The Empire, 1914–21
Celebrating the end of the First World War? On the morning of Nov. 11, 1918, as the Examiner reported, “a procession over a mile long, containing every kind of vehicle that could be induced to move,” travelled down George Street to Charlotte, west to Aylmer, north to Hunter, and east to Water, ending finally in Central Park. The parade was “impromptu” and the vehicles were “bedecked with flags and bunting.” Although this photo is not identified as such, here a parade heading west along Charlotte Street goes by the Empire Theatre (in the middle of the photo). The auto at the front has a 1918 licence plate. It appears that the cars are about to turn north onto Alymer Street. Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images, nd, Peterborough Museum and Archives.
A few years earlier . . .
The Empire on its second day of life: a page 7 banner headline ad promoting the excitement: Saturday, July 25, 1914.
“The New ‘Empire’ Theatre . . . opens to-day.”
So proclaimed a not-to-be-missed banner ad stretched across the top of the Examiner’s page 7 on Friday, July 24, 1914. The name of the theatre proved prescient, for just a few days later saw the beginning of the bitter battle of the “empires” first known as the “European War” and soon as the “Great War” and later the “First World War.” Although touted on the home front as a case of “Humanity against Barbarism,” under any moniker it would prove over time to be both supremely misbegotten and painfully costly on all sides.
Examiner, April 10, 1946, p.9. The “Robinson Block” on the northeast corner of Charlotte and Aylmer, as it appeared in 1946. The Empire Theatre had been in the slightly indented building on the far right. The owner Robinson was born in the upstairs flat on the corner. The southeast corner of Charlotte and Aylmer was called “Robinson’s Corner.”
In the meantime a middle-aged veterinary surgeon, Dr. Fred L. Robinson, had decided for some reason that animals and motion pictures would make a profitable mix. In December 1913 the vet announced plans for extreme renovations to what was known as “Robinson’s block,” an area that took up much of the north side of Charlotte Street, west of George, with buildings stretching from the Curling Club Rink (no. 216½) to Alymer Street. Robinson had decided to transform part of his Charlotte Street property into a “modern picture theatre . . . ornamented with a splendid front.”
Examiner, Oct. 5, 1897, np.
Union Publishing Co.’s Peterborough Directory, 1904-5, p.214.
Daily Evening Review, Dec. 9, 1913, p.8. “Movies”: this is an early sighting of that term as employed by the local newspaper — so new it had to be enclosed in quotation marks.
In combination with his veterinary practice Robinson operated a livery and hack business at 224-26 Charlotte, with an entrance as well on Aylmer Street – stabling, feeding, and caring for (or boarding) horses, hiring out horses and carriages, and providing a taxicab service – “open day and night.” In his renovations Robinson would convert his carriage barn, next to the Curling Rink, into the theatre, leaving the Aylmer Street entrance to the livery unchanged.
Robinson, born in Peterborough in 1865, lived in the city all his life. The story goes that he had entered life in the upstairs flat over the grocery and general store on the corner of Alymer and Charlotte — with the store being operated at that point by his father, Edward. He lost his father and in 1883 had a step-father, Tobias Fitzgerald, who in that decade held the land between Charlotte and Simcoe streets as a tenant and operated a livery stable. Fred Robinson originally worked as a clerk for his step-father before getting his degree at the Ontario Veterinary College — and he would eventually take over and expand the Fitzgerald livery stable business.
By 1895 both Tobias and Fred were living on the south side of Charlotte, at numbers 225 and 227 respectively, in the stretch between Louis and Aylmer streets — and shortly after that Robinson was advertising himself as a combination veterinarian-surgeon-dentist and “inspector of live stock under appointment of the Dominion Government.” For years the southeast corner of Charlotte and Alymer was known as “the Robinson corner.”
Examiner, May 9, 1914, p.9. In anticipation of the Empire: “The City centre continues to shift.”
