Elgin & Winter Garden Theatres

This guide to the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres in Toronto traces architect Thomas Lamb's unusual 1913 design for Marcus Loew: two entirely different theatres, stacked one above the other. It follows the Winter Garden's sudden lock-up in 1928, when vaudeville died out and its ceiling of real beech leaves and hand-painted forest walls went dark. Old vaudeville scenery from long-forgotten acts sat piled in that abandoned upper hall for decades, while downstairs the Elgin kept running as a movie house. Best heard looking up at the gilded ceiling before the show starts.