First off its address is 28 Elgin Street, Sudbury. It is still there although vacant and under threat.
The Theatre that was recently a bingo hall was the Capitol Theatre, it was demolished in 2006.
The Grand Theatre was built in 1908 at the rear of the Balmoral Hotel on Elm Street. Pictures of this can be seen at Sudbury Library website if you search the catalog. Also at the Ont Archives here. View link
It was run as part of the Grand circuit owned by Ambrose Small, who disappeared in 1919 without a trace. Small also ran/leased theatres in London, Toronto, Hamilton, Peterborough and Guelph.
It was renovated after ww2 and became the Empire Theatre.
In the 1990’s it was renovated again and became a nightclub/dance hall until closing last year.
The building is currently up for sale. An article about this is here. View link
Nope. Those pictures are of a theatre with the same name in Toronto, Australia.
There is an interior picture of this theatre in John Lindsey’s book TURN OUT THE STARS BEFORE LEAVING.It was originally known in the 1920’s as the Standard Theatre, and was home to Yiddish Vaudeville, as Spadina was the garment district of TO.
In the 40’s it became the Victory Theatre, and then later on the Victory Burlesque – which was quite the landmark in 1950’s Toronto, as it was the only legal place in the city where one could see (mostly) naked females.
In the 70’s it was subdevided, the balcony became the Golden Harvest Cinema, while the mainfloor and old stage house became restaurants and retail.
If anyone else gets into this theatre again would they please grab some pictures of the former backstage area on the east side of the building? Particularly the paint frame and the fly gallary/railings
You may have to brings some lights with you – this area likely doesn’t have any illumination at all…
Excellent! Thanks very much for this… Do you also have pictures of other Hamilton theatres? Been looking for pics of the Galt Capitol too.I would be most grateful to see some pictures of the Delta Theatre’s interior.
The listing from Ontario Archives says the pictures are from the 1940’s, and I haven’t seen them myself. I am going to make the pilgrimage to the archives myself very soon.
BTW I have a theatrical connection to the old Delta, in a rather oblique way. I wrote a stage adaptation of a book called MY FATHER’S HOUSE by Sylvia Fraser. One of the scenes in the play takes place in the auditorium of the old Delta… We have staged it four times now, and each time I have taken the actors to the outside of the apartments and showed them where the marquee once was, and the location of the former Main Street fire exit, now bricked up.
I have no idea alas who owns the building. I live in Hamilton, ONT which is about 90 minutes away. I would see this building every time I drove up to Owen Sound or Blyth… So I was looking for it in the Cinema Treasures listings… and when I didn’t find it I added the info myself. There have been a number of historic theatre’s knocked down in Ontario this past five years (Uptown in Toronto, Lyric in Kitchener, Grand Opera Houses in Barrie and St Catherines, Capitol in and Century in London)….
There are also many under real threat – Century in Hamilton, Heritage in Brampton and this one.. So I was hoping that someone might read this and start to care…
Here is the listing from the Julius Chan Guide (1902) about this theatre.
HAMILTON Pop., 65,000. Grand
Opera House. C. J. Whitney and A. J.
Small, lessees and mgrs. A. R. Loudon,
local representative. S. c., 1,144. Ilium.,
elec. no direct, 104 alt. E. Lavis, stage
carp. Width proscenium opening, 30 ft.
Height, 27 ft. Depth, footlights to back
wall, 36 ft. Dist. curtain line to foot-
lights, 2 ft. Dist. bet. side walls, 55 ft.
Dist. bet. fly girders, 46 ft. Stage to fly
gallery, 23 ft. Stage to rigging loft, 6V
ft. No grooves. Depth under stage, 8
ft. 4 traps, i bridge, in 3 sections, locat-
ed back of 4. Scene room. Theatre on
ground floor. I. A. Lomas, leader of or-
chestra. 7 in orchestra. Printing re-
quired, 12 stands, 60 3-sheets, 400 lithos,
heralds, etc. Dates read, Grand Opera
House. Culhane Bill-Posting Co.
Newspapers “Spectator,” daily, even-
ing, Mr. Mitchell. “Herald,” daily, even-
ing, Mr. Pasmore. “Times,” daily, even-
ing, Mr. Davis.
Hotels St. Nicholas, $1.25 and $i.
Royal, $2. Commercial, $i. New Wal-
dorff, $1.50.
Railroads G. T. R., C. E. Morgan,
agt. Can. Pac., W. J. Grant, agt. Cana-
dian Transfer Co.
Its use a cinema is likely gone. There is a multiplex in the area.
This however was live theatre long before the coming of motion pictures. I would hope that it could be restored to form some kind of summer stock theatre/performing arts venue. It has a full fly gallery although long abandoned.
According to the SPEC, they say they need $12 to restore the auditorium and to build an entirely new structure to replace what was lost in 2004. I have heard rumblings that the paperwork/feasibility studies are being done in order to access the funding.
I am hopeful! But I haven’t really heard much in a while.. That’s why I was pleased to see the recent (january 2008) pictures.
We formed a non profit theatre company called the Tivoli Theatre Foundation, and lasted about 14 months before we went broke.
A church group Crossfire moved in after us (covering up the statues!), they lasted until 1994. Then in 1995 Loren Lieberman moved in with the Tivoli Renaissance Project, later merged with Creative Arts Inc. They were running the building until the disaster with the front wall collapsing in 2004.
