by gap74 » Sun Sep 24, 2006 4:39 pm
I'll be happy to oblige, although as regards Hengler's, there were actually three premises which operated under that name in Glasgow.
The first Hengler's was a conversion of an 1849 music hall in West Nile St called the Prince's Theatre. This was converted to Hengler's Circus in in 1863, and was successful enough to warrant rebuilding and enlargement in 1867 and again in 1877. The site today is where the derelict General Accident building behind the Odeon is.
By 1883, it had become too small, so a fantastic looking new building was erected in Wellington St, designed by Britain's foremost theatre architect, Frank Matcham. This continued until 1900, when it too closed due to a problem with the lease, and due to competition from rival circus and hippodrome operations in Cowcaddens (run by E.H. Bostock, a structure still surviving today as the Chinese supermarket/restaurant/outdoor shop/snooker club) and in Sauchiehall St (run by Arthur Hubner, a conversion of a former diorama and ice rink which has subsequently been converted in a dance hall and then the ABC cinema). Both rivals appeared in 1897.
Hengler thus had no permanent base in Glasgow until Hubner's Sauchiehall St operations ran into difficulty, allowing him to take it over in 1904. Spectuacular shows continued there until 1924, when it was converted to the ballroom. Inevitably, given that the building had probably hosted Glasgow's first cinema show in 1896, film had started to feature more prominently in the final years of Hengler's, and the replacement ballroom only lasted another 5 years before conversion again to the Regal cinema.
Pics to follow soon.
Gary