CAPITOL THEATRE TURNING 100
Downtown landmark has endured
That the venerable Capitol Theatre still stands on its 100th birthday on Dec. 30 is an unlikely survival story, and it speaks to the efforts of so many people who fended off the wrecking balls and worked to restore and transform the heritage treasure into the premier performance venue it is today.
So says Sheila Wisdom, executive director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, which now manages the theatre in a kind of symbiotic relationship that has finally provided stability after many years of crises and struggles.
The fate of the Capitol was never so threatened as in 1990 when the severely deteriorated movie theatre — owner Famous Players had permanently closed it in 1989 after a final showing of Gone With the Wind — was slated for demolition. A permit had already been issued. At the same time, people were bemoaning the fact the city had no performance venue for community arts groups.
“And someone said, `Why don't you look at the Capitol Theatre?'” Wisdom recounts. “I was a really green city councillor and I remember (then-mayor) John Millson looking at me and smiling and saying `Sheila, this is the most hare-brained idea I've ever heard of, but if you want to do it, I'll support you.'”
What ensued was a coming together of community leaders and volunteers, including Wisdom, her husband Jerry Wisdom, Patricia Hennessey Laing, Merry Ellen Scully Mosna, Nancy Nicholson, Peter Hrastovec, Eleanor Paine, University of Windsor president Ron Ianni, and MPP Dave Cooke. They started fundraising, campaigning and seeking grants from the province — Cooke helped secure funding from the province — and the feds, culminating in a $5.5-million interior restoration and renovation completed in 1995.
It's what you see today inside the Capitol, which sank into financial trouble again in the mid-2000s. Its volunteer board declared bankruptcy in 2007, again threatening the Capitol's future until local arts groups sounded the alarm bells and the City of Windsor came to the rescue the following year, acquiring the building and turning it over to the WSO to manage and use as its performance venue.
“When I think of the Capitol Theatre, I think of it as emblematic of what a lot of people in our community value. It's here because the community mobilized to save it,” Wisdom said. “And they did that more than once.”
Wisdom describes the WSO/ Capitol relationship as an arranged marriage that actually works. The WSO is paid $150,000 annually to manage the theatre on behalf of the city, providing performance space and services for an array of arts groups — both non-profit community organizations and professional performers. And the WSO gets a home of its own, one with “incredible” acoustics, according to WSO musical director Robert Franz.
“I think it's one of the best acoustics I've performed in,” he said, explaining the theatre is “fantastic” for two reasons:
On stage, the orchestra can really hear itself. “You'd be shocked to know how often orchestras perform where they can't hear each other across the stage,” he said. “The Capitol Theatre is nearly flawless in that regard.” And when orchestra musicians can hear better, they sound better, and they grow artistically. The second quality is what the audience hears. Franz's preference is to have a sound that envelopes the audience. “You feel like you're inside the sound,” in the Capitol's main theatre, the Pentastar, he said. He describes it as a visceral sound, like being inside a jewel box.
“It's incredible to me. I joke to people the best seat in the house is mine on the podium, but the truth is, in the Capitol, all the seats are as good as on the podium.”
The WSO is grateful the city has provided the theatre “to use as our home,” said Franz. “Most orchestras our size don't have this kind of opportunity. It really is something special when you have a venue that is so acoustically superior.”
When the theatre opened for vaudeville performances and silent movies on Dec. 30, 1920, it was the largest single-floor theatre in Canada, with 1,995 seats. The land at London Street (what is now University Avenue) and Pelissier Street had been purchased in February 1920 by Loew's Vaudeville Theatres, which hired prolific theatre architect Thomas White Lamb. He designed it in his trademark Adam-empire style, one of 16 he designed in Canada, including the Pantages and Elgin and Winter Garden theatres in Toronto.
Construction took nine months and cost $600,000.
In an advertisement in the Border Cities Star, the new Loew's Theatre promoted continuous shows running from 1 to 11 p.m. on Dec. 30, featuring a dizzying variety of entertainment. It ranged from One Week, the first film released by Buster Keaton on his own, to the Royal Italians performing “Gems of the Opera,” to “Remarkable Sharpshooting” by Lieut. Fernand Theiton, to a silent western called The Testing Block starring William S. Hart. All seats were 15 cents in the afternoon and 35 cents in the evening.
The Loew's ownership didn't last long. In 1922, three local theatre owners got together to buy the facility and renamed it the Capitol Theatre.
By 1929, the Capitol was sold again, for $270,000, less than half what it cost to build. The Famous Players chain remained the owner for the next 60 years. Following the Cineplex trend of the time, the single cavernous theatre was divided into three smaller theatres in 1975.
That configuration — along with the balcony in the largest Pentastar theatre — has remained to this day. As a result, the WSO often has packed houses because the Pentastar seats a little more than 600. For its most popular concerts, the WSO often has to hold two performances.
The City of Windsor has made some significant investments in recent years to the theatre, including new seating in 2016 and improvements to the Pentastar stage to better accommodate orchestral concerts. The theatre has also become the headquarters for the Windsor International Film Festival, the largest volunteer-run film festival in the country.
Wisdom said there were big plans to celebrate the Capitol's 100th birthday.
“We had events planned throughout the year and pretty much all of it went south,” she said, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But just because it's turning 100 on Dec. 30 in the midst of a lockdown doesn't mean the celebration can't be held some time later.
Stay tuned.
Wisdom said some people remember seeing movies at the Capitol. Others performed there, as dancers, musicians or actors. Still others held special events, such as a wedding, at the storied playhouse.
“It's a beautiful building,” she said. “But it's more than the bricks and mortar.”
It's a beautiful building. But it's more than the bricks and mortar.