1884 – Lyceum Theatre, Dublin

Proposal for a huge theatre at the junction of Tara Street and Pearse Street (on the site of the now former Fire Station by C.J. McCarthy) that was never built, or indeed progressed beyound drawings. The promoters of the scheme were London theatre investors who ultimately couldn’t get funding together before permission to build expired.

According to The Irish Builder, October 15 1884: “THE old Theatre Royal Hawkins-street is still in ruin and from all appearance is likely to remain so, and the project of the new theatre for which a patent was granted some months ago if not hanging fire is not certainly making much headway. It is announced to be sure that the Board of have approved of the modified plan for the new theatre and that Mr Dillon has procured the parchment sheet which will contain the Royal patent. Further we understand that it was intended that the new theatre should be flanked in Tara street by a row of shops and dwelling houses but the Board of Works insisted on limiting the number of the houses and doing entirely away with the shop floors, thereby considerably increasing the dimensions of the theatre and also the cost of the building by 7,000. The promoter, according to one account, states that the building will probably be commenced early next spring, and if the works progress uninterruptedly will be completed in time for Christmas season. This is certainly not very definite information, and we all know what the old saying about ifs and ans indicate. Poor Dublin it would seem is not able to support a Theatre Royal. We repeat what we said on a former occasion that the Gaiety Theatre never acted as a proper substitute for the Hawkins street house and we cannot see that there was any anxious desire on the part of the late lessee of the burned down building.”