The Electric Cinema first opened in London's
Portobello Road on 24 February 1910. It was one of the first buildings in Britain to be designed specifically for motion picture exhibition, and one of the first in the area to be supplied with electricity. It was built shortly after its namesake the
Electric Cinema in
Birmingham, which predates it by around two months. Its first film was
Henry VIII, screened on 23 February 1911. Designed by architect
Gerald Seymour Valentin in the
Edwardian Baroque style, it originally opened as the Electric Cinema Theatre, with 600 seats. During
World War I an angry mob attacked the Electric, believing that its German-born manager was signalling to
Zeppelin raiders from the roof, after nearby
Arundel Gardens was hit by a bomb dropped from a
Zeppelin. Later, in 1932, the Electric became the Imperial Playhouse cinema, though by this time the Portobello Road area had become run down, along with the rest of Notting Hill. During this time, the venue's nickname among locals was "The Bughole". During the Second World War the venue was attended by up to 4000 per week, despite the
Luftwaffe's night-time bombing raids. During the late 1940s the notorious mass murderer
John Christie (1899–1953) of nearby
10 Rillington Place is said to have worked at the Electric as a
projectionist In the late 1960s the venue changed its name to the Electric Cinema Club, showing mostly independent and
avant garde films. In 1984 the then-owners Mainline Pictures proposed to turn the venue into an antiques market; a petition against these plans reached over 10,000 signatures, including those of
Audrey Hepburn and
Anthony Hopkins. Thereafter it opened and closed several times without finding commercial success. In 1992 it went into voluntary receivership and tried to find a buyer. In July 1993
Paul Bucknor assembled a consortium including
Choice FM and
The Voice that moved in, with the aim of promoting black film effectively making it the first black-owned cinema in the UK. They were said to have paid almost £1 million to prepare the building for the
Notting Hill Carnival in August 1993. ==Modern era and revival==