Apollo Movie Theatre was the second movie theatre in Timişoara, built in 1909 by Georg Pflum, an entrepreneur, after arch. Josef Ecker Jr.’s designs. Starting with 1913, the movie theatre came under the administration of Timişoara City Hall.
An interesting aspect of the times is that a large amount of the tickets’ sales was donated to orphanages and old-age homes in the city.
On July 15th, 1924, the new summer movie theatre in Fabric is inaugurated, from then on being called ‘The Apollo Movie Theatre With Summer Garden’. In the same year, there were 3 winter movie theatres in Timişoara and 3 summer movie theatres (in Cetate, Fabric and Mehala neighbourhoods). The general manager of the public movie theatres at the time was Popovici Ioan.
The acting Committee of Timişoara agrees, on March 7th, 1930, to bring in sound movies at the Capitol (in Cetate) and Apollo movie theatres, asking for state of the art equipment and finalization of the works by the fall of the same year. This plan would only be implemented in 1931. Both in the winter movie theatre, and in the summer one in Fabric, proper equipment was installed from the ‘Klang-Film’ company in Berlin.
Between 1954 and 1955, the building’s architecture is severely modified, according to a project coordinated by architect Paul von Schuster. A short history emphasizing the steps in the building’s architectural evolution can be seen on the Marele Ecran blog.
The building had multiple purposes over the years (from movie theatre - which also had an outdoor garden - to billiards hall, discoteque, and, lately, medical clinic) and multiple names (1909 - ‘Apollo’ Movie Theatre, 1926 - ‘Apollo with Outdoor Garden’ Movie Theatre, 1959 - ‘Alexandru Sahia’ Movie Theatre, 1966 - ‘Parc’ Movie Theatre, 2012 - ‘Le Cinema’ Club).
