Photo Index

Carlow County - Ireland Genealogical Projects (IGP ^TM)

The Ritz Cinema and Crotty's Bakery c1968

The Ritz Cinema opened in 1939.  A Hollywood actor came all the way over from America for the opening ceremony. Admission price to the pits cost 4d. In 1941 the Ritz management decided to raise this to 7d . 'Holy murder',  pickets came from Graigue, and stood at the Pit door so no person were allowed to go through.

The projectionist at the Ritz for many years was Joe Carter of Burrin St, Carlow -Source: Michael Cradden

Their argument was that no tax was payable on 4d, but above that incurred a tax of 2d. So they were only getting 1d extra. Three weeks later, the increase was scrapped.

See Foot Note below.

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The front entrance to the Ritz Cinema on Tullow Street.

The Ballroom was down the side road on the left.

(Photo W. Muldowney)

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(Photo W. Muldowney c1967 & 2006)

Here we have the side entrance in Charlotte Street to the Ritz Cinema 'Pit seats' in 1967. Further down on the right hand side is the Ritz Ballroom.

P.J. TIERNEY AND HIS ORCHESTRA was one of the many bands that would have played here during the 60's.  He was also did regular appearances at the CROFTON HOTEL BALLROOM

The van on the left is delivering to Atkinsons Bicycle Shop in Charlotte Street.  This was where he used to store bicycles. The main shop entrance was in Tullow Street.

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Michael Scott (Architect)

During the Second World War, or the 'Emergency' as it was called in neutral Ireland, Scott's practice operated out of accommodation in Clare Street, Dublin. It survived on small commissions such as cinemas in Athlone and Clonmel and interiors of public bars. Building materials and money were in short supply and architects were hard hit. The artist Louis le Brocquy (born 1916) who produced work for Scott during these years wrote:

... things were not easy for Michael either, as might be expected of an inspired contemporary architect who repeatedly refused to compromise his growing vision, a revelatory vision of plastic rectitude, of pure, unsentimental, unadorned rightness.

Scott had been known to walk away from commissions that he did not find challenging or interesting. Increasingly he was passing on work and commissions that he had received to young graduate architects whose work he admired. The Ritz Cinema in Athlone (1939) is a case in point. Although the design of the Ritz Cinema Carlow was attributed to Michael Scott it was in fact designed by Bill O'Dwyer who was working and studying in the office at that time. While it is impossible for a successful architect to fully design all the buildings that come into his practice, Scott seems to have produced only rough sketches for the project leaving O'Dwyer to design the building. O'Dwyer was to be responsible for many of the cinema commissions undertaken by the firm in these years including two other Ritz cinemas at Carlow and Clonmel which opened in 1940

Source: http://www.archeire.com/michael_scott/emergency.html

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