An Article from the Vancouver Sun
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| The Burr theatre on |
Theatre revealing its secrets
Early work on a $7-million restoration
of New Westminster
— now the Burr theatre — is uncovering
some astonishing art beneath thick layers of paint
John Mackie
Lost amidst the
hubbub of the Orpheum's 75th anniversary celebration was news that another
local theatre recently had its 75th birthday.
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Arts Centre hides a couple of secrets from its early days as a vaudeville house. |
The Columbia Theatre
in New Westminster
turned 75 on Nov 3. Now known as the Burr theatre, after New Westminster native Raymond Burr, the theatre
is in the early stages of a proposed $7-million restoration to return it to its
former glory.
The first stage of
the restoration is beginning to take shape on the walls of the theatre. Buried
under six layers of paint, drywall and plaster, conservator Cheryle Harrison is
painstakingly uncovering a mural straight out of The Arabian Nights.
The mural depicts a
rolling landscape of trees and classical buildings, alongside a golden shield,
crown and scroll. Winding its way up a beam is a faux-painting of a trellis
with wild roses and wisteria; the ceiling is a deep blue night sky, complete
with sparkling silver leaf stars.
The
three-by-six-metre section uncovered so far points to the Columbia 's
origins, when it was one of Canada 's
first "atmospheric" theatres.
In atmospheric
theatres, the auditorium was painted in a fantasy theme, giving theatre-goers
the feeling they were entering an enchanted never-never-land.
"An atmospheric
theatre is one that visually transports you to another place and time,"
said the theatre's historian, Jim Wolf. "It was the vogue at the time.
"In the case of
the Columbia ,
it was the fantasy of a Moorish garden. You stepped into a walled garden city,
and walked down an old street in a Moorish town."
The Columbia was the centerpiece of New West's
theatre row when it opened in 1927. Like the Orpheum, it was a combination
vaudeville/movie palace.
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| Theatre manager Billy Long stands beside one of the huge fir pillars that support the floor of the building over the ravine it was sited on. |
The opening show
featured a vignette from actors Francis & Hubert, dancing from Jeane Gauld,
music from AV Thomas and His Columbians, and the "photoplay" Swim
Girl Swim with Bebe Daniels.
But time hasn't been
kind to the theatre. The 1927 mural was probably covered up in the 1930s, the
auditorium was split into a dual cinema in 1976, and the building was converted
to a Fraternal Order of Eagles Hall in 1987.
In recent years the Eagles operated a bar in the upstairs
cinema, while the lower cinema hosted events like Extreme Canadian Championship
Wrestling.
The city of New Westminster purchased
the theatre in Sept., 2000. The bar is still upstairs, but the downstairs is
now an extremely successful live theatre — 30,000 people have seen plays there
in the last two years. (The next production is Mother Goose, from Dec. 11 to
Jan. 4.)
If funding is
successful, Harrison feels she could probably
have the whole mural uncovered in a couple of years. It took about 400 hours
to do the cur-rent section, which had to be uncovered layer by layer - each
type of paint is taken off with a different solution.
When she started
working on the mural, she knew what it looked like from an old black and white
photograph, but had no idea about the colour scheme.
That changed about a
month ago, when Wolf discovered a treasury of architectural drawings in the
former home of the muralist, John Girvan. Among the find were the original
colour drawings for the interior of the Columbia .
Locating the Girvan
collection involved detective work worthy of Perry Mason. A man named Peter
McInnis showed up at a Burr theatre open house, and told someone his
grandfather William had worked on the theatre opening.
"William
McInnis remembered it quite well, because somebody had put their foot through
the ceiling during the decoration and he had to madly work to fix the hole in
the ceiling prior to the opening," Wolf said with a laugh.
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| A copy of a design drawing for the Columbia Theatre's original 1927 interior decoration. |
McInnis was a Scot
who specialized in applying gold leaf — he had done the extensive gold leaf in
the Titanic's ballrooms. He was actually booked on the Titanic, but bowed out
at the last minute when there was a death in his wife's family.
"They missed
their own funeral by going to another funeral," said Wolf. "They
caught another boat and ended up in New
Westminster ."
In 1923, another
Scottish artist, John Girvan, arrived in Vancouver .
Girvan specialized in murals (he did a legendary mural series for the old Province
building) and theatres, and convinced Famous Players to go with the atmospheric
design at the Columbia .
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| The metal sign from the firm that originally designed the Columbia Theatre. |
A story in Canadian
Paint and Varnish magazine claimed that Girvan used 1000 pounds of paint and
100 books of metal leaf in the interior decoration.
Peter McInnis
remembered meeting Girvan's son at an open house several years ago in Burnaby or Vancouver ,
and Wolf started scouring old directories trying to locate the house. When he finally
found it, he looked up the address in a city directory and called the current
owner, out of the blue.
"I said `Do you
know anything about Girvan [Studios]? This woman said `Not only do I know about
Girvan, I have their entire studio collection in the basement,"' said
Wolf.
He went to see it
the next day — 75 years to the day after the Columbia Theatre opened.
The Girvan Studios
collection isn't the only discovery in the Burr theatre project. Underneath the
auditorium is an old ravine — the building actually sits on piles. Before it
was covered by the theatre in 1927, people had been throwing their garbage
into the ravine for decades. All sorts of relics have been found, including pottery
and remnants of the original theatre facade.
"We haven't
even done a dig yet, this is all just lying on the surface down there,"
said Wolf.
"It's quite
incredible. Inside it's a historic garbage dump of New Westminster going back to the
1860s."
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