In 1914 Robinson continued to maintain a small barn and carriage shop on the south side of Charlotte, with his main business and stables on the north side. Although he was taking a leap into the motion picture business, Robinson was not gambling all on it. He left his livery service intact and built a large addition to his barn on the south side of Charlotte. He needed space for “thirty-two horses now in his barns and for a number of others that might be added.” During the alterations he took over a vacant building – a few years earlier, the site of the Queens Hotel – on the northeast corner of Charlotte and Alymer (where he was apparently born) for his office. He also planned to take over an office on Alymer south of Charlotte “in conjunction with the stables that are being enlarged adjacent to it.”
On Saturday, July 18, 1914, a number of people got a preview of the new theatre. Although the seats were not yet installed, those who ventured out could take some standing room and watch a film or two without charge. Then, at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, July 24, the Empire Theatre at 224 Charlotte Street, with about 500 seats to offer, was finally ready for the greater public.
“With new and attractive features in motion picture productions” and “a fine air of distinction,” the latest in a series of moving picture halls “made its opening bow to Peterborough’s amusement lovers.” The occasion apparently attracted a “bumper” crowd of about 200 people (far from capacity). Possibly many of the people who lined up along Charlotte Street on a bright, hot summer day were chatting not about the theatre or the possibilities of a distant war but about the so-called “gypsies” who were being “chased out of Peterborough” yet again – after typically racist stories had arisen about how people had been duped out of their hard-earned money by a “gypsy fortune-teller.” Just another reminder of how things were not necessarily all that good for all people in those “good old days.”
Daily Evening Review, July 27, 1914, p.8. Here not “movies,” but “photo plays” — and the specific program of films unnamed.
But once inside the theatre, the audience members found a place much to their liking, a space in which their thoughts could turn elsewhere. With its 500 seats the new Empire, just a short walk west from the main downtown hub of George and Charlotte, was among the first wave of theatres being constructed across North America as true “motion picture houses” – a house dedicated to film alone, with built-in screen, the latest in projectors, and, most significantly, no stage for live performances.
The Empire was not the only new touch being applied to that stretch of street. As the Daily Evening Review reported, “When Braund’s new three-storey building is completed, this is bound to be one of the busiest and prettiest sections of the city.”
His trade and the profession seem an unlikely fit for the new amusement field, and the respectable Dr. Robinson was yet another newcomer to the fledgling business of amusement. Born in Ontario, of Irish origin, Presbyterian by religion, he was clearly tempted, as were so many others, by the potential of motion pictures and their ability to draw crowds and bring in cash. Perhaps he was conscious of the distinct possibility that horses and carriages were on the way out. His aim, the paper reported, was “to build an up-to-date theatre that would make a higher type of progress and development in the moving show business.” Later on Robinson would spell out his intent a little further, as a matter of showing “High-class, Clean and Educational Pictures, composed of Comedies, Melodramas, Dramas and Instructive plays by most famous stars.” That he was purposing to follow a model that had shown proven success elsewhere, the paper said, “reflects credit on his genius as an amusement caterer.” The management promised to search “movie land . . . for the best of the gilt-edged plays in public favor.”
The Empire Theatre, in a detail from a larger photo of Charlotte Street showing the Banks automotive business. PMA, nd, 2000-012-003769-1. The film posters near the front entrances are advertising the popular Japanese-born actor Sessue Hayakawa in The Soul of Kura-San (1916), which places this photo at April 19—21, 1917. Some forty years later, in the late 1950s, Hayakawa was still on screen in town – most notably in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
Robinson must have put a good deal of his resources into transforming the inherent messiness (and odours) of stables, horses, and well-greased carriages into a cinema. The “handsome” new theatre was “ornamental, luxurious, and safe.” Its general appearance, said the Daily Evening Review upon its opening, was “very picturesque.” Its front entrance, with a white, marble-like finish, was of “Roman” design, with a balcony supported by five heavy circular columns. Its two main entrances had doors mounted with heavy brass fixings. “The ticket wicket,” the newspaper reported, “is a convenient and neatly panelled design with plate glass effects and with plenty of room for service.” The front and rear exits were designed “to ensure safety and convenience.”
