MUNICIPAL THEATRE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 65, 19 March 1925, Page 9

MUNICIPAL THEATRE

, Queen Victoria Buildings in George street, one of the City Council's properties, and the "white elephant" of Sydney, has been the plaything of so many successive politioal parties that have governed the city's affairs that'all the schemes which have been formulated for remodelling it and making it a more profitable asset have come to nought. A great, rambling building, whose imposing facade in George street, belies its internal ugliness, it is now the subject of another scheme, the central idea of which is a municipal theatre, with a hbtel on each of the two corners in George street. There are now in, the city hotels and to spare, and enough theatres, with another now in course of erection apparently to satisfy the needs of theatergoers; but it is some of the Labour aldermen who are nursing this project, and they have a leaning for ideas that depart from th a : old conservative, set lines. The theatre proposal, as a matter of fact, was rejected a few years ago, and 'the tendency is to reduce hotels rather than .augment their number. The demolition, however, before long of one or two hotels in the neighbourhood will, it is said, provide room for the hotels which are part of the latest scheme. If only half of the schemes which the civic Labour caucus have in mind, are realised, Sydney is going to witness some unusual, changes.