Belgrade Theatre

Belgrade Theatre, Coventry

A civic repertory theatre with integrated flats and offices, built 1956–8 by the Coventry City Architect's Department. The chief architect was Arthur Ling, with principal architect Douglas Beaton and group architect Kenneth G King, working alongside H W Pearson, K Edgar, M McLellan, W Armstrong, Jean Hanney and G Bryson. Peter Jay served as engineer, with support from the Building Research Establishment.

The building combines a steel frame clad in whitbed and roach Portland stone with a spar dash finish applied to the exposed concrete of the auditorium shell and brick facing to the Corporation Street elevation. The Belgrade Square façade features five panels of double-height glazing. The main entrance, situated at the junction of Belgrade Square and Corporation Street, opens on the left into a café with restaurant above, and on the right into a double-height foyer running the length of the façade. Behind this lies the auditorium with boxes and gallery rising behind the façade. Offices occupy the space above the foyer.

The Corporation Street elevation features six shops at ground level (not of special interest) and originally 21 flats for visiting actors, now mainly converted to office use. These flats have square windows in rendered surrounds. The elevation projects over the shops on columns. The café retains original lettering reading 'BELGRADE THEATRE' on blind stone panels between metal windows. On the projecting first floor restaurant is a relief by J C (Jimmie) Brown based on a 17th-century engraving of Belgrade. The city crest appears on the auditorium wall. An offset entrance to the left sits beneath a small balcony with straight metal balusters.

The foyer and auditorium rising behind create a symmetrical composition facing Belgrade Square, with metal-framed glazing. The interior public areas survive largely unaltered except for a 1984 remodelling of the entrance and the installation of a coffee bar. The foyer is long and narrow on two floors, featuring pierced openings and open-well stairs at either end. A ground floor mural by Martin Froy depicting the four seasons in tesserae adorns the space. Hanging lamps designed by Bernard Shottlander exemplify Coventry's post-war policy of commissioning works by German artists and craftsmen for public buildings.

The auditorium seats 862 people with stalls and a single circle. A distinctive feature comprises two tiers on each side wall, each containing three stepped boxes; the upper boxes create the effect of loge seating. Two further boxes positioned to the rear of the stalls flank the lighting and sound control box. The ceiling is lined with Yugoslavian beech wood—a gift from the City of Belgrade—with curves engineered by the Building Research Establishment for optimal acoustic effect. The side walls are veneered in West African makoke. The stage is a proscenium arch type with an extendable forestage over the orchestra pit. Backstage areas were remodelled in the early 1960s and again in 1994 and are not of special interest.

The theatre takes its name from beech wood promised by a Yugoslavian trade delegation in 1954. The design, particularly in its use of loges, represents the finest adaptation of the Royal Festival Hall style to theatrical use.

The Belgrade holds singular importance as Britain's first civic theatre and the first professional theatre of any kind built after the Second World War. It is a significant and early element in the replanning of Coventry as a new city.