The classic design indicates that Robinson was in tune with the theatre-building tendencies of the time; motion picture houses of a similar style were going up across the continent. Here, he and others were saying, is a respectable place in which citizens of all classes and sexes and ages can come and freely mingle and feel secure. In this he was following an established trend. “Between 1908 and 1914,” as one historian puts it, “proprietors saw that ladies and gentleman would come to their establishments if movie houses mirrored the designs fashionable for public buildings at the time.”
Inside on the main floor, the auditorium had a slightly inclined floor, with a tidy and “ample” orchestra space near the screen. An upstairs gallery had folding seats. The “metallic ceiling” was painted in a bright shade of green, with four large ornamental arc chandeliers providing a sparkling glow, adding to the effect of the dozen other lights fixed into the walls. Most of the lighting was done by gas, which was said to be “far superior to the electric lights.” The ventilation was “perfect,” the exits well placed. There were separate washrooms for ladies and gentlemen on each side of the front entrance.
Moving Picture World, July 11, 1914, p.299. Simplex projectors were top of the line.
The motion pictures themselves, according to the newspaper’s account, would not be “flashed upon a white sheet, which is usual, but on a soft white solid wall, which had the effect of overcoming the disagreeable ‘staggering’ of the pictures.” A Union Jack, “in pleasing folds,” was prominently displayed above “the picture wall.” The all-important “operating” (or projection) room, located in a small enclosed space at the rear of the gallery, had the “very latest of optical devices and moving picture machines,” including both an Edison Kinetoscope and a state-of-the-art Simplex – advertised in a U.S. trade magazine that month as the “Acme of Mechanical Perfection” and “Perfect Projection,” a machine known for its “non-flicker and steadiness of projection . . . silence of operation . . . [and] low cost of upkeep.”
“If one [projector] does not work properly,” the theatre reassured its patrons, “the other will be always available and delays will be eliminated” – indicating something of a new practice. In the future movie theatres would normally have at least two projectors in a booth, with one of them at the ready, holding a full reel, prepared to continue on after the other projector’s reel was finished, a process that would soon become standard practice.
Vernon’s City of Peterborough Directory, 1915, p.143.
As his initial manager, Robinson hired Mr. A. Sollitt. He had J.W. (John) Tetlock as an usher and Jas. Chambers as caretaker, with Bernadette Ward as cashier. The projectionist, Emile Baumer, soon went off to war and was replaced for a time by William Bailey (Baumer returned to the job in 1918). The orchestra at the very beginning consisted of a pianist, Miss Coulter (followed by Norma Moore), and a violinist, Mrs. Foster (the same Eveline Foster who had played in 1912 at the Princess); Herbert Fallis was also employed early on as a musician.
The first films presented were not named, but identified by their production studios: “a Lubin, an Essanay, a Biograph, and a Kalem.” The prevailing wisdom at the time was that “the single-reel photo-drama is the keystone of the motion picture industry,” and that film audiences wanted to see a bit of everything. That meant a program offering four or five 1,000-foot reels of different productions. (Although that was shortly to change.)
The theatre’s program – running continuously from 2:30 every afternoon and again at 7:30 in the evenings – changed three times a week, with admission tickets priced at ten cents for adults, five cents for children.
Vernon’s City of Peterborough Directory, 1915, p.333.
In 1914, with the addition of the Empire, the city, with a population of 20,653, now had five theatres serving up the magic of motion pictures.
Evening Review, Sept. 11, 1914, p.8.
A month after it opened the Empire did feature a longer picture released almost a year earlier, in October 1913, by Vitagraph: “The Motion Picture Sensation of the Year . . . ‘Wild Beasts at Large, or When the Circus Menagerie Broke Loose,’ positively the greatest comedy picture yet shown” (U.S., 1913) – “two thousand feet of unconfined laughter and thrilling anticipations.” The audience that day was doubtless captivated by what was yet another entry in the popular “animal pictures” genre. A train carrying circus animals is wrecked near a village, and bears, lions, leopards, elephants, kangaroos, boa constrictors, and monkeys escape down the track. A small boy witnesses the wreck from his front-room window and rushes out to warn the town. Mayhem ensues as the animals run rampant. The town grocery store comes in for a particular spot of trouble, along with the local butcher. Perhaps the film had a special appeal to the veterinarian proprietor.
