Lyric Theatre

Opened on May 9th, 1921, and closed in 1991 and reopened December 3rd, 1993-1994. Owned by Premier who leased it to Cineplex Odeon in February 1987. It had 70mm projection.

Its too bad some of the comments of people from K-W are so negative.As in every downtown core in our province, people started to migrate from the core to the outskirts.Just look at what happened to Brantford!!It was the choice of the major theatre owners to close up shops in the downtown.It was after that happened that the city had to make some plans as to what to do with the empty buildings.I agree that it was too bad this happened but it was inevitable like in every other major city around.This theatre was absolutely gorgeous as was the Capitol right beside it.Peopls dont want to come back to the urban core and that is sad but true.The city has some plans for the king street strip.Once all the bars have closed(which some of these theatres became)things will clean-up and maybe the core will live again.It is sad that these buildings wont be part of this!!By the way-OKTOBERFEST is the largest Bavarian celebration outside of the one held in Munich and also offers a Thanksgiving Parade-the only one left in Canada.The fstival runs 9 days.

Next to the now defunct Uptown 1 in Toronto, the Lyric was, and is, my favorite theatre. Of all the many theatres, I have visited in Windsor, Chatham, London, Hamilton, Kitchener and even Toronto, the Lyric had the largest screen I had the good fortune to view. I had the very good fortune to see Lawrence of Arabia there on its re-release, just before it closed, when it was of all things, a bargain theatre!! During the last few months, I went to see anything that played there, even if it was bad!! $2.00 was not too high a price to pay to bask in the glory that was the Lyric!!!

The Lyric was purchased by the city and will be demolished in April. The theatre was an important landmark for many years. The loss of this theatre is not surprising, since most of Kitchener’s landmarks have been lost. Few note worthy buildings remain. The only landmarks left are houses. The Capitol theatre down the street is the next building on the city’s shopping list since the City believes that parking lots, low income housing and strip malls will make downtown the place where people, from all over southern Ontario will want to visit. The Lyric site will become, surprise, a parking lot. Kitchener residents have few choices for enjoying the arts. Two box theatres exist. Both are ugly and not worth visiting. Kitchener is, however close enough to Toronto and Greyhound Buses leave Kitchener for Toronto every hour.

By the way. The City of Kitchener is labeled “The Original City”