Tag: alfred holden

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Kodachrome slides, technicolor screens

Eric Veillette

The above Kodachrome slide (taken in 1987 by Alfred Holden) shows the terrazzo of the Danforth’s Roxy Theatre — originally known as the Allenby when it was built by Kaplan & Sprachman in 1935. Many Toronto theatres were captured in Kodachrome, some of the best residing at the City of Toronto Archives in the F. Ellis Wiley Fonds. Toronto has long held an interesting relationship with Kodachrome, something I examine in today’s Toronto Star. Astrid Idlewild, a McGill University urban planning student, has launched Kodachrome Toronto 1935-2010, a Masters project aimed at examining Toronto’s urban and cultural development through the warm … Continue reading Kodachrome slides, technicolor screens

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The Evolution of Cool

Eric Veillette

Early cinemas were used to convince the populace that air conditioning was cool. by Alfred Holden I watched poetic justice unfold in a cool way last month, when the brief May heat wave hit. The clamour for air conditioning erupted that very day in my own home, and spread like a storm through the St. George Street building where I live. But by the time the engineers turned on the central air, the weather, too, had turned. We froze. The system leaked. “A wonderful thing,” the U.S. watchdog magazine Consumer Reports found fit to say about air conditioning in 1957, … Continue reading The Evolution of Cool