Bertie Crewe

• Born:     1864
• Died:     10 January 1937

Bertie Crewe was born during the 1860s and educated at Merchant Taylor's School in London. He was articled to Clement Dowling and attended Atelier Lacoux, Paris. Returning to London he found employment as assistant in the office of Thomas Walter Laurence Emden for two years and then to William George Robert Sprague a distinguished theatre architect with whom Bertie Crewe was in partnership about 1889-1896. He practised on his own thereafter, specialising exclusively in theatres and 'was one of the most dynamic architects in the 1890 and 1900s'. He formed a new partnership with Herbert Gordon Kay from 1916; the practice title of the partnership is uncertain. Together they built many cinemas and some theatres after the First World War. Kay continued the practice for some years after the death of Crewe in 1937.