Theatre Architects

Died: 1967 (Keighley, UK)

William Beresford Inglis was a Scottish architect who studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1903 to 1905. He went on to become a cinema specialist and owner of cinemas and hotels in Glasgow and the west of Scotland. He also designed various public houses, houses and industrial buildings.

Inglis’ office was in Blythswood Square in Glasgow, near his most important work: the Beresford Hotel on Sauchiehall Street (restored in 2003 as residential apartments).

In 1932 Inglis merged his practice with that of James Wilkie Weddell, the newly formed partnership being based at 216 Bath Street which Inglis had occupied since 1926. At the time of the merger, Inglis was the owner of North British Theatres Ltd, formed to build the Andalusian atmospheric Boulevard Cinema (later renamed Vogue) in Knightswood. Inglis ran it himself and booked his own films.

Immediately after the formation of the partnership to build the Boulevard, Inglis promoted a second company – the Toledo Picture House Company – to build another atmospheric cinema, the Toledo in Muirend. The company ran into financial difficulties and both cinema and company were sold to ABC a year later.

Inglis also built the Hippodrome in Oatlands and the Arcadia in Bridgeton.

Inglis died in 1967 in Keighley, Yorkshire. He was survived by his third wife. His first wife died on Arran during a family holiday, and his second wife divorced him and emigrated to New Zealand with the couple’s two daughters.

Theatres on this website in which this architect was involved:

Boulevard Picture House, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Ritz Cinema, Cambuslang, Scotland, UK

Toledo Theatre, Glasgow, Scotland, UK