Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre
The world's last operating stacked Edwardian theatres, one above the other on Yonge Street.
Built for Marcus Loew and designed by the American theatre architect Thomas W. Lamb, the complex opened in December 1913 as the Loew's Yonge Street Theatre, with the smaller Winter Garden added above it in February 1914. The lower house, gilded and hung with chandeliers, presented vaudeville and film; the upper one was fitted out as a roof garden, its ceiling hung with real beech boughs and its walls painted with trellises and foliage. The Winter Garden closed in 1928 and stayed shut for more than fifty years.
The Ontario Heritage Trust bought the buildings in 1981 and undertook a restoration completed in 1989, when the lower theatre was renamed the Elgin. Conservators cleaned the Winter Garden's hand-painted walls with bread dough and replaced the decayed foliage with preserved branches. The centre holds the largest surviving collection of vaudeville scenery in the world, and it is a National Historic Site. The Elgin has seated Toronto International Film Festival galas since the 1990s.
Highlights
- Only stacked Edwardian theatre pair still operating anywhere
- Winter Garden ceiling hung with preserved beech boughs
- World's largest collection of vaudeville scenery
- A regular gala venue for the Toronto International Film Festival
