Seville Theatre, Heritage movie theater in Ville-Marie, Canada
The Seville Theatre was a single-screen, 1,148-seat cinema on Sainte-Catherine Street West between Lambert-Closse and Chomedey streets in Shaughnessy Village. Cajetan L. Dufort designed the 1929 building and Emmanuel Briffa its interior, whose ceiling was painted as a night sky with stars and a mechanism for moving clouds. Shops occupied the front, an ice cream parlour on the east side and a drugstore on the west.
Built in 1929 to designs by Cajetan L. Dufort, with interiors by Emmanuel Briffa, the Seville was a 1,148-seat single-screen house. It became a live venue in the 1940s, and around 1950 Oscar Glas redesigned the interior in pastels, discarding most original decoration. It returned to films in the 1960s, closed on 31 October 1985 after a rent increase, and was demolished in 2010.
The name comes from the Spanish theme of the 1929 interior, whose ceiling was painted as a starry night sky. In the 1940s the single screen gave way to live variety shows, with Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong among the performers. Around 1950 Oscar Glas replaced the original decoration with a pastel scheme, and most of the old ornament went to the monastery of St-Bernard-de-Lacolle.
The building no longer exists, having been demolished in 2010. A modern residential complex called Le Seville now occupies the site with apartments and ground-floor commercial spaces.
The interior ceiling created an artificial night sky, a feature found in only about fifteen such atmospheric theaters across Canada. This design element provided an immersive viewing experience for audiences.
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