The Second Theatre Royal

LARGE IMAGE OPENS IN A NEW TAB OR WINDOW

This is a previously unknown circa 1877 photograph of the second Theatre Royal on the southern side of Gloucester Street East, between Manchester and Colombo Streets. Immediately beyond it is Beatty's Palace Hotel of 1877. Designed by A. W. Simpson and built by John L. Hall of the Canterbury Opera Company, the theatre opened on the 4th of November 1876.

Built by Matthew Allen and Sons, the 1,100 seat theatre replaced an earlier building, which had begun life as the Canterbury Music Hall in 1861. To honour Alexandra, Princess of Denmark and Wales, in 1863 the music hall was renamed as the Princess Theatre, becoming the first Theatre Royal three years later.

The theatre closed in 1908, to be replaced by the extant third Theatre Royal opposite and by 1910 the Palace Hotel had been converted into a cinema and renamed as The King's Theatre. Both buildings were subsequently acquired by The Press, with the street frontages converted into shops and the upper levels renovated as the newspaper's Copy and News Rooms and production departments. Only the upper level facades and the theatre's original roof line survive.


Recently acquired by an Australian construction company as part of an eight building complex, the 1907 Press building in Cathedral Square will be renovated for use as an hotel or offices and a lane precinct created through the property to link Press Lane to the Cathedral Junction vintage tram terminus.

With work projected to commence in October 2009, the company is proposing to construct a new multi-storey building behind the facades of the Palace Hotel and the second Theatre Royal. The artist's rendition below indicates that the pediment's will be restored to their former glory and it is therefore hoped that Queen Victoria's Coat of Arms will once again grace Gloucester Street.


We're greatfully indebted to Steven McLachlan of the Shades Stamp Shop at 108 Hereford Street for the original photograph, which is dated to 1877 by the lack of the stables to the Palace Hotel's Left and there being no Playbills and Posters, which soon began to adorn the theatre's Press Lane side wall (Right).

New Christchurch Civic Centre

Designed and built in 1974 by the Ministry of Works, the seven storey former Christchurch Mail Centre at 53-59 Hereford Street West, is now owned by Ngai Tahu Property Ltd. The building is shown under construction to the Left in the above aerial photograph.


To be leased for $8.2 million a year by the Christchurch City Council, the building is currently undergoing a $105 million refit, which will include a five metre extension to the Worcester Boulevard façade (above), three partial mezzanine floors and the installation of a $3.3 million electricity generation, heating and cooling plant, which will be fed by a biogas pipeline from the landfill and wastewater treatment facilty at Burwood.

With reconstruction (below) designed by the Architect Ian Athfield and scheduled for completion in mid 2010, the former New Zealand Post building will accommodate the Council's 1,116 staff.

Reputed as suitable for housing the Council for the next hundred years, the re-inforced concrete building is strong enough to support two further floors should more space be required. The Civic Centre will have a public café and a walkway from which the populace will be able to see into the council chamber.

With an allocation of $200,000, the Council is negotiatiing to acquire a large work of art depicting a feather for the building's foyer and another for the debating chamber.

Artistic licence showing the proposed main entrance from Worcester Boulevard would appear to indicate a somewhat shorter building.

Crucifixional Complexity

A recent north-easterly aspect of Cathedral Square by Jose Sanchez.

Behind the War Memorial of 1937 can be seen the 1901 facade of Warners Hotel, which is currently undergoing significant restoration and extension.

1863 is the date usually attributed to the foundation of this hotel as John Etherden Coker's Commercial and Dining Rooms. However, the records indicate that by that year the Publican's licence had already been transferred to William White. Renamed as the Commercial Hotel, it would appear from contemporary correspendence to have been commonly known as White's Hotel.

The current name was acquired in 1875 and the hotel's greatest claim to fame came in March, 1927 when King George VI (as the Duke of Cornwall) stayed there. Thirty years later the hotel was still claiming "under royal patronage."

Below: from the Christchurch City Council comes an artist's representation of the completed development.

The Majestic Theatre

The Site

Originally the southwest corner of "Cabbage" Wilson's market garden, the Majestic Theatre site was designated in 1874 for an hotel as part of Wilson's Newmarket commercial development. William Wilson had become the city's first Mayor in 1868, but failed to attract an hotelier prepared to pay £117 per annum for a 21 year lease, so by the later 1870s a large two storey wooden building was erected on the corner as the premises of the grocers Hubbard, Hall & Company, with the offices of the Commercial Union Assurance Company above.

The Architects

The Australian Luttrell brothers: Alfred Edgar (1865-1924) and Edward Sidney (1872-1932) established one of New Zealand's foremost architectural practices when they arrived in Christchurch in 1902 after winning a competition for the design of the third White Hart Hotel in High St (demolished in 1984).

Alfred acted as the principal designer and engineer, while the smooth-talking Sidney co-ordinated building programmes and dealt with clients. Their skills and versatility made an impact on the architecture of Christchurch that remains an important and visible contribution to our architectural heritage.

Also building contractors, among their surviving projects are the 1902 Lyttelton Times Building (now the X-base Backpacker's Hostel) and the 1905 Royal Exchange building (now the Regent Theatre), both in Cathedral Square, the 1906 New Zealand Express Company building on the southeast corner of Hereford and Manchester Streets and the 1908 Theatre Royal in Gloucester Street.

