Dundee’s Art Deco Heritage 1. Green’s Playhouse.
Posted in Art Deco, Dundee, Scotland at 13:59 on 5 July 2009
I was strolling about Dundee a while back (as you do) and noticed an Art Deco building I hadn’t seen before. Since I knew there were several other Art Deco buildings in the city centre, the next time I was in Dundee I took the camera. The pictures will be appearing here over the next wee whiley. (Well, I had to put in a bit of Dundonian for this post.)
The first one is of course of the most striking example of the form in the city. Even if it’s a travesty of its former glory you can’t miss the tower.
Green’s Playhouse was erected in the Nethergate in 1936 as a cinema but has now been converted (rather obviously) to a bingo Hall.
The following is from the Theatres Trust website.
“A large “super-cinema” – second only in the UK in size to Green’s Playhouse in Glasgow (1927) – by John Fairweather. The lavish interior was by John Alexander, with Art Deco foyer and restaurant, and the auditorium, with Corinthian columns and piers marching down the side walls, was described as an”outstanding and enormous Classical/Art Deco theatre”. It was said to have set “standards of luxury unrivalled anywhere else in Scotland”. The exterior was dominated by a 25m lattice steel neon advertising tower, later clad with sheet metal. Bingo and other uses from 1967 until a devastating fire in 1995. The remains were deemed to be dangerous and demolition followed, although the tower survived and is listed (Category B).”
The Scottish cinemas website has some stonking old pictures of the Playhouse in its heyday, including a few of postcards that were made of the exterior, the foyer and Sunshine Café; not to mention of the management and staff! Those were the days. Some of the plans are shown there too.
The building was certainly much classier then than it is now.
Here are the external lighting cylinders in close up.
There’s a photo here of the cylinders with their tips lit up.
Tags: Art Deco, Dundee, Green's Playhouse, Scotland
ArtDecoBuildings
5 July 2009 at 22:28
Great looking building. Can’t wait to see what other deco gems you are going to show us from Dundee.
Cheers,
David
jackdeighton
6 July 2009 at 16:57
I don’t know about gems, as such. They’re Deco but not high Deco.
Scotlandâs Art Deco Heritage 17. Willison House, Dundee – A Son of the Rock -- Jack Deighton
31 August 2009 at 19:04
[…] is the building I fortuitously came across while strolling through Dundee last June. It houses Robertsonâs Furnishings whose address is given as 56, Barrack Street despite […]
Philip
20 September 2009 at 20:17
Hi, Greens Playhouse (now the bingo hall) is not the origional art deco building. It sadly burnt down several years back and was replaced by the building you show on your photos.
The fire was so bad, basically nothing survived of the origional art deco building.
The company who own the bingo hall, however recognised the importance of the “image” that the building had on the nethergate and tried to re-create the origional look.
In later days of the origional building all the exterior art deco features had been enclosed by a corrigated metal box and it didnt look good!
jackdeighton
20 September 2009 at 21:58
Thanks for this.
I know the outside didn’t look quite right.
But at least they made the attempt to keep it in style.
The old photos I linked to are fantastic though.
Mike
26 October 2009 at 16:45
In regards to the building with Tesco, it was a woolworths store, a while back, and only part of the middle floor is JJB, ground, half of middle and all of top floor belongs to Tesco.
Katherine Elliot
26 August 2018 at 15:58
I have read recently that the tower that stands above the replacement mecca bingo hall is an actual replacement and the only thing that was used from the original tower are two brackets. This was a poster on a Dundee site who worked for a salvage company at the time and when they transported the tower to the yard it lay for a couple of years and in the end was salvaged for scrap and only two brackets were actually used on the replacement tower. The poster said that it was up to Dundee City Council in the end and that they had conned people of Dundee into thinking that the whole art deco tower had been restored. Why the replacement has a B Listing is a mystery when its not the original tower which was awarded a B Listing in 1998.
jackdeighton
26 August 2018 at 19:58
Katherine,
Thanks for this. Interesting stuff. I didn’t know about the brackets business.
It’s a bit like Trigger’s shovel. When the handle and shaft have been replaced is it still the same thing? I suppose it’s the form of the tower that’s listed. If it’s a sympathetic restoration as much like the original as possible will it matter? Like the Glasgow School of Art. If it gets restored to more or less exactly as it was, will anybody in 100 years care it’s not really original? In a practical sense, over that time-scale buildings will need repaired anyway.
Dundee’s Art Deco Heritage 4. Willison House. – A Son of the Rock -- Jack Deighton
13 November 2022 at 20:00
[…] is the building I fortuitously came across while strolling through Dundee last June. It houses Robertson’s Furnishings whose address is given as 56, Barrack Street […]