William George Robert Sprague (1863 – 4 December 1933) was a theatre architect.

Biography

He was born in Australia in 1863 the son of actress Dolores Drummond who returned with acclaim to London in 1874. Sprague was an

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for

Frank Matcham Francis Matcham (22 November 1854 – 17 May 1920)Mackintosh, Iain"Matcham, Frank" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, accessed 7 July 2019 was an English architect who specialised in the design o ...

for four years, then in 1880 was an

for

Walter Emden Walter Lawrence Emden (1847 – 1913) was one of the leading England, English Theater (structure), theatre and music hall architects in the building boom of 1885 to 1915. Biography Emden was the second son of William S. Emden, lessee of Londo ...

for three years. He was in a partnership with Bertie Crewe until 1895. He went on to design a large number of theatres and music halls, almost all of them in London. At the height of his career he showed a productivity worthy of mentor

, producing six theatres in

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, B ...

in less than four years. Unlike Matcham and Emden, Sprague studied architectural forms and conventions and used his knowledge in his designs, saying of himself that he "liked the Italian Renaissance" as a style for his frontages, but would take liberties when needed "to get the best effects" In 1902, the theatre newspaper ''The Era'' described him as "Britain’s youngest theatrical designer, with more London houses to his credit than any other man in the same profession." In 1898, William Morton, owner and manager of the

Greenwich Theatre Greenwich Theatre is a local theatre located in Croom's Hill close to the centre of Greenwich in south-east London. Theatre first came to Greenwich at the beginning of the 19th century during the famous Eastertide Greenwich Fair at which the Ric ...

, commissioned Sprague to produced plans for a 3,000-seat theatre to replace his existing theatre on a new site on London Street, but this was never followed through.'Mr. W. Morton's Benefit', ''The Era'', 22 January 1898 p. 17 Sprague died in Maidenhead in 1933.

Theatres

References

External links

This is Theatre
list of London Theatres, designers and opening dates {{DEFAULTSORT:Sprague, W. G. R. 1863 births 1933 deaths Australian emigrants to the United Kingdom Theatre in the United Kingdom Theatre architects Architects from London