THE ROXY THEATRE
43
General view of the Theatre.
One would have thought that there was sufficient theatre accommodation for a city the size of Hong Kong. Evidently commercial interests feel that there is plenty of scope still for this class of enterprise, for, within a few months, three cinemas, two in Kowloon and one on the Island, will have been completed. The one in Hong Kong, the most recently Situated in opened to the public, was the Roxy Theatre. Causeway Bay district, on a triangular plot of land, with frontages on Yee Wo and Sugar Streets, the theatre is the largest in the Colony with seating accommodation for over 1700 persons, 1146 on the ground floor and 594 in the dress circle.
The triangular area on which the building stands allows the architects considerable scope for the exercise of originality in the positioning and arrangement of the various services which are a necessary adjunct to a theatre or cinema.
The total width of the building is approximately 155 feet at the widest part of the triangle of which the theatre itself comprises 105 feet, narrowing to about 60 feet at the proscenium. Ample public lavatory accommodation is provided in the nooks and angles of the various floors and mezzanines, while back of the stage, at the point of the building, are dressing rooms provided at three different levels of the building.
The structural plan is a most unusual one since, in order to avoid the use of any columns which might obstruct the view of the stage, the dress circle was built on four heavy reinforced concrete girders, with spans varying from 91′0′′ to 104'0". These massive beams are anchored down by means of side struts over 20'0" high, which are carried down the
sides of the walls as a continuation of the main beams making, in effect, huge U-beams which span the building and are anchored into reinforced footings well below ground level, The size of these beams can be imagined from the cross- section which shows 56 lengths of 14′′ mild steel bars in ten rows in concrete beams measuring 30′′ across, with a depth of 80". One larger beam is 84" deep whilst there are two more of 72′′ and 65′′ respectively. These beams carry the full load of the dress circie and are a triumph of engineering from the point of view of design and construction,
The roof of the office part of the building is of reinforced concrete beam and slab construction, but the theatre itself is spanned by six prefabricated steel trusses which carry the corrugated cement asbestos sheet roofing and from which the false ceiling is suspended. This false ceiling is of plaster rendered on expanded metal sheets held in a frame of light steel angles.
The interior walls of the theatre are quite plain being of a textured plaster finished with warm tones of red and brown, with the colour of the seats of blue leather forming the con- trast to the walls. Two large panels in relief, one on either side of the theatre complete the decorative theme.
All attempts at garish embellishments in the design of the building, both interior and exterior, have been studiously avoided. The decorative part of the exterior has been confined to that of the building over the entrance lobby in which a well-proportioned area built up of glass blocks extends from the marquee to the roof parapet with horizontal lines connect- ing and emphasizing the windows of the front facade, forming part of the decorative scheme.
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A longitudinal cross-section of the building. The position of the girders and the roof trusses are clearly indicated.
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