Younger Bradfordians, seeing the Alhambra illuminated and welcoming at the bottom of Morley Street, might reasonably assume that it had always looked like it does nowadays. In fact it's only been that way for 20 years.

Just two decades ago, on October 30, 1986, Jacques Delors, then president of the European Commission, presided instead over the official gala reopening of a theatre which had been extensively refurbished at a cost of £8.2 million - of which £2.1 million had come from Europe with the ratepayers footing the rest of the bill after much debate about whether it would be worth the expenditure.

The Alhambra had become old and careworn. It was failing to attract the top shows and the audiences. Two choices faced it: refurbishment or closure. In the end those in favour of refurbishment won the debate. The old Alhambra closed, the builders virtually dismantled it before rebuilding it, and two years later the new Alhambra reopened to universal acclaim.

In fact opening night had been on Tuesday, May 27 when the curtain went up on the Ballet Rambert. But to allow any teething troubles to be fully overcome the official opening was set for five months later.

It was a great occasion for Bradford, with the speeches being followed by a sparkling performance by London Festival Ballet of Coppelia, directed by Ronald Hynd.

In his speech, Jacques Delors observed that while providing a cultural focus for the future, Bradford had preserved the best features of the Alhambra's past. "And a glorious past it was," he added.

It was indeed. That past had begun in 1912 when an immaculately-dressed middle-aged man looked across a patch of waste land at the bottom of Little Horton Lane and saw something magical there.

His name was Francis Laidler, born in 1867 as the son of a Thornaby-on-Tees doctor, later to become a bank clerk at Stokesley, North Yorkshire, before moving to Bradford at the age of 21 to eventually become manager with Hammond's Bradford Brewery Company.

The world of theatre, though, attracted him. In 1902, when he was 35, he joined Walter J Piper in running the Prince's Theatre at the bottom of Little Horton Lane, close to where the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television now stands. Piper died within the year leaving Francis Laidler to decide whether or not to go it alone.

He took the plunge, managing the Prince's Theatre and, as the years passed, pondering on the growing popularity of variety which in Bradford found a home in the Empire Music Hall at the bottom of Great Horton Road.

This was a theatre which had featured many famous entertainers since its opening in 1889. In 1910 a young London comedian called Charles Chaplin had made a big impression in a Fred Karno sketch. Another favourite was a young chap from Ulverston by the name of Stan Laurel. And then there was W C Fields, at that time a comedy juggler.

Variety was "on the up", and Laidler decided to take the plunge.

"Looking out of his window at the Prince's Theatre, his glance fell upon the eyesore of the Morley Street waste," reported the late Peter Holdsworth in Domes of Delight, his celebrated story of the Alhambra. "In that moment of inspiration he saw the building which was to be the Bradford Alhambra. That triangular piece of land was more than 1,500 square yards in extent and had been left over after Bradford Corporation had bought a large area for street improvement and the construction of a new highway.

"In 1897 the Corporation then sold it for nearly £8,000 to wool merchant William Horsfall Greenwood, who presumably wanted it for private development. But it was still a hideous eyesore when Laidler took a lease on it for 98 years and six months."

Work began on building the theatre on July 21, 1913. The cost of completing it was less than £20,000. Although it officially opened on Wednesday, March 18, 1914 the first public performance wasn't until the Monday, March 23.

The act who opened the proceedings was Alice Wyatt, who until a few days before had been starring as principal boy in Robinson Crusoe for Laidler at the Prince's Theatre.

According to Peter Holdsworth: "Miss Wyatt provided the first Alhambra item by singing the National Anthem. An observer commented: She was so overcome by the importance of the occasion that many people thought she would never get through it, though she quickly recovered'."

One reviewer of that opening night's show, which included a variety of acts and a revue, found fault with the orchestra but praised the attendants, who "are smart in appearance and unwaveringly amiable."

And he concluded: "It may be added that quite the best attraction at the Alhambra this week is - the Alhambra!"

And so it remains, as the brightest star on the Bradford scene.