The Coliseum

The coly as it was known was designed by Frank Matcham and was opened in December 1905 and was host to a variety of acts from theatrics to stand up comedy and even music, it was one of the most popular places in  early 1900's Glasgow.

It was taken over in 1925 and started to show films there. In 1929 it made history when it was fitted for sound and played the first ever "talkie" in Glasgow; The singing fool. The response was astonishing and queues formed for several blocks.

The cinema continued to attract crowds for shows through the forties and fifties but the modern technology and the price of Tv's dropping in the 1960's the numbers declined and the owners took the brave and expensive step of turning it into a cinerama.

A cinerama was a new type of cinema experience which involved three synchronized projectors which were required to show film shot by the three cameras. All of this was then displayed on a special 146 degree screen which measured a huge 90ft x 30ft! A new sound system was also installed. The cost? ... £80,000!

To fit all this in the seating arrangement was changed and the top tier was removed taking the number of seats from just over 3000 to 1310. During this remodeling nearly all of the original features were lost and a new modern 60's look was installed including the now rather weird looking corrigated frontage.

Cineramas films dried up in 1980 and it was converted back into a normal cinema. It closed as a cinema in 1988 and was replaced by County Bingo but structural problems forced its closure in 2003.

Wandering about here was a little odd as after having woken up a homeless guy having a snooze we went into the old cinerama projection area which was last used as a fruit machine area to find quite a few knives all 6 - 8 inches!! We put them out of the way and tried to find the roof and the tower, we did find the roof but oddly no way to the tower. We later found out that the tower may have a separate entrance as different classes of theatre patrons would have different entrances!

The Coliseum Tour Gallery