Circus Carré Cologne

In the 1860s the couple bought a plot in Amsterdam and built a permanent circus there: a timber structure whose front building was already made of stone. Amsterdam became the company's home base, and from 1870 the circus carried the title "Royal Dutch Circus." From 1868 son Oscar Carré, an accomplished rider and horse trainer, led the company. In 1873 he had a wooden building with around 4,000 seats erected on Vienna's Ausstellungsstraße, which stood until 1884. In Cologne, his first stone circus building arose in 1878. He later replaced the Amsterdam timber building with a stone structure, opened in 1887, which still stands today as Theater Carré.

Behind the ring lay a frontal stage. Several tiers, 40 boxes each seating four, and a gallery were arranged in a semicircle around the ring. Large chandeliers lit the hall. A hot-water heating system ran beneath the rows of seats and could be additionally connected to the stage platform for extra warmth. The front building housed two cafés and two restaurants.

Circus Carré used the building for its Cologne performances and also rented it out for theatre, concerts, assemblies, and other events. For these occasions the ring could be floored over, providing room for additional audience seating or an orchestra.

Why Oscar Carré left Cologne, and whether or when he sold the building, remains undocumented. In October 1886 Richard Schippanowsky reopened the house as the Reichshallentheater; under changing management it ran as a variety theatre until 1937/38. After a renovation by Ernst Huhn, it became the Apollo-Theater, which also served as a cinema. A floor plan drawing of the building is preserved at the Architecture Museum of TU Berlin. After its destruction in the Second World War, the city's rubble-clearance office decided on complete demolition in the early 1950s. Kreissparkasse Köln already owned a neighbouring plot at the time; today nothing on site recalls the building.

Even before the building existed, equestrian troupes and circuses performed on Neumarkt, including Circus Carré around 1873. To this day, circuses such as Circus Roncalli still play the square. A diorama likely stood on the neighbouring Wolfsstraße in the decade before the opening. After 1900, larger circuses also performed at Aachener Tor, or Aachener Weiher, where the Williamsbau of Circus Williams was built in 1947; it stood until 1956, and a plaque on a stele commemorates it today.