Not Just Another Leicester Square Building
Walk past the corner of Cranbourn Street on any given evening and you’ll probably be too busy dodging tourists and street performers to look up. That’s the thing about Leicester Square. It demands so little of your attention while somehow taking all of it.
Little do many know, the building just on the side of Charing Cross Road has been quietly outperforming everything around it since 1900, and most people have absolutely no idea. What building is it, you ask? The Hippodrome. Grade II listed, seven floors, open 24 hours, no membership required. Also: polar bears once swam in it.
A Water Tank, Elephants, and Edwardian Crowds
Frank Matcham built it for theatre impresario Edward Moss in 1900, cost £250,000, which was an extraordinary sum at the time. Matcham had designed over 150 venues across Britain by that point but this one was a different proposition entirely. The arena floor dropped hydraulically into a 100,000 gallon water tank for aquatic shows. Sea lions performed in it. So did polar bears. Horse-drawn carriages too, somehow. Elephants appeared on the bill regularly. The opening night show was called Giddy Ostend and by all accounts it was exactly as chaotic as that sounds.
It ran as a circus and variety venue for nine years before Matcham came back in 1909 to gut it and rebuild it as a conventional proscenium theatre. The tank went. The reputation stayed.
The Booking History That Reads Like Fiction
Here is where it gets genuinely strange. Swan Lake received its first ever British staging on that stage. Charlie Chaplin appeared in the early variety bills. Harry Houdini performed there in 1904, which feels about right for a building with a water tank in the floor. Julie Andrews made her professional stage debut at the Hippodrome aged twelve. And in 1919, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band played what is now widely accepted as the first official jazz concert ever held in the UK, in that building, on Cranbourn Street.
None of that is embellished. It’s just what happened there.
Sinatra, Stringfellow, and Going Dark
It was the 1950s that turned about the biggest change and transformation. The interior was stripped and then the venue was reopened, becoming the talk of the town. Just like that, this supper club became the centre for people who wanted to play. Big names like Judy Garland, Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tom Jones made the list, some would think it’s made up, but it really was not.
Peter Stringfellow took the keys in 1983 and ran it as a nightclub through the 80s and 90s. It won best nightclub in the UK in 2004 then lost its alcohol licence a year later and closed. Just like that, one of London’s most storied buildings went dark.
The £40 Million Comeback
It sat empty for a few years. In 2009 a father and son from Leicester, Jimmy and Simon Thomas, bought the lease and started work. When builders pulled out a false ceiling that had been installed back in 1958, they found Matcham’s original auditorium completely intact underneath. That discovery reshaped the whole restoration. The neighbouring Cranbourn Mansions building got absorbed into the plans and the floorspace doubled. Forty million pounds and three years later, Boris Johnson opened the Hippodrome Casino in July 2012. It won best land-based casino in the UK the following year.
Seven floors now. Four gaming areas. A PokerStars live room taking up the entire third floor. Twenty jackpot slots, over 100 electronic games, a steak house, a hidden bar, a cabaret theatre still named after Frank Matcham, and Magic Mike Live in the evenings. If you’ve not been, the door is open around the clock and you don’t need to be a member to walk in.
The Online Alternative
For anyone who wants the casino experience without the Friday night queue on Charing Cross Road, BoyleSports runs a casino online with the same table game range you’d find across the Hippodrome’s floors. Blackjack, roulette, live dealer tables, slots, no dress code required.
Boyle Casino was actually one of the best rated UK casinos according to most comparison sites and it was clear to see why. They offer a unique experience where you can have all the different game types, bonuses, payment methods, live interactions, all at your fingertips.
Go, Though
Seriously. The Hippodrome is one of those London places that rewards actually turning up. Somewhere beneath the casino floor there is a 100,000 gallon water tank that polar bears used to perform in, and the building around it has housed circus acts, jazz legends, a supper club, a nightclub, and now a casino without ever really losing the thread of what it is. A place people come to have a good time. It has been doing that for 125 years and it shows no signs of stopping.
