Toronto renamed a theatre after the woman its performers called the godmother of Canadian entertainment. The Jane Mallett Theatre, the 499-seat recital house of the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts at 27 Front Street East in downtown Toronto, opened on 2 February 1970 as the Town Hall - half of the city's official project marking Canada's 1967 centennial. The St. Lawrence Centre was Toronto's 2.6-million-dollar centennial gift to itself: designed by Gordon S. Adamson and Associates after eight years of planning, it opened with two rooms - the 863-seat Theatre (later the Bluma Appel) and the 483-seat Town Hall, conceived as a civic space for debate, recitals and film as much as staged drama. The renaming carried real sentiment: after actress Jane Mallett died in 1984, friends raised funds to renovate the Town Hall in her memory. Mallett was the founding president of the Actors' Fund of Canada, an Order of Canada recipient, and a force in Canadian radio and revue comedy for half a century - the theatre took her name that November. The room became the home of Toronto's chamber-scale music ecosystem: Music Toronto's chamber series, Opera in Concert, the Toronto Operetta Theatre, the Hannaford Street Silver Band and the Esprit Orchestra have all been resident companies, using the hall's clear acoustic and human scale for repertoire the city's big halls swallow. Practical notes: the centre sits a block east of Yonge on Front Street, near Union Station and the St. Lawrence Market; the city has debated redeveloping the ageing complex, with the building's future under active study - but the Jane Mallett's calendar of recitals, opera-in-concert and lectures continues meanwhile. The hall's civic-forum DNA still shows: the Town Hall name was literal, and the room's flat-floor-free, gently raked single-tier design was built for spoken word as much as music - a clarity that made it Toronto's favourite room for public debates, book launches and broadcast tapings alongside the resident companies' seasons. TO Live, the city agency that now runs the centre, has kept the Jane Mallett busy even as redevelopment proposals for the 1970 complex cycle through city hall, with the theatre's named legacy - and its acoustics - central to every argument for preservation.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 27 Front Street East, Toronto, Canada

Website: https://www.tolive.com

Capacity: 499

Opening Date: 02/02/1970

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