Building that is home to the Everyman opened as the Cork Palace Theatre of Varieties in 1897
Cork’s Everyman Theatre is housed in a building that is almost 130 years old. Over that time, the purpose-built theatre has had a few different uses and its share of ups and downs. It opened to great fanfare in 1897 as a variety hall, was used as a cinema, before being reinstated as a theatre in recent times.
As managing director, Lowrey was convinced of its viability and success. He demonstrated his faith in the new venture by agreeing to forfeit all remuneration in any year that the shareholders did not receive a dividend of at least 6 per cent.A rite of passage – Fionnuala Ward on the first day of schoolBuilt on King Street at a cost of £19,000, it was designed by Henry Brunton. The Scottish civil engineer had spent some years building lighthouses in Japan.
Ten acts performed before an audience that included the lord mayor, who was seated in one of the boxes. On the programme were various singers, dancers, ventriloquists, comedians, and acrobats, as well as a full orchestra and a Professor Jolly with his Cinematographe. In a newspaper advert from October 1897, a variety of acts were promoted. These included Fred H Leslie’s Wonderful Dogs, which was a troupe of trained dogs. Also on the programme were the Two Emeralds, described as “Charming Duettists and Clever Dancers”, Professor J Thornbury, a ventriloquist and mimic, and Miss Katie Lawrence, a performer who featured in Ulysses. These were travelling acts that performed in music halls all over Britain and Ireland.
Audiences were looking for new forms of entertainment and it ceased to be a theatre in 1930. Renamed the Palace Cinema, it advertised itself as “The House with the Perfect Sound”. It showed new releases from England and America. According to John McSweeney in his book on Cork cinema history , one of its early successes was Chaplain’s City Lights, with 10,000 people seeing it in the first week alone.
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