Quote:
Originally Posted by ns_kid
It's not true that Halifax has never had a great medium-sized facility. The Capitol Theatre (1930-1974) on Barrington at Spring Garden was a venue of 1,980 seats with superb acoustics and grand appointments. I think of its loss as Halifax's Penn Station moment (Penn Station being the New York City landmark lost in 1963, spawning the historic preservation movement in that city.) Sadly the city had the opportunity to protect the Capitol, and ensure the auditorium was incorporated within the new Maritime Centre. In fact, city council voted to do so, before reversing itself.
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Cynthia Henry, the unofficial historian of the Capitol Theatre, sheds some more light on this today in a
short documentary piece for CBC. She suggests the reason the Capitol auditorium was not preserved is that owner Famous Players insisted as a condition of sale that the auditorium had to go, to protect its 1200-seat Paramount theatre down the street. Of course the sad irony is that the Paramount itself was shuttered 14 years later.
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