Halifax's booming population puts a squeeze on performance venues

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Here’s a pic of the interior of the Capitol Theater found on FB. Approximately 2,000 seats, demolished in 1974 to allow for construction of Maritime Centre.

Wow... I think this may be the first colour pic I've seen of the theatre. Makes its loss even more painful, as it was spectacular. Lots of nice stuff around here didn't survive the sixties, seventies, and eighties.

[ns_kid]

Originally Posted by ns_kid

It's not true that Halifax has never had a great medium-sized facility. The Capitol Theatre (1930-1974) on Barrington at Spring Garden was a venue of 1,980 seats with superb acoustics and grand appointments. I think of its loss as Halifax's Penn Station moment (Penn Station being the New York City landmark lost in 1963, spawning the historic preservation movement in that city.) Sadly the city had the opportunity to protect the Capitol, and ensure the auditorium was incorporated within the new Maritime Centre. In fact, city council voted to do so, before reversing itself.

Cynthia Henry, the unofficial historian of the Capitol Theatre, sheds some more light on this today in a short documentary piece for CBC. She suggests the reason the Capitol auditorium was not preserved is that owner Famous Players insisted as a condition of sale that the auditorium had to go, to protect its 1200-seat Paramount theatre down the street. Of course the sad irony is that the Paramount itself was shuttered 14 years later.


[Keith P.]

While that is an interesting theory, surely the real reason is simply that MT&T, who had a smallish modern building next door, wanted to consolidate its operations and management in a large new modern tower on that site and needed the theater property which was adjacent to do so. Without saving the theater building there would be no saving the theater - although in retrospect, it might have been a good thing to abandon the dream of a downtown mall in the bowels of Maritime Centre and use the space instead for a new 2000-seat performance theater using some of the artifacts from the Capitol.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Wow... I think this may be the first colour pic I've seen of the theatre. Makes its loss even more painful, as it was spectacular. Lots of nice stuff around here didn't survive the sixties, seventies, and eighties.

That is a great Picture and man that would a jewel in the City now. Halifax has always had enough wealth and things going on that money can be found to retire or demolish things but not enough wealth to go to the next level. Yet in other communities that are not as wealthy as Halifax you see things like the Saint John Capital theatre still around not to mention Glace Bays. Not enough money around to demolish things. That has really worked out for Saint John as its late 19th Century restoring up Town is actually quite impressive.