Lee's Palace
Lee's Palace in March 2011 featuring a mural by Alex "Al Runt" Currie.
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| Former names | Allen's Bloor Theatre (1919-1923) Bloor Theatre (1950s–1960s) Blue Orchid (1967-1976) Oriental Palace (1976-1985) |
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| Address | 529 Bloor Street West Toronto ON M5S 1Y5 |
| Location | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Coordinates | 43°39′55″N 79°24′34″W / 43.665272°N 79.409448°WCoordinates: 43°39′55″N 79°24′34″W / 43.665272°N 79.409448°W |
| Owner | Collective Concerts (Jeff Cohen) |
| Type | Nightclub |
| Genre(s) | Alternative, Indie |
| Seating type | Standing room |
| Capacity | 550 |
| Construction | |
| Built | early 1900s |
| Opened | 5 September 1985 |
| Website | |
| leespalace.com | |
Lee's Palace is a rock concert hall located on the south side of Bloor Street West east of Lippincott Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The two-floor facility in The Annex neighbourhood has a long history prior to being adapted in September 1985 for its current use as a concert venue and nightclub. While the Lee's Palace live performance venue that accommodates just over 500 guest is on the ground floor, the top floor is occupied by The Dance Cave, a nightclub that on weekends mostly caters to university and college students from the nearby downtown Toronto schools such as University of Toronto, Ryerson University, OCAD University, and George Brown College with alt-rock while attracting older patrons during workweek with a fare that includes goth rock, mod music, punk, and indie.
Having been established and owned for 16 years by the Korean Canadian entrepreneur Chong Su Lee a.k.a. Mr. Lee, the venue has since 2001 been owned by Collective Concerts, a Toronto-based music promotions company (owned by Jeff Cohen with partners Ben Pearlman and Bruce Bennett) that also has the Horseshoe Tavern, another iconic Toronto music venue, among its list of assets. In 2006, they also bought the building that houses Lee's Palace.
The building at 529 Bloor Street West, which currently consists of two floors of 5,000 square feet each, dates back to early 1900s and was reportedly a bank at one point as well as a shoemaker shop.
During late 1910s, the building's redesign got initiated by its new owners — Canadian-based Allen Theatres chain that decided to turn it into a silent film theater. With the redesign executed by the Detroit-based Howard Crane's company, the 782-seat Allen's Bloor Theatre became one of Toronto's (a city of some 200,000 inhabitants at the time) most luxurious suburban movie houses. The undertaking came as part of Allen Theatres' aggressive 1917-1920 expansion into the Toronto marketplace, a period during which they built/redesigned many buildings around the city into theaters such as Allen's Danforth on the Danforth and Allen's Beach Theatre in the Beaches neighbourhood in addition to purchasing many existing theaters like the nearby Madison Picture Palace across the road on Bloor St. and the 1,100-seat Beaver Theatre in the Junction neighbourhood.
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