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The Tivoli Theatre

One would well expect a theatre to be filled with the voices of actors, the patter of footsteps treading the boards of the stage, and fantastical images inspired by the imagination of playwrights and directors. But the old Tivoli Theatre in Hamilton offered those things even when supposedly quiet and between performances, sending a quick shiver of fright up the spines of employees and actors who worked there.

Many looked at the remains of the Tivoli Theatre building as a forgotten ruin of an era long past. The 750-seat auditorium still stands vacant, but in 2004, when a portion of the south wall facing James Street North (the area containing the lobby, office space, washrooms, props room and storage space) began to collapse, it was deemed unsafe, and the demolition of that entire section began.

The Tivoli was built in three sections; the first section was constructed in 1875. The section that used to front James Street North was built with a carriage factory on the upper floors and retail shops at street level. The architecture of the building has been described as a Second Empire style, boasting a steeply pitched mansard roof with dormers, bracketed cornices, and rich classical detailing.

For almost one hundred years, the Tivoli Theatre buildings were the centre for entertainment in the city of Hamilton.

Courtesy of Stephanie Lechniak.

The carriage factory closed in 1881 and the building remained vacant until 1907, when the theatre community in Hamilton began to rise. The factory was converted to a theatre with about two hundred seats, and Hamilton city records reveal that in 1908 a theatre known as the Wonderland opened on the site at the rear of the factory building, showing live vaudeville acts. In 1909 it was renamed the Colonial and in 1913 the name changed once more to The Princess at about the same time it began showing motion pictures.[1]

A theatre magnate of the 1900s named Ambrose Small owned the Tivoli (The Princess at that point) along with several other theatres in Southern Ontario. In 1919 he signed a contract selling all of his theatres — The Tivoli in Hamilton, The Grand in London, and The Grand in Toronto — for a couple million dollars. But on the fateful and sunny afternoon of Friday, December 19, Small walked away from a pleasant meeting with his lawyer FWM Flock on the corner of Adelaide and Yonge in Toronto and was never seen again.[2],[3]

Small’s disappearance became one of the most captivating and enduring mysteries of the time. He was not only a theatre mogul but also a ruthless businessman, a gambler, and an adulterous rogue. He openly hated children, the less fortunate, and regularly complained that his wife’s benevolent nature and participation in charities was a waste of time.

Small’s ruthless nature amplified the hype surrounding his bizarre disappearance and sent the media into a tailspin, as might happen with more modern celebrities, who shine in the spotlight merely because of the way that people love to hate them,

A $50,000 reward was offered for anyone finding Ambrose Small alive, and $15,000 was offered if his dead body was recovered. A stream of claims poured in, with many of the dead bodies closely fitting Small’s appearance. But each of them was disproved by a single fact that was held from the public’s knowledge: Small had hammertoes.[4]

On the same day that Small went missing, his long-time assistant, John Doughty, also went missing. Doughty, however, was reportedly seen in Montreal the following day, and almost a year later was captured and questioned by police in Oregon while living under a false name. And though he was found to not be guilty of Small’s disappearance, Doughty was found guilty of stealing $104,000 in bonds that had belonged to his boss.[5]

The last place Small was seen was in his office in The Grand Theatre in Toronto, but a stream of eyewitness accounts three quarters of a century after he disappeared suggest that though Small’s physical body was never seen again, his spirit has returned to the Hamilton theatre that he owned.

In 1924 the old carriage factory was converted into a lobby and the back part of the structure was rebuilt into a bold new auditorium to impress patrons and compete with the Capital, Hamilton’s crown jewel of theatres at the time.[6]

In 1926 it was the theatre that brought “talkies” to Hamilton and was perhaps one of the very first in Canada to do so.

In 1954, Famous Players spent $250,000 in renovations on the auditorium, reworking the previous Italian Renaissance theme and installing special lighting effects. One of the other major renovations involved converting the balcony into a smoking area. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, smoking became an extremely popular activity, particularly since it was featured regularly in movies and partaken in by all of the coolest roles played by the most well-loved actors of the day.

In September 1989, Famous Players closed the theatre down, with the last show being Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. That same year, Sam Sniderman bought the building for $1.7 million, converting the front area into a record store (a Hamilton location for his popular Sam the Record Man chain). Famous Players made Sniderman sign a contract with a clause stating that, while he could put on musical acts and stage plays there, he was not able to show a movie there for twenty years.

