Usher Hall, Cambridge Street, Edinburgh

Usher Hall, Cambridge Street, Edinburgh

Built 1910–14 by architects James Stockdale Harrison and Howard Henry Thomson, Usher Hall is a Grade A listed 3-storey Beaux Arts concert hall occupying a wedge-shaped site. The building features a polygonal entrance front, an elliptical ribbed copper dome on a drum with glazed cupola, and a horseshoe-plan auditorium.

The exterior is constructed in polished Darney sandstone ashlar, channelled to the ground floor, with a Kemnay granite base course and steps. A moulded cornice runs along the ground floor, and the drum is topped with a cornice featuring curved corbels. The building rises in 5 projecting bays, with 3 principal entrances serving crush halls positioned on the north (Cambridge Street), north-west and west (Lothian Road) elevations, and additional crush halls, corridors and ancillary spaces in the north-east and south-west bays.

The principal entrance openings are keystoned with lion heads and have rusticated round arches that push up through the entablature. They are flanked by paired Roman Doric columns standing on granite pedestals. Above each entrance are Diocletian windows, beneath which are triple 2-leaf glazed oak doors with triangular panes and radiating astragals, fitted with lyre-shaped bronze pull handles in cast-bronze door cases decorated with banded leaf motifs. Glazed bronze canopies with reeded bronze frames and lion-headed supporting brackets shelter each entrance.

The north-west elevation bears the inscription "THE USHER HALL" in gilded letters above the entrance. The south-west (Grindlay Street) elevation comprises two distinct sections. The right section, adjoining the Lyceum Theatre, is recessed and features rusticated flat-arched openings to the ground floor and a stage door at centre with a cornice above. The upper floors are regularly fenestrated, with windows set in projecting surrounds and a segmental pediment crowning the centre first-floor window. The left section projects forward in 7 bays with a symmetrical arrangement: entrance doors to the galleries occupy the outer bays as 2-leaf glazed doors in corniced moulded surrounds; above these are semicircular recessed panels containing carved heads and cartouches; paired small windows sit above. The penultimate bays advance further and contain windows in moulded surrounds. A recessed 3-bay centre section at ground level features lunettes with cast-iron screens below the windows, and first-floor windows in moulded surrounds, flanked by giant Roman Doric columns.

The three principal entrances lead into marble-clad crush halls with geometric black and white Sicilian marble floors. Paired pilasters are clad in gold-tinted Siena marble, and the ceilings are moulded and gilded plaster. A limestone staircase with brass handrails ascends from the Grand Tier crush hall, its panels lined with Roman stone and Siena marble. The Grand Tier foyer contains paired Siena marble-clad Doric columns and an oak parquet floor. Corridors surrounding and providing access to the auditorium (through mahogany double doors) and services incorporate compartmented ceilings, curved plaster panels flanked by pilasters, and gilded medallions featuring poets and composers above the doorways. Gallery staircases are lined with plain stone steps and white glazed tiles, leading to arcaded crush halls at gallery level lit by circular roof lights.

The auditorium is horseshoe-shaped, with 2 cantilevered reinforced concrete balconies. The proscenium arch houses the platform and choir seating, supported on giant fluted and reeded Ionic columns with swagged capitals, painted white and gilded. The plaster decoration to the proscenium and ceiling is painted and gilded, featuring musical instruments and other ornamental motifs. The ceiling itself is beamed and compartmented. An organ fills the wall behind the choir seating, its case carved in mahogany and decorated with gilded trumpet-playing putti.

Steel-framed windows are used throughout, with plate glass in rooflights and textured glass in small-pane glazing to the windows. Bronze down pipes with decorative hoppers provide water drainage.

Three pairs of original cast-bronze lamp standards, designed by Stockdale Harrison, mark the principal entrances. Each standard has a fluted column on a square-plan base supporting an octagonal lantern filled with patterned glass and surmounted by an urn finial.

The building contains an important programme of external and internal sculpture throughout.