St James's Hall

St James’s Hall stood in the heart of Westminster between Regent Street and Piccadilly. Owen Jones, who had decorated the Crystal Palace, designed the building in a Florentine style with Moorish details from the Alhambra. Its main hall seated over two thousand people and measured forty-three metres long by eighteen metres wide. Two smaller halls on the ground floor provided space for recitals and meetings. The Piccadilly front wore a Gothic cloak, while the whole complex hid behind Nash’s Quadrant. Inside, pale-green horse-hair benches bore bright pink seat numbers like office files. The hall opened in 1858 with a performance of Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise conducted by Julius Benedict. Sims Reeves soon became a star there, singing Beethoven’s Adelaide with Arabella Goddard at the piano. In the same year William Sterndale Bennett led one of the first complete English performances of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. For half a century the hall led London’s musical life before newer venues took its place. It became famous for Monday and Saturday ‘Pops’ concerts and the Ballad Concerts that spread classical music to wider audiences. Visitors found music everywhere. The Monday Popular Concerts offered chamber music by artists such as Joseph Joachim and Alfredo Piatti. The Philharmonic Society moved its concerts from Hanover Square to the hall in 1869, introducing lower prices and annotated programmes. From 1862 the Christy Minstrels performed blackface minstrelsy nightly in one of the smaller halls. Restaurants and refreshment rooms stood ready for intermissions, while the grand hall’s acoustics carried every note across the seats.