The late nineteenth century was a time characterised by a boom in popular entertainment. As people began to have more leisure time to spare, they also demanded new forms of entertainment to fill them.
One such place was the Sydney Cyclorama-the nineteenth century answer to IMAX.
But first we need to step back a little to 1787 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
In that year a local artist produced a 360° painted view of Edinburgh from the top of Carlton Hill. To view this masterpiece, Barker patented a new style of theatre. A circular building was erected, with the image round the inside wall. The building was designed so the audience could see nothing above or below the painting, giving the feeling of immersion in the scene.
The idea quickly took off, with shows in London and Europe.
Back in Sydney the town was beginning to grow and citizens were taking some pride in it. However in England Sydney was still viewed as a convict backwater with little appeal.
One way to address this perception was through art. Painting of landscapes of Sydney and surrounds were popular with many being sold in London. In 1820 a Major James Taylor, recently returned to London, exhibited a four panel panorama of Sydney at Barker’s London Panorama theatre. This was the first of a series of panoramic images of Sydney taken back to London through the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s to show the old country how we were going.
The panorama of Sydney joined those of Constantinople, Pompeii, Jerusalem and Hobart on display in London. They served to show the people of London a world that they had only read about. And they came back to Australia as well, with panorama’s regularly being shown in Sydney or Melbourne to entertain locals. The first one shown in Australia was in 1835 at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, where a moving panorama titled ‘The Aquatic Pageant’ represented a whaling expedition.
By the 1880s the display of panorama’s had evolved, with a new idea coming out of America-The Cyclorama.
The Cyclorama was a purpose built theatre, much like Barkers of the 1780s. However these included large scale painted scene with props and sets in the foreground to add realism.
In March 1889 the Sydney Cyclorama Company opened its new theatre in George Street west, near Central Station. The cyclorama, designed by Norman Selfe, was a 16 sided, 15 metre high enclosed theatre, topped with a domed roof and flag pole. Audiences entered via a tunnel that took them up a spiral staircase to a viewing platform.
The new attraction was met with approval by the local press, who reported that all the great cities of America had one and Sydney was due.
The opening was quite a show, with the Governor and the Premier and his wife in attendance. The first panorama displayed was imported from America and depicted the Battle of Gettysburg. This remained on display, with regular retouching, until at least 1903, while other panorama’s were added such as a panorama of Jerusalem in 1895.
The Cyclorama also included musical performance and other entertainment to attract the crowds. However by the mid-1890s the writing was on the wall. In 1894 the first screenings of the new motion pictures had taken place in George Street, not far from the Cyclorama.
Cinema killed the audience for Cyclorama’s elsewhere in Australia (there were five in total: Sydney, Adelaide, Launceston and 2 in Melbourne) by 1896, but Sydney’s struggled on. Partly it seems this was due to the popularity of the Gettysburg picture, but also because it diversified to include other attractions. By the late 1890s it even included a cinematograph in an attempt to head the motion picture craze off at the pass.
Alas in July 1910 the Sydney Cyclorama Company went into voluntary liquidation and the cyclorama closed. It was Australia’s first and last one. The building survived a bit longer, taken over by the Sydney Ice Skating Rink and Cold Storage Company, living on as Sydney’s Glaciarium.
March 7, 2013 at 7:03 pm
Lovely to read the story of the Cyclorama in your blog. I’ve been fascinated by it since I saw that photograph posted in Lost Sydney. Have read contradictory accounts of whether the Glaciarium used the same structure; it was certainly on the same site. A report in the Clarence & Richmond Examiner of 23 June 1906 claims the buidling was to be dismantled and the Gettysburg artwork relocated (didn’t say to where). Hope more photographs and accounts come to light.
March 31, 2013 at 11:03 pm
Thanks for this info on the cyclorama. I was just looking because I’ve just turned up a 1891 program from the Gettysburg exhibition that belonged to one of my Great Grandparents and I was wondering just what form it had taken.
April 11, 2013 at 12:01 pm
Thanks David, too bad our only known image of Sydney’s cyclorama is taken from so far away.
April 12, 2015 at 7:02 am
Please do not compare 19th century rotunda panorama to IMAX. This is not true, very misleading, and unfair. That would be like hitching a 19th century horse and buggy to a SATURN V rocket. I am writing the first book from the American point of view about 19th century rotunda panoramas. These were the biggest paintings in the world, 50 x 400=20,000 square feet, housed in their own rotundas which were 16-sided polygons. Chicago in 1893 had 6 panorama companies and 6 panorama rotundas. I have interviewed members of the Reed & Gross family who set up 2 rotundas in Melbourne, 1 in Sydney an 1 in Adelaide. My great aunt was an artist-model in William Wehner’s panorama company in Milwaukee. INFO TO SHARE genemeier@frontier.com
April 13, 2015 at 10:16 am
By IMAX, it was meant as a comparison in terms of the experience and wonderment of the viewing audience not the technology, not by a long shot. Having viewed a surviving example in America I thought it was breathtaking, even from a modern point of view. I can only imagine the impact on 19th century visitors. Good luck with the book, it will be interesting to read.
April 13, 2015 at 10:30 am
Please contact me–info to share.: genemeier@frontier.com
April 13, 2015 at 10:48 pm
Recently I learned that in the 1880s there were two schools of thought –arguments!-regarding the presentation of 19.century rotunda panorama. The two schools of thought between two rival panorama companies is now well documented. The William Wehner/Heine & Lohr panorama studio of Milwaukee expressed the effects of dawn-to-sunrise as simply producing the very best possible FINE ART on canvas. The Reed & Gross studio of Chicago/Melbourne/London would eventually “soup up” the fine art and employ electronic special effects including rheostat terminals to create dawn-to-sunrise, and the booming of gunfire. The electronic cyclorama concept was KEPT ON THE DRAWING BOARD since the mid 1880s and was always being “tweaked” ,subject to several patents by different inventors, and public demonstrations that were documented in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. Electricity, the “high tech” of the late 19th c. did not involve flipping a switch, but hiring an engineer to grapple with a noisy steam engine, dynamo,fly wheel, and feeding the fire.There are stories about “runaway engines” that powered panoramas.I have further info