This hotel lost its gloss for decades. Now it’s a tribute to a classic cinematic era

There’s only one hotel in Sydney where guests can choose dreamer suites or revenge rooms that make up part of a classic old cinema which, after being vacant for decades, has now morphed into modern and stylish accommodation.

Paddington’s 25Hours Hotel (its full name is a bit of a mouthful: 25Hours Hotel Sydney The Olympia) occupies a building that traces its roots to 1911 and the arrival – novel at the time – of movies with sound.

When the cinema first opened its doors, it was the talk of Sydney. The building, with its classical style of architecture, screened actual talking films, rather than silent reels, where patrons arrived under a distinctive copper dome eager to hear their movie heroes speak on film.

The venue lost its gloss over subsequent decades, morphing into Arcadia Twin Cinemas and later The Grand Pacific Blue Room, a nightclub from the 1990s.

Architects Tonkin Zulaikha Greer (TZG) took on the building’s redesign project and turned the cinema into a hotel whose shops and cafes now enliven Oxford Street. When TZG started in 2018, the building had been vacant for decades and its distinctive bell-shaped porte-cochere was long gone.

Sadly, most of the original interior had also disappeared. The few original black and white photos they found revealed the cinema’s distinctive copper-domed entrance, placed below the parapet with the words “Olympia West’s Pictures”.

“We didn’t want to reproduce the original dome but rather provide a contemporary nod to the past,” says architect Jarrod Hughes, director of projects at TZG, who worked closely with architect Tim Greer, a founding director of the practice.

Replacing the structure is a fluted dome, with blades of copper-coloured steel separated by a translucent mesh. “At night, the effect is similar to a lantern,” says Hughes.

For the developer, a joint venture between Central Element and Boston Global, the brief was to maximise the site while still allowing breathing space for the nearby Victorian terraces. What was a two-level building has become five levels, including a series of bronze steel dormer-style windows on the top level, along with a rooftop bar recessed from the street. “We took our design cue from many of the dormer windows you see in Victorian terraces in Paddington,” says Hughes.

One of the strategic moves by TZG was to create an internal courtyard designed by landscape architects Context. With its significant slope, the courtyard provides a light well for the lower two levels – including back-of-house amenities along with a retail component above.

The courtyard also provides an important link to the past. The cinema’s soaring wall is clad in various new coloured bricks, from brown at the base to matt-white near the top.

“The white bricks reflect the light,” says Hughes, who retained the cinema’s original vents in the wall which now offer delightful vignettes of the rooftops over Paddington from some of the hotel suites.

While TZG was responsible for the architecture and heritage component of the project, the fitouts for the 109 guest suites were designed by Indyk Architects with Woods Bagot looking after the food and beverage component.

Connecting to the cinema’s history, guests can enjoy either dreamer suites or revenge rooms: the former are lighter in palette while the latter offer a moodier experience similar to the texture of early 20th-century films.

For those not staying at the hotel, there’s pleasure in taking the lift to the rooftop bar. Its glazed northern facade and terrace is a perfect spot for looking over Paddington and the more distant Sydney Harbour. And there’s still the experience of going to the movies – there’s a small cinema in the basement. People strolling past or popping into one of the building’s cafes or shops will get a sense of the resurgence in this part of town.

After being boarded up for years, 25Hours Hotel has reinvigorated the neighbourhood.

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