Adelphi Theatre
Posted in 1800-1899 and tagged with actors, art, building construction and demolition, community, employment, entertainment, everyday life, music, nightlife, novelists, playwrights, poets, roads, streets, theatregoers, theatres, tourism, tourists, walking
Adelphi Theatre today by Mary Shannon
Carrying on along the north side of the Strand, heading east towards Fleet Street and away from Trafalgar Square, we reach the Adelphi theatre.
This gorgeous Art Deco-style building is the latest incarnation of the theatre, built in 1930. However, the Adelphi started life as the Sans Pareil in 1806. It was renamed in 1819, and renamed again the New Adelphi when it was rebuilt in 1858. It is a prime example of the turbulent turn-over of buildings and their occupants along the Strand!
According to Ronald Bergan’s book ‘The Great Theatres of London’ (2004), the Adelphi became notorious for turbulence of a different kind in 1897, when its star was murdered by a vengeful fellow-actor at the stage door.
The exterior of the Adelphi in the nineteenth-century. Westminster Archives Centre
