Wonderland, 1907–08
In 1907—8 the five-cent theatre Wonderland was located at 445 George St. N., which in the twenty-first century was the home of the BioPed Footcare Clinic. Photo 2020 (by 2021 Pete’s Subs was gone). Wonderland had a short life, and it seems that no photographs of it survive.
If you have any spare moments . . . take in the flickers?
The moving picture has become a recognized feature in local attractions. The brand of this entertainment as given at “Wonderland,” 445 George street, is rejoicing in overflow houses quite frequently. Some of the scenes thrown on the canvas sheet portray life in various aspects, principally of a humorous nature. The pictures are worth seeing in your spare moments. – “The Moving Pictures at ‘Wonderland,’” Examiner, Sept. 5, 1907, p.4.
Northwest corner of Brock and George streets, mid-1970s. Years earlier Wonderland, at no.445, was located just to the right of the McDonald’s Beauty Salon — with the occupants of that space changing several times from 1975 to 1980. The block was constructed in 1868 for the Rev. Mark Burnham, and in 1910 the Coleman Brothers purchased the property. In the following decades modernization had altered its appearance. At some point the square-top second-floor windows, as shown here, were opened up to the original round-top windows of earlier years (as shown in the 2020 photo). The occupants of 445 changed several times during the period 1975 to 1980. From Martha Ann Kidd, Peterborough’s Architectural Heritage (Peterborough Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee, 1978), p.78.
The second of Peterborough’s early motion picture theatres was called Wonderland, perhaps with an indirect nod to Lewis Carroll – although in those days “Wonderland” was an oft-used name for this new kind of exhibition establishment. It was “by far,” as Paul S. Moore states, “the most common name for early picture shows.”
Peterborough’s very own Wonderland opened on Thursday, July 25, 1907. The pioneering proprietors had managed to find a vacant store in a block of stores “just three doors north of Brock Street” on the west side of the street. A year earlier the space had been occupied by a tailor, Virtel Reynolds (offering cleaning and pressing); the year before that, by Herman Engel, “dry goods, clothing, etc.” — with Engel living above the store.
It appears that there was never a photo of the relatively short-lived Wonderland. Here, a view of George St., c.1900s, looking south to the corner of Brock St. and beyond, indicates its whereabouts. Towards the left side of the photo, dominating the view to the south, is the grand historic four-storey structure on the southwest corner of George and Brock. (It was reduced to two stories in the 1950s, but the bottom part remained more or less intact.) Wonderland was across Brock and three doors up the street, at no.445. The Peterborough Directory of 1907 indicates that north of Wonderland were “Bill Boards & Vacant Lots,” which you can see in this photo; and no.459, Bethany Tabernacle (much later, Church of the Open Bible), a butcher shop, and, on the corner, the YMCA, built in 1896–97. A detail from TVA F50 50.33 Y.W.C.A.
People out for a stroll on George Street that opening day would have seen, just north of Wonderland, a vacant lot with some billboards and, beyond that, at no. 459, the Bethany Tabernacle (which later became the Church of the Open Bible) – a structure that remains in place today, although almost hidden behind a newer edifice, the Schandry Building. Just above that was the relatively new and splendid Romanesque Revival YMCA building (constructed in 1886–87) on the corner of George and Murray (now largely demolished, with only a front street-facing fragment still in place). South of Wonderland, at no. 443, was T.A. Redner, a locksmith (who also made and repaired umbrellas).
Examiner, July 25, 1907, p.8.
To make sure that newspaper readers could find the theatre, a newspaper ad pointed out that it was “OPPOSITE Street Railway Office.” That office was in the Morrow Building, constructed in 1880 and is still there on the northeast corner of Brock and George.
Earlier that year, perhaps stirred by the opening of the Colloseum, city council had reasserted its rightful stake in the new commercial enterprises of the twentieth century, passing yet another version of the old bylaw (no. 1281, Feb. 11, 1907) governing the licensing of “places of amusement.”
In addition to merry-go-rounds, toboggan slides, and rifle and shooting galleries, the bylaw covered “every person who owns, holds or keeps for hire or profit any apparatus, contrivances or mechanical device for amusement,” which for the first time would include “moving pictures.” The bylaw listed what appears to be two separate license fees:
1) “for any mechanical device, moving picture or other apparatus or contrivances” (fees of $40 for a year, $20 for four months, and $10 for a week or part of a week); and
2) “for a theatre, music hall or other place of amusement” ($50 for a year, $30 for four months, and $10 for a week or part of a week).
