Orpheum Theatre

Saving History: the autographed lights from the Orpheum Theatre

by Eve Lazarus on January 27, 2018

A couple of weeks ago Bill Allman, Tom Carter and I were sipping martinis and discussing bits of history that have been saved from the dumpster. The subject of the rescued lights from the Orpheum Theatre came up, and next thing he knew, Bill had agreed to write this blog.

By Bill Allman

Deep in a haunted basement on West Cordova, below Vancouver curio shop, Salmagundi West, lay a collection of vintage stage lights. I blew the dust off one marked TUTS (for

Theatre Under the Stars) and marveled at the antique design. “There are more.” said my friend – theatre historian and painter extraordinaire, Tom Carter. “Where?” I asked. “The Orpheum. A whole collection. All signed by different stars.”

I let out a low whistle. We emerged from the cavernous cellar, went to the Sylvia Hotel for a drink (or three), and decided that we HAD to see the Orpheum’s treasure trove.

Tom and I were organizing a gala fundraiser and auction for the Friends of the Vancouver Archives to benefit the Hugh Pickett Collection. But that’s another story. This one is about lights – stage lights that had illuminated shows for hundreds of thousands of people.

I am fascinated by objects from great performances by famous people. “Screen used” props, and dog-eared shooting scripts are the only ones I care about; likewise, any piece of stage memorabilia with a genuine connection to a gifted artist. So, when we got access to the Orpheum’s cache of autographed lights, AND a very generous donation from the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame of three of those lights for our auction, we were in seventh heaven.

Three lights went up for auction at the Hugh Pickett Gala in November 2017. Courtesy Christina Potter

There we were, crouched in a room in the Orpheum hidden from public view and illuminated only by a flickering Radio Shack strobe light bouncing off the walls and the tinsel curtain that covered the racks of antique Leko lights. As quickly as we could read the names, we’d call them out with schoolyard excitement. “Tina Turner!”, “Michael Buble!”, “Ray Charles!”. Then we found the three we wanted for the auction – artists that Hugh had presented at one time or another: “Tony Bennett!”, “Victor Borge!”, “And here’s a friend of mine – Jeff Hyslop!”

A light signed by Tony Bennett after a performance at the Orpheum. Courtesy Jason Vanderhill

The lights had almost been lost to time and the dumpster. Another near-tragedy of Vancouver’s urge to purge its past. But eyes that were keen and hearts that long to preserve and celebrate our city’s culture had intervened. The three lights that sold went to homes where their rich history would be appreciated. And the remainder? They rest in a secret room in a famous theatre. And the day will come when they are displayed and perhaps even researched by top people.

Who?

Top people.

Bill Allman is a “recovering lawyer” and instructor of Entertainment Law at UBC. Bill has been a theatre manager (the Vogue), president of Theatre Under the Stars, and a concert promoter and theatre producer through his company, Famous Artists Limited. He is no longer willing to move your piano.

Tags Bill Allman, Hugh Pickett, Orpheum Theatre, Salmagundi West, Sylvia Hotel, Tom Carter, Tony Bennett

What the Alhambra Theatre and the Vancouver Stock Exchange have in common

by Eve Lazarus on June 13, 2015

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

I was spending a typical Friday afternoon yesterday poking around the digital files at Vancouver Archives when I found this photo of the Alhambra Theatre. The photo was taken in 1899, the year the theatre first appears in the city directories and it stood at the corner of West Pender and Howe Street.

West Pender and Howe Streets — Alhambra Theatre, 850 West Pender Street, 1899 CVA Bu N424

While I often run posts lamenting the loss of our old building stock, I do realize that change is inevitable, and all of it isn’t bad. I wanted to know what had replaced this old theatre.

The Royal Theatre at West Pender and Howe Street — 1902 Tourist Guide map showing the Royal Theatre courtesy Tom Carter

The Alhambra Theatre didn’t last long. By 1901 it was the Royal, and two years later the People’s Theatre. Tom Carter*, who is the expert on anything and everything that’s theatre in Vancouver, tells me that Vaudeville magnates Sullivan and Considine performed a huge renovation and turned it into the Orpheum in 1906. The theatre lasted at 805 West Pender until, according to Tom, its owners rebuilt the Vancouver Opera House into the second Orpheum Theatre in 1913 (the current Orpheum Theatre was built in 1927).

