The brick shell of the theatre building on Elizabeth Street enclosed a composite steel and concrete frame with ancillary timber framing used to support the floors and ceilings and their decorative features. The Regent in Brisbane reflected the evolution of the picture palace concept devised by Samuel Lionel "Roxy" Rothapfel's 1913 Regent Theatre in New York which created a fantasy interior where audiences could lose themselves within an evocatively decorated atmospheric picture palace. This style was perpetuated by Hoyts in a chain of Regent theatres built across Australia in the 1920s, in Melbourne, South Yarra, Ballarat, Perth, Sydney and Adelaide. Two more were built in New Zealand in Auckland and Palmerston North. The Brisbane Regent's interiors were a blend of Gothic, Baroque and Classical themes. Two building contractors were employed on the Brisbane Regent: AJ Dickenson for the theatre component and J & EL Rees for the Queen Street section. Construction and fit-out costs, including furnishings (some of which reputedly were antiques collected from overseas), paintings, the main chandelier, Belgian carpets, a Wurlitzer organ, and a state-of-the-art air conditioning system, amounted to around £400,000.