Tag: atmospheric cinemas

Toronto Cinemas10 Comments

Canada’s Atmospheric Theatres – The Empress

Eric Veillette

This week we continue our recent examination of the historic Atmospheric theatres that once existed in this fair country. We now leave Toronto and look to la belle province to the east. by Eric Veillette While walking in the Notre-Dame-De-Grace area of Montreal on a particularly cold winter night in January of 2007, I looked up and noticed a massive structure spanning most of the block. Noting the intersections of Sherbrooke and Old Orchard, I realized this must be the Egyptian theatre a friend of mine had just mentioned. Despite the darkness, it was a marvelous sight. Overlooking Girouard Park … Continue reading Canada’s Atmospheric Theatres – The Empress

Toronto Cinemas6 Comments

Canada’s Atmospheric Theatres – The Runnymede

Eric Veillette

By the mid 1920s, after the construction of great vaudeville and movie houses like the Toronto Pantages and Loew’s Yonge St. Theatre, North American theatre designers sought more cost-effective ways to attract theatre-goers. What resulted was the Atmospheric style. Iconoclastic and progressive, it took theatre-goers out of the tired palatial setting and brought them into another world altogether, one where the ceiling wasn’t a ceiling, but a night sky with flickering stars. In Toronto, one could consider the Winter Garden Theatre, covered in leafy greens and vines, to be a proto-Atmospheric, but the first true Atmospheric in Canada was Toronto’s … Continue reading Canada’s Atmospheric Theatres – The Runnymede