City shouldn’t ignore heritage and community value of Empress: expert

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It’s troubling news that the city of Montreal is preparing to put up the former Empress theatre for sale, warns an architecture and art historian who has studied the landmark and says she’s worried the city is signalling it has given up on its preservation and on its function as a gathering place in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce after years of neglecting it.

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“I was indeed surprised by the city’s decision to put the cinema up for sale,” said Camille Bédard, who began researching the theatre’s architectural and social relevance for her bachelor’s degree in art history in 2009 and continued her research for a master’s degree in architectural history.

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She was reacting to a Gazette report Friday revealing that the city, which has owned the Sherbrooke St. W. cinema since 1999, is preparing a call for proposals to sell it for “mixed-use development” that would be at least 20 per cent housing. It will be at least the third call for proposals for the forlorn property in just over a decade.

“Following the 2021 call for projects, it seems to me that the city and the borough should have understood how central this building is to the community,” Bédard said, adding that the building shows the ravages of neglect by the city.

“I would have hoped that political decision-makers would grasp their responsibility in saving the building. This, in my eyes, would be a political vision supporting projects that animate and mobilize citizens.”

Bédard grew up in N.D.G. and recalls the awe of entering the theatre for the first time at the age of four in the early 1990s. By then, it was serving as a repertory cinema called Cinema V.

The neo-Egyptian-style theatre, built in 1927, “is really very rare,” Bédard said, adding that the architecture was perhaps inspired by a wave of interest in all things Egyptian following the 1922 archeological discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s 3,300-year-old tomb. It’s the only historic neo-Egyptian theatre dating from the 1920s in Canada, she said.

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Moreover, her interviews with people who went to the Empress while it was a “palace” cinema, then a burlesque theatre and still later Cinema V revealed “there is a huge community attachment to this theatre,” Bédard said.

The Empress is a fine example of an “atmospheric” theatre of the 1920s, she said, meaning that the ornamentation and architectural elements inside help create the illusion of an outdoor space. That includes the ceiling, which created the effect of a starry night sky.

The 1,550-seat theatre was built by Montreal architect Alcide Chaussé, who was an expert on fire prevention. His expertise was valued at the time, given the tragic 1927 fire at the Laurier Palace theatre in which 77 children and adolescents perished. The interior design was handled by Emmanuel Briffa.

Before the advent of television, neighbourhood theatres like the Empress “were gathering places,” Bédard said. “Cinemas were places where people met or socialized and spent a lot of time. It was like their second living room.”

The community’s attachment to the Empress/Cinema V hasn’t waned since a minor fire in 1992, which served as a pretext for its owner to shut it down and eventually sell to the city, she contends. In fact, successive mayoral candidates since the 1990s have promised to restore the theatre, and every call from the city or the Côte-des-Neiges—N.D.G. borough for public input on its future use has elicited huge response.

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In the 1990s, a group of citizens spearheaded a project to turn the theatre building into the Empress Cultural Centre. However, nothing came of it. In 2010, another group, led by Élaine Éthier and Mario Fortin, the former CEO of the Beaubien and Parc cinemas, began mounting a project to turn the site into Cinéma N.D.G. The project won the city’s 2012 call for proposals for the Empress. But even that project sputtered out because of a lack of support from the city, says one of the two project leaders.

“It was 10 years of my life,” Éthier told The Gazette, adding that her group was caught in a catch-22 with the city.

The group assembled 75 per cent of its financing and was working with architects and engineers, she said. But the city wanted them to have 100 per cent of their financing before it would transfer the building to their non-profit. However, they needed to own the building to complete their financing, she said.

Then, in the 2017 municipal election, a Projet Montréal team was elected in the borough and the new borough mayor, Sue Montgomery, announced a new call for projects for the Empress.

With all the foot-dragging, the city and borough have allowed the Empress to fall into ruin, said Éthier, who has worked in the film industry all her life. For example, the borough and city stopped heating the building sometime after 2012, she contends.

“It’s very sad,” Éthier said. “Every time I hear news of the Empress, it breaks my heart.”

Politicians only seem to care about the Empress when there’s an election, she said.

“We have municipal elections coming next year and suddenly they’re talking about the Empress again,” she said. “We haven’t heard the politicians talk about the Empress since the last election (in 2021). Why is it put back on the table at every election, but in-between we don’t hear anything?”

lgyulai@postmedia.com

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