One day in early October Robinson’s six offerings reflected the more usual variety of short (and standard) fare: The Red Head Introduces Herself (U.S., April 1914), one of a series from the Selig studios involving “a demon child with the angel face,” and, on the same reel, All Mixed Up (U.S., April 1914). The program also had the older A Tour Through Touraine and Asiatic Turkey (France, Patheplay, June 17, 1913), a travel film “with a quiet, restful effect . . . which is pleasing to the observer,” who “gets some of the choicest emotions of a journey through France, and at the same time save[s] a great deal of money in making the trip.” You could, now, travel the world just by going to the motion picture theatre.
Examiner, Nov. 6, 1914, p.13. Now exhibiting Paramount pictures. For three days in November 1915 the Empire promised “another treat” for its picture show patrons – and not just a laugh or two, but “6,000 Laughs,” in the form of a motion picture that had a slight Peterborough connection (although probably not many people knew about it at the time). The film was Tillie’s Punctured Romance (U.S., 1914), often referred to as “the first feature comedy ever made.” Marie Dressler hailed from nearby Cobourg and over the years became one of Hollywood’s most popular stars.
Examiner, Nov. 19, 1915, p.13. The Paramount distribution arrangement, with Mary Pickford (of Toronto) increasing in popularity.
In October 1914 the Empire also booked A Leech of Industry (U.S., 1914, Pathé Freres): “three thousand feet portraying Capital and Labour,” with a complicated melodramatic plot involving young Russian immigrants to the United States, misbegotten romance, a plant explosion, and an “evil capitalist” who tries to cheat the young immigrant out of a chance for success in a business venture. Later that month, with an appeal to that same class, the Empire had The Foreman’s Treachery – (U.S., Edison, Oct. 17, 1913), said (quite typically) to be “without doubt the most interesting picture shown in the City for some time.” The two-reeler, produced in Wales, told the story of a despicable mine foreman who tries to cover up a rich ore vein.
In another example of intense competition for customers, in early November the Empire announced a film – for two days only and “the first time shown in Canada” (an unlikely boast) – of baseball’s World Series featuring the “Miracle” Boston Braves (in last place on July 4) vs. the Philadelphia Athletics. The Empire warned patrons, “Don’t be deceived – See This Year’s Pictures” and “not a few of Last Year’s which are being shown at another Local Theatre” – a dig at the Royal Theatre and its “World’s Baseball Series” pictures shown around the same time.
Examiner, Dec. 18, 1915, p.11. This film was of particular local interest because Barbara Tennant (as it was spelled; and she was often referred to as “Mrs. Wadely”) had a local connection. Her father worked for a spell at Canadian General Electric.
Although he had hired a manager from the start, Robinson the veterinarian took an active part in running the theatre. Early on he signed an agreement with Paramount Pictures, a branch of Hollywood’s Famous Players-Jesse Lasky Film Company, securing a block of films from that company to make sure he had “product” to put on his screen. The “Paramount” name began appearing on his newspaper ads.
After a year or two Robinson appointed a new manager, W. Arthur Head (who had previously been a “driver” for William Stock and Sons and a blacksmith).
Examiner, Jan. 18, 1916, p.11. An early sighting of director Cecil B. DeMille.
Examiner, Sept. 7, 1915, p.6. The livery business is still flourishing.
The Empire’s proprietor, like other managers, also made sure to contribute to the local community. Like others, he opened his doors on Sunday — in his case, for gatherings of the City Mission. Not long after opening the theatre, he made a hefty contribution to the war cause by donating proceeds to the local Hospital Ship and War Fund. In May 1915 he promised to donate the entire theatre proceeds to a “Tobacco Fund” – aimed at providing tobacco, chocolates, and other needed goods to Canadian soldiers at the front. Unfortunately, a rainfall “coming on as darkness fell . . . prevented a very large attendance.”
