Venue
881 Granville Street,
Vancouver,
BC
V6Z 1K7
881 Granville Street,
Vancouver,
BC
V6Z 1K7
1 person
favorited this theater
Opened as the Maple Leaf Theatre in 1924, it became the Plaza Theatre around 1939. This 925-seat movie house was renamed the Odeon in 1966, when it was acquired by the theater chain of the same name.
Closed in 1991, the Odeon was reopened in 1997, but within a year, was closed once more.
In 1999, the former theater was converted into a two-level nightclub/live performance space, its marquee retained, called the Plaza Club. Renovations were carried out in the Summer of 2009, and it reopened as the Venue.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft
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Recent comments (view all 15 comments)
Before becoming the Plaza, the theater’s grand opening was as the Maple Leaf Theater in 1924. It went dark a few years later due to the depression. It was later remodeled and reopened as the Plaza as a movie house.
Here are a couple of photos circa 1925. One shows both the Maple Leaf and Globe (later Paradise, then Coronet before it was integrated into the Empire Granville Cinemas.
View link
View link
More images and a 360 VR tour can be found at this link.
According to the PSTOS website, the Maple Leaf Theater had a 2/3 Robert Morton organ.
The Plaza Club is now closed.
This is a 2009 photo.
The club has reopened after finally completing renovations on July 16th. It has a new name of “Venue”, but the previous name still stands on the enormous vertical sign.
Official website: http://www.venuelive.ca
The Plaza opened in 1936 and was renamed as the Odeon in 1963, not in the years listed above. Cineplex closed the theatre in 1987 when the Granville 7 opened, but Famous Players took over the lease and reopened it as the Plaza again in 1988. Two years after FP closed it, the Plaza reopened in 1993 (first under Leonard Schein as an art-house venue, then later under another lease as a second-run house) and continued running on-and-off until it closed for good as a movie theatre in 1997.
At some point under Cineplex’s ownership ( could have been 1984 ) They converted the Park to platter and moved the second Victoria 10 projector to the then Odeon, later Plaza.
This was done to allow a move over house from the other cinemas with 70MM product.
ScreenClassic’s rendition of the history is correct.
March 1963, the Odeon opened with Lawrence of Arabia. I didn’t attend, but did make a point of attending the first matinee at the Plaza in 1988. Lawrence of Arabia 6 or was it Police Academy 6?
Anyone interested history should read this.. scroll right. Plaza->Odeon Paradise->Coronet. Next? Nova->Totem. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=q5VlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TooNAAAAIBAJ&pg=7286%2C1999246