musical.today York, United Kingdom
Grand Opera House York
It was a corn exchange first. William Peacock bought the 1868 building and the warehouse behind it, spent £24,000 joining them together, and opened the result as a theatre in January 1902 with a pantomime starring Florrie Forde.
The building
The Italianate red-brick front on Clifford Street was Dean's corn exchange, opened in October 1868 and made obsolete within thirty years by the collapse in British agriculture. The auditorium behind it — raked seating, proscenium arch, stage — is Briggs's, dropped into the old warehouse.
It was renamed the Grand Opera House and Empire in 1903, showed silent films early, became the Empire Theatre in 1916, and has been back to its original name and its original job for decades: touring plays, musicals, opera and ballet.
Opening dates, capacities and architects on this page come from the theatre's own history pages and from Wikipedia.