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Photo: Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A performing arts theatre with renowned acoustics, Massey Hall opened in 1894 and is today a designated National Historic Site of Canada.
Massey Hall is a performing arts auditorium located within the Garden District in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Opened in 1894, it is known for its outstanding acoustics and was the long-time hall of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Although originally designed to seat 3,500 patrons, after extensive renovations in 1933 its capacity was reduced to 2,765. Its extensive history includes concerts by many of the most famous artists of the past century and more, across many musical genres, which is a pattern that continues to the present day.
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These two theatres are the last remaining Edwardian stacked theatres in the world. They were opened in 1913, showing mainly Vaudeville acts. After the decline of Vaudeville, the upper level Winter Garden closed and the lower level Elgin was converted into a cinema. By the 1970s the Elgin was showing a mixture of B-movies and pornography, but in the 1980s the Ontario Heritage Foundation bought both theatres and restored them to their original glory. They now show mainly Broadway plays and musicals and serve as venues for the Toronto International Film Festival.
This theatre opened as the Pantages Theatre in 1920, hosting films and Vaudeville acts. In the 1970s it was split up into several cinemas to form a modern multiplex. It was restored and reopened as a theatre in 1989, most famously hosting Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera for more than ten years.
Mackenzie House, built in 1830, was the last home of William Lyon Mackenzie, the city's first mayor. Mackenzie lived here from 1835 to 1837. Today the house has period furnishings and there is an exhibit of many 19th century printing presses in a nice mock-up of an old printing office. (Mackenzie was editor of his own newspaper, The Constitution.) Mackenzie abandoned the house after participating in a failed rebellion in 1837.
A small museum with exhibits about prominent Canadian musicians and singers, from jazz to opera.
This modest Gothic Revival church was built in 1847. It is approximately five storeys tall, and though the scale of the church is modest, its height is emphasized through details which point upward. With the rectory building, the church gives Trinity Square a rustic look despite the modern buildings around it. The square has densely planted trees along walkways, a decorative fountain of water falling from a wall into an ornamental pond, and an artificial stream.
Gothic-style cathedral that is one of the oldest churches in Toronto.