Did a motion picture theatre manager/owner, especially given the mix of pictures and music, have to pay both fees?
New York Clipper, Aug. 18, 1906, p.704. The Vitagraph Company of America in New York released The 100 to 1 Shot in August 1906. At 640 feet it was about 11 or 12 minutes long (depending on how fast the operator cranked the machine), but in that short time the film presented a breathtaking story that may well have had the audience members on the edges of their seats and perhaps even shedding a tear or two.
Opening day, a brief news item noted:
Messrs. Lamb and Stutt, proprietors of the new “Wonderland” and Continuous Vaudeville, 445 George street, will give their opening attraction to-night, commencing at 7.30. The startling moving picture views, depicting Old Homestead Life, in the “100 to 1 Shot,” or Run of Luck, the Cinematograph and music, fill in a varied and interesting programme. The admission is only 5 cents for a continuous 30-minute show.
J.W. Lamb and F.A. Stutt, both “late of Toronto,” shouted out to potential patrons: “Step in and see the cinematographe and hear the music.” They promised, “Everything is clean, bright and entertaining.” They assured their potential audience that the “premises are attractively fitted up, and the moving pictures and songs are thoroughly up to date.” (No matter that Run of Luck had been released a year before.) For five cents you could get “thirty minutes of wholesome amusement.”
Not so Wonder-ful? “Bright Amusement” nevertheless
Doubtlessly making sure to have its licence in place, Peterborough’s second “Nickolet” – what an Examiner article decades later mistakenly called its “first ‘palace of the silver screen’” – was a decidedly makeshift affair, rudimentary at best, and hardly a palace. Its “fittings, decorating and program,” the 1939 Examiner retrospective noted (looking a little down its nose), “were on the same scale as the box office levy.”
Its space, like most other storefront picture theatres of the time, was long and narrow. Its screen was a stretch of canvas or a white linen bedsheet (accounts vary) mounted across the front of the small room. It had sawdust on the floor and room for something like 150 seats, if that — fashioned from boards stretched out over wooden kitchen chairs.
Examiner, July 30, 1907, p.6.
Its projection area would have been on a raised platform behind the seats, just inside the entrance. The theatre had only one projector plus a stereopticon – a “Magic Lantern” machine that projected illustrated song pictures on slides.
The individual reels of film were short and silent and subject to a rather irritating flickering. If the seating was uncomfortable, that was okay because people came and went relatively quickly, perhaps staying for periods of thirty minutes, or less, to an hour. The theatre’s capacity stretched beyond the available seats because given the relatively brief duration of the program patrons could come in and stand wherever they could find a space. Paying their nickels, they could enter and leave whenever they wanted during the theatre’s allotted hours.
Despite its minimal decor, Wonderland appears to have quickly drawn in big crowds; evidence of that (in addition to press accounts) is that about six weeks into its life the interior was enlarged and the seating capacity increased. The Colloseum had disappeared from its location just down and across the street, and for a brief time Wonderland was the best on offer. Peterborough was clearly ready for a motion picture theatre.
“The Nickelodeon,” Moving Picture World, May 4, 1907, p.140. This list omits a stereopticon; during the early years most five-cent theatres appear to have had one of those machines to present their illustrated songs.
What did it take to set up such an establishment? The “ingredients” were considered to be pretty basic, as the new trade magazine Moving Picture World pointed out a few months before Wonderland opened. The owner also had to pay the municipal business licence fee, and, later, as of 1911, a provincial fee.
Wonderland probably had a smaller space than called for by this U.S. publication. It may not have had the electric sign or the “young woman cashier.” It may not even have had a box office. Rough hand-written signs on the street would have announced the day’s program. A phonograph machine near the front door, perhaps on the sidewalk, might have drawn attention. The walkers-by might well have encountered the proprietor stationed outside, handed him a nickel, and proceeded to find a spot to sit along the bench in a crowded, cramped, dark, and “frequently ill-smelling” space. If it was like the other five-cent theatres scattered across the continent, by the end of the day peanut shells would be littering the sawdust in the smoke-filled room.
The music and motion picture experience
Peterborough Daily Evening Review, July 27, 1907, p.4. The performer was the attraction, rather than any particular films (which went unnamed in this ad).
