Capitol 6 Theatre
820 Granville Street,
Vancouver,
BC
V6Z 1K3
820 Granville Street,
Vancouver,
BC
V6Z 1K3
2 people
favorited this theater
This theatre originally opened in 1918 as a single screen and was renovated/expanded in the 70s or 80s into a six-screen multiplex.
It closed April 14, 2005 and was demolished to provide for a new apartment block.
Contributed by
ian macdonald
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Recent comments (view all 39 comments)
Great Photo!
That Capitol 6 “ Extension ” out into the sidewalk was there up until around 2003-2004, when it was demolished.
I didn’t know about the monitors built into it, I wonder when those were removed? They weren’t there in 2002-2004.
This is a 1935 ad for “G Men”. The ad was originally in the Vancouver Sun newspaper.
hdtv you must be using a different format for your comments, part of your comments are cut off.
Two pictures of the Capitol from some time in the 1940s from the City of Vancouver Archives (click on them to expand):
Exterior: View link
Interior: View link
A picture of the theatre’s Seymour Street entrance c. 1926 from the City of Vancouver Archives (click upon it to expand) View link
My last visit to the Capitol 6 was a few months before Famous Players closed the cinema. The place was a pigsty; it reeked of cigarette smoke, the seats and carpets were filthy and many of the seats were broken. A manager stood near the candy counter, so I asked him about the squalor. He said, “I apologize for this, but we’re closing the place soon, so we have discontinued all cleaning and maintenance.” I noticed, however, that their ticket/confection prices were as high as ever despite refusing to spend any $ on providing a comfortable viewing experience for their guests. I used to manage a movie house in a major US city and we would never have pulled a stunt like that on our customers. Canadians don’t understand (or care about) the concept of customer service.
Wow. I wouldn’t really take the experience of that one situation to make a blanket statement about all Canadians…
I imagine there’s been a few American mega-chains that have “pulled the plug” on an old theatre before they actually closed it!
In my travels as an airline pilot for TWA I have visited quite a few Canadian Theatres and find the Customer Service in Canada no different than in the USA. Some of their theatres in Canada in cleanliness put others in the USA to shame.
Cap 6 was pretty much a cesspool right at the end with ads for the new Paramount ( later named Scotiabank ) all over the place.
The place did have an odd, musty smell to it. But I don’t think it was cigarette smoke.
The chairs left an odor on your clothes, and the stairway on the south side of the building, which oddly enough had a bathroom mid way between the 1st and 2nd floor, reeked of piss.
The place also had major water damage from leaks that were not repaired promptly. The Granville side entrance, which had skyline windows in the ceiling leaked for some time before it was fixed ( or was it? ) and caused brown stains all over the ceiling of the granville entrance roof.
I also recall at a sneak peek of the first “ Underworld ” , looking up at the booth and seeing what looked like black tarps or garbage bags taped to the ceiling of the booth.
But all in all, I still loved the place. The Main house ( #1 ) was something that cannot and will not be matched in terms of the size, uniqueness, and just pure awesomeness.
I fully blame FP for not taking care of it properly and letting it die a horrible death, leaving it’s last years' a dark spot on the memories of many movie-goers.
I remember seeing a lot of movies at the old Capitol 6, namely ‘The Ghost and The Darkness’, ‘Alien’, and ‘Titanic’. I agree with rl_83 that FP neglected it sadly and letting it die the way they did; sadly, this seems to have been their policy with a lot of classic Vancouver-area theaters.