The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre is one of the world's last surviving double-decker theatres — two stacked auditoriums built directly above each other in 1913, each with its own distinct character. The Elgin on the lower level is a conventional ornate vaudeville house; the Winter Garden above is something stranger and more beautiful.
The Winter Garden was designed to evoke an enchanted outdoor garden. The ceiling is hung with more than 5,000 preserved beech leaves, hand-painted in autumn colours, with a blue painted sky vault above and painted tree trunks rising up the walls. It looks like a theatre that has been transported inside an enormous hollow tree. The two theatres were sealed and abandoned in 1928; when they were restored by Heritage Toronto in 1989, the Winter Garden's original decorative scheme was remarkably intact — the leaves had simply dried out.
Both theatres are National Historic Sites of Canada and still operating performance venues. The Winter Garden in particular is used for mid-sized concerts, theatrical productions, and film screenings. Behind-the-scenes tours are available on Saturday mornings.