Toronto Theatres And The Golden Age Of The Silver Screen

The history, heritage, and architectural significance of Toronto's most notable theatres and movie houses. Movie houses first started popping up around Toronto in the 1910s and '20s, in an era without television and before radio had permeated every household. Dozens of these grand structures were built and soon became an important part of the cultural and architectural fabric of the city. A century later the surviving, defunct, and reinvented movie houses of Toronto's past are filled with captivating stories. Explore fifty historic Toronto movie houses and theaters, and discover their roles as repositories of memories for a city that continues to grow its cinema legacy. Features stunning historic photography.

Relive Toronto’s golden age of local movie houses, when the city boasted over 150 theatres. A night at the movies was the highlight of the week for adults, and the Saturday afternoon matinee the most anticipated event in a child’s life.

2017 Theatre Library Association Book Awards — Nominated, Richard Wall Memorial Award 2017 Heritage Toronto Book Award — Nominated Slip once more into the back rows of the favourite movie theatres of your youth. “Brought Back to Thrill You Again” was an advertisement employed by theatres to disguise that they were offering older films that were past their prime. In the 1950s a sign appeared outside Loew’s Downtown (the Elgin) displaying these commonly used words. The theatre was screening Gone With the Wind, released in 1939. However, in this instance the claim was accurate, as the film did indeed thrill audiences one more time. Similar to this cinematic classic, this book will thrill you again as it brings back memories of Toronto’s old movie theatres. Relive the experience of sitting in their darkened auditoriums, witnessing the adventure, comedy, and romance of the silver screen. Most of the theatres have been demolished, but to visually recreate them, the book includes 128 historic pictures of the theatres — exteriors, marquees, colourful neon signs, and auditoriums — many of the photos never before published in books or on the internet.

Lost Toronto is the latest in the series from Pavilion Books that traces the cherished places in a city that time, progress and fashion swept aside before the National Register of Historic Places could save them from the wrecker's ball. As well as celebrating forgotten architectural treasures, Lost Toronto looks at buildings that have changed use, vanished under a wave of new construction or been drastically transformed.Beautiful archival photographs and informative text allows the reader to take a nostalgic journey back in time to visit some of the lost treasures that the city let slip through its grasp. Organised chronologically, starting with the earliest losses and ending with the latest, the book features much-loved Toronto institutions that have been consigned to history. Losses include: King’s College, Holland House, Hotel Hanlan, St. Patrick’s Market, The Grand Opera House, Metropolitan Methodist Church, Old Union Station, St. Andrew’s Market, Yonge Street Arcade, Sunnyside Beach Amusement Park, Shea’s Hippodrome, S. S. Cayuga, High Park Mineral Baths, Tivoli Theatre, Riverdale Zoo, Odeon Carlton, Cyclorama on Front Street, Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade, Colonial Tavern, Sam the Record Man, The World’s Biggest Book Store.

The Flyer Vault: 150 Years of Toronto Concert History captures over 150 years of Toronto concert history through a visually stunning collection of flyers, posters, and advertisements.

In this authoritative work, Seiler and Seiler argues that the establishment and development of moviegoing and movie exhibition in Prairie Canada is best understood in the context of changing late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century social, economic, and technological developments. From the first entrepreneurs who attempted to lure customers in to movie exhibition halls, to the digital revolution and its impact on moviegoing, Reel Time highlights the pivotal role of amusement venues in shaping the leisure activities of working- and middle-class people across North America.

The Sounds of Early Cinema is devoted exclusively to a little-known, yet absolutely crucial phenomenon: the ubiquitous presence of sound in early cinema. "Silent cinema" may rarely have been silent, but the sheer diversity of sound(s) and sound/image relations characterizing the first 20 years of moving picture exhibition can still astonish us. Whether instrumental, vocal, or mechanical, sound ranged from the improvised to the pre-arranged (as in scripts, scores, and cue sheets). The practice of mixing sounds with images differed widely, depending on the venue (the nickelodeon in Chicago versus the summer Chautauqua in rural Iowa, the music hall in London or Paris versus the newest palace cinema in New York City) as well as on the historical moment (a single venue might change radically, and many times, from 1906 to 1910). Contributors include Richard Abel, Rick Altman, Edouard Arnoldy, Mats Björkin, Stephen Bottomore, Marta Braun, Jean Châteauvert, Ian Christie, Richard Crangle, Helen Day-Mayer, John Fullerton, Jane Gaines, André Gaudreault, Tom Gunning, François Jost, Charlie Keil, Jeff Klenotic, Germain Lacasse, Neil Lerner, Patrick Loughney, David Mayer, Domi-nique Nasta, Bernard Perron, Jacques Polet, Lauren Rabinovitz, Isabelle Raynauld, Herbert Reynolds, Gregory A. Waller, and Rashit M. Yangirov.

Toronto has long been a financial powerhouse in North America, and this is represented by its many grand bank buildings. Canada's capital may be Ottawa, but the financial power emanates from this thriving city, the fourth most populous in North America.Sites include: Toronto Harbour, Fort York, Queen's Quay Lighthouse, Toronto Island Ferries, Queen's Quay Terminal, Canadian National Exhibition, Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion, Princes' Gates, Royal York Hotel, Union Station, City Hall, St. Lawrence Market, St. James Cathedral, Canadian Pacific Building, Bank of Montreal, Dineen Building, Elgin Theatre, Arts and Letters Club, Old Bank of Nova Scotia, Ryrie Building, Masonic Temple, Osgoode Hall, Royal Alexandra Theatre, Gurney Iron Works, Boer War Monument, CN Tower, Old Knox College, Victory Burlesque Theatre, Maple Leaf Gardens, University of Toronto and much more.