Cinecity
6 Charles Street East,
Toronto,
ON
M4Y 1T2
6 Charles Street East,
Toronto,
ON
M4Y 1T2
1 person
favorited this theater
The Cinecity Cinema was located at the corner of Yonge Street and Charles Street East in Toronto. It opened in a former post office building in 1966 and had 260 seats.
The Cinecity Cinema showed mainly art and foreign films, with art work on show on the walls.
Sadly the Cinecity Cinema closed on August 28, 1975 with Jan-Michael Vincent in “White Line Fever”. Part of the building is now a Starbuck’s another part is a McDonald’s.
Contributed by
Chad Irish
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Recent comments (view all 20 comments)
Here is a photo I took on Monday February 8th 2010 of the building Cinecity was located in.
http://i47.tinypic.com/oqzszm.jpg
I have established now that the building was erected in 1905.
Yup, that’s the one. The cinema entrance was where the yellow awning is on Charles St.
My one and only trip to Cinecity was to see the Beatles Yellow Submarine at a midnight showing. The projectionist ran the sound through all the speakers to make up for the mono sound and I was truly amazed at how large the screen was for such a small theatre. The only artwork I saw on the walls was posters for upcoming movies.
Yup, telliott is right on the money here about location and direction of screen. I saw Gimme Shelter at Cinecity about 7 times from 1973-1974. It always ran Friday nights at midnight I believe. Steady crowd with a decent lineup outside the Charles St entrance. Great movie if you could see it through the smoke.
The description of Cinecity as having Italian renaissance elements in the lobby and auditorium is totally inaccurate. And it’s also not now, and never was, a “high class Italian restaurant.” I should know: I worked for Filmcanada presentations (located directly across the street from Cinecity) the company that owned and operated this cinema.
CINECITY was an experimental theatre owned and operated by Barry Allen of Premier Operating Company (a Famous Players associate)!! The newspaper ads for the Cinecity were ALWAYS located in the Premier Operating section of the newspaper. This theatre was equipped with custom made Famous Players Axminister woven carpet type: Red Dot on Red. If that doesn’t show it’s Famous Players Canadian Corporation pedigree I don’t know what else I can tell you!!!
Can"t recall how many time I saw “Gimme Shelter” there – it was a lot!!
While Cinecity did have a connection with Barry Allen’s Premier Theatres group, filmcanada presentations (located directly across the street from the theatre) did most of the booking and definitely took care of the advertising. I should know, since I (Jon Lidolt) designed the newspaper ads for the cinema.
Added two vintage photos of Cinecity from 1975 (the year it closed) that I came across. Looks like it was a really cool spot judging on what they were showing!
The theatre closed on Aug. 28th, 1975 with WHITE LINE FEVER, a considerably more mainstream feature than Cinecity’s usual fare.