Sheffield City Hall has provided a unique window on the world since the day it opened in September 1932. Its sentinel-like watch would have started years earlier if it hadn’t been for the economic slump that swept the nation in the wake of World War One; its construction as a memorial to the city’s war dead was first mooted as far back as 1916.
Sheffield City Hall trod a difficult path in the turbulent thirties as the world counted down to the outbreak of World War Two. It promoted concerts for peace as the world teetered on the brink of Armageddon and 15,000 protested against its staging of a convention by Nazi sympathiser Sir Oswald Mosley and his black shirted-fascists. The building just survived the Luftwaffe attacks in December 1940, the frontage and pillars still bear the shrapnel scars.
Sheffield City Hall did more than its bit to fuel the post-war baby boom. Its weekend municipal dances in the fifties arguably forged more marriages than any other venue in the city. The mobbing of the likes of Johnnie Ray early in the same decade coupled with the popularity of trad jazz signalled a new era in the life of the building. Rock’n’roll had a got a true stranglehold on the building by the sixties with everyone from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones making their indelible mark whilst the building’s celebrated Philharmonic Season carried on regardless with its Hallé-inspired classical calendar that started in the 1930s.
Few buildings have became such a beacon for popular music in subsequent decades with the city’s own Joe Cocker, Dave Berry, Def Leppard, Human League, ABC, Heaven 17 and others all making the venue their home alongside global rock acts spanning AC/DC to Zeppelin; pop acts from Frankie Goes to Hollywood to One Direction via every possible permutation in between.
Celebrated Hall conductor Sir John Barbirolli finally got his wish when the hall’s controversial lions were unceremoniously thrown into storage in 1962 whilst the building’s resident ghost still, we understand, resides where else but the gods. The Grade II listed building put its long-running money worries behind it when it re-opened its doors to the 21st century in 2005 after a breathtaking £12.5m revamp – decades of illustrious history has finally gone full circle as the building took its place once again as the region’s premier destination for arts, music and civic life.