850 West Pender Street — People’s Theatre 1903

In 1914, the West Pender building is listed in the directories as the “old Orpheum Theatre” and (possibly because it’s now the war years) it doesn’t get a mention again until 1917 when it becomes a tire-dealership. The building then hosts a couple of different taxi companies, and at one point the Sing Lung Laundry.

By 1929 the building has been replaced by the eleven-storey neo-gothic Stock Exchange, its address changes to Howe; and it becomes the home of the Vancouver Stock Exchange until 1947.

West Pender and Howe Street — Stock Exchange Tower, 475 Howe Street, 1929 CVA 1399-600

It’s a valuable piece of real estate in development hungry Vancouver, and its zoned for a much higher tower. But instead of knocking down this old gem as we’re prone to do, Credit Suisse, a Swiss company has stepped in with the Starchitect behind the restoration of London’s Tate Modern gallery, to incorporate the old building into the design for the new.

The new building will be a 31-storey office tower and the ground floor will be retail.

It’s an impressive looking building, a win for heritage, and a nod to the original architects—Townley and Matheson, the same two who designed Vancouver City Hall in 1936.

*For more on Vancouver’s theatre check out Tom Carter’s chapter in Vancouver Confidential: “Nightclub Czars of Vancouver and the Death of Vaudeville.”

* For more on our missing theatres: Our Missing Theatre Heritage – what were we thinking?

Tags 475 Howe Street, 850 West Pender Street, Alhambra Theatre, building, Credit Suisse, Orpheum Theatre, People's Theatre, Royal Theatre, Sing Lung Laundry, Stock Exchange, Sullivan and Considine, the Exchange, Tom Carter, Townley and Matheson, Vancouver Archives, Vancouver City Hall, Vancouver Confidential, Vancouver Stock Exchange

Vancouver’s Missing Theatres

by Eve Lazarus on December 12, 2014

It’s hard to imagine that 100 years ago the Hastings Street area had a thriving theatre district, filled with opulent buildings, cafes and people, and known as the “Hastings Great White Way.”

The Rex Theatre, 25 West Hastings Street, 1914, CVA 99 240

In past blogs I’ve written about the Strand, the Pantages and the Empress–all theatres that once existed in downtown Vancouver, but have long since been turned into parking lots or cheaper, uninteresting buildings.

I decided to take a look at the city directories from 100 years ago and take a stroll through Vancouver’s theatre district. Just look what we’ve done with the space.

1920 — Columbia Theatre, 64 West Hastings, CVA 99-3293

In 1914 the National Theatre and the Columbia Theatre sat side by side at 58 and 64 West Hastings Street, just across from the Rex Theatre. The space is now a “developer ready” lot.

The Bijou Theatre sat at 333 Carrall Street just off Hastings Street. It was demolished in 1940. The photo (below) and the story of its life and death is at the Changing Vancouver blog.

In 1913, The Vancouver Opera House turned into the Orpheum Theatre and started showing vaudeville acts. The Orpheum (but not the one we have now) sat at the 700 block Granville Street. In the Leonard Frank photo below you can see the second Hotel Vancouver behind.

By 1935 the Orpheum had morphed into the Lyric and in 1969 it was a distant memory — demolished to make way for the Pacific Centre.

The gaudy Pacific Centre on the 700 block Granville

The Imperial Theatre was once part of a vibrant street scape along the 700-block Main.

700-block Main Street, ca.1918 CVA 99-1269

The theatre is long gone and the two adjacent buildings on the corner of Main and Union and what’s now the Brickyard are likely soon to be replaced by another boxy glass condo building.

The Star Theatre was at 327 Main Street in 1914.

Sources:

Changing Vancouver – then and now blog

Murray Maisey’s slide show on Hastings Theatre

For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

Doors Open Vancouver

by Eve Lazarus on October 2, 2014

The second Doors Open Vancouver is coming up this Saturday October 3, and will give you a behind-the-scenes look at 18 city-owned buildings. Since you won’t have time to see all of them – here’s my top six:

1. Vancouver Fire and Rescue Training Centre:

Go see the city’s only burn building (meaning one that’s lit on fire), find out about the heavy urban search and rescue team, and of course, check out the hot firefighters.

