Forty years inside a Brisbane second-hand store

They call her “Netty”. She wears a black sequinned gown, and has been seen sweeping down the aisle of the former Plaza Theatre in Paddington, now the Empire Revival antiques and interiors store.

Lee Cary, the shop’s customer relations manager, has seen her. One day, she and a colleague even heard her speak. It was just one word.

“She whispered, ‘abundance’. We both heard it, then she just vanished,” Cary says.

Customers have described an uncanny feeling in two areas of the building. “There’s a distinct energy,” Cary says. “It’s not eerie, but it’s unmistakable.”

“Abundance” is an apt descriptor for Empire Revival. They have jewellery, homewares, furniture and retro clothing in abundance, with 60 merchants operating under the one roof.

They have history in abundance too. The 900-seat Plaza Theatre was built in 1929, opposite the old tram terminal on Latrobe Terrace.

Richard Gailey Jnr designed it as a pastiche of Spanish and Middle-Eastern architecture. Its financiers went insolvent while construction was still under way, so the building contractor, Hutchinson, went into the cinema business.

It was designed to be an “atmospheric theatre” – meaning its ceiling evoked the night sky, with a pulley system of moving clouds, stars and planets.

Cinema patrons would jump on passing trams to get a beer at the Paddo Tavern before returning for the remainder of their session.

“We have had people come in who claim to have been conceived in the theatre,” owner Suzy Baines says.

The building hasn’t screened films since 1962, but the proscenium arch still clings precariously to the far wall. There are ornamental balconies and columns. The front of the building is old-school opulent, and a plaque in the floor of the foyer carries the name of the theatre. If you close your eyes, you can smell the Jaffas.

When TV came along and killed the cinema, it became an indoor basketball court, then sat vacant for 10 years. In 1985, two couples – Graham and Anne Hesse and John and Heather Mildwaters – bought it, opening the Paddington Antiques Centre.

Suzy Baines enters the story in 2008.

Baines had worked in PR, as a speech and drama teacher, and as a bookkeeper. She had just bought a new home and needed some furniture.

“My mother and I went on an antiques-buying trip to Eastern Europe and brought back a container of antiques with no idea what we were going to do with them. Then I happened to be in Paddington with a girlfriend.

“I saw the sign in the window saying ‘business for sale’ and within a week, I bought it.”

Suzy Baines

Baines had never been in business. Counterintuitively, she reasoned she needed to buy a large enterprise because, with three children to raise, she was too busy to run a small one.

“This is a seven-day-a-week business, so you have to employ staff, and that gives you greater flexibility.

“The best piece of advice I got was from one of my brothers: ‘Don’t change anything until you understand why it’s been done the way it’s been done.’”

She took over just as the GFC hit, but didn’t feel its impact. “[Second-hand] does well when times are tough because people perceive it as offering better value.”

Baines, who runs Empire Revival in partnership with her daughter, Olivia, rents out spaces but centralises the sales and manages the staff, leaving vendors free to find their stock, price it and display it.

“Our business model, I think, is going to become more and more used because it enables people to do what they’re good at and have somebody else take care of the things that can drag you down.

“It’s not just that the model works really well for retailers today, it’s such a great way to use these old spaces.”

True to her word, Baines has found another old cinema – Murwillumbah’s 1947 Regent Theatre – to expand the business later this year. The Regent even has a similar name plaque in its floor. (Baines also has a store called The Emporium in Kalbar in the Scenic Rim.)

“Anything that you did with it other than have it as an antique centre was going to involve compromising how people experienced the space,” she says.

“We’ll be part of an arts precinct that has so much vibrancy and activity already. You’re buying into a community, and I really like that.”

One of the colourful identities of Paddington, Baines has a flamboyant sense of personal style, favouring outfits with big sleeves and strong colours.

Wandering around the Empire Revival shopfloor, she stops at a bright-green, trimmed fur coat with an orange collar and cuffs.

“Oh wow, look at that,” she says. “Amazing! I reckon it’s ’60s.”

Vintage clothing was the focus of the annual fashion parades she held here some years back, models sashaying a full circuit of the 700-square-metre store.

Diversifying into clothing and new items, such as upholstery fabrics and lampshades by Sachs & Cornish, prompted a name change for the Paddington Antiques Centre in 2018.

“I needed the flexibility to be able to move into things that were more representative of what people were looking for,” Baines says.

Antique items are still a feature at Empire Revival, however. She introduces me to one of the longest-standing merchants, Wallace, who points out a stunning art nouveau mirror, dated at 1904 (sale price: $1500).

Baines tells me about the time 10 years ago when a woman came in clutching a large object wrapped in a towel.

“Her brothers used to play cricket and use it as stumps. Somehow, this thing that was rolling around in the back of her car survived.”

It was an art deco vase by the English ceramicist Clarice Cliff (1899-1972). Longtime stallholder Stan Prickett made inquiries and verified its value at about $40,000.

Nowadays, the store runs an Antiques Roadshow-style valuation service one Sunday a month, with three experts giving their opinions in exchange for a gold-coin charity donation.

In 2020, Baines converted a storeroom into a second-hand book depository called The Cupboard Under the Stage, and opened the Loft Gallery to artist exhibitions.

To acknowledge the shop’s 40th anniversary and the building’s silver-screen past, an exhibition of vintage movie gear has been set up in the foyer, courtesy of local collector John Schindler: clapper boards, a hulking old camera, a jazz-era microphone on a stand.

Baines shows me the southern side of the building, where Netty has been spotted browsing.

“Over the years, people will come in, usually women, and say: ‘I can’t be here. I can’t be in this space. There are presences here’, and they flee.”

She pauses, at the space where Rosie Bates used to have a stall selling jewellery, collectibles and small furniture pieces.

Bates was British, brought up in China, and had an excellent eye for antiques. A ferocious competitor at auctions, she worked at the centre well into her eighties, before dying about a decade ago.

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“She was the most crotchety old woman you can imagine. But very funny!

“She always got a cab in. One day she came in, cross as, and said: ‘That cabbie wanted to know where I wanted to go!’

“One day I said to her: ‘Rosie, your trackie is inside out.’ She said: ‘Yes, the other side is dirty.’”

Baines laughs. “It’s an industry of characters.”

Empire Revival is at 167 Latrobe Terrace, Paddington, open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, and Sun 10am-4pm.

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