O2 Academy Brixton
This site once rang with live music and cinema, but today it’s a memorial. Brixton Academy, originally the Astoria Variety Cinema, opened in 1929 on Stockwell Road, a mid-sized venue designed in Art Deco by Thomas Somerford and E. A. Stone, built at a cost of about £250,000. It began life as a cinema, hosted a BBC-broadcast variety act, and boasted nearly 3,000 seats, though publicity claimed up to 4,500. In 1972 it closed as a cinema, briefly became the Sundown Centre as a discotheque, and then was reborn as a concert hall in 1983, eventually joining the Academy Music Group as Brixton Academy, known to locals as Brixton Academy or the O2 Academy Brixton under sponsorship. The venue has hosted landmark moments, from The Smiths’ last gig in 1986 to a 1996 Leftfield show that reportedly reached 137 dB, and Madonna in 2000 watched by millions online. …
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