One Wednesday afternoon later that same year, at the Empire, Robinson brought in the 93rd Regiment Band, under Bandleader Lieutenant E.R. Hughes, assisted by a number of vocalists, to help raise money for “the Peterborough boys at the front.” Robinson “devoted” all the proceeds from the concert and an afternoon’s worth of motion pictures “to buying comforts for the city’s brave lads on the firing line.” In January 1918 “Robinson placed the Empire Theatre at the disposal of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Great War Veterans’ Association,” raising over $100 for a clubroom fund. A news article noted that over the past three years Robinson had “repeatedly given the proceeds of his theatre for such causes.” Robinson was not alone. Over the war years from time to time the different theatres would offer up “receipts” of an evening’s show to various war causes.
Examiner, June 23, 1917, p.1. Donating the site for a Sunday meeting.
Examiner, Aug. 25, 1916, p.1.
During those years theatre managers had to cope with a new provision of the provincial Amusements Tax Act, amounting to a “war tax,” that came into effect on May 15, 1916. It was a complicated process: according to the regulations, theatre managers had to sell patrons two separate tickets – one to cover the admission price and the other (for one cent) applied to the war tax. The tax got the Empire’s Robinson into a spot of trouble. He was hauled into police court and fined $100 for failing to fill out and return to the government the required weekly form detailing ticket sales.
There was no question that Robinson had paid the appropriate tax – only that he had not strictly followed the prescribed bureaucratic procedure: “Magistrate Dumble remarked that the proprietor of the Empire might be the most honest man in the world, but the war tax law must be observed, even in its detail.” Dumble decided that it was necessary to impose the fine, “partly as an example to other theatres.”
Robinson duly paid the fine; but about two weeks later Ontario’s treasure department returned the $100 — agreeing that Robinson had in fact turned over all the amounts required by law (if not completely in the correct way).
In its advertisements the Empire strained somewhat to emphasize the “class of picture” to be seen in its program, directly attempting to appeal to those who were not necessarily a “motion picture supporter.” Again and again Robinson extolled his program as clean and wholesome. The films he showed, he said, would “never have any objectionable features.”
Examiner, Feb. 20, 1917, p.7. A huge wartime filmic event, with audiences eager to catch glimpses of the European war, however accurate or true. The 1910s saw heavy criticism of the preponderance of U.S. films and “American self-glorification,” and Jule and Jay Allen distributed a number of films like this one as an antidote. As the trade magazine Moving Picture World reported in 1915: “Pictures of real and officially vouched for events, troops fighting and war’s devastation are eagerly watched by audiences in Ontario.”
The battle, September 1916, resulted in heavy casualties but supposedly helped solve the riddle of the trenches and turned the tide of the war; tanks were used for the first time. The film was a partial Canadian effort (made under the auspices of the British Imperial War Office Committee) of the Canadian War Office and the British War Office’s Topical Film Company. Yet the film the audience saw may not have been the real thing. According to one source (Imperial War Museums), “The original CANADIAN VICTORY AT COURCELETTE was probably a version made for Canadian audiences” of a different film, “Battle of the Ancre.”
Examiner, July 3, 1917, p.11. Another war picture, but this one from France (released May 1917) and starring the aging but legendary Sarah Bernhardt — and the price goes up to an extraordinary 25 cents (unusual outside the confines of the Grand Opera House).
Examiner, July 9, 1917, p.7. Following the July holiday: at only three years of age the theatre needed a bit of a facelift.
Examiner, July 3, 1917, p.11. “The Hearts of Maryland” was actually The Heart of Maryland (U.S., March 1915), a civil war film said to be the first shown at New York City’s massive Hippodrome Theatre, with its 5,400 seats. As for Robinson Crusoe, there were many versions made of the story; this may be a a three-reel film released by Universal in late 1916 or early 1917.
Examiner, Aug. 15, 1917, p.15. Robinson gave the theatre “a thorough cleaning, painting and general dressing up.”
Examiner, July 31, 1917, p.9.
Motography, Sept. 7, 1917, p.452. In 1917, after a “flying trip” (metaphorically speaking) to view a film firsthand at the Regent Theatre in Toronto, Robinson signed a contract with Goldwyn Pictures, taking on that company’s films, including their first release, Polly of the Circus (1917), starring Mae Marsh — the first film to display, in its logo, the iconic huge lion’s head looking around and out at the audience. Robinson’s move made it into the pages of Motography, a “Motion Picture Trade Journal” published out of Chicago. And U.S./Hollywood film production takes a firm grip on distribution here as elsewhere.
