Demolition work begins on Majestic Theatre
Fifty years ago, a demolition crew started taking down the Majestic Theatre at 20 West Hastings.
Built as the Pantages Theatre in 1917, it was one of the most ornate structures ever built in Vancouver.
“The stage, which once featured Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth and Duke Ellington, is now an 80-foot-deep gaping hole with only the apron of the stage left for a workmen’s walkway,” Simma Holt wrote in The Sun.
“A jagged hole punched through the golden dome 72 feet above the seating area brings light and air into the dark theatre.”
A photo by The Sun’s Ken Oakes shows the interior in a shambles, its intricate plasterwork smashed to rubble.
“Attempts to save frescoes that surround the dome have failed,” wrote Holt. “The plaster, brittle with age, crumbles despite care taken to remove them in solid pieces.”
It was a sad end to Vancouver’s first big vaudeville/movie palace. But it had been in a long, slow decline for decades.
Vaudeville legend Alexander Pantages spent $300,000 on the 1,800-seat theatre, an opulent neoclassical building done up in the “Pantages Greek” style.
The design was by architect B. Marcus Priteca, who also designed the Orpheum. The elaborate ornamental plasterwork in the interior was by Vancouver’s premier sculptor, Charles Marega.
The auditorium was designed to have the best sightlines and sound possible — a performer was supposed to be able to talk in a normal voice from the stage and be clearly heard way up in the rafters.
The theatre was the second Pantages had built in Vancouver, replacing a smaller structure at 150 East Hastings that had opened in 1908. There were a string of theatres along Hastings in the early 1900s, including the Empress, the Princess, the Rex, the National and the Columbia.
Unfortunately for Pantages, theatre row moved downtown to Granville Street with the construction of movie palaces like the Allen and Capitol in 1920 and the Orpheum in 1927. (The Allen was later known as the Strand.)
But in 1917, Alexander Pantages was on fire. He had opened his first theatre in Dawson City during the Klondike gold rush, then opened a theatre in Seattle in 1902.
He built a vaudeville empire that totalled 84 theatres at its peak. But Pantages ran into financial difficulties with the advent of movies and the Depression, and had to sell his chain to rival RKO in 1929.
That same year, he was accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl. He was initially convicted and sentenced to 50 years in jail, but was acquitted on appeal.
The second Pantages Theatre was sold to a local operator in 1930 who changed its name to the Beacon. In 1946, it was sold to the Odeon chain and became the Odeon-Hastings. In 1958, it became the Majestic, but the era of the big theatres had passed and in 1964 the theatre was sold to City Park, which wanted to tear it down and turn it into a parking lot.
Heritage advocate Arthur Irving waged a campaign to save the theatre, but the city issued a demolition permit on April 26, 1967, and it came down.
The name Pantages remained prominent in Vancouver through Alexander’s nephews Peter, Angelo, Lloyd and Alfonso, who came to town to work for their uncle and went on to own several restaurants, including the Golden Gate Café and the Peter Pan Café.
Peter Pantages also founded the New Year’s Day Polar Bear Swim in English Bay. His nephew, Rod, played seven seasons in the Canadian Football League, winning the Grey Cup with the Calgary Stampeders in 1948 and the Edmonton Eskimos in 1954.
Peter Pantages’ grandchildren are all in the local film business — Tony is a filmmaker, John is a producer, Peter is a locations manager, and Lisa is a chef.
Tony Pantages said the family doesn’t have any mementoes from the 1917 Pantages Theatre. But he thinks one of the elaborate sculptures that used to sit on top of the theatre survived.
“There’s one in a garden in someone’s house,” he said. “Lincoln Clarkes photographed it out by UBC. That’s the only one I’ve heard that still exists.”