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http://www.historicplaces.ca/
Statement
of Significance
Description of Historic
Place
The three-storey Orpheum
Theatre is located in the busy entertainment district of Vancouver,
adjacent to other historic Edwardian commercial buildings on Granville
Street. Expanded in the 1980s, a new entrance to the theatre was
created on one side of the building, with the Granville Street
elevation retaining its original symmetrical brick and terra cotta
façade with a large canopy and vertical neon sign. The
official recognition refers to the interior and exterior of the
building on its legal lot.
Heritage Value
Orpheum Theatre was
designated a national historic site of Canada in 1979, because
it is a good example of a Canadian movie palace, and one of the
few to survive in relatively unchanged condition.
Considered the ‘Grand
Old Lady of Granville’, Vancouver’s fourth Orpheum
Theatre was one of seventeen grand movie places in Canada built
by the Chicago-based Orpheum Circuit and the largest and most
extravagant theatre on the Pacific Coast. It exemplified the faith
of the company in the metropolitan growth of Vancouver and it
became a symbol of Vancouver’s progress.
The Orpheum Theatre
was designed by B. Marcus Priteca, a Seattle-based architect who
designed nearly two hundred theatres from San Diego to Alaska.
Priteca introduced many innovations to theatre design including
the triple-domed ceiling, a deep, cantilevered balcony with carefully
angled seating for improved sight lines, an orchestra pit, and
a mezzanine. Priteca was also a master at economically creating
the illusion of opulence with plasterwork on reinforced concrete.
Frederick J. Peters was the associated architect on the project.
The Orpheum is an excellent
example of theatre design of the 1920s. Centrally located in an
urban area, it offered a large seating capacity, spacious foyer
and lobby areas, and a lavish interior décor that created
an atmosphere of exotic luxury. Throughout the richly decorated
common areas of the theatre are a series of repeating motifs such
as colonnades that provide constant visual stimulation and multiple,
controlled perspectives. The design is a mélange of architectural
influences - the vaulted ceilings of the main concourse and foyer
and the terra cotta undersides of the marquees and the travertine
walls and pillars are Italian influenced, there are exotic ceiling
motifs, crests of British heraldry, chandeliers of Czechoslovakian
crystal, Moorish-inspired organ screens, and Baroque ceiling and
dome covers.
The Orpheum Theatre
was an important landmark in the development of Granville Street
as entertainment area from the 1920s to the 1940s. Long under
the management of master showman Ivan Ackery, a number of prestigious
acts have graced its stage, many related to Orpheum Circuit productions.
Audiences have been entertained by symphonies, vaudeville acts
and movies by some of the world’s most famous performers.
The Orpheum hosted Vancouver’s first radio theatre and it
is home to B.C.’s ‘Starwall Gallery’ inside
the theatre and ‘Starwalk’ along theatre row to honour
British Columbians who have excelled in all disciplines of the
entertainment arts.
The theatre was one
of the first large-scale heritage conservation projects undertaken
in Vancouver. Between 1974 and 1977, renovations were carried
out by the firm Thompson, Berwick, Pratt and Partners of Vancouver.
Today the theatre thrives as the city’s premier concert
hall and as home to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
Sources: Historic Sites
and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, November 1979; Screening
paper, 1979.
Character-Defining
Elements
Key elements that contribute
to the heritage character of the Orpheum Theatre include its:
- exterior design with
classicized symmetrical façade, brick and terra cotta facing
with decorative pilasters, large round-headed window, and balustrade
along the roofline, entrance canopy, vertical neon sign on the
Granville Street façade;
- reinforced concrete construction with steel girders;
- its interior layout with triple-height foyer decorated with
cast stone colonnades and elegant coffered ceiling, and the grand
unified interior space of the auditorium defined by the richly
plastered vault and dome built upon a metal frame and suspended
from steel girders and massive trusses crossing an unbroken span
of 36.5 metres, its cantilevered balcony created by a network
of counterbalanced steel trusses, and the grand staircase ascending
through several landings to the main level of the auditorium;
- decorative finishes including European-inspired plasterwork,
terrazzo floors, travertine walls, marble bases, highly ornate
ceilings, elaborate grand staircase balusters, plaster decorative
trim and moldings, Czechoslovakian chandeliers, and two silk and
hand embroidered Chinese tapestries ‘Long Life’ and
‘Happiness’ presented to the theatre by the Chinese
Community in 1927;
- repeated series of arches that create a sense of unity and progression
to the stage in addition to punctuating space and creating a series
of ‘stages’ in the lobby;
- hardwood (maple) stage;
- built-in (former) projection booth constructed of reinforced
concrete;
- the rare Wurlitzer Theatre Pipe Organ.
Architect / Designer
B. Marcus Priteca
Frederick J. Peters
Thompson, Berwick and Pratt |
Two preliminary sketches for the Orpheum
entrance from the workbook of B. Marcus Priteca, 1927. The final
design is most similar to the sketch on the right 
