Resource | Text: Article | |
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Title | Palace Theatre Sydney | |
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Source | Philip Parsons, Victoria Chance, Companion To Theatre In Australia, Currency Press with Cambridge University Press, Sydney, NSW, 1995 | |
Page | 423 | |
Date Issued | 1995 | |
Language | English | |
Citation | Ross Thorne, Palace Theatre Sydney, Companion To Theatre In Australia, 1995, 423 | |
Resource Identifier | 65010 |
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Theatre in Pitt Street, opened 19 December 1896, seating 1000. Architect: Clarence Backhouse. Remodelled to seat 872, 1923. Architects: Ballantyre and Hare. Closed late 1969. Demolished 1970.
The small Palace Theatre was truly theatrical in its architecture. The brick-and-plaster exterior was an eclectic mixture of baroque arches and cornices with a French-style roof pavilion topped by an Indian-style cupola. Heavily modelled baroque was the style for the lobby, toilets and a small dress-circle foyer, which had a ceiling painting of diaphanously attired young women floating in a misty sky. The original auditorium was unique in Australia. Eight posts rose from the stalls floor to support the fronts of two circles above and then the roof by way of vaults in 'Hindoo Gothic' style. This amalgam of Mogul and Hindu detail continued in an ogee-arched proscenium and side boxes in the form of cupolas with onion-dome 'roofs'. Most of the auditorium was ornamented in sheet steel embossed in elaborate patterns designed and painted by Philip W. Goatcher, one of the last scene-painters to follow the custom of designing the interior decoration of a theatre. Many of the decorative elements he used in the Palace Theatre appear to have come from the Broadway Theatre built in Denver (Colorado, USA) in 1890.
Goatcher was also the first lessee and director of the Palace Theatre. Its owner was George Adams, who built it as part of his Tattersall's Hotel complex. He intended it to be a palace of varieties - as close to an English music hall as NSW laws would allow. Until 6 p.m. closing of bars was introduced in 1916, patrons could leave the theatre by side exits, cross a narrow private alley and enter the hotel by side doors almost opposite. This satisfied regulations that theatres and hotels had to be on separate sites. The Palace had many later lessees, mainly minor entrepreneurs finding a short-term home or major managements needing an overflow theatre, and it housed entertainment of all kinds. Redesign of the auditorium in 1923 removed most of the posts and converted the decor to a more sedate European Renaissance style. The Palace became a full-time cinema during the Great Depression. After the Second World War it fluctuated between film and live theatre until its demise. The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust and Garnet H. Carroll sub-leased it from Hoyts it from Hoyts Theatres in 1960-61 and 1964.