A building that brought a slice of the Big Apple to Athens
The iconic Rex Theater on Panepistimiou Street in central Athens is inextricably linked to the development of the capital’s metropolitan identity as few buildings of the interwar era are. It will close for a while this year for restoration. It was inaugurated on January 23, 1937 with a musical film. The owners worked with Spyros Skouras, later president of 20th Century Fox, to introduce films. It was designed by architects Vassilis Kassandras and Leonidas Bonis, the successful duo who had already designed the Army Pension Fund Hall in Athens. The New York style, however, as opposed to the French rationalist style of the latter, was suggested by the owners, the Sikyaridis brothers. Elizabeth Sikyaridis, a descendant of the founders, tells Kathimerini that they had traveled to New York and there had decided they wanted to build a modern building, an American mansion, in Athens.
