Sony Centre for the Arts
| O'Keefe Centre (1960-1996) Hummingbird Centre (1996-2007) |
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| Location | 1 Front Street East Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1B2 |
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| Owner | City of Toronto |
| Type | Performing arts venue |
| Capacity | 3,191 |
| Construction | |
| Opened | October 1, 1960 |
| Rebuilt | 2008-2010 |
| Years active | 1960-2008; 2010-present |
| Architect | Peter Dickinson |
| Website | |
| http://www.sonycentre.ca | |
The Sony Centre for the Performing Arts is a major performing arts venue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The Sony Centre for the Performing Arts is Canada’s largest soft-seat theatre. The centre opened as the O’Keefe Centre on 1 October 1960, and has hosted a variety of international attractions and stars.
The theatre, designated a heritage building by the City of Toronto, underwent renovations to restore its iconic features such as the marquee canopy and York Wilson’s lobby mural, The Seven Lively Arts. Restoration of the wood, brass and marble that were hallmarks of the original facility was undertaken, along with audience seating, flooring upgrades, new washrooms and reconfigured lobby spaces. Following two years of renovations and restoration work, the Sony Centre reopened its doors on 1 October 2010, fifty years to the date of the first opening night performance.
The Centre was built on land formerly occupied by the a series of commercial buildings including that of Canadian Consolidated Rubber Company and prior it was the site of the Great Western Railway Terminal (later as Toronto Wholesale Fruit Market).
The idea for a performing arts centre that could serve the needs of an increasingly dynamic city predates the building's opening by almost 20 years. In the mid-1940s, Nathan Phillips issued a challenge to Toronto industrialists to underwrite the cost of a multipurpose centre for theatre, music and dance. Response to Phillips' challenge was not immediate. E.P. Taylor, the racehorse-loving head of the O'Keefe Brewing Company and Argus Corporation, was already one of the city's most generous philanthropists, and in 1954, he offered to build a performing arts centre that would not only serve the needs of local institutions but to increase the diversity of entertainment options available in Toronto.
Taylor assigned one of his key executives, Hugh Walker, to oversee building what was to be known as The O'Keefe Centre in its first 36 years. The O'Keefe Centre opened on 1 October 1960 with a red-carpet gala. The first production was Alexander H. Cohen's production of the pre-Broadway premiere of Lerner and Loewe's Camelot, starring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. Camelot would prove to be just the first in a long and continuing line of spectacular productions, featuring such artists as Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Angela Lansbury, Alfred Drake, Yul Brynner, Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, and Katharine Hepburn. Even Rudolf Nureyev, more familiar to Centre audiences in his frequent role as a ballet superstar, tried his hand at musical theatre as the Siamese autocrat in The King and I.
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