Tactical

2. Vancouver Police Department’s Tactical Training Centre:

Where cops go to fire guns and learn other skills (Waterboarding 101 anyone?)

Photo courtesy greenbuildingaudiotours.com

3. Stanley Park Train

The Stanley Park Miniature Train Yard—It has been around since 1947, and should be on the must-do list of any visit to Vancouver (with or without kids). It may even have its Halloween clothes on.

Stanley Park Train

4. Carnegie Community Centre:

Built in 1903 as the Carnegie Library, now operating as the Carnegie Community Centre at Main and Hastings. Right next door are some of the cleanest washrooms I’ve ever seen. You could eat off the floor.

CVA Bu P116.1

5. The Orpheum Theatre:

For all the different architectural influences, and because it wasn’t demolished

Dan Rickard photo. www.danrickard.ca

5. Vancouver City Hall

Go just to see our Mayor’s ceremonial office and council chambers. Who knows you may even have a strange encounter with the mayor himself.

Vancouver City Hall from Yukon, 1937, Leonard Frank photo CVA City P21

Sharp eyed-readers will notice that this post was written last year for the first Doors Open Vancouver. I’ve updated a little, but overall, I stand by my choices. If you got to these ones last year check out the other 12 on display at Doors Open Vancouver 2015

Tags Carnegie Community Centre, Carnegie Library, Open Doors Vancouver, Orpheum Theatre, Stanley Park Train, Tactical Training Centre, Vancouver City Hall, Vancouver Fire and Rescue Training Centre

The Orpheum Theatre and a conversation with Paul Merrick

by Eve Lazarus on August 23, 2014

Dan Rickard photo. www.danrickard.ca

Dan Rickard photography

A couple of weeks ago, Judy Graves, Tom Carter and I took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Orpheum Theatre.

The “new” Orpheum was designed in 1927 by Marcus Priteca, a Seattle-based architect who fashioned the theatre in a Spanish renaissance style and gave it an opulent air with some sleight of hand tricks.

For instance, if you tap on a colonnade it’s hollow, made from precast plaster. The ornate Baroque ceiling is made from plaster and chicken wire.

Priteca introduced a range of different influences including Italian-inspired terrazzo floors and travertine walls, crests of British heraldry and 145 Czechoslovakian crystal chandeliers.

We got to climb up on a catwalk way above the domed ceiling, visit the projection booth—and we went up on the stage—the same one where Jack Benny and W.C. Fields once performed.

Tom played the original organ.

I didn’t realize how close we came to losing the theatre. In 1973 Famous Players wanted to replace the Orpheum with a Multiplex cinema and it sparked off what was probably the biggest heritage protest in Vancouver’s history. City Hall received 8,000 letters from angry citizens and petitions with thousands of signatures. Ivan Ackery, the Orpheum’s long-time manager bounced back from retirement and joined impresario Hugh Pickett to stage a benefit concert.

The City bought the Orpheum for $3.9 million and poured another $3.2 million into a renovation by Paul Merrick, the same architect who designed Cathedral Place, renovated the Marine Building and converted the BC Electric building into the Electra.

“The Orpheum is a good example of a building that has begged, borrowed and stolen characteristics from all over the world,” Merrick told me. “There’s a dozen different styles going on top of each other, from Spanish to late Edwardian to who knows what, it was just a case of playing some more with it.”

Merrick said the Orpheum was one of “the earliest large adaptive reuse projects” and was more extensive then it appears because the whole of the Vaudeville stage entrance was taken out and redone using a larger version of Priteca’s original design to accommodate a 100-plus orchestra.

“Adapting buildings involves paying all the respect and every respect you can to what it is and what it was and why it’s worth taking trouble with, but that doesn’t mean being stultified or precious about it,” he said. “The focus of architecture is to make a building and when it’s all said and done, buildings need to be objects of utility, to service the people’s uses and needs inside them. They are there to provide shelter, but they are also concerned with affording delight. I always thought if you could make pieces of the city—which is all a building is just another piece of the city—if we can make an environment that we’re happy to leave to our descendants, then that’s as good as you can do.”

Tags Cathedral Place, Hugh Pickett, Ivan Ackery, Jack Benny, Judy Graves, Marcus Priteca, Marine Building, Orpheum Theatre, Paul Merrick, Tom Carter, W.C. Fields

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