I wrote an impassioned article in the HAMILTON SPECTATOR arguing for the theatre’s preservation at the time. And I was absolutely delighted when the Ballet bought the theatre for $1 from the Sniderman Family, Because they want it to survive as a theatre venue.There is a wonderful TV series called SLINGS AND ARROWS that filmed at the Tivoli in 2003. There are great images of the theatre in it.
oops that should read NOT allowed in because of the adult films.. ;–)
In 1990 I was part of the group that reopened the Tivoli as a live venue for theatre productions and concerts. I literally got to take down the movie screen, which was on scaffolding and clear away a giant set of “voice of the theatre” speakers..
I re-rigged the 1924 hemp fly gallery with fresh rope, built a 16 foot fore-stage over what used to be the orchestra pit, and with plywood and Masonite covered over the footlight troughs. I hung lighting pipes in the auditorium being very careful not to damage the plasterwork… In short we proved that it could be a viable space for performance.
I produced a play by Douglas Rodger called HOW COULD YOU MRS DICK about the Evelyn Dick Murder case of the 1946. 30,000 people came to see the play over the next 3 months.
We opened the play 53 years to the night that Evelyn attended the Tivoli to see a film with her boyfiend Bill Bohozek
I was really excited to see these myself. Because it shows that the auditorium has survived and is in one piece barring some water damage to the plasterwork.I have a real history with this theatre myself.
First film I saw here was MESSAGE FROM SPACE a japanese version of STAR WARS in the spring of 1978. Before that it showed “adult” films, so I was allowed in.
This was the theatre when I was a kid where all of the big blockbusters… EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, STAR TREK 1, 2, 3, 2010: ODDESSY CONTINUES, BLADERUNNER, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, THE WALL.
I have really strong memories of attending to see movies. Often on the night the film premiered.
THE DEATH OF VENUS
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
by Dimitrios Otis-contributing writer
Gazing around the dim interior of the Venus Theatre, Michael Turner is sad. The Vancouver author has been told the longtime porn palace in the Downtown Eastside will soon be demolished.
A shabby curtain partially obscures a few men sitting on metal chairs on the flat main floor of the cavernous auditorium. On the big screen is a fuzzy video image of bluish skin, beaming out from a large, antiquated floor projector. Turner has returned for a last look. He first came here in 1978. He was underage and the experience made such an impression on him that he used it as the opening to his novel The Pornographer’s Poem, which won a B.C. Book Prize in 2000.
“I was in Grade 10 when I first went to the Venus Theatre,” Turner tells me. “It was a wet November night and I was with one of my best friends. We had a desire to see what lay behind those tiny adult film ads in the Province newspaper’s sports section.”
What lay behind those tiny ads were giant celluloid bodies writhing in lurid colour, and there have been a lot of them since the Venus Theatre started showing sex movies in 1970. But the building and much of the block will soon be yet another condominium development.
Most of us have passed by the grimy washed-out pink stucco structure at 720 Main St. Far fewer have dared enter, especially since tales of drug use, low-track prostitution and public sex inside the theatre have surfaced, including an award-winning expose in this paper in 2004.
So as word got out in the fall of 2006 that Vancouver-based Porte Realty had bought the property, along with most of that entire block, there was little lament. Porte plans to restore three buildings at the corner of Main and Georgia streets that comprise the Hotel Pacific. They will become non-market housing, and the Imperial will make way for nine floors of market condos with a standard main level of retail. People may gripe about yet more condos going up in the Downtown Eastside but there will surely be line-ups to buy in. Throughout its long history, there was rarely a line-up at the Venus.
News of the redevelopment was noticed by heritage researchers, who belatedly noted that the building the Venus occupies is actually an original vaudeville theatre, called the Imperial, which opened in 1912. At a meeting of the Vancouver Heritage Commission on Dec. 11, 2006 at city hall, the “history/heritage value” of the Imperial building was considered. But the commission merely recommended “the commemoration of the historic Imperial Theatre in an appropriate form.” One translation of that recommendation could mean merely putting up a plaque.
But the Imperial is one of the last examples of Vancouver’s original theatres on the East Side, and spaces like it are much needed by arts groups in the city. A few blocks away, the Pantages Theatre is being restored to the tune of $10 million. Why no save-the-Imperial campaign?
“The Imperial’s fate was sealed by the time the developer walked into city hall,” says heritage advocate and historian John Atkins, referring to the power of the Vancouver Heritage Register in determining the preservation or destruction of an old building in this city.
Adopted in 1986, the Vancouver Heritage Register cannot legally protect a structure but it does have various processes and incentives that go a long way towards keeping a heritage building up. The three buildings of the Hotel Pacific that Porte will restore are all on the heritage register. The Imperial/Venus building is not. “You are starting from a losing position,” says Atkins.
The City of Vancouver website states that in forming the register, a study team looked “at every street in the city to identify notable buildings.” Atkins refers to this as a “drive by” and suggests that “a pink porno theatre on the East Side obviously didn’t impress the surveyors.”
Why is the Imperial building worth preserving? “For one thing, it’s still standing,” he says.
