GENERATIONS of movie-goers' memories have been turned to dust with the demolition of a famous Glasgow cinema.

GENERATIONS of movie-goers' memories have been turned to dust with the demolition of a famous Glasgow cinema.

Workers using specialist equipment have reduced the Coliseum, in Eglinton Street, to rubble.

The cinema, the venue for the city's first screening of a talking picture, in January 1929, suffered a fire on May 25.

The roof of the listed building collapsed and the interior was devastated. Building experts said the building was unsafe and that it should be flattened.

But Dr Gordon Barr, of the ScottishCinemas.org project, expressed disappointment.

He said: "The interior of the building had been chopped and changed about so much over the years.

"It was converted from theatre use to cinema, then gutted and rebuilt for the Cinerama theatre in 1963, then rebuilt again for bingo, so there was very little of the original Frank Matcham interior left.

"We feel it is very unfortunate that after the fire, total demolition was very quickly being talked about as the only option.

"We would have liked to have seen a decent investigation taking place into the option of retaining the foyer block and tower at least."

Dr Barr added: "Although the frontage had been covered in an ugly corrugated iron front for the last 30 years, the original pillars and carved Coliseum name were all still there behind it, at least until the demolition team pulled it down last week.

"The tower still had delicate painted glass panels in its windows, which were still mostly intact until then."

He said that while public safety issues were paramount, the building had "resolutely failed to collapse" into the street in the three weeks that Eglinton Street was closed. "There would have been plenty of time, if the will had been there, to have propped up the frontage while the rest of the building was demolished, and retain that for any future redevelopment, as has been done successfully elsewhere."

Dr Barr said the area had suffered badly from earlier demolitions and redevelopment decisions.

The cinema was where former Lord Provost Pat Lally took his wife-to-be, Peggy, on their second date, to see Dr Zhivago.

In 1993, two of the cinema's old projectors were transferred to the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television in Bradford.

It closed as a cinema in 1980 and served as a County Bingo Hall between 1987 and 2003.