Princess Theatre Bendigo

Theatre at corner of McKenzie and View Streets, opened 1874, seating 2000. Architect: George R. Johnson, superintended by Vahland and Getzschman. Also called New Sandhurst Theatre or Royal Princess's Theatre. Altered to form cinema and theatre 1936. Architects: Cowper, Murphy and Appleford. Demolished 1963.

Soon after the first gold rush in 1851 a few theatres were built in Bendigo, then called Sandhurst. The first was the Royal Theatre in 1854. The Royal Victoria followed in the same year and soon closed. The Criterion Theatre, reported to seat only 350, opened in 1856. All were associated with hotels. In 1874 it was reported that there was no regular theatre in the town but a new one would remedy that.

The new Princess Theatre was behind deep shops, and long corridors reached to the various parts of the house. The axis of the auditorium and stage ran parallel to the street. The auditorium was 24 metres wide by 18 metres deep and the stage, contrary to published dimensions, was only about 18 metres wide by less than 15 metres deep, with a nine-metre-wide proscenium opening flanked by banks of three private boxes. The floor of the pit and stalls appears to have been flat, with 11 posts supporting the dress circle and the gallery above it. Six posts at the edge of the circles continued to support the domed ceiling. During its first 50 years the theatre saw touring companies of entrepreneurs such as William Anderson, Wybert Reeve and J. C. Williamson as well as local performers and oddities like the Egyptian War Diorama in January 1885. In 1936 major alterations to produce an Art Deco cinema and theatre reduced the auditorium to two levels but extended the theatre into a former warehouse behind.