Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres

The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres are a pair of stacked theatres in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Winter Garden Theatre is seven storeys above the Elgin Theatre. They are the last surviving Edwardian stacked theatres in the world. The pair of theatres were originally built as the flagship of Marcus Loew’s theatre chain in 1913. The building was designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb, who also designed the Ed Mirvish Theatre nearby. Both theatres were built to show vaudeville acts and the short silent movies of the time. Each theatre was intended for a different class of patron. In 1928, the lower theatre was converted to show sound films and the upper theatre was closed. The Winter Garden remained shuttered for about sixty years. Left inside it was a large collection of vaudeville flats and scenery, now the world’s largest surviving collection.