But he’s one of the few people willing to speak up on the building’s behalf. When the Venus comes down and the new tower comes up, maybe someone will open an adult DVD store on the retail level and call it The Venus in tribute.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. The Imperial Theatre began life proudly, built for the Canadian Theatre and Amusement Company in 1912. George B. Purvis was architect and proprietor was J. J. McDonald. According to an Anvil Press publication The Door Is Open, by Bart Campbell, the Imperial “alternated vaudeville acts and movies,” and legendary performers such as Jack Benny and the Marx Brothers played there.
Unfortunately the downward spiral began early. Shows moved on from the Imperial quickly. The popular local wife-and-husband acting team of Isabelle Fletcher and Charles Ayres started a stock company at the theatre but failed to produce a hit. Archived newspaper articles blame variously the competition from the more established Avenue Theatre across the street (now demolished), the shift in locale of the entertainment district north to Hastings, the rise of motion pictures, or some mysterious jinx.
An interesting Chinatown connection emerged in the 1920s when Chinese businessmen turned the Imperial into a Cantonese opera house. Wing Chung Ng, UBC doctoral graduate and professor of history at University of Texas at Austin, studies the history of Cantonese Opera in Vancouver and provided key information from the local Chinese-language newspaper The Chinese Times: “According to a theatre ad on Sept 1, 1921, a group of nine Chinese merchants acquired the use of the former Imperial Theatre and turned it into an opera house for troupes from China. The first such company arrived in Vancouver on Sept. 5 and started performing on the evening of Sept 9. The troupe was called Lok Man Lin, and its season lasted till February of 1922.”
But by 1927, the Imperial was no longer an entertainment house of any kind. It had been re-christened a “temple”-first the Pyramid then the Emanuel-as suited its new purpose as a Pentecostal church. Unfortunately, God also wasn’t a smash at the venue and by 1932 it fell into the City of Vancouver’s hands as a result of tax arrears.
The Imperial then narrowly avoided demolition. A 1943 Vancouver News-Herald article reported that city council considered replacing the Imperial with three stores, “but when it was figured that to tear down the old building and erect the stores would cost around $10,000 the plan was declared uneconomic and dropped.”
The Imperial postponed its date with destiny, only to be resurrected rather ignobly as Walsh’s Auto
Parts and Wrecking. A 1941 local newspaper article by Ernest Walter floridly relates that “where now stands a grimy-faced lad, beating a mudguard into shape with a hammer, the heroine once stood and shrieked, ‘Unhand me, Colonel Cordite!’”
Dismantling old cars onstage occurred daily for an unprecedented 27-year run. When it ended in 1967 the theatre was left a greasy relic. But amazingly the old Imperial was reinvented once more.
The City of Vancouver Archives hold a single sheet of typed information on the Imperial, which lists use as a “Chinese moving picture house.” As for the date, the anonymous researcher only noted, “at one time; when, don’t know.” But indeed a man named Henry Chow had bought the building with plans to show old movies from Hong Kong. A full renovation was done. Barry Godfrey, the late Chow’s son-in-law, recalls that Chow “did show the Chinese movies, but it only lasted a month or two.”
So Chow changed plans and the Night & Day theatre was born in 1970, given over to adults-only 16mm films. Cinemas dedicated to skin flicks were still spreading across North America and this was the first one in Vancouver. By comparison, the venerable “art house” Pacific Cinematheque didn’t open until 1972. In a curious mirroring of the building’s vaudeville-and-movie roots, the Night & Day also featured exotic dancers performing on stage between reel changes.
The films themselves were amateur at best, often starring San Francisco hippies. One such film, entitled Dirt Bike Banger, is so drearily awful, and has so little sex (which is simulated anyway) or even nudity that one wonders how even the most titillation-desperate patron could have tolerated it. The best part is the opening shot of a motorcycle being parked.
Yet the customers still came, and when the theatre was renamed Venus in 1978, it had its own in-house logo, which proudly showed at the beginning of the movies, along with a strip of film that declared “good clean sex.” By the mid-‘90s management installed video equipment, though Godfrey notes that as late as 2000, when he sold the business, he was still showing films occasionally, “because our regular customers liked some of them.”
It was the “tiny ad” campaign of the Venus that caught the eye of a certain precocious future writer. Powerful as young Michael Turner’s triple-bill experience was, he didn’t return for another 20 years. “This time it was to make sure I got the opening of The Pornographer’s Poem right” he tells me. “Just being there-closing my eyes and taking it in-brought back more than expected.”
Turner describes in his novel how his fictional counterpart encountered the Venus: “I step into the light. The silver light. Hundreds of seats. The backs of 10 heads. Silhouetted_ I still can’t see. But I end up front-and-centre. A mystery to me. To this day.”
Porte Realty spent $5.16 million acquiring six properties in the 700 block of Main Street. One property not for sale was the small red brick building beside the Venus. Leo Chow has operated his Brickhouse bar in the back for 15 years, proudly calling it a “non-trendy local tavern.” As the Venus’s closest neighbour, Chow has seen it all. “It’s the end of an era whatever people think of it,” he says, admitting he does have “a problem with the drug activity and shady people” that have been more frequent in recent years. As for his upcoming spiffy new neighbours as potential patrons of the Brickhouse, Chow is undecided. “The condos are sort of like a mixed blessing. Places like the Venus are what make these areas edgy and create a certain mystique. Hopefully this will not change the dynamic.”
