When it was built in 1901, Hackney Empire incorporated state-of-the art technology such as electric lights, central heating and a built-in projection box. Its architect Frank Matcham was astonishingly prolific, designing at least 95 new theatres, but many of them had been pulled down before anyone got around to recognising Matcham’s skill at at creating buildings that squeezed the biggest possible auditoria onto the smallest possible sites while complying with the safety regulations of the time and making sure that every seat in the house had an excellent view.
Hackney Empire did survive but it had a patchy career that included stints as an independent television studio (readers with a very long-standing addiction to medical dramas may be interested to know that ‘Emergency Ward 10’ was filmed there) and a bingo hall. It re-opened as a theatre in 1986 and became a major venue for stand-up comedy. More recently a £15 million revamp masterminded by architect Tim Ronalds and completed in 2004 set the theatre up for a new century.
