Gateway Theatre Leith Walk, Elm Row building image, Architect, News, Project Photo

Leith Gateway Theatre Edinburgh

Queen Margaret University Project on Elm Row / Leith Walk, Edinburgh Architecture, Scotland

Gateway Theatre To Go
Planning received for Elm Row residential scheme

Queen Margaret University Gateway Theatre Location: Leith Walk
Dates built: 1999-2000
Design: Law & Dunbar-Nasmith – now LDN Architects

QMUC Theatre Edinburgh building image on Leith Walk by Adrian Welch

Gateway Theatre Leith Architecture

This theatre has a fairly elemental blue frontage animated with a flat glass canopy supported by metal cantilvered brackets. The sandblasted glass windows and mesh folding gates add to the successul layering, though spoilt since the photo by signs and painted beams.

The nearest theatre to the Gateway is Edinburgh Playhouse Theatre:
Edinburgh News
Edinburgh Playhouse Theatre © Adrian Welch

The theatre building was situated at no 41 Elm Row, a section of Leith Walk in Edinburgh. The site was a veterinary college in 1890, and reconstructed as Pringle’s Picture Palace in about 1910. This closed in the 1930s and the building was subsequently used as a theatre by a group of amateur actors.

In 1946, however, the premises were gifted to the Church of Scotland who formed their own repertory company. By 1953 the Church decided to hand it over to a fully professional independent company. The company was formed with Robert Kemp in charge and was to include many of Scotland’s finest actors; its repertoire included many plays by contemporary Scottish dramatists.

The theatre closed just as Edinburgh corporation was acquiring the Royal Lyceum to establish a civic theatre in 1965.

source: http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/specialcollections/collectionsa-z/scottishtheatrearchive/stacollections/gatewaytheatre/