The edgy little secret of the remaining adult movie theatres is that while they show strictly “straight” porn, the clientele is largely men seeking the sexual company of other men. But the Venus is different. Not only is it rare enough as a survivor but its particular locale has made it into a specialized zone of social interaction.
The Downtown Eastside has long been an open market for hard drugs as well as women who are addicted to them. And since the Venus is an accessible and extremely dark space nearby, it has become a haven for both of these activities. While the male action takes place on the main floor, the prostitutes work the balcony-their efforts highlighted by flares off the occasional crack cocaine pipe.
The conditions for the working girls in the balcony was covered in the 2004 Courier feature. The Venus’s off-the-street environment protects the prostitutes from the danger of violence from predators in anonymous cars, but according to prostitution activist Jamie Lee Hamilton, that security is offset by male patrons taking excessive liberties with vulnerable hookers. “Too often the house girls of the Venus were subjected to abuse and degradation,” she says. “While I’m not unhappy to see the Venus finally close. I am concerned over what the future may bring for these girls who will now be forced out onto the street.”
For now, a unique and vital culture, however illicit, thrives inside the Imperial building, drawing together elements mainstream society wants hidden-pornography, gay cruising, prostitution and drug use. Is the proprietor who turns a blind eye uncaring or merely facilitating a needed function in society?
The current Venus owners are a married couple from mainland China with no particular interest in adult movies. When I first began researching the Venus several years back, the husband, Dong Xu, quickly asked if I wanted to buy the old stockpile of adult films that previous owners had left behind. (I am now an expert on the divergent sociological underpinnings between Million Dollar Mona and Hundred Dollar Wife.)
Yet if there is a potential hitch in the developer’s plans, it is not city hall but Dong Xu. With translation help from an employee named Philip, Dong assures me he has “four and a half years left on our lease” and everything is business as usual.
But heritage advocate John Atkins has resigned himself to the Imperial’s fate, a reminder that “lack of historical context lets buildings get overlooked.” He hopes to at least document the inside of the Imperial before it goes. “A proper survey of the interior would probably uncover more of the original design than people assume is there,” he says.
While the stigma of porn may have led heritage arbiters to overlook the Imperial Theatre, it is true that most of the interior and the exterior of the building were long ago stripped of their original features. The Heritage Commission underscored this in its statement of regret on the “loss of the remnants of the historic Imperial Theatre Building.”
“Built heritage” is the focus of most formal heritage groups, and the city’s heritage register also bases evaluations on the physical structure. But the quality of “heritage value” is also defined as having “historical, cultural, aesthetic, scientific or educational worth.” According to some, the Venus has much of this second kind of heritage, one not so much reliant on the architecture as the unspoken layers of personal meaning for people who function within it.
Turner notes the full flowering of that culture on his last visit to the Venus. On a tour through the building we find ourselves in the original projection room with the two Eiki 520 Premier projectors abandoned on a table and aiming their lenses toward the screen below where Turner and friend sat over 25 years ago. “What we saw in the Venus that night provided us a private language that we continue to use to this day,” Turner comments.
For him, the Venus is about the “sexscapes” he saw during his final visit. “The place is in a state of disrepair, no longer functioning as a site for viewing stuff on a screen, but one where people turned tricks in the balcony, while others sat around and watched. I had never seen anything like it. It might sound revolting to some, but that’s what I’ll miss when they tear this building down. Not the building, but the behaviour. What went on inside it.”
See related story “Ed Wood’s final film discovered at Venus Theatre”
This theatre has sadly been demolished as noted by others.
This info was on another website.
The Imperial opened on Oct. 14, 1912 with the Sheehan English Opera Co. (“chorus of 40, orchestra of 40”), which performed Il Trovatore, The Chimes of Normandy and The Bohemian Girl. Tickets were 50 cents to $2, at a time when you could get into other theatres for 10 cents.
Like many theatres it suffered during the Great Depression and was converted into Walsh’s Auto Wrecking in 1938. Walsh’s moved out in 1967, and in 1970 it was converted back to a movie theatre.
Pics are here of the demolition.
Click on visual database about half way down on the left
Type in the words “Palace Theatre Hamilton” into the search box.
and four pictures of the Palace will appear.
You can download them, you just can’t reproduce them or post them anywhere without permission from the archive.
Any idea of what the interior might be like today?
Did it have a very large balcony? Normally there would be a fire escape on the outside of the building.
Is there any interest in saving this theatre or is the medical centre a done deal?
I have been doing some research on this theatre.
First off its address is 28 Elgin Street, Sudbury. It is still there although vacant and under threat.
The Theatre that was recently a bingo hall was the Capitol Theatre, it was demolished in 2006.
The Grand Theatre was built in 1908 at the rear of the Balmoral Hotel on Elm Street. Pictures of this can be seen at Sudbury Library website if you search the catalog. Also at the Ont Archives here.
View link
It was run as part of the Grand circuit owned by Ambrose Small, who disappeared in 1919 without a trace. Small also ran/leased theatres in London, Toronto, Hamilton, Peterborough and Guelph.
It was renovated after ww2 and became the Empire Theatre.
In the 1990’s it was renovated again and became a nightclub/dance hall until closing last year.
