Duke of York's Theatre

Duke of York's Theatre

Theatre built 1891-92 by Walter Emden, originally named the Trafalgar Theatre. The building is constructed of painted brick with stucco dressings and a slate roof, in the Late Classical style.

The front elevation is five windows wide with a slightly advanced three-window centrepiece and plain returns to side passages. The ground floor is arcaded with fanlighted, glazed and panelled doors beneath a probably later iron and glass canopy. The centrepiece features a first-floor loggia with Ionic columns, and the second floor has semi-circular arched windows with attic windows above, framed by Doric pilasters. The flanking bays have tripartite, architraved and corniced windows on the upper floors, with those on the first floor dressed with the same Ionic order as the centre. The entire front is framed by advanced quoin piers with entablatures over the ground and first floors and a crowning cornice.

The interior auditorium features an elegant decorative scheme inspired by Louis XV and Louis XVI styles with three balconies, a domed ceiling and three tiers of boxes. The boxes and proscenium arch are framed by neo-classical stucco reliefs, which are also used on the flank walls. Arabesques of similar stylistic derivation decorate the balcony fronts, and the dome is ribbed and coffered. In 1980, structural alterations removed the original composite columns carrying the balconies, replacing the first balcony with plain columns and cantilevering the upper two whilst respecting the decorative scheme.

The theatre played a significant role in the suffragette movement. Between 1913 and 1914, the Women's Social and Political Union used the theatre as a site for protests to draw attention to their campaign for votes for women. Women would take seats in the gallery, stand to give speeches during performances, and shower the stalls audience with handbills. At one protest in January 1914, a banner in the WSPU colours of purple, white and green highlighting the forcible feeding of suffragette prisoners was hung over the gallery rails. The final protest at the Duke of York's Theatre occurred on 27 July 1914, one of the last militant protests before the WSPU suspended campaigning at the outbreak of the First World War.