Sauchiehall St. / West Nile St.
The magnificent and infamous
Empire Theatre. Built on the site of the old Gaiety Theatre
(1874-1895), itself a conversion of a Choral Hall. The Empire Palace,
as it was originally known, opened in 1897 as a follow up to the Moss
Empire in Edinburgh (now the Edinburgh Festival Theatre). Designed,
like the King's, by Frank Matcham, his opulent interior was swept away
in a 1931 enlargement and rebuild which saw the assimilation of
adjacent warehouses, hence the rather clumsy looking exterior seen
above. The new theatre sat 2,100 and was popular right up to its demise
in 1963, in a farewell show that saw Albert Finney literally
demolishing the stage with a sledgehammer!