The building is currently up for sale. An article about this is here.
View link
The nightclubs website is still up there are recent interior pictures there
http://www.thegrandsudbury.ca/TheGrand/index.html
Nope. Those pictures are of a theatre with the same name in Toronto, Australia.
There is an interior picture of this theatre in John Lindsey’s book TURN OUT THE STARS BEFORE LEAVING.It was originally known in the 1920’s as the Standard Theatre, and was home to Yiddish Vaudeville, as Spadina was the garment district of TO.
In the 40’s it became the Victory Theatre, and then later on the Victory Burlesque – which was quite the landmark in 1950’s Toronto, as it was the only legal place in the city where one could see (mostly) naked females.
In the 70’s it was subdevided, the balcony became the Golden Harvest Cinema, while the mainfloor and old stage house became restaurants and retail.
If anyone else gets into this theatre again would they please grab some pictures of the former backstage area on the east side of the building? Particularly the paint frame and the fly gallary/railings
You may have to brings some lights with you – this area likely doesn’t have any illumination at all…
Thanks
Excellent! Thanks very much for this… Do you also have pictures of other Hamilton theatres? Been looking for pics of the Galt Capitol too.I would be most grateful to see some pictures of the Delta Theatre’s interior.
The listing from Ontario Archives says the pictures are from the 1940’s, and I haven’t seen them myself. I am going to make the pilgrimage to the archives myself very soon.
BTW I have a theatrical connection to the old Delta, in a rather oblique way. I wrote a stage adaptation of a book called MY FATHER’S HOUSE by Sylvia Fraser. One of the scenes in the play takes place in the auditorium of the old Delta… We have staged it four times now, and each time I have taken the actors to the outside of the apartments and showed them where the marquee once was, and the location of the former Main Street fire exit, now bricked up.
I found some more pictures here
View link
Info on the Houdini connection is here
View link
Also a nice picture of the exterior from the 1920’s is here
View link
I have no idea alas who owns the building. I live in Hamilton, ONT which is about 90 minutes away. I would see this building every time I drove up to Owen Sound or Blyth… So I was looking for it in the Cinema Treasures listings… and when I didn’t find it I added the info myself. There have been a number of historic theatre’s knocked down in Ontario this past five years (Uptown in Toronto, Lyric in Kitchener, Grand Opera Houses in Barrie and St Catherines, Capitol in and Century in London)….
There are also many under real threat – Century in Hamilton, Heritage in Brampton and this one.. So I was hoping that someone might read this and start to care…
There is also an exterior photo of the Tivoli Theatre and its neighbor the Grand Opera House from 1923 at this site here
http://www.architecturehamilton.com/tours.html
Picture is the black and white one second down
There is also an exterior photo of the Grand Theatre and its neighbor the Tivoli Theatre from 1923 at this site here
http://www.architecturehamilton.com/tours.html
Picture is the black and white one second down
Here is the listing from the Julius Chan Guide (1902) about this theatre.
HAMILTON Pop., 65,000. Grand
Opera House. C. J. Whitney and A. J.
Small, lessees and mgrs. A. R. Loudon,
local representative. S. c., 1,144. Ilium.,
elec. no direct, 104 alt. E. Lavis, stage
carp. Width proscenium opening, 30 ft.
Height, 27 ft. Depth, footlights to back
wall, 36 ft. Dist. curtain line to foot-
lights, 2 ft. Dist. bet. side walls, 55 ft.
Dist. bet. fly girders, 46 ft. Stage to fly
gallery, 23 ft. Stage to rigging loft, 6V
ft. No grooves. Depth under stage, 8
ft. 4 traps, i bridge, in 3 sections, locat-
ed back of 4. Scene room. Theatre on
ground floor. I. A. Lomas, leader of or-
chestra. 7 in orchestra. Printing re-
quired, 12 stands, 60 3-sheets, 400 lithos,
heralds, etc. Dates read, Grand Opera
House. Culhane Bill-Posting Co.
Newspapers “Spectator,” daily, even-
ing, Mr. Mitchell. “Herald,” daily, even-
ing, Mr. Pasmore. “Times,” daily, even-
ing, Mr. Davis.
Hotels St. Nicholas, $1.25 and $i.
Royal, $2. Commercial, $i. New Wal-
dorff, $1.50.
Railroads G. T. R., C. E. Morgan,
agt. Can. Pac., W. J. Grant, agt. Cana-
dian Transfer Co.
Its use a cinema is likely gone. There is a multiplex in the area.
This however was live theatre long before the coming of motion pictures. I would hope that it could be restored to form some kind of summer stock theatre/performing arts venue. It has a full fly gallery although long abandoned.
According to the SPEC, they say they need $12 to restore the auditorium and to build an entirely new structure to replace what was lost in 2004. I have heard rumblings that the paperwork/feasibility studies are being done in order to access the funding.
I am hopeful! But I haven’t really heard much in a while.. That’s why I was pleased to see the recent (january 2008) pictures.
Perhaps someone else would know more?
We formed a non profit theatre company called the Tivoli Theatre Foundation, and lasted about 14 months before we went broke.
A church group Crossfire moved in after us (covering up the statues!), they lasted until 1994. Then in 1995 Loren Lieberman moved in with the Tivoli Renaissance Project, later merged with Creative Arts Inc. They were running the building until the disaster with the front wall collapsing in 2004.
