La Scala cinema

The client, Edmond Meyer, had first chosen René Chapallaz after a competition open to students of the La Chaux-de-Fonds art school. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, who had not entered it, offered him his own scheme for a fixed price, and Meyer accepted. The commission ended the friendship between Jeanneret and Chapallaz.

Work began on 14 July 1916, and the cinema was inaugurated on 1 December of that year.

Over the years the building was altered. In the late 1930s the timber roof frame was replaced by a metal structure. The projection booth was also altered to take new cinema technology. Partly destroyed by fire in 1971, the building was rebuilt that same year: of the 1916 building, only the rear façade remains, listed since 2017.

Jeanneret made use of the natural slope of the site: the projection booth and the balcony were at the top, the stage at the bottom. A large pediment marked the entrance façade, and a gallery, whose entrances were marked by a pediment and pilasters, sheltered posters and visitors from the weather.

In the middle of the rear façade, the projection booth formed a projecting bay, with an outside staircase on each side leading up to the balcony. The hall served both for films and for stage shows, with a stage and an orchestra; to the right of the ground-floor seating, an internal staircase also led to the balcony. The walls and the balcony were of reinforced concrete, and the roof rested on glued laminated timber trusses, following Otto Hetzer's German patent.

The cinema is still in operation.