Academy of Music 9 Victoria (1875-1910) Crowd-surfing, a blind piano prodigy and an early anti-racism lawsuit coloured the history of this 2,000-seat venue, which made the mistake of being built on swampy terrain at downtown Victoria and St. Catherine, a site later filled by the western half of Eaton's department store.
Blind Tom a “wholesome-looking negro” proved an early-day draw, as the sightless Georgia-born ex-slave pianist played to full houses before returning to live a quiet life near New York City.
A revolving door of managers and vaudeville acts ensued, including the hit “Bathing in the Nile” show in 1877.
Kids would participate in "pit tossing," a forerunner of crowd-surfing, which allowed a small body to get passed overhead from the back row to the front, if the passenger dared to endure the manhandling.
The business started sinking, literally, one evening in 1896 when the structure descended five inches into the muddy soil, leading officials to condemn the building.
It reopened after extensive repairs but trouble returned two years later when owner John B. Sparrow refused to honour a black man's orchestra-section ticket. “The patronage which occupies that part of the house does not want them there. And so naturally I exclude them,” said Sparrow. The snubbed ticket-holder, a Queen's Hotel employee named Frederick Johnson, sued for $500 and was awarded $50.
The adjacent W.H. Scroggie department store building collapsed in 1899 and demolition of the entire swamp-challenged area seemed imminent but the venue gave it once last try as La Théatre de la Comedie Française in 1909.
The building was demolished in May 1910 to allow the neighbouring Goodwin's department store—the former Scroggies and future Eaton's—to expand.
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