PEOPLE’S PALACE

Waikato Times, Volume 115, Issue 19159, 20 January 1934, Page 5

PEOPLE’S PALACE

NEW QUEEN’S HALL. PROPOSAL IN LONDON. REBUILDING SCHEME MOOTED. (From a Correspondent.) LONDON, December 2. For over two years the East End of London has been without Its Queen's Hall that almost l'aiitastlc-looklng building in the Mile-end Road, with its 13 marble queens, niched high up along its balcony walls, and its general'associations with the recreation of the East London working man. Two years ago the Queen’s Hall the main portion of the famous People’s Palace —took lire, and 12 of the l'l queens toppled from Iheii niches, Honi over-exposure to heat, leaving Queen Victoria to look down on Ihe charred ruins of bricks, beams and girders the following morning. Since then the East End, to which the Oueen’s Hall had for over 40 years' been a lively centre of attraction and instruction, has heard rumours I hat the People’s Palace would never he built again, and that m future the people of the district would have to find their evening entertainments elsewhere. The rumours arc happily unfounded. So far from being doomed, the People’s Palace is to rise from its ashes in an even more splendid form ihnn ever Its Victorian creators dreamed of. The Charity Commissioners have completed Iheii plans for the new building. It is expected that in a few months workmen will be busy clearing the site for the new building and digging the foundation? for a new People’s Palace, for which close on £IOO,OOO has already been rais*-n. The site will no! be on that of the oh! building, hut on the ground now occupied by houses in St. Helen’s Terrace, which has been presented to the governors lry the Drapers’ Company, who have been so closely bound 'with, the People's Palac* from

beginning of Its history. The new building Is to be representative of the best of modern ideas of architecture and design, with swimming baths and a great hall, capable of seating 30Q.0 people.