Edmonton Capitol Theatre

10067 Jasper Avenue NW, Edmonton

By: Ryan Krawchuk

This theatre, replicated on a much smaller scale at Fort Edmonton Park in 2011, is one of my favourite places to visit in the City of Edmonton. Fort Edmonton Park is expected to re-open in May of this year, following a $165 million dollar improvement project, and I couldn’t be more excited.

The Capitol Theatre was Edmonton's first dedicated movie-house.

The Allen Theatre opened on December 2, 1918. It was designed by architect H. L. Gage as a two-storey building. It was constructed of concrete with brick cladding. The main entrance arches were cast in concrete. It had a flat roof edged along the front elevation with a precast concrete cornice topped by a brick false front. Inside, the auditorium curved towards the stage, giving every seat an unobstructed view of the screen, and birthing the modern theatre seating.

In 1923 it was acquired by Famous Players and renamed. Now called the Capitol Theatre, Famous Players closed it in 1929 for three months to add a balcony to seat an additional 500 people and to install sound equipment for the new "talkies." An electric marquee was added and Emmanuel Briffa, a famous theatre designer from Montreal, was hired to redecorate the interior. He added antique gold finishings to walls and ceilings. Stairs were added leading up to a spacious lounge outside the new balcony area. The ticket office was moved and expanded to make the lobby more comfortable and to reduce wait times. Once the renovations were complete, the Capitol was the first theatre in the region to show movies with sound.

The theatre would see additional renovations only nine years later in 1938. Designers Magoon and MacDonald brought air conditioning and a 2000-light marquee with a large vertical sign, the largest in all of Western Canada. The marquee was said to generate so much heat that the sidewalk in front of the theatre stayed snow and ice-free nearly all winter. The next major redesign occurred in 1954 by the architectural firm Dewar-Stevenson & Stanley.

In addition to movies, between 1952 to 1957, the theatre served as the original home of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

By the 1970s, the larger theatres were no longer profitable, and the Capitol Theatre was demolished on November 5, 1972, only to live on in memory and the re-creation at Fort Edmonton Park.