GLASGOW’S St Andrew’s Hall was one of those concert venues able to cater for interests as diverse as boxing and music.
In its long history its stage was graced by everyone from Enrico Caruso and John McCormack to Nellie Melba and Paul Whiteman, the ‘king of jazz’. Caruso said “Never have I found a place with better acoustics.” Politicians gave speeches there, too: Winston Churchill (in 1904), Stanley Baldwin, David Lloyd George.
The Evening Times writer Jack House said his experience of the venue was “a strange mixture of politics, religion, weddings, drama, symphonies, exhibitions and jazz.”
A leading article in the paper said St Andrew’s had been “one of the most famous halls in Europe”, in which many Glasgow people had enjoyed their first taste of culture, as school-children. Belgian refugees were sheltered within the hall in the First World War.
These and other memories were recalled when the venue was destroyed in a blaze on Friday, October 26, 1962. The fire was so intense that it reportedly caused the paintwork to bubble on cars parked in adjacent streets. The city’s fire chief went into the building to investigate and escaped serious injury “when he was literally blown out again by an explosion.”
Joy Adamson, author of ‘Born Free’, had been due to show a film of Elsa the lioness at a lecture at the halls that night, and an alternative venue had to be found at short notice.
The Granville Street facade of the hall today forms part of the Mitchell Library extension.
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