28 May 2009: King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

William Stewart Cruikshank erected the Kings Theatre from a design by architects J D Swanston and J Davidson, with the famous philanthropist Andrew Carnegie laying the foundation stone. The theatre opened in 1906 with a performance of Cinderella.

The main theatre’s interior décor is very ornate with nine boxes either side of the proscenium and there are examples of Edwardian stained glass in the foyer doors. The present Upper Circle bar area was originally a Billiard Room and there were shops on either side of the entrance at street level. RCAHMS holds architectural plans and drawings from the construction of the original building, along with a number of archive photographs of the theatre. The image here shows a view of the auditorium in 1930.