I wrote an impassioned article in the HAMILTON SPECTATOR arguing for the theatre’s preservation at the time. And I was absolutely delighted when the Ballet bought the theatre for $1 from the Sniderman Family, Because they want it to survive as a theatre venue.There is a wonderful TV series called SLINGS AND ARROWS that filmed at the Tivoli in 2003. There are great images of the theatre in it.
oops that should read NOT allowed in because of the adult films.. ;–)
In 1990 I was part of the group that reopened the Tivoli as a live venue for theatre productions and concerts. I literally got to take down the movie screen, which was on scaffolding and clear away a giant set of “voice of the theatre” speakers..
I re-rigged the 1924 hemp fly gallery with fresh rope, built a 16 foot fore-stage over what used to be the orchestra pit, and with plywood and Masonite covered over the footlight troughs. I hung lighting pipes in the auditorium being very careful not to damage the plasterwork… In short we proved that it could be a viable space for performance.
I produced a play by Douglas Rodger called HOW COULD YOU MRS DICK about the Evelyn Dick Murder case of the 1946. 30,000 people came to see the play over the next 3 months.
We opened the play 53 years to the night that Evelyn attended the Tivoli to see a film with her boyfiend Bill Bohozek
MJC
I was really excited to see these myself. Because it shows that the auditorium has survived and is in one piece barring some water damage to the plasterwork.I have a real history with this theatre myself.
First film I saw here was MESSAGE FROM SPACE a japanese version of STAR WARS in the spring of 1978. Before that it showed “adult” films, so I was allowed in.
This was the theatre when I was a kid where all of the big blockbusters… EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, STAR TREK 1, 2, 3, 2010: ODDESSY CONTINUES, BLADERUNNER, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, THE WALL.
I have really strong memories of attending to see movies. Often on the night the film premiered.
This is a recent picture interior of the Westdale theatre. A place have seen many a film in…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wootam/3044998/
I attended this cinema many times when I was a student in Montreal 1986-88
Here be some great period images
View link
There is a picture here.
View link
Friday, March 09, 2007
THE DEATH OF VENUS
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
by Dimitrios Otis-contributing writer
Gazing around the dim interior of the Venus Theatre, Michael Turner is sad. The Vancouver author has been told the longtime porn palace in the Downtown Eastside will soon be demolished.
A shabby curtain partially obscures a few men sitting on metal chairs on the flat main floor of the cavernous auditorium. On the big screen is a fuzzy video image of bluish skin, beaming out from a large, antiquated floor projector. Turner has returned for a last look. He first came here in 1978. He was underage and the experience made such an impression on him that he used it as the opening to his novel The Pornographer’s Poem, which won a B.C. Book Prize in 2000.
“I was in Grade 10 when I first went to the Venus Theatre,” Turner tells me. “It was a wet November night and I was with one of my best friends. We had a desire to see what lay behind those tiny adult film ads in the Province newspaper’s sports section.”
What lay behind those tiny ads were giant celluloid bodies writhing in lurid colour, and there have been a lot of them since the Venus Theatre started showing sex movies in 1970. But the building and much of the block will soon be yet another condominium development.
Most of us have passed by the grimy washed-out pink stucco structure at 720 Main St. Far fewer have dared enter, especially since tales of drug use, low-track prostitution and public sex inside the theatre have surfaced, including an award-winning expose in this paper in 2004.
So as word got out in the fall of 2006 that Vancouver-based Porte Realty had bought the property, along with most of that entire block, there was little lament. Porte plans to restore three buildings at the corner of Main and Georgia streets that comprise the Hotel Pacific. They will become non-market housing, and the Imperial will make way for nine floors of market condos with a standard main level of retail. People may gripe about yet more condos going up in the Downtown Eastside but there will surely be line-ups to buy in. Throughout its long history, there was rarely a line-up at the Venus.
News of the redevelopment was noticed by heritage researchers, who belatedly noted that the building the Venus occupies is actually an original vaudeville theatre, called the Imperial, which opened in 1912. At a meeting of the Vancouver Heritage Commission on Dec. 11, 2006 at city hall, the “history/heritage value” of the Imperial building was considered. But the commission merely recommended “the commemoration of the historic Imperial Theatre in an appropriate form.” One translation of that recommendation could mean merely putting up a plaque.
But the Imperial is one of the last examples of Vancouver’s original theatres on the East Side, and spaces like it are much needed by arts groups in the city. A few blocks away, the Pantages Theatre is being restored to the tune of $10 million. Why no save-the-Imperial campaign?
“The Imperial’s fate was sealed by the time the developer walked into city hall,” says heritage advocate and historian John Atkins, referring to the power of the Vancouver Heritage Register in determining the preservation or destruction of an old building in this city.
Adopted in 1986, the Vancouver Heritage Register cannot legally protect a structure but it does have various processes and incentives that go a long way towards keeping a heritage building up. The three buildings of the Hotel Pacific that Porte will restore are all on the heritage register. The Imperial/Venus building is not. “You are starting from a losing position,” says Atkins.
The City of Vancouver website states that in forming the register, a study team looked “at every street in the city to identify notable buildings.” Atkins refers to this as a “drive by” and suggests that “a pink porno theatre on the East Side obviously didn’t impress the surveyors.”
