Art Deco architecture across Canada – sneak peak!

This Sunday afternoon (March 25), Tim Morawetz is delivering an illustrated lecture entitled 'Art Deco Architecture Across Canada' as part of the Roaring Twenties Lecture Series at the Bata Shoe Museum in downtown Toronto.

Ceiling of Marine Building lobby, Vancouver, 1929

During the talk, Tim will showcase several dozen Art Deco buildings from coast to coast, including:

Hambly House, Hamilton, 1939

* Halifax's Bank of Nova Scotia
* Montreal's best Deco Roman Catholic Cathedral
* Toronto's legendary Maple Leaf Gardens
* Hamilton's newly restored Hambly House
* Winnipeg's best Moderne high school
* Calgary's dismantled York Hotel
* Vancouver's spectacular Marine Building

This talk is a chance to preview some of the buildings that will be featured in Tim's upcoming book to be published later this year.

Lecture tickets are $16, which includes Museum admisison and a short tour of the Roaring Twenties exhibition following the lecture (free for Bata Shoe Museum members). Pre-registration is required; call 416-979-7799 x240 or email programs@batashoemuseum.ca.

Step out in Hollywood on Sept. 24!

The Art Deco Society of Los Angeles is launching a brand-new walking tour of Hollywood Boulevard.

For details, visit: http://adsla.org/info/content/september-24-art-deco-walking-tour-hollywood-boulevard.

You've got (Art Deco) mail!

Canada Post has released the designs for a series of five postage stamps, to go on sale June 9, that feature five Art Deco structures from across Canada.

Stamp designer Ivan Novotny of Taylor | Sprules says: “Many of the great (Art) Deco buildings across this country have very distinct silhouettes that were defined by the principles of the movement. It’s the commonly overlooked extraordinary details that adorn these great spires that demand a closer look.”

The five buildings featured in the series are:

• MONTREAL: Cormier House – Ernest Cormier (architect and engineer); 1930–31
•  OTTAWA: Supreme Court of Canada – Ernest Cormier (architect and engineer); 1939
• TORONTO: The R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant – Thomas C. Pomphrey (designer, of engineering firm Gore, Nasmith and Storrie); initial phase designed 1932–1937 and opened 1941
• REGINA: Dominion Building – Reilly and Portnall (architects), 1935–37
• VANCOUVER: Burrard Bridge – George Lister Thornton Sharp (architect), 1930–32

If I was asked to add five buildings to turn this into a top-ten list, I would recommend:

• QUEBEC CITY: Price Building – Ross and MacDonald, 1929–30
• TORONTO: Garden Court Apartments – Page and Steele, 1939–42
• CALGARY: (former) Bank of Nova Scotia (Eighth Avenue West) – John M. Lyle, 1929
• VANCOUVER: Marine Building – McCarter and Nairne, 1929–1930
• VANCOUVER: Vogue Theatre – Kaplan and Sprachman, 1940–41

What great Canadian Deco buildings would YOU add to the list?

Feature attraction! gas, milk and a coffee

Allenby (later Roxy) cinema as Hollywood dinner theatre in the 1980s.

Toronto's Allenby cinema – located at 1215 Danforth Ave., just east of Greenwood Ave., later rebranded the Roxy – was designed by noted theatre architects Kaplan and Sprachman in 1936. (After its cinema days were over, it was known to a generation of mostly youthful Torontonians as the home of midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and as then as the Hollywood Dinner Theatre before lying closed and derelict for more than a decade. 

About a year ago, things began happening when Imperial Oil (which owned the corner lot, formerly the site of a gas station), began transforming the tired but still intact yellow brick building with decorative stone details into a state-of-the-art On the Run convenience store.

Original canopy has been faithfully
rebuilt, including neon lettering.

With the building now essentially finished, Torontonians who once eagerly lined-up to watch the latest movie now line up in droves to get their daily fix of Tim Hortons coffee!

At end of August, the hoarding was still up.
The contemporary On the Run entrance
is to the far right of the photo, facing west.

 Kudos to Imperial Oil for their wisdom to preserve and restore so much of the building to create a unique 'c-store' experience, and to ERA Architects and Teksign for pulling it off!

Read the story about the building's transformation in articles by Dave Leblanc (The Globe and Mail) and Christopher Hume (The Toronto Star). 

Footnote: Other Deco-era cinemas in Toronto designed by Kaplan and Sprachman are the former Eglinton cinema (400 Eglinton Avenue West, 1934-36); the former Bayview (1605 Bayview Avenue, 1936), the former State (1610 Bloor Street West, 1937), the Metro (679 Bloor Street West, 1938) and the Paradise (1008 Bloor Street West, 1939). Two other Deco cinemas (the Pylon – 608-610 College Street, 1939, now the Royal; and the Kingsway – 3030 Bloor Street West, 1939-40) were designed by different architects. Source: Art Deco Architecture in Toronto by Tim Morawetz, 2009.

Hollywood & Art Deco: a classic double-bill

The Art Deco style certainly made itself felt on the movies, both in terms of the sets and costumes of films from the period, as well as in the design of cinemas themselves. In fact, Art Deco cinemas can literally be found the world over, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities.

Fortunately, the city that's intimately associated with the movies – Hollywood –  has its own Art Deco society (Art Deco Society of Los Angeles).

In my opinion, ADSLA is one of the most organized and effective Deco societies, with a full slate of events (walking tours, lectures, movie showings and galas). As well, it monitors preservation issues in that city, as well as around the world.

If and when you travel to LA, be sure you check out ADSLA's website to see if there's an event you can work into your schedule!

Help save streamlined Australian cinema!

Please help preserve the Glenelg Ozone Cinema in Glenelg South Australia by signing the online petition!

This cinema is an outstanding example of the Art Deco style and possibly the earliest remaining air-conditioned, fully Art Deco designed cinema in the region. Faced in Basket Range freestone, featuring horizontal fins and a prominent vertical signage element (both originally neon lit) it is the only Art Deco theatre in Australia constructed with a stone front. The building was designed in 1936 by F. Kenneth Milne, a prominent interwar architect, after visiting the United Kingdom in the early 1930s.