Seville Theatre

The Seville Theatre was a movie theatre on Sainte-Catherine Street West between Lambert-Closse and Chomedey streets in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in a district now known as Shaughnessy Village. After closing in 1985 the theatre was shuttered and remained abandoned for 25 years. It was demolished October 2010.

The theatre, designed by Cajetan L. Dufort (full name Louis-Joseph Cajetan Dufort, also the architect of the Corona Theatre), was built in 1929 – just five years after the nearby Montreal Forum – in a then-bustling part of downtown Montreal. Its interior was designed by Emmanuel Briffa.

The Seville was a single-screen, 1148 seat theatre and one of only 15 atmospheric theatres ever built in Canada. Its interior had a Spanish theme (hence the name "Seville") with its ceiling painted to resemble a night sky with sparkling stars. There was an additional mechanism in place that could be turned on to give the appearance of clouds moving across the sky.The theatre was built with shops in the front, including an ice cream parlour on the east side and a drugstore on the west.

In the 1940s the theatre became a live theatre, hosting a variety of performers including Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, The Four Aces, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.

The Seville's interior was redesigned about 1950 by Oscar Glas using a pastel colour theme, and most of the original decorations were either discarded or sent to the monastery of St-Bernard-de-Lacolle.

In the 1960s, the Seville reverted to showing movies once again. The Seville was home to The Sound of Music for a two-year run between 1965 and 1967. Then in 1978 the Seville was converted into a repertory theatre. After the theatre's owners claimed their rent was quadrupled in 1985, the theatre ceased operation. The last film to be shown was Stop Making Sense on October 31, 1985.

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