Empire Theater
422 Barton Street E,
Hamilton,
ON
L8L 2Y6
422 Barton Street E,
Hamilton,
ON
L8L 2Y6
1 person
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Architects: Bernard Herman Prack
Functions: Banquet Hall
Styles: Beaux-Arts
Nearby Theaters
This was a 600-seat single screen auditorium that still stands today as the Essence Banquet Centre on the corner of Barton Street East and Leeming Avenue.
The Empire Theater was opened by October 1916 by Hamilton Theatre magnate Fred Guest who also owned four other cinema’s locally (The Playhouse, The Main, The Strand and his flagship The Delta), as well as one other (The Stanley Theatre) in Vancouver BC. Ironically the only one still intact is the cinema (now an arts centre) in BC. The Empire Theater was remodeled in December 1930 when a balcony was added which increased the seating capacity to 1,000. In the late-1960’s the space was twinned, the seats removed, and the floor flattened. It remains as a Banquet Hall for weddings and other events.
Contributed by
Brian Morton
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
A little more info. This was also known as the Italia Cinema from 1938 to 1969 when it closed.
There are photos at the Ont Archives of the exterior/interior.
See an exterior photo of the Empire, as part of John Sebert’s “Glamorous Ghosts” at: www.hamiltonmagazine.com/sitepages/?aid. This was the first time I had seen a shot of this place. Comparing the photo and the street view, you can see the upper windows are gone and the railing (or decoration?) has been added to the roof edge.
I went to a yard sale in this neighborhood, and I got talking to a guy selling there, and I mentioned the Empire and he told me that the projection equipment was still in the building. It’s possible that it was too cumbersome to remove or was kept as a ‘novelty’. I don’t know if this is true, I’ve never checked…
Fred Guest’s Empire Theatre on Barton Street East was mentioned, along with his Strand Theatre, in the October 14, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World.
The papers of architect Bernard Herman Prack list a project for Fred Guest at the Empire Theatre in 1922. The specifics of the project are not mentioned. !922 was the same year Prack drew the plans for Guest’s Delta Theatre.
Held an reopening in December 1930.
Empire theatre reopening 20 Dec 1930, Sat The Hamilton Spectator (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) Newspapers.com