Osborne Theatre
108 Osborne Street South,
Winnipeg,
MB
R3L 1Y5
108 Osborne Street South,
Winnipeg,
MB
R3L 1Y5
2 people
favorited this theater
The Osborne Theatre opened during the 1920’s and was one of several neighborhood theatres under the Famous Players banner. It had no stage house and no organ, but did contain a Photoplayer instrument to accompany silents. The Photoplayer is currently located in a theatre in eastern Ontario. Movies at the Osborne Theatre were mainly double bills of sub-runs as well as Saturday kid’s matinees.
The Osborne Theatre closed in the mid-1950’s and was leased to an Elks Club. The interior was pretty much stripped of all fittings and the floor was levelled out in the conversion. However, the marquee and vertical remained, although the neon was changed to read ‘Elks Club’.
With a change in the immediate area to the trendy Osborne village in the late-1970’s until now, the Elks vacated the building and for a number of years it had been a rock venue. At some point the vertical sign and marquee were removed and an awning running the full width of the front of the building replaced it. It had the name ‘Village Cabaret’ on the awning but that has since been painted out and it remains blank.
In 2011, the building was in use as an American Apparel clothing store.
Contributed by
sam_e
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
Here is a 1945 ad from the Winnipeg Free Press:
http://tinyurl.com/yqj67j
This has recently been converted to an American Apparel store. If you squint just right, though, you can still see it as a cinema…
That used to be a theatre? Wow, I’ll have to take a good look at it next time I go past.
Here is a picture taken from the corner of River and Osborne — the marquee can be seen in the background:
View link
(source: Winnipeg Tribune Archives)
This theater might be on the site of an earlier Osborne Theatre that was destroyed by fire on December 12, 1917, as reported in the January 5, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World. The address of the destroyed theater was not given, but the loss was estimated at $42,000.