Venue
881 Granville Street,
Vancouver,
BC
V6Z 1K7
881 Granville Street,
Vancouver,
BC
V6Z 1K7
1 person
favorited this theater
Showing 18 comments
I’ve seen photos posted on Google of the interior of the theatre when it was the Venue nightclub, but I sometimes wonder what it looked like inside during its cinema days. Shame that it’s been sitting boarded up for over three years since Venue closed and I fear it could end up undergoing “demolition by neglect”, as some other older buildings in Vancouver ended up being fated to experience (like the building on East Hastings that once housed the Only Seafood restaurant, which underwent a similar fate when it was boarded up after the restaurant closed and was left to sit and crumble until it was eventually torn down at some point around 2021).
Multiple Vancouver theatre images in below Flickr link.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/99915476@N04/sets/72157636305761336/
^^ I was at the 2:45 PM showing of Police Academy 5 at the Plaza on March 18 1988.
Reopened as Plaza by Famous Players on March 18th, 1988
Dunbar, Plaza, and Varsity reopenings Fri, Mar 18, 1988 – 75 · The Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com
Reopened as the Odeon theatre on March 20th, 1963
September 1st, 1936
Plaza theatre opening Tue, Sep 1, 1936 – 5 · The Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com
This opened on March 17th, 1908 as the Maple Leaf Electric Theatre.
Maple Leaf Electric Theatre opening Tue, Mar 17, 1908 – Page 10 · Vancouver Daily World (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com
October 15, 1973 photo added credit Vancouver Archives CVA 800-0438.
September 1st, 1936 grand opening ad can be found at the photo section.
Plaza opened Wednesday, September 2 1936
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=jPRlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FYkNAAAAIBAJ&pg=3363%2C30387
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
ScreenClassic’s rendition of the history is correct.
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.
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.
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
More images and a 360 VR tour can be found at this link.
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
This theatre has been renovated into a nightclub named The Plaza, opened in 2002. The block lettered marquee remains, and has become a nice addition to the streets night life.