It is a commonplace to say that silent films were not at all silent. As in other five-cent theatres, the music at Wonderland was as important as the motion pictures – perhaps more so. As one report stated, “The music and singing is of the lively kind that goes with moving pictures.” Wonderland did not name the pianists who accompanied its program, other than celebrating the appearance of the “blind musician” Prof. George Parry in its second week. After that it advertised only the “Special engagement of a Professional Vocalist and new Pianist.” Over the weeks of its existence it gave the names of songs: “Strolling Home with Jenny,” “They’ll All Be Glad to See You,” “No One to Love Me,” “Floradora,” “Alice, Where Art Thou Going” (said to be “a tuneful song, with appropriate and artistic slides”), “Colleen Bawn.” Eventually, the theatre’s pianist took over as proprietor.
The co-owner Stutt (whom I have been unable to trace) soon disappeared, with J.W. Lamb being joined in September by J.E.C. Hannah. They bought a new Edison combined stereopticon and moving picture machine. For Lamb, theatres seemed to run in the family; he had a brother who managed the Lyceum Theatre in Orillia. Hannah was said to be a “first-class operator” who had experience in working in picture shows in Toronto and elsewhere.
And the memory of the “picture show” lingered on: Examiner, July 31, 1957, p.4.
The “moving picture machine” at Wonderland, according to an Examiner retrospective in 1939, “was a primitive affair that never seemed able to grasp the idea that a theatre program should be presented with a minimum of interruption.” The projector had “an annoying habit of breaking down at the most thrilling moment.” That was by no means unusual. A visitor who surveyed theatres in New York City in the fall of 1907 found: “No matter when we go, the film breaks in the most interesting part and the story is lost, or the light goes out and only a ghost is seen.”
As the Examiner reporter remembered years later:
Just when the heroine was being shoved off the cliff by the villain and the handsome hero was coming to the rescue there would be a gurgle or two from the machine, the picture would flicker two or three times and then black out. Followed a printed announcement on the screen, “One moment, please, while film is being repaired” and the audience would sit back and wait in patient resignation for the necessary adjustments to be made.
New York Clipper, Nov. 14, 1903, p.920. Among other popular releases of the time is Casey and the Steam Roller (released September 1902 from the Lubin studio in Philadelphia), announced long before its arrival at Wonderland.
The writer recalled an early comedy shown at the Wonderland, which, he said, “old patrons of the silver screen” would remember: “It dealt with the experience of a comedian who found himself in the path of a street roller which knocked him down, rolled him as flat as a circus poster and then he was picked up and hammered back into shape again. The picture was considered a wow in those days.”
Considered a “wow,” maybe, but also cited here for an early filmic technique. A passage from a Handbook for Motion Picture and Stereopticon Operators (Washington, D.C., 1908), p.93.
This unnamed picture would have been Casey and the Steam Roller (1902). Featuring a character, Michael Casey, described as a “short, thick-set Irishman,” it was already a relatively old film at the time it appeared at Wonderland — but had a reputation as as one of the funniest films of its time.
An egalitarian venture, aiming at a wide appeal
The admission of five cents was considerably cheaper than the cost of a ticket to see the attractions at the city’s new and lavish Grand Opera House, located a short distance down the street. The five-cent theatres were by their nature more egalitarian: those who had once been confined to the gallery of the opera house could now go in the front door and grab a seat anywhere they wanted. This meant that sensitive members of the “better class” were less likely to attend, or went only occasionally. As in the upper gallery at the opera house, though, the preferred treat was peanuts (it would be a long time before popcorn took over). In 1908 a writer urging the value of lectures in a motion picture theatre pointed out: “Watch, for example, some well-known peanut fiend, and notice how quick he forgets his peanuts as he watches the pictures with an interest never before shown.”
Wonderland’s emphasis on “wholesome” entertainment was a necessity. In cities the size of Peterborough, the motion picture theatres relied on broad appeal to draw audiences and make money; they had to be sure to “cater to the best people.” From the start theatre managers in Peterborough engaged in their own form of self-censorship. They often presented their films with an educational bent, as having “a strong lesson to teach.” They emphasized the “laughs” and “continuous vaudeville” as much as they did the motion pictures.
Examiner, Aug. 15, 1907, p.8. Married for Millions (1906), this “laughable comedy” (complete with a dose of sexism and anti-Semitism) is one of the rare early silent films that still survives.
Examiner, Aug. 29, 1907, p.8. A “Professional Vocalist and new Pianist.”
