Le Laurier
5117 Avenue du Parc,
Montreal,
QC
H2V
5117 Avenue du Parc,
Montreal,
QC
H2V
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Additional Info
Architects: Daniel John Crighton
Functions: Retail
Styles: Neo-Classical
Previous Names: Regent Theatre, Le Beaver
Nearby Theaters
No theaters found within 30 miles
A Montreal neighborhood theatre. When it was re-named Le Beaver on February 2, 1973 it began screening triple bill adult porn movies.
It seems the auditorium was demolished, but the entrance foyer (and possibly a newly built addition at the rear) is now in use as a French language bookshop named Renaud-Bray.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
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Recent comments (view all 8 comments)
Here is a photo I took of Le Laurier. I thought I took it in 1989, but that doesn’t seem to agree with the “demolished in January 1988” timeline above.
View link
The interior was demolished only three months before the scheduled visit by the city officials who wanted to class it as historical building,thus protecting it from further destruction. The owner wanting to be able to sell it for anything but a theater rushed to destroy it. When the city clerks arrived, they only found an empty cube with four walls.
Hello
I was in Montreal in 2003, and following the tracks of cinemas I found the Regent (original name) like a branch of the Renaud-Bray bookstore. I believe that today it is still on, although very transformed into its interior. There is a photo here.
There was a fire at the Laurier Palace theater in Montreal in January 1927. I don’t know if that is an aka for this theater. A news story called this an east-end theater.
FYI to those interested. If you go to Wikipedia and enter “Laurier Palace Theatre Fire”, it gives a synopsis of apparently hard fought Canadian cinema laws that at one time banned children.
I mentioned on CT’s Colonial Theatre page, that we had encountered such a ban when we visited Montreal during Expo `67.
The Laurier Palace was a different theater and now has its own page here on CT: View link. There is a link there to an article about the fire and the passage of the law mentioned by Davis Zornig. That particular law only applied to theatres in Quebec province (though other provinces restricted the attendance of children in movie theaters to various degrees) and was very much influenced by the powerful Catholic Church in Quebec which saw an opportunity in the tragedy to prevent children from what the Church deemed immoral influences as much as the professed interest in child safety.
March 4th, 1916 grand opening ad in photo section. Opened the same day as the St. Denis.
Le 2 février 1973, une grande ouverture en anglais et en français pour Le Beaver se trouve dans la section de photos de ce cinéma.
February 2nd, 1973 grand opening ad in English and French for Le Beaver can be found in the photo section for this cinema.