Golders Green Hippodrome

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 28/01/2013

TQ 2587 28/6 5004 23.10.73

NORTH END ROAD Golders Green Hippodrome

II

Former variety theatre, now concert hall and studio, 1913 by Bertie Crewe. Brick and concrete, rendered on main facades, with partial steel frame, asphalt roof with octagonal cupola. Rectangular plan on prominent corner site, where lies the entrance. Main facade of three storeys and seven bays faces bus station to side between rusticated stair towers with Diocletian attic windows. Giant Ionic order, with pediments over second floor windows. All windows small paned casements, some with coloured leaded glass. Exit doors in centre, formerly giving access to the pit and gallery, are panelled with small coloured leaded lights. Elevation to North End Road similarly seven bays between rusticated towers, with Ionic order and smaller casements but identical exit doors. Corner entrance has three double panelled doors with bevelled glass between Tuscan columns.

Interior. Entrance foyer with moulded dentil frieze and thin swags leads to terrazzo-floored stairs. Doorcases to stalls and circle entrances have fluted Egyptian-inspired columns and swags. Auditorium with proscenium, extended stage and two circles, the upper partially blocked. Square proscenium with triglyph cornice and deep cove is flanked by giant Doric columns separating boxes; above these are urns and pediments surmounted by charioteers pulled by lions. Double doors at sides of balconies, the upper pedimented and with a frieze of heads and swags over, the lower with engaged Doric columns in front supporting serpentine ends of gallery. Plaster panels and pilasters on side walls. The upper balcony front pure Doric, the lower with more Renaissance loucheness. Coffered ceiling.

Listed as a rare example of a surviving suburban theatre, largely intact.

Source: Curtains!, 1982. Jean Holden, Golders Green Hippodrome, 1913-68, unpublished City University MA thesis, 1989

Listing NGR: TQ2530187415