In 1907, in encouraging readers to come out for this entertainment, the Examiner writer added quite directly, “Don’t be afraid to bring your ladies and families.” With this the paper was assuming, perhaps wrongly, that the paper’s male readers were fully in charge of such events and also revealing more than a little concern over the cheap theatre’s low price and somewhat tawdry appearance – and, even worse, the sordid reputation that had in general attached itself to these new “electric theatres” (as they were called in 1907, and for some time after).
To many people (and critics) the motion picture had “low-class associations” and were not of “good moral tone.” They were a cut below the opera houses. Nay-sayers complained that they catered to the hoi polloi. For a time the pictures were referred to as “the poor man’s amusement” (although records reveal that they were frequented to a considerable degree by women and children). They could be noisy, unruly places, not quite suitable for the supposedly refined. They could be firetraps, and several theatres did go up in flames here and there on the continent – including a Wonderland in Chatham in October 1907.
Fire was both a constant fear at motion picture theatres — and a common subject. Examiner, Aug. 7, 1907, p.8.
Indeed, Peterborough’s Wonderland itself experienced a fire scare towards the end of November. One evening after seven o’clock the manager threw some dry wood in the stove, preparing to heat up the theatre for the evening show. The blaze somehow led to “a dense smoke” issuing like a cloud from the chimney and blowing out into George Street. To those nearby, it seemed as though the whole corner block was on fire. The alarm was raised, a crowd gathered, and the fire brigade quickly arrived. But it turned out to be a false alarm. The smoke drifted away, the property was safe, no harm was done, and all was well. The theatre was just about to start its next presentation of slides; inside the pianist began to pound at the keys, and “the echoes” of the music were “freely distributed on the outside and everything ran along as before.”
At times the fare offered up on the screens of the time was said to be “naughty,” trashy, “unwholesome,” and, even worse, sometimes “largely suggestive of evil” – “schools for robbery to morbid and degenerate youth.” The films were said to be corrupters of children. People worried from the start about just what was going on in the darkness or even “semi-darkness” of the theatres. If frequented on a regular basis, the new moving pictures – with their frivolity and silliness – could cause great harm to family and religious life. Not only that, but the constant “jumping” and “flickering” of images could hurt your eyes and cause your head to throb!
Still, in Peterborough over the early years, with the theatre owners’ assurance of content that would be suitable for all, self-regulation was the order of the day. The motion picture advertisements, and popular venues such as Jackson Park and the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church or St. Peter’s Total Abstinence Society hall, suggest that film viewing in Peterborough was a largely respectable and mainstream affair. Given the city’s relatively small population, to ensure their success the theatres that sprang up in those years, if cheap in price, still aspired to attract as many people as possible.
Examiner, Oct. 21, 1907, p.5. For some, theatre-going (and he would have been speaking mainly of motion pictures) represented a new threat to family values and worthwhile practices.
One Sunday morning in October 1907 Rev. H.M. Manning, the pastor at Charlotte Street Methodist Church, complained in his sermon that humanity was being “corrupted” by the lure of new distractions found outside home and church. “We take our children,” he said, “to the theatre, and never think of bringing them to a prayer meeting.” For such people, the new motion pictures were simply “immoral trash” that should be avoided at all costs.
The attacks, of course, depended more on the critic’s point of view than on any objective calculation. For one thing, Peterborough’s citizens tended to be a thoroughly church-going crowd. One survey of attendance in 1906 indicated that more than half the total population of the city (some 7,935 people) had attended church the previous Sunday. Certainly, for the theatres to be successful, they would have to have been drawing on a good number of these seemingly devout people.
Examiner, July 25, 1907, p.8. Taking focus at its audience from the start.
The theatre managers in small cities such as Peterborough recognized that, simply to stay in business, they had to provide “clean” entertainment that would appeal to the public at large – and they were constantly advertising the wholesome nature of their offerings. Indeed, the smallish electric theatres, in Peterborough as elsewhere, tended to be heavily frequented by hard-working people who needed a break from their routines and could afford the nickel, which was all it took to stop in and witness the latest “views” or short melodramas for a half-hour or so. Beverage room proprietors also bemoaned the new amusement den, for different reasons: they saw “the nickelodeon as a menace to their trade,” as a place that was drawing away thirsty customers in droves. Temperance leaders celebrated the theatres as “now occupy[ing] the attention of a great many persons who would otherwise be in a saloon.”
