Built in 1927, the beautiful 2,800 seat Orpheum Theatre was originally the Vancouver outpost of the Chicago-based Orpheum vaudeville circuit and once the largest theater in Canada and the Pacific Northwest. As a master of theater design, architect Priteca created a lavish interior, derived from the Spanish Baroque, featuring exuberant arches, tiered columns and interlaced moldings executed in marble, travertine, cast stone and plaster. But the Orpheum opened in the year when ‘talkies’ were first introduced and increasingly the theater was used for movies until, in the 1970s, former owner Famous Players made plans to divide the building into several small cinemas.  With strong community support, the city bought the Orpheum and refurbished immaculately it for use by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and by the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame.  Today, it is a National Historic Site.

Sidebar:
Pratt is hardly a name made for glory - just think of the connotations: ‘pratfall’ meaning humiliating failure of ‘prat’ meaning a foolish person or a set of buttocks! But Vancouver boasts such a Bill Pratt who labored first as a longshoreman, then as a stagehand at the Orpheum Theatre. He was not gloriously successful. So Bill changed his name, and set for Hollywood to find fame and fortune; which he did, as Boris Karloff!