The iconic 1950s Stella Cinema has been wiped off the landscape in Mount Merrion in Dublin to make way for an apartment development.

A massive bulldozer, fitted with a specially- designed device which uses mechanical jaws to chew through reinforced concrete, tackled the facade of the building yesterday and quickly tore down the movie theatre which first opened its doors in 1955.

The 1,000-seat cinema was a popular spot serving the Mount Merrion and wider area until it eventually closed its doors two decades later in 1976.

It was a sister cinema to the smaller Stella Cinema in Rathmines, which reopened in 2017 after lying derelict for years.

After its closure, the Mount Merrion cinema was transformed into a furniture showroom which traded for more than 40 years.

Many of the original cinema features survived the transition from cinema to furniture store, but that has all come crashing down in the last few days.

Demolition began last week, and yesterday many locals looked on as the machinery tore through the landmark building.

The site was placed on the market in late 2017 with a €7.5m price tag, and was bought by property company Oakmount, headed by developers Matt Ryan and Paddy McKillen Jnr.

It has residential planning permission.

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