Kaplan & Sprachman, Architects National Historic Event

Kaplan & Sprachman, Architects was designated as a national historic event in 2008.

Historical importance: one of Canada's most prolific architectural firms specializing in movie theatre designs in the first half of the 20th century.

Commemorative plaque: Eglinton Theatre National Historic Site of Canada, 400 Eglinton Avenue West, Toronto, Ontario^{Footnote 1}

Kaplan & Sprachman, Architects

During the “Golden Age” of cinema in the first half of the 20th century, Harold Kaplan and Abraham Sprachman designed hundreds of movie theatres, like the Park, in the Moderne style. They put the latest engineering and film technologies into their theatres, and clad the interiors in the newest finishes to create alluring spaces that briefly transported moviegoers out of their everyday lives. This prolific firm captured the glamour of the movies by using flowing, streamlined surfaces and neon-lit marquees, producing a distinctive architectural feature on main streets and in neighbourhoods across Canada.