The Royal Victoria Theatre — often called the Victoria or “Old Vic” — was Sydney’s first large purpose-built theatre. Entrepreneur Joseph Wyatt opened it on 26 March 1838 on the western side of Pitt Street between King and Market Streets, with a hotel in the front section. Architect Henry Robertson designed a Georgian street façade and a Regency-style auditorium seating about 1,900 (a large pit extending under the dress circle novel in Australia — with upper tiers above). For more than forty years the Victoria was a leading venue for drama, opera, pantomime, minstrelsy and touring stars (including George Coppin’s Australian debut in 1843). Joseph Fowles’s Sydney in 1848 plates record the Pitt Street elevation and help date the streetscape around the theatre. On 22 July 1880 the uninsured theatre burned; the fire also destroyed Hardie and Mitchell’s steam mill behind, and collapsing walls killed three men. The theatre was not rebuilt. Later uses of the Pitt Street site included auction rooms and, in the twentieth century, cinema and retail buildings.
