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The History of the Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre Centre
The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre is one of the most attractive
buildings in the city of Toronto. Its interior is not only covered with
rich colours and attractive finishes, but its walls are drenched in history.
The incredible story of this complex began in 1913, when over a period of
eight months it was constructed on a property stretching from Yonge Street,
east to Victoria Street, just north of Queen Street. The building was
designed by the American architect Thomas Lamb, and was constructed as the
flagship of Marcus Loew's chain of vaudeville theatres. The complex had a
unique design, incorporating two theatres in one building, one stacked on
top of the other. The main inspiration for building one theatre on top of
another one was economical. It offered a greater amount of seating space,
on a smaller amount of real estate, than two single theatres would occupy.
Fewer than a dozen of this "double decker" theatres were constructed
internationally. This theatre of Loew's, on Yonge Street, was the only one
double decker ever built in Canada.
The bottom theatre was originally called "Loew's Yonge Street Theatre" and
opened to the public on December 15th, 1913. With the capacity to seat
2,149 people, it was the larger of the two. The decor seems lavish to us
now, with gilded plaster and imitation marble, but ninety years ago it was
conventional for the time. The upper theatre, the Winter Garden, opened on
February 16th, 1914, and had seating for 1,410 people. It had a whimsical
design, decorated as it was to look like a rooftop garden in perpetual
blossom. The columns of the Winter Garden were painted to look like tree
trunks, the walls were covered in garden scenes, and the ceiling was hung
with lanterns, blossoms and beech leaves.
Identical performances were shown on each of the two stages. A typical
performance would include about ten vaudeville acts, punctuated by newsreels
and a silent film. Performances would begin in the downstairs theatre, late
every morning, with the show continuing all day. Meanwhile, the Winter
Garden theatre would show the same performance only once, in the evening,
with higher ticket prices and reserved seating. In the time period,
vaudeville was the popular form of entertainment. However, within ten years
another entertainment form dawned ,which drew the curtain on the vaudeville
era - "talking movies" - movies with sound.
By 1930, the lower theatre was wired for movie sound, and live acts were no
longer shown. The upper theatre, the Winter Garden was shut up in 1928, and
abandoned for nearly six decades.
Twenty years ago, the building complex was purchased by the Ontario Heritage
Foundation and completely restored. The downstairs theatre had been renamed
the Elgin in 1978, and had run as a movie cinema until 1981. In the 1960s,
it had been a reputable institution, showing the Toronto premieres of movies
like "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz". However, the theatres
reputation declined with the quality of the movies that it showed - from "B
movies" and action films, to soft core pornography. The last movie shown in
the Elgin was entitled "What the Swedish Butler Saw."
When it was purchased by the Ontario Heritage Foundation, though, the
complex was completely restored and refurbished to its original vintage
condition of the pre-First World War era. For the volunteers who went in to
the Winter Garden to restore it, nearly sixty years after its closure, it
was like walking into an eerie time vault. Stage scenery was left abandoned
where it lay after the last act in 1928. Ticket stubs dropped by its last
patrons still lay fading under the seats. In the dressing rooms, costumes
lay discarded and actors notes were found, still pinned to the walls.
The fully restored theatre centre re-opened on December 15th, 1989, and has
been a financially self supporting project ever since.
The Ghosts of the Elgin & Winter Garden Theatres
The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres have a share of ghost lore appropriate
to such a gem of history within the boundaries of the city of Toronto. A
number of the stories come out of the time, twenty years ago now, when the
theatres were being restored. The Thomas Lamb lobby stretches eastward from
Yonge Street, and it is there that an apparition of a finely dressed woman
is seen. She appears wearing the customary dress of the Edwardian period,
just prior to the First World War, that dates back to when the theatre
complex first opened. People report seeing her manifest there, and they are
duly surprised. Often, they turn to capture the attention of a friend, but
when they turn back, she has vanished. No one seems to know the identity of
this woman, or why she would come back to haunt the lobby in her customary
style.
Just after live performances finally reappeared on the stage of the Elgin,
after its restoration, one of the stage producers reported seeing a number
of rows of the theatre seats fold down, as if some unseen, spectral audience
had just sat down to take in a show. A while later, the seats all flipped
back up, as if this ghostly audience had left, in mass.
The elevators in the lobby have been reported to operate on their own. They
have been restored to their original condition, which requires an operator
to manipulate them to and from the various floors. But whatever ghostly
inhabitants now ride them, they seem quite able to operate them on their
own.
The restoration of the 1980s was carried out in large part by a group of
layman volunteers. After a number of them had experienced a collection of
strange encounters, of sights, and sounds, and eerie sensations, a number of
them thought that it might be an interesting experiment to perform a seance.
No doubt some of the participants were avid believers, and probably a few
were just the tongue in cheek curious. Those who took part in the seance
claimed to come into contact with the spirit of a man named "Sam". Sam told
the eager audience that he had played the horn back in the vaudeville days.
The seance participants had a drawn out chat with Sam, but eventually asked
if there were any other spirits in residence, in the grand old theatres.
He replied that, without a doubt, there were many other ghosts around. They
asked if they could talk to some of these other ghosts, but Sam refused. It
seemed that after so many decades, Sam was finally enjoying the spotlight
too much to pass it off.
Not quite ghostly, but definitely grisly, was the Winter Garden's connection
with the famous American gangster, John Dillinger. During the restoration
period, the theatre seats of the Winter Garden were replaced with those
imported from the Biograph theatre in Chicago, Illinois. One of the seats
that arrived was upholstered in a different colour than the rest. It was
sent out and made uniform to blend in with the rest. After the new fabric
work was done, the seat was installed with all the others with no particular
annotation. Then, explanation for its variance arrived. Dillinger had been
a notorious and violent American bank robber, a former "most wanted man".
He had been lured to the theatre in Chicago one day by his ladyfriend, who
had been secretly conspiring with the FBI. She had tipped federal agents
off, and when Dillinger left the theatre one day in 1934 with his
girlfriend, clad in a vibrant red dress, the authorities sprang out of their
cars and riddled the 31 year old criminal with bullets. The seat which he
had been sitting in was upholstered to represent that this was his last
place of repose, before being cut down by the bullets of the law. His final
theatre seat now enjoys anonymity somewhere in the Winter Garden theatre,
and adds to the general air of mystery that abounds there.
In my brief time as a volunteer at the lavish Elgin Winter Garden Theatre
Centre, I have enjoyed wandering its silent halls as performances run on its
stages. It is a marvellous place, rich in compelling, historical mystery,
and I can say with confidence that it is very near the top of my list as a
favourite amongst all of Toronto's heritage buildings. The Centre
participates in Toronto's "Open Doors" weekend held each May, and guided
tours of about 90 minutes in length are held each Thursday evening, and on
Saturday mornings at 11.00 o'clock.
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©1997-2003 - GHRS - Ontario 100632991
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