Opened 1913 Years active 1913–present Province Ontario Owner Ontario Heritage Trust | Rebuilt 1987–1989 restoration Designated 1982 Phone +1 416-314-2901 Architect Thomas W. Lamb | |
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Type Edwardian stacked theatres Address 1M4, 189 Yonge St #620, Toronto, ON M5B 2H1, Canada | ||
The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres are a pair of stacked theatres located at 189 Yonge Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Winter Garden Theatre is seven storeys above the Elgin Theatre. They are the last surviving Edwardian stacked theatres in the world.
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Early history
The pair of theatres were originally built as the flagship of Marcus Loew's theatre chain in 1913. The building was designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb, who also designed the Ed Mirvish Theatre nearby.
Both theatres were built to show vaudeville acts and the short silent movies of the time. Each theatre was intended to compete in a different market.
The gold-and-marble, domed, 'hard-top' lower theatre (originally called Loew's Yonge Street Theatre) was home to continuous vaudeville and movies. The upper-level Winter Garden is an 'atmospheric' country garden under the stars. The upper theatre was built for the 'Big Time' vaudeville market and had reserved seats at premium prices, catering to the upper middle class. As well as competing in a different market, the upper theatre could be used for experimentation with acts, without the risk of closing the lower theatre.
By 1928, feature-length silent films were popular, but sound films were just coming into their own. In 1928, the lower theatre was converted to show sound films and the upper theatre was closed. The Winter Garden remained shuttered for about sixty years. Left inside it was a large collection of vaudeville flats and scenery, now the world's largest surviving collection. In 1969, Loews sold the Elgin to Famous Players. By the 1970s, the Elgin was showing mainly B movies and soft-core pornography.
Later history
In 1981, the Ontario Heritage Foundation bought the structure from Famous Players. The Cats musical was very successfully shown at the essentially unrestored Elgin, showing the viability of the theatre. The building was closed in 1987 to be fully restored, and then reopened in 1989.
In 1991, Dr. David Griesinger and Steve Barbar of Lexicon, Inc., at the request of acousticians Neil Muncy and Robert Tanner, installed the first production LARES system in the Elgin Theatre. LARES is an electroacoustic enhancement system that augments architectural acoustics. This initial LARES system used two microphones placed at the balcony's front edge to pick up sound from the stage. The microphone signals were digitized and processed in two mainframe computers, and the resulting signals were sent to 56 loudspeakers in the main ceiling and 60 under the balcony, for the purpose of providing additional intelligibility and ambience.
The Elgin Theatre was home to The Who's Tommy musical in the mid-1990s. It also housed the world premiere of the Napoleon musical in 1994. That musical transferred to London's West End in 2000. Since 1996, Ross Petty Productions has staged pantomimes at the Elgin Theatre each Christmas season.
From February 10 to 14, 2004, Conan O'Brien taped 4 episodes of NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien from the Elgin Theatre. The visit came about via the Toronto City Council's CDN$1 million (~US$750,000 at the time) payment to NBC in order to have the American late night television program come to Toronto for a week worth of shows, part of the overall council-funded PR effort of promoting Toronto as a tourist destination for Americans in the wake of the widely publicized summer 2003 Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic that had an adverse impact on the city's tourism industry.
The Elgin Theatre also serves as one of the hosts to the annual Toronto International Film Festival.
The location is the setting for the music video for the song "Changes" by Montreal band Stars, and the Winter Garden is the setting for part of the 1994 film Camilla.
The cover photos of Rush's 1981 live album Exit...Stage Left were shot at the Winter Garden and the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
The Elgin Theatre played host to the taping of Bryan Adams in Concert for the American broadcast of Great Performances on PBS. The show was filmed in July 2014 and first aired on March 2, 2015.