Why is the Imperial building worth preserving? “For one thing, it’s still standing,” he says.
But he’s one of the few people willing to speak up on the building’s behalf. When the Venus comes down and the new tower comes up, maybe someone will open an adult DVD store on the retail level and call it The Venus in tribute.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. The Imperial Theatre began life proudly, built for the Canadian Theatre and Amusement Company in 1912. George B. Purvis was architect and proprietor was J. J. McDonald. According to an Anvil Press publication The Door Is Open, by Bart Campbell, the Imperial “alternated vaudeville acts and movies,” and legendary performers such as Jack Benny and the Marx Brothers played there.
Unfortunately the downward spiral began early. Shows moved on from the Imperial quickly. The popular local wife-and-husband acting team of Isabelle Fletcher and Charles Ayres started a stock company at the theatre but failed to produce a hit. Archived newspaper articles blame variously the competition from the more established Avenue Theatre across the street (now demolished), the shift in locale of the entertainment district north to Hastings, the rise of motion pictures, or some mysterious jinx.
An interesting Chinatown connection emerged in the 1920s when Chinese businessmen turned the Imperial into a Cantonese opera house. Wing Chung Ng, UBC doctoral graduate and professor of history at University of Texas at Austin, studies the history of Cantonese Opera in Vancouver and provided key information from the local Chinese-language newspaper The Chinese Times: “According to a theatre ad on Sept 1, 1921, a group of nine Chinese merchants acquired the use of the former Imperial Theatre and turned it into an opera house for troupes from China. The first such company arrived in Vancouver on Sept. 5 and started performing on the evening of Sept 9. The troupe was called Lok Man Lin, and its season lasted till February of 1922.”
But by 1927, the Imperial was no longer an entertainment house of any kind. It had been re-christened a “temple”-first the Pyramid then the Emanuel-as suited its new purpose as a Pentecostal church. Unfortunately, God also wasn’t a smash at the venue and by 1932 it fell into the City of Vancouver’s hands as a result of tax arrears.
The Imperial then narrowly avoided demolition. A 1943 Vancouver News-Herald article reported that city council considered replacing the Imperial with three stores, “but when it was figured that to tear down the old building and erect the stores would cost around $10,000 the plan was declared uneconomic and dropped.”
The Imperial postponed its date with destiny, only to be resurrected rather ignobly as Walsh’s Auto
Parts and Wrecking. A 1941 local newspaper article by Ernest Walter floridly relates that “where now stands a grimy-faced lad, beating a mudguard into shape with a hammer, the heroine once stood and shrieked, ‘Unhand me, Colonel Cordite!’”
Dismantling old cars onstage occurred daily for an unprecedented 27-year run. When it ended in 1967 the theatre was left a greasy relic. But amazingly the old Imperial was reinvented once more.
The City of Vancouver Archives hold a single sheet of typed information on the Imperial, which lists use as a “Chinese moving picture house.” As for the date, the anonymous researcher only noted, “at one time; when, don’t know.” But indeed a man named Henry Chow had bought the building with plans to show old movies from Hong Kong. A full renovation was done. Barry Godfrey, the late Chow’s son-in-law, recalls that Chow “did show the Chinese movies, but it only lasted a month or two.”
So Chow changed plans and the Night & Day theatre was born in 1970, given over to adults-only 16mm films. Cinemas dedicated to skin flicks were still spreading across North America and this was the first one in Vancouver. By comparison, the venerable “art house” Pacific Cinematheque didn’t open until 1972. In a curious mirroring of the building’s vaudeville-and-movie roots, the Night & Day also featured exotic dancers performing on stage between reel changes.
The films themselves were amateur at best, often starring San Francisco hippies. One such film, entitled Dirt Bike Banger, is so drearily awful, and has so little sex (which is simulated anyway) or even nudity that one wonders how even the most titillation-desperate patron could have tolerated it. The best part is the opening shot of a motorcycle being parked.
Yet the customers still came, and when the theatre was renamed Venus in 1978, it had its own in-house logo, which proudly showed at the beginning of the movies, along with a strip of film that declared “good clean sex.” By the mid-‘90s management installed video equipment, though Godfrey notes that as late as 2000, when he sold the business, he was still showing films occasionally, “because our regular customers liked some of them.”
It was the “tiny ad” campaign of the Venus that caught the eye of a certain precocious future writer. Powerful as young Michael Turner’s triple-bill experience was, he didn’t return for another 20 years. “This time it was to make sure I got the opening of The Pornographer’s Poem right” he tells me. “Just being there-closing my eyes and taking it in-brought back more than expected.”
Turner describes in his novel how his fictional counterpart encountered the Venus: “I step into the light. The silver light. Hundreds of seats. The backs of 10 heads. Silhouetted_ I still can’t see. But I end up front-and-centre. A mystery to me. To this day.”
Porte Realty spent $5.16 million acquiring six properties in the 700 block of Main Street. One property not for sale was the small red brick building beside the Venus. Leo Chow has operated his Brickhouse bar in the back for 15 years, proudly calling it a “non-trendy local tavern.” As the Venus’s closest neighbour, Chow has seen it all. “It’s the end of an era whatever people think of it,” he says, admitting he does have “a problem with the drug activity and shady people” that have been more frequent in recent years. As for his upcoming spiffy new neighbours as potential patrons of the Brickhouse, Chow is undecided. “The condos are sort of like a mixed blessing. Places like the Venus are what make these areas edgy and create a certain mystique. Hopefully this will not change the dynamic.”
