Elgin Theatre

216 Elgin Street,
Ottawa, ON K2P

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Additional Info

Previously operated by: 20th Century Theaters, Famous Players

Architects: Harold Solomon Kaplan, Abraham Sprachman

Firms: Kaplan & Sprachman

Functions: Restaurant

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This theater is featured in the Cinema Treasures book

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The 750-seat Elgin Theatre opened as a single screen theatre on November 15, 1937 with Leslie Howard in “Stand-In”. It was designed by architectural firm Kaplan & Sprachman. The Elgin Theatre added another auditorium on December 25, 1947 opening with Larry Parks in “The Swordsman”, making it one of North America’s earliest two-screen theatres. The second 256-seat auditorium was again designed by Kaplan & Sprachman.

Famous Players closed the old Elgin Theatre in 1994.

Contributed by Cinema Treasures

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Recent comments (view all 14 comments)

AEM1968 on August 23, 2006 at 2:01 pm

The second screen at the Elgin did indeed open on December 31, 1947. It was the world’s first twin-screen cinema. In response to Hugger1, the Pizza Pizza is a couple doors down the same block. The building where the Elgin Theatre used to be has a Harvey’s, Johnny Farina’s restaurant, a Second Cup and a Great Canadian Bagel.

kencmcintyre on December 5, 2008 at 6:25 pm

Interior photo on the restaurant website:
http://www.johnnyfarina.com/gallery.htm

Joe Vogel on January 7, 2009 at 10:03 pm

The Elgin turns out to have been Canada’s second dual-auditorium theater, according to an article in the April 5, 1947, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The article announced that Twentieth Century Theatres, a Toronto company allied with Famous Players, was planning to add a second auditorium to their Elgin Theatre in Ottawa. But the article also mentioned that a second auditorium was already under construction at the Allen Brothers' Hollywood Theatre in Toronto, and was expected to open shortly.

Three dual-auditorium theaters are known to have already been opened in the United States by that time- two in 1935 and one in 1941. However, these three, and the Hollywood in Toronto, were all operated under a policy of showing the same program in both of their auditoriums. The intention of the operators of the Elgin was to show an entirely different program, consisting of foreign language movies and special attractions, in the new auditorium. The Elgin was probably the first movie theater in the world to do this.

The Boxoffice article gives the seating capacity of the original Elgin as 800, and the capacity of the “Little Elgin” (as it was then being called) as 350.

Mike Rogers on January 31, 2011 at 5:41 pm

“CASTLE KEEP” and “GOODBYE,COLUMBUS” were playing on june 1 1970.

Eric Evans on February 1, 2011 at 7:24 pm

Here’s a photo I took of the Elgin when on holiday in 1991.
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DavidDymond on February 3, 2013 at 7:00 pm

This was an old Twinex (Twentieth Century Theatre) house and in the mid-seventies it was dumpy. It had a puny Candy bar and I can remember watching movies in there and hearing the damn projectionist’s radio blaring in the booth. Old-time manager of this theatre was Ernie Warren an old Twinex manager.