hotel, now the Capital". These may be later names for the same building, but I haven't found a source that confirms it.
- How tall was the Crest? The Dictionary of Sydney says 14 storeys. The City of Sydney planning papers call it 17 storeys.
- How many apartments in Omnia? The 2015 consent allowed 131, a later change raised it to 134, the architects say 132, and a real-estate news site says 135.
- Which suburb? In 1916 the papers called it Darlinghurst. Most histories say Kings Cross. The council's planning papers say Potts Point.
My Earlier Posts
- The Windmills of Darlinghurst Road and Roslyn Street
- The Widening Of William Street - East Sydney & Kings Cross
- Original Villas Of Woolloomooloo Hill, Potts Point & Elizabeth Bay
- Brougham Lodge – Darlinghurst Road / Victoria Street
- Roslyn Hall – Roslyn Street / Darlinghurst Road – Potts Point
- Goderich Lodge – Bayswater Road / Penny's Lane
- Springfield Lodge - Potts Point
- Kellett House (formerly Bona Vista)
- Craigend - Darlinghurst
- The Battle of Blood Alley – Eaton Avenue – Kings Cross – 7 May 1929
- Kate Leigh & Tilly Devine – Sydney's Razor Gang Queens
- Juanita Nielsen – Kings Cross Publisher and Victoria Street Green Ban Campaigner
- Arthur Stace – Mr Eternity
- Maramanah – 64 Macleay Street – Potts Point
- The State Theatre - Market Street - Sydney
- Demolished Sydney
Sources
- "Waddington's New Theatre", 2 April 1916, p. 16, via Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/121342588
- "King's Cross Theatre", 30 April 1916, p. 16, via Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/121345731
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Kings Cross Theatre": https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/kings_cross_theatre
- Mark Dunn, "Kings Cross", Dictionary of Sydney, 2011: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/kings_cross
- Jake Ollett, "Breeding delinquents: Surf City 1963–1966", Dictionary of Sydney, 2020: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/breeding_delinquents_surf_city_1963_1966
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Crest Hotel": https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/crest_hotel
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Brougham Lodge": https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/brougham_lodge
- Cinema Treasures, "King's Cross Theatre" (Ken Roe), with comments: https://www.cinematreasures.org/theaters/35318
- City of Sydney, planning reports for 111–139 Darlinghurst Road (D/2015/331 and modifications; Statement of Environmental Effects, 25 June 2018), via eplanning.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
- Durbach Block Jaggers, "Omnia": https://durbachblockjaggers.com/projects/residential/omnia
- Apartments.com.au, "From hotel to high-end apartments: the transformation of the Kings Cross Crest Hotel into Omnia": apartments.com.au
- Wikipedia, "El Alamein Fountain" (incorporating NSW State Heritage Register listing H01847): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Alamein_Fountain
- City of Sydney Archives, "Plenty of fun, lots of young people, but no vice. Surf City...", newscutting, 22 September 1963: https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/900526
- Images: Wikimedia Commons (State Library of NSW, Royal Australian Historical Society and individual photographers as credited under each picture).