{"id":1891,"date":"2025-01-21T11:13:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T16:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/history\/"},"modified":"2025-04-17T17:49:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T21:49:36","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"History"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

HISTORY<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\"historique1\"<\/figure><\/a><\/div>
\"historique5\"<\/figure><\/a><\/div>
\"historique4\"<\/figure><\/a><\/div>
\"historique8\"<\/figure><\/a><\/div>
\"historique6\"<\/figure><\/a><\/div>
\"historique1\"<\/figure><\/a><\/div>\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

A Witness to an Era<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza, for those who remember, was once one of the most luxurious and prosperous cinemas in the metropolis. Indeed, from its opening in 1922 until the late 1970s, the theatre honored its primary vocation: to present popular and repertory films in 35mm. As a sign of the times, the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza closed its doors at the turn of the 1980s like so many others in Montreal. One can think of the Seville, the Elys\u00e9e, the Orpheum or the York… All these abandoned theaters eventually fell to the jackhammers. Or they were repurposed to accommodate pharmacies (the Rivoli), bookstores (the Regent) or shopping centers (the Snowdon). Today, these theaters are memories or mere shadows of what they once were.<\/p>

Now, you can count on one hand the number of old Montreal cinemas that have preserved their original architecture. We think of the Rialto or the Corona, for example. The Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza, surprisingly well-preserved for its 103 years, is one of these flamboyant old performance halls that only ask to regain their former splendor.<\/p>

Through the richness and exoticism of its interior decoration, the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza offers a magnificent illustration of the ‘Adam’ style and eloquently testifies to a phenomenon that briefly marked the design of movie theaters at the turn of the 1920s.<\/p>

It was the United Amusement corporation that financed the construction of the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza. This company had begun its activities in Montreal in 1912 with the construction of the Strand theatre on Sainte-Catherine Street. The other movie theaters it built were the Regent (1916) and the Rialto (1924) on Park Avenue, the Rivoli (1926) on Saint-Denis Street, the Seville (1929) on Sainte-Catherine Street, the Monkland (1930) on Monkland Avenue and the Snowdon (1937) on Decarie Boulevard.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

The Renaissance<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza began showing French films in 1940. It was the golden age of Plaza Saint-Hubert, an upscale and prosperous business district. With the advent of television, the vocation of the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza and several other cinemas was compromised. In 1957, the theatre was modified and its capacity reduced by half. A median concrete floor was poured to make room for a bowling alley on the ground floor. It continued to show repertory films and adult films for a few more years before closing at the end of the 1970s. It then underwent the most improbable transformations, housing at times a shoe store, at other times a film development laboratory.<\/p>

In September 2003, the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza reopened its doors on the initiative of Claudio Bustamante and Renaud Gauthier, who turned it into a multidisciplinary performance hall after significant revitalization work.<\/p>

In February 2022, the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza celebrated its 100th anniversary!<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HISTORY A Witness to an Era The Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Plaza, for those who remember, was once one of the most luxurious and prosperous cinemas in the metropolis. Indeed, from its opening in 1922 until the late 1970s, the theatre honored its primary vocation: to present popular and repertory films in 35mm. As a sign of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1893,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"elementor_header_footer","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1891","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1894,"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1891\/revisions\/1894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theatreplaza.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}