The audiences, though, were made up not just of men. Contemporary accounts of incidents at various scattered theatres indicate that large numbers of women and children attended the early pictures. Mothers, it was said at the time, did not have to “dress” up to go to the theatres, and they could “take the children and spend many restful hours in them at very small expense.” By their tendency to attend films in large numbers, as U.S. cinema historian Charles Musser points out, “women asserted their independence and loosened a code of conduct that narrowly circumscribed their public sphere.”
Over the next few years the new motion picture theatres would do their best to appeal to a more “genteel” crowd while still filling their seats – to attract “the better crowd” – but for a decade or more the audiences at motion picture theatres remained predominately made up of working-class people, of men, women, and children looking for a little bit of affordable entertainment or, as historian Steven J. Ross puts it, “a quick fix of pleasure.”
Examiner, Sept. 23, 1907, p.8.
From the start, as Russell Merritt points out in his analysis of nickelodeon audiences, exhibitors made attempts to attract the larger middle-class family trade, or “better crowd,” that was the domain of vaudeville and the so-called “legitimate” stage – which certainly seems to have been the case in Peterborough given the news articles and advertisements.
The audience makeup also differed considerably given the time of day, whether matinees or evenings or weekdays or weekends. On Saturday afternoons, Merritt says, “schoolchildren reigned supreme in movie theaters everywhere” – and this, as I well know from personal experience, would remain the case into the 1950s.
The Weekly Post (Lindsay), Nov. 22, 1907, p.12 — pointing out for the uninitiated just what motion pictures were capable of doing.
Wonderland, like the Colloseum, had a relatively short life. “Typically,” Charles Musser writes, “the first picture show in a large town or small city lost its local monopoly within a few months.” Those first two storefront theatres were quickly followed by the opening of yet another five-cent theatorium, the Crystal, in late September. The Colosseum/Coliseum was already gone by that point; and it would be only a matter of months before Wonderland’s flimsy curtain/screen was taken down and the sawdust swept from its floor.
In its brief lifetime a succession of proprietors came and went: Lamb (with Stutt forgotten) was joined by J.E.C. Hannah in September; a “Mr. Pritchard” of Barrie, Ont., became part of the business for a brief while; and in late October a “V. Reynolds” joined Hannah. The last that was heard of Lamb, he was off on a business trip to New York City. Hannah and Reynolds were both said to be of Peterborough and well known in the city: “Mr. Hannah is an experienced man in moving picture exhibits, having operated the films at the Toronto Industrial show, as well as elsewhere.” “V. Reynolds” may have been Virtel Reynolds, who had previously occupied 445 George as a tailor. Their names were soon included in the theatre’s ads –“Hannah and Reynolds” – with a complete change of program three times a week. Their improvements included cutting down on rowdyism – they would tolerate “nothing of an objectionable nature.”
Hannah and Reynolds began to print announcements at the top corner of the Review’s first page (though that lasted only for seven issues).
1924 Peterborough Fire Insurance Map, no.4. showing Brock St. to Murray St. The paint store was the site of Wonderland. Billboards were between that building and the Bethany Tabernacle. PMA.
By Jan. 10, 1908, Reynolds and Hannah had sold out their interest, and a week and a half later yet another new owner was reported – this time the theatre’s pianist, W.J. Bennett, who remodelled the interior and installed fire exits are the back of the theatre. He presumably would have saved a little money by not having to hire a musician. But his stint at the helm was short-lived; in March the theatre closed its doors. Although Bennett said that the house had experienced a “very successful season,” with a large audience on the past Saturday night, its space was being taken over by a grocery store. He expressed a hope to reopen in new premises.
Shortly after that Wonderland’s former address at 445 George Street was indeed occupied by a “fruit dealer,” Frank Marino (who perhaps did keep the sawdust on the floor). By 1912, and for a long time thereafter, it was the site of the Coleman Brothers’ paint shop (Coleman’s appears to have moved to 447 by 1938) and from the late 1930s to the late 1950s by a ladies’ wear shop owned by Bernice Graham, who sat on city council in the 1950s. More recently it was occupied by the BioPed Footcare Clinic.
Daily Review, June 25, 1912, p.5. Coleman Bros. has moved into 445 George.
As late as 1958, a living memory lingered of one of the city’s first motion picture houses. An “informant” that year told the Examiner: “Five cents at the door gave you choice of any of the kitchen chairs, sample of the bare accommodation of those first years of the flickers.” Now, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, little survives of the storefront that once offered entrancing amusements of picture plays and illustrated songs, with its music drifting out onto a dusty but busy George Street.