Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre
189 Yonge Street,
Toronto,
ON
M5B 1M4
189 Yonge Street,
Toronto,
ON
M5B 1M4
12 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 30 comments found
The interior of the upstairs auditorium, The Winter Garden, is amazing with all the leaves dangling from the ceiling.
If you’re ever in Toronto, make sure you take the free tour.
Here are links to a few posts at Silent Toronto involving the Elgin/Winter Garden:
The Lost Films of the Loew’s Theatre
Tough guys at the Yonge Theare
Dracula Triple-bill at the Elgin!
Hollywood dreams at the Loew’s Theatre
Here’s an updated link to the 1929 photo I posted on June 4, 2008: View link
Elgin/Winter Garden prior to restoration: View link
Photo of the Winter Garden’s side boxes:
View link
Once the Uptown shut its doors back in 2003 this ended up becoming my most frequented theatre for the toronto film festival just to sheer volume of the great programming and the historic and prestine nature of the theatre itself. It is just absolutely gorgeous. Rivals the El Captitan in my opinion in terms of viewing experience and wish there were more opportunities to watch films here *fingers crossed.
Check out a fang-tastic ad from 1978 for a Hammer Dracula triple-bill at the Elgin!
The Winter Garden is one substantial theatre. It boggles the mind to think that it’s atop another. According to my guide, there is actually a glorified crawl space between the two theatres. The only indication that there is a massive structure above it in the Elgin auditorium are a couple of substantial columns toward the rear of the orchestra. The current main lobby is actually more ornate than it was originally. According to the guide the way it is now is the way it was designed, but not executed.
Here is another 1982 photo.
1982 photo of the Elgin Theatre.
View link
On second thought I think Cats played the Elgin, Phantom was at the Pantages.
When Loews was sold to 20th Century Theatres in 1969, it was re-named the Yonge…then several years later when Famous Players renovated it, it was then re-named Elgin. The only reason i think those names were chosen is because the tall vertical sign had room for 5 letters, hence Yonge and Elgin. Since there was an Elgin in Ottawa, they probably thought this was a good name for the theatre in Toronto. Probably had nothing to do with what letters were left over from Loews.
The lower theatre was originally Loew’s Younge Street; the upper theatre then and now the Winter Garden. Since the Winter Garden was never a movie theatre, when the building achieved a landmark status it could not be equipped for traditional movie showing. When I was last up there they were having some sort of presentation which involved a glorified power point presentation.
Rumor also has it that when the lower, movie theatre, was no longer under the Loew’s umbrella, they used illuminated letters which were still available to rename the theatre – hence, Elgin. It supposedly is not named for a person, e.g. Lord Elgin. But that makes absolutely no sense since there is no “I” in Loew’s Yonge Street.
I recently wrote an article<>/a> about a curious event that took place at the Loew’s Yonge St. theatre in 1928. Over the course of an entire week, hundreds of children lined up along the stage of the theatre to be selected as part of an “Our Gang” competition. The winners got to appear as a character in an “Our Gang” film. Read more over at [url=http://www.32elvismovies.com]32 Elvis Movies!
Oops; sorry. This is the correct link to the 1929 photo:
View link
The marquee of Loew’s Yonge Street can be seen on he right in this 1929 photo:
View link
More photos can be seen here. Click each photo to expand it.
This is another exterior view.
Here is an album of photos for this theater. There are two pages. Click each photo to expand.
I took the walking tour last summer. It is truly an astonishing place. According to the guides there are only three of these double-deckers left in North America. The Elgin-Winter Garden is the only fully operational one. The others are the New Amsterdam in NYC which has not restored the roof garden theatre (famous from the Ziegfeld days) and one in New Jersey, which is sadly rumored to be slated for demolition. When inToronto, definitely make time to tour this theatre.
This is a twinned theatre with a totally different concept..double decker rather than splitting the auditorium down the middle or using the balcony for a second cinema.
This website has an interior photo of both the Elgin and the Winter Garden. Click on each photo to enlarge.
The left hand set of doors visible in the photo link provided by lostmemory originally led to the Winter Garden theatre. The right hand set of doors went into the Elgin (former Loews Yonge) theatre. The box office kiosk always remained just about in the same position as now. For years the left hand doors and part of the lobby directly behind them were blocked and used to house a small jewellery store under the marquee. If you looked carefully as you walked the length of the Elgin lobby corridor, cleverly concealed into the wall decor was an access door through which you could enter the Winter Garden corridor and see the elevator bank and stairs leading up to that
theatre. Because of the jewellery store housed under the marquee many people never knew that the second theatre ever existed.
Here is a website with a small photo of this theater.