From Robinson to the Porters, Mr and Mrs
In August 1919 Dr. Fred L. Robinson sold his Empire theatre to Charles T. Porter, who had returned from overseas in the last year or so after serving with the Princess Pats “through all the principal engagements in which the regiment figured.”
Examiner, Aug. 21, 1919, p.7.
Porter also seemed an unlikely figure to manage a movie theatre. He had come to Peterborough early in the decade, for a while working at the CGE plant. Porter immediately set out to make “alterations of practically the whole building.” He had the theatre’s fans and all electrical equipment “overhauled and modernized.” Porter promised to get his films from the same circuit that Robinson had been using. An article on the transfer noted, “The theatre is a Union shop, with a Union operator on the machine.” The new management opened with an older William S. Hart film, Wolves of the Rail – released in January 1918. Charles Porter made the standard promise – to show pictures that would “excell any which have been previously shown.”
Charles Porter, April 15, 1918. Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images, Bio 19904-1.
Porter’s wife, Muriel Porter, worked with him from the start, as both musician and treasurer; and by 1921 she had taken over as “proprietor” — the second woman I’ve found who played that role (although in the later war years the Strand was advertising “ladies management”).
The politics of the day were never far from the wayside. The years 1919–20 witnessed a cycle of “Red Scare” pictures. The Empire featured Bolshevism on Trial in April 1920 (declared to be “The Timeliest Picture Ever Made” and “Not a propaganda picture but a thrilling drama . . . the story of the ruthlessness and treachery of the demon Bolshevism with all the scenes laid on this side of the Atlantic Ocean”) – and its message, in the end, was that “the interests of labour and capital could be harmoniously reconciled.” The militant unionists of town, at the CGE plant, for instance, may not have been quite so convinced or even seen the film as the “education” suggested by their local paper. (And see also “Women in Silent Film Days: Politics and an Evening’s Entertainment at the Empire Theatre.”)
In 1920 the theatre made a big splash with its showing of the film version of the Canadian classic (but U.S. film) Anne of Green Gables (1919), starring Mary Miles Minter (with its exterior scenes filmed in Dedham, Mass.). The Empire’s screening of Experimental Marriage and other films especially stands out.
Moving Picture World, Sept. 21, 1918. “This serial is as vivid as a flash of lightning . . .”
For some reason the Porters could not make a go of it, and in April 1921 the Empire closed its doors. Although it was less than seven years old, the “ornamental, luxurious, and safe” theatre had lost its lustre. It was low on the list of theatres-to-go-to for an evening out.
In February 1919, for instance, a love letter from a young Peterborough boy to his girlfriend revealingly made that point. One day Austin Nixon, seventeen years old, wrote about how he had a great yen to go to the movies: “I would like to see a show, just one. I would go to the Empire too, that means I really want to see one.” He was asking his gal if she’d like to go to see the latest serial, Wolves of Kultur, starring Leah Baird.
The Empire’s last program, on Thursday, April 28, 1921, included The Tiger’s Coat (1920), featuring among its cast the Italian-born photographer and political activist Tina Modotti, described in a local news article (“Moditti”) as a “piquant little Italian beauty” who had left Italy in 1912 to go to the United States. The Tiger’s Coat was her last film. She moved to Mexico soon after that and as a photographer and photojournalist (and member of the Communist Party) became part of an artistic and political community that included the painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Toronto filmmaker Brenda Longfellow made a sparkling movie about her: Tina in Mexico (2002) — which includes a clip from The Tiger’s Coat in a scene showing Modotti and a friend arriving in Mexico and spotting a billboard for the film.
The Porters appear to have quietly and quickly exited town. Fred Robinson died in Peterborough in June 1925, survived by his wife, Etta. “He was a highly respected citizen of Peterboro,” an Examiner obituary pointed out, “and his sudden death was a great shock to his many friends. A large funeral cortege testified to the esteem in which he was held.” At the time he still lived at 225 Charlotte.
