Old Photograph King George V Laying Foundation Stone Usher Hall Edinburgh Scotland

Old travel Blog photograph of the ceremony for King George V laying the foundation stone for the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland. The construction of the hall was funded by Andrew Usher, a whisky distiller and blender, who donated £100,000 to the city specifically to fund a new concert hall. The choice of site caused early delays but in 1910 an architectural competition was announced with the requirement that the hall be simple but dignified. The winning bid, one of 130 entries, came from Stockdale Harrison & Howard H Thomson of Leicester. england. The design was partly a backlash against Victorian Gothic, with a return to classical features owing much to the Beaux-Arts style. On 19 July 1911, King George V and Queen Mary laid two memorial stones, an event attended by over a thousand people. The dome was designed to reflect the curvature of the walls, but not to give a domed interior, which would have been acoustically disastrous. The interior of the hall is adorned with decorative plaster panels by the Edinburgh sculptor Harry Gamley. The figures depicted in these panels show figures from the world of music, as well as famous Scots. These include: Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Allan Ramsay, Robert Louis Stevenson, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, Edvard Grieg and Anton Rubinstein. Harry Gamley's work also features on the outside of the building with two large figures representing Inspiration and Achievement, as well as another three figures by Crossland McClure depicting the Soul of Music, Music of the Sea and Music of the Woods. The finished building was officially opened on 16 March 1914 with a concert featuring music by Handel, Bach, Wagner, Beethoven and the Scottish composer Hamish MacCunn. The final cost of building the Usher Hall was £134,000. Andrew Usher died before building work was started.



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