Sydney CBD

Castlereagh Street, Sydney

A vertical ROYAL sign, lit crowns above the entrance, an illuminated awning, and a marquee big enough to read from across the road: for most of a century the Theatre Royal put more light onto Castlereagh Street than the street ever made for itself, and it was Sydney's principal playhouse throughout.

It was born out of a fire. When the second Prince of Wales Theatre burned in January 1872, its architect J. F. Hilly was commissioned to build a replacement and kept the Castlereagh Street frontage of the old house; the Theatre Royal opened in 1875 and ran drama, vaudeville and film until 1972. The marquee here bills *Annie Get Your Gun* with Evie Hayes — a J. C. Williamson production that had already played ten months in Melbourne before opening at the Royal on 27 August 1948 and running a further twelve. Hayes went on playing Annie Oakley for six years and more than three thousand performances.

The theatre did not survive its block. In 1971–72 the Royal and most of the buildings around it came down for the MLC Centre, and it was only public agitation and the building unions, after the doors had already closed, that pushed Lend Lease into designing a replacement theatre into the tower.

Sixty years earlier the same street was still shedding its first skin. A timber-fronted shop stands behind a paling fence with a conical sheet-metal roof and a window of vases and pottery, its sign reading *Pottie / Veterinary Surgeon* — a low, wooden Sydney standing among buildings already condemned, on a street that would end up lit by neon.

4 works
Hotel Australia, Castlereagh Street, Sydney — photograph, from Castlereagh Street, 1903
photograph·1903·Sydney CBD

Hotel Australia, Castlereagh Street, Sydney, 1903

Illuminated address presented to George Judah Cohen Esq. on the occasion of his departure from Sydney on a visit to Europe. Royal Exchange Sydney. Feb. 19th 1903Royal Exchange of Sydney
Penfolds wine bar on the corner of Bathurst and Castlereagh Streets, Sydney — photograph, from Castlereagh Street, 1936
photograph·1938·Sydney CBD

Penfolds wine bar on the corner of Bathurst and Castlereagh Streets, Sydney, 1936

State Library NSWSam Hood
Pottie's shopfront and condemned timber buildings, Castlereagh Street, Sydney — photograph, from Castlereagh Street, c. 1875–85
photograph·1880·Sydney CBD

Pottie's shopfront and condemned timber buildings, Castlereagh Street, Sydney, c. 1875–85

Castlereagh Street, SydneyC.H. Woolcott
Theatre Royal by night, "Annie Get Your Gun" on the marquee, Castlereagh Street — photograph, from Castlereagh Street, 1949
photograph·1949·Sydney CBD

Theatre Royal by night, "Annie Get Your Gun" on the marquee, Castlereagh Street, 1949

Theatres of SydneyPix magazine