Theatre life in downtown St. Catharines
It’s now been almost three years since St. Catharines’ performing arts centre opened its doors in November 2015.
It has been a resounding success, contributing much to the cultural life of the city, enlivening our city centre, and giving a major economic boost to our downtown.
But the arts centre is not the first entertainment venture to operate in that block of St. Paul Street. Let’s focus today on one of its predecessors — the Capitol Theatre.
At the time of the First World War, the site where the PAC stands today was occupied by three buildings — the McIntyre Funeral Home at the St. Paul/ Carlisle corner, the NS&T terminal at the St. Paul-Garden Park intersection, and in between them the R. H. Smith saw factory.
The saw factory occupied an enormous, fortress-like, threestorey stone building located right in the middle of the space where the PAC is today. The factory had been there since 1873, but by the mid-1910s its days were numbered. Plans were then being made to move the factory to larger quarters elsewhere.
By 1919 the saw factory had moved on and its old building was soon demolished. The property was purchased by the Allen Theatre chain from Toronto, and it built a new movie palace in the same location, this at a time when there were already five other movie theatres serving our downtown.
The new Allen Theatre, with more than a thousand seats, opened in April 1920, becoming the newest of the 52 theatres that made up the nationwide Allen chain. When four years later, in August 1924, the theatre became part of Capitol Entertainment, it was renamed the Capitol Theatre. Our old photo this week shows what the Capitol looked like in 1930.
After its first two decades of operation, the Capitol Theatre in late 1939 had a significant facelift, adding a more modern, much larger marquee over its entrance and a shiny black glass (Vitroiite) facade that covered the original beige-coloured bricks on the first floor of the building’s exterior.
The Capitol Theatre continued to serve St. Catharines for another quarter-century, but by the 1960s this old movie palace, like so many others, was slowly succumbing to competition from television and from the suburban mall multiplex theatres. The Capitol Theatre closed in August 1967.
After that, the old theatre building briefly housed a discount store, after which it stood vacant until it was demolished in March 1971. Later that year the Leonard Motor Inn (later renamed the Montebello Inn, lastly the Knights Inn) opened on the same site.
And today? Early in this decade the motel property became part of the package of properties assembled to become the site of the long desired downtown performing arts centre. The ground was cleared, construction began and since the opening of the PAC, the musicians and actors and dancers have thrived where the old Capitol Theatre used to stand.
Dennis Gannon is a member of the Historical Society of St. Catharines. He can be reached at gannond2002@yahoo.com.