Date of closure: 26th February 2023
Address (for reference only):
Mecca Bingo (Lost Halls)
The Playhouse
104–110 Nethergate
Dundee
DD1 4EH
Dundee’s Mecca is remarkable for having two entirely different lives as a bingo venue, bookended by a devastating fire. It started as Green’s Playhouse, opened on 4 March 1936, designed by Joseph Emberton and John Fairweather with an original capacity of around 4,126 seats, making it the second largest cinema in Europe at the time. It was a genuine spectacle, with a huge dome, Corinthian columns, ten boxes and an 87-foot Art Deco advertising tower that became one of Dundee’s landmarks, believed to be the tallest advertising tower in Britain and a forerunner of Tait’s Tower at the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition. The cinema closed in January 1968, and bingo took over almost immediately, with Mecca buying the building by 1970 and running a 2,850-seat hall that reportedly pulled in around 10,000 regular players a week at its peak.
Everything changed on the night of 26 August 1995, when a fire broke out shortly after the Saturday session had finished, destroying almost the entire historic building and leaving only the advertising tower standing. Rather than walk away, Mecca rebuilt around it, restoring and re-erecting the tower as the centrepiece of a completely new club designed by Cooper Cromar and opened in 1997, seating around 1,600 with roughly 100 electronic terminals. That gave the Nethergate site an extraordinary 56 years of almost continuous bingo, interrupted only by the fire and rebuild, before Mecca announced closure in January 2024, with the final session held on 25 February 2024. The story hasn’t ended there either. The building has since become LiveHouse Dundee, a major music and events venue with capacity for around 4,500 people, meaning the site once again does what it’s done for nearly 90 years: bringing large crowds together under one roof, tower and all.
Other Lost Halls In The Area
Here are some photos of the Dundee Mecca Bingo Playhouse on Nethergate from Twitter and Facebook, to give you a flavour of the club, its customers, staff and decoration. The photographers are unknown, but if one of these is yours let us know and we’ll add a credit.
Also, if you have photos to add here, please contact us here to share them.
Used to be the best club, gone downhill with introduction of electronic bingo, and lousy callers. Staff aren’t friendly or fun anymore, in fact some are downright rude. Never thought I would switch to Mecca, but I have, but keep going back to Gala now and again…and regret it.
I enjoy going to our Mecca but I absolutely hate that members are allowed to smoke e-cigarettes inside club I think it is appalling, if they were smoking they would have to go outside, it is not allowed in any other establishment.