The edgy little secret of the remaining adult movie theatres is that while they show strictly “straight” porn, the clientele is largely men seeking the sexual company of other men. But the Venus is different. Not only is it rare enough as a survivor but its particular locale has made it into a specialized zone of social interaction.
The Downtown Eastside has long been an open market for hard drugs as well as women who are addicted to them. And since the Venus is an accessible and extremely dark space nearby, it has become a haven for both of these activities. While the male action takes place on the main floor, the prostitutes work the balcony-their efforts highlighted by flares off the occasional crack cocaine pipe.
The conditions for the working girls in the balcony was covered in the 2004 Courier feature. The Venus’s off-the-street environment protects the prostitutes from the danger of violence from predators in anonymous cars, but according to prostitution activist Jamie Lee Hamilton, that security is offset by male patrons taking excessive liberties with vulnerable hookers. “Too often the house girls of the Venus were subjected to abuse and degradation,” she says. “While I’m not unhappy to see the Venus finally close. I am concerned over what the future may bring for these girls who will now be forced out onto the street.”
For now, a unique and vital culture, however illicit, thrives inside the Imperial building, drawing together elements mainstream society wants hidden-pornography, gay cruising, prostitution and drug use. Is the proprietor who turns a blind eye uncaring or merely facilitating a needed function in society?
The current Venus owners are a married couple from mainland China with no particular interest in adult movies. When I first began researching the Venus several years back, the husband, Dong Xu, quickly asked if I wanted to buy the old stockpile of adult films that previous owners had left behind. (I am now an expert on the divergent sociological underpinnings between Million Dollar Mona and Hundred Dollar Wife.)
Yet if there is a potential hitch in the developer’s plans, it is not city hall but Dong Xu. With translation help from an employee named Philip, Dong assures me he has “four and a half years left on our lease” and everything is business as usual.
But heritage advocate John Atkins has resigned himself to the Imperial’s fate, a reminder that “lack of historical context lets buildings get overlooked.” He hopes to at least document the inside of the Imperial before it goes. “A proper survey of the interior would probably uncover more of the original design than people assume is there,” he says.
While the stigma of porn may have led heritage arbiters to overlook the Imperial Theatre, it is true that most of the interior and the exterior of the building were long ago stripped of their original features. The Heritage Commission underscored this in its statement of regret on the “loss of the remnants of the historic Imperial Theatre Building.”
“Built heritage” is the focus of most formal heritage groups, and the city’s heritage register also bases evaluations on the physical structure. But the quality of “heritage value” is also defined as having “historical, cultural, aesthetic, scientific or educational worth.” According to some, the Venus has much of this second kind of heritage, one not so much reliant on the architecture as the unspoken layers of personal meaning for people who function within it.
Turner notes the full flowering of that culture on his last visit to the Venus. On a tour through the building we find ourselves in the original projection room with the two Eiki 520 Premier projectors abandoned on a table and aiming their lenses toward the screen below where Turner and friend sat over 25 years ago. “What we saw in the Venus that night provided us a private language that we continue to use to this day,” Turner comments.
For him, the Venus is about the “sexscapes” he saw during his final visit. “The place is in a state of disrepair, no longer functioning as a site for viewing stuff on a screen, but one where people turned tricks in the balcony, while others sat around and watched. I had never seen anything like it. It might sound revolting to some, but that’s what I’ll miss when they tear this building down. Not the building, but the behaviour. What went on inside it.”
See related story “Ed Wood’s final film discovered at Venus Theatre”
published in Vancouver Courier on 03/07/2007
This theatre has sadly been demolished as noted by others.
This info was on another website.
The Imperial opened on Oct. 14, 1912 with the Sheehan English Opera Co. (“chorus of 40, orchestra of 40”), which performed Il Trovatore, The Chimes of Normandy and The Bohemian Girl. Tickets were 50 cents to $2, at a time when you could get into other theatres for 10 cents.
Like many theatres it suffered during the Great Depression and was converted into Walsh’s Auto Wrecking in 1938. Walsh’s moved out in 1967, and in 1970 it was converted back to a movie theatre.
Pics are here of the demolition.
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Here is a recent picture of this theatre which has now become a starbucks
http://flickr.com/photos/emangrooving/312296643/
This theatre was built on the site of the (1867) Star Theatre, a much smaller legitimate stage that predated the 1880 Grand Opera House.
You can see this clearly in postcards of Market Square.
I believe it was built around 1908 or 1910.
It was a long narrow theatre with two balconies and a full size stage. HPL special collections has an interior picture
There is a picture of the proscenium arch on page 128 in John Lindsey’s book TURN OUT THE STARS BEFORE LEAVING
There is an amazing album of pictures of this theatre here.
View link
Mjc
Goto
View link
Click on visual database about half way down on the left
Type in the words “Palace Theatre Hamilton” into the search box.
and four pictures of the Palace will appear.
You can download them, you just can’t reproduce them or post them anywhere without permission from the archive.