Examiner, June 15, 1934, p.15. Gone but not forgotten: the location of the meeting is the “Old Empire Theatre,” at the time a vacant space.
The Empire had survived for less than seven years, but it was long remembered. Much later, in 1947, speaking of the theatre, an Examiner reporter reminisced:
The east end, north end gangs rarely got down that far, but the south-enders and the gang from Patterson St. were loyal and regular customers. Pearl White, the luscious pin-up of that era, had a lot of followers, and the boys and girls screamed approval as she evaded the clutches of the villain. Tom Mix and Eddie Polo helped weave the aura of romance and bravery into the lives of the juvenile show-goers of that day.
Within a year or two of the theatre’s closing, its space had been taken up by a furniture store, McBride and Franks. After some intensive remodeling, it opened in March 1923 “with a complete line of curtains, draperies, furniture and floor coverings.” The dreamy world of the motion picture was gone. By 1934 the site was listed as vacant — though on a few occasions it was used for Liberal Party election meetings. Around 1937 the Hillrust Wine Co. moved in for a few years.
In 1944, 224 Charlotte was taken over by the Red Shield Recreation Centre, to be used at least partly for men returning from the war. A newspaper report noted that the Centre would occupy the former wine store premises that had once been used as the Empire Theatre, as well as an adjoining laundry and the entire second-floor rooms and apartments extending to the corner: “The upper part of the building that was used as the gallery of the theatre will be converted into a lounge for women.”
A little later, in 1947, a Firestone Store moved into the space once occupied by the Empire. It was followed by a furniture store and, in the mid-1970s, the Trent University Bookstore. In 1984 a massive fire destroyed all of the buildings along the street from no. 212 to the corner of Alymer. The buildings that had housed a curling club, an ancient theatre, an old hotel, and many other offices, stores, and apartments were all gone. Within a year or so new buildings quickly went up on at least part of the properties (and the Trent University Bookstore again took up no. 124). Today a sad-looking unpaved parking lot remains next to the last existing older building, no. 208, Pammett’s Flower Shop. No. 224 is now home to Pettigrew Spa, but is perhaps only roughly in the location that once held the Empire.
On the south side of Charlotte the old buildings at 225 and 227, where Tobias Fitzgerald and Fred Robinson once lived, were gone by the early 1930s. The southeast corner of Charlotte and Alymer, the area once known as “the Robinson Corner,” where Robinson’s carriage shop once resided, “fell before the axes of the wrecking crew” in 1938. A service station had been on the corner since at least 1925, and a new one was built and occupied there for years after the demolition — most notably owned by Ivan Lillico followed by Don Earle. Service stations continued on the corner until the late 1980s, alongside a city parking lot established around 1967 next to Louis Street. In the 1990s a Maxi Drug store moved onto the corner, and as of 1999-2000 a Shopper’s Drug Mart (now relocated to the northwest corner).
On the north side of Charlotte, a little later, in 1947, the Firestone Store took up the space once occupied by the Empire. In 1984 the buildings along the street on that site — to the corner of Alymer — were destroyed by a fire. New buildings were constructed on part of the stretch to the northeast corner of Charlotte and Alymer (with no. 124 becoming home to the Trent University Bookstore). Today a sad-looking unpaved parking lot remains next to the last existing older building, no. 208, Pammett’s Flower Shop. No. 224 is now home to Pettigrew Spa, but is perhaps only roughly in the location that once held the Empire.
Sometimes these days I ride my bike through that parking lot and find it a little difficult to imagine sitting on a comfortable chair somewhere in the confines of that once “ornamental, luxurious, and safe” location and witnessing the excitement of Wolves of Kultur accompanied by moodful piano music.
The Firestone store at 224 Charlotte — where once was the Empire — in the late 1940s. Hugh Jones Bond Street postcard, Trent Valley Archives, F546 Series 6.
Looking east along Charlotte from Aylmer, 2020, Google.com, no. 208, Pammett’s Flower Shop to the right and the Pettigrew Spa/parking lot area, once home to the Empire.
For a list of all the theatres, see Peterborough Motion Pictures Through Time.