After Alfred's death in 1924 the design work of the firm was undertaken by Jack Hollis and Allan Manson. Manson took over the practice when Sidney Luttrell died in 1932 (renamed as Manson, Seward & Stanton in 1936). In 1929 Allan Manson and Jack Hollis designed two major buildings, with similar facades, for the city.

Beath's Department Store at the corner of Colombo and Cashel Streets was originally intended to be six storeys, but the Great Depression put the project on hold and the store, which is now The Crossing transit centre, was completed at three levels in 1935.

The other project was the five level Majestic Theatre building for John Fuller & Sons Ltd at the corner of Manchester and Lichfield Streets. The original design proposal was for a three-tiered auditorium, with seating for 4,000, but this was later modified to two tiers with seating for 1,650.


The Theatre

Unlike Beath and Co, Sir Benjamin Fuller’s (1875-1952) cash rich Australian company, backed by their sixty-four New Zealand theatres, with unmortgaged freeholds, survived the Great Depression better than most.

The new theatre was the city’s first with a steel frame (of 380 tons), and the brick clad exterior was rendered with stucco to create an effect of two-tone Buff Limestone blocks, separated by white pointing.

The Fuller’s new building was completed in early 1930, with the western third of the upper three floors as offices. Known as Majestic House, with a separate entrance on Manchester Street, the offices were occupied by the Department of Labour (now Work and Income New Zealand).

Promoted as "The Show Place of Christchurch," the city's largest theatre was leased to Christchurch Cinemas Limited, which was made up of a partnership of Hayward Pictures Ltd, Waters and Spence Ltd, Fuller Pictures Ltd and Edward Joseph Righton of Christchurch. Fitted with sound apparatus for the "talkies," and seat plugs for hearing aids, it opened on the 1st of March, 1930.


Good though the restrained Art Deco exterior is, it is the theatre's auditorium that is probably the more significant. For more than three decades the discreet luxury of an interior in the Hispano-Moorish architectural tradition would ensure that the Majestic remained preëminent among the thirteen theatres within the central city.

The Fuller-Hayward organisation was also the original promoters of the Miss New Zealand contest, which was billed as a “Quest for a Screen Type.” Ten provincial finalists were chosen from the more than two thousand hopefuls who entered the contest. The finalists toured the country appearing in a spectacular show at the new Majestic Theatre, after which the patrons voted for the contestant of their choice.

In 1946 Christchurch Cinemas Limited was sold to locally born Sir Robert Kerridge (1901-1979) and in that same year the Majestic was badly damaged by fire. The building was subsequently renovated under the supervision of the Architect Harry Francis Willis (1893-1972), who had designed the 1932 New Regent Street development and the now concealed 1934 Art Deco facade of the State Cinema at the northeast corner of Gloucester and Colombo Streets.

By the 1950s there were fashion parades during the interval before the main feature and even three-dimensional films (requiring patrons to wear spectacles, with red and green lenses). In 1960 New Zealand cinema ticket sales peaked at forty million, but within three years television was beginning to take its toll on Christchurch cinemas. However, the large theatre, with its excellent stage facilities, enjoyed a revival with the Startime Spectacular live music shows. There were also performances by some of the legendary Rock 'n Roll groups of that era, these included the Beatles, The Kinks, The Dave Clark Five and Manfred Mann.

The theatre closed on the 28th of August, 1970, becoming Moby Dick's Nite Spot. The club is probably best remembered as the salubrious venue where the legendary Christchurch glam rock band Odyssey performed regularly. Six years later it was again badly damaged by fire and the night club closed.

Renaissance

The Christchurch Revival Fellowship, which had originally met in the old Horticultural Hall on Cambridge Terrace after being established in 1962, owned a building opposite the Majestic by 1976. On that fateful Sunday morning the churchgoers looked on as the old theatre burned. A member of the congregation purchased the gutted night club and two years later the Christchurch Revival Fellowship became the City New Life Centre, but it would still be another year before restoration was complete. With seating reduced to eleven hundred the former theatre is now known as the Majestic Church.


It is understood that there is a proposal to restore the Art Deco Theatre and it is to be hoped that the facade will be returned to its former glory.

Christchurch: Warner's Hotel Restoration

The main block of Warner's Hotel was built in 1900, but 17 years later the Left hand third was demolished to make way for a cinema (below), which was in turn demolished in 1996. As part of a high-rise hotel development on the site the original neo-classic facade is now being restored.

The Liberty Cinema, 1930

Bonnington House Restoration

Begun in December 2006 the restoration by the KPI Rothschild Property Group of the 1883 Bonnington House on Christchurch's High Street is nearing completion.

George Bonnington (1836-1901) opened his first Chemist shop in 1854, the pharmacy closed 120 years later, but more than a century and a half after its invention Bonnington's Irish Moss Cough Mixture is still manufactured by the Glaxo Smith Kline company.

This is an image of the interpretive display prepared by Canterbury Heritage for the foyer of the restored building.

Satellite view of the building's location

Ecological Design Gym for Les Mills

The Les Mills Christchurch building was constructed in 1910 on the corner of Cashel Street and Woolsack Lane for Massey Harris, importers of agricultural machinery.

It's reported that the century old building will become the most ecologically designed gym in the world and will surpass anything New Zealand has ever seen when it's opened in early 2009.

Satellite view of the building's location