In 1991, playwright Douglas Rodger’s How Could You, Mrs. Dick? was put on by Theatre Terra Nova and drew in massive crowds, a reminder of the days in which the beautiful seductress drew crowds of spectators to the trial in which she was accused of murdering her husband, John Dick.

This is about the time that, after more than seventy-two years, Ambrose Small was again spotted. Was this the ghost of the theatre magnate making a suggestion regarding his own wife Theresa’s involvement in his disappearance, or merely a coincidence?

Loren Lieberman was the manager of the theatre at this time and, soon after he and his crew moved in, was continually approached by both staff and actors who claimed to see an apparition of a man in various locations throughout the building. Describing the ghost as looking like he was homeless, but not in contemporary clothes of the time, instead wearing a more Victorian style of dress, they noted he bore a single striking feature: a long curled moustache like the one that Salvador Dali was known for.

Lieberman went to the Hamilton Public Library and picked up a book that contained pictures of Small. When he showed the staff the pictures of the theatre magnate, one by one, they each independently agreed that this was the man they had spotted wandering the theatre.

Many renovations took place during this time, and that was when a secret basement location containing many old vaudeville posters, movie reels, and steamer trunks was found. One trunk had a gold plate on the front with A. SMALL carved into it. When the workers opened it, they at first thought they had discovered a theatre prop of a skeleton, but upon closer inspection, the bones inside were real.

Lieberman called the Toronto police (the closest forensics team at the time), informing them of the find and the potential that this might be the remains of the long-lost theatre mogul. The police team was scheduled to arrive the next day. However, renovation-related confusion led to the trunk’s disappearance before they arrived; nobody is sure whether the trunk was tossed out with so much of the rubbish or if it disappeared under more suspicious circumstances. The A. SMALL trunk’s ultimate destiny also remains a mystery.

But if Small’s ghost haunts the theatre, he is certainly not alone.

A spirit that was seen most often at the Tivoli is a woman in a long 1920s dress. Seen by many employees and actors over the years, this shy ghost would disappear rather quickly whenever she was spotted by the living. This act made her appearances that much more unsettling and memorable for those who spied her.

Lieberman, who, as manager, had spent more time in the theatre than any of the actors or employees, was frustrated that the woman had quickly shown herself to virtually everybody except for him. He had even joked about being the one person left out, until one day he and a female employee were engaged in a conversation, when she looked away from Lieberman in mid sentence and went completely pale.

Turning to see what the employee was looking at, Lieberman saw the woman standing directly behind him. It appeared as if she were trying to frantically tell him something, but though her lips were moving, neither Lieberman nor the employee could hear a thing. They both could distinctly make out that she was saying his name, Loren, over and over before she faded from sight.

Another occurrence that Lieberman himself never experienced, but which he had heard multiple accounts of, was of patrons using the restrooms off the lobby and hearing voices all around them on their walk back to the auditorium. They said that though the lobby was empty, there were sounds as if a large crowd were mingling there.

Lieberman had one dedicated worker of the canine variety, a Rottweiler he named Norbert T. Rottweiler, or Nobby for short. Nobby patrolled the lobby and foyer at night, ensuring that this building, which wasn’t in the best of the downtown neighbourhoods, would remain secure from break-ins.

One morning when Lieberman arrived at the theatre, he discovered that Nobby was missing. The dog was nowhere to be found in either the foyer or the lobby. Hearing a soft whimpering from behind his office door, Lieberman unlocked it and found Nobby inside.

Confused as to how a dog could have gotten through a locked door in the middle of the night, Lieberman and some employees reviewed the security footage. They watched in shocked fascination as the locked office door opened by itself to let the dog inside, then slammed shut behind Nobby.

This happened on more than one night, confusing and frustrating Lieberman. Determined to try to solve the mystery, Lieberman and a group of employees lingered in the lobby in the middle of the night, directly across from the locked office. When Lieberman prompted Nobby to go into his office, the dog walked up to the door and put his paw on it. The door suddenly swung open long enough for the dog to walk in, then it abruptly closed again.

The witnessing group was dumbfounded.

Lieberman walked up to the door, placed his hand on it, and gave a little push. It didn’t budge. He then threw his entire two hundred pounds against the door, but still it didn’t budge. The door didn’t in fact open until he took out the keys and unlocked it.

That particular occurrence eventually stopped happening after just a few more confusing and eerie nights, but there was yet more to fear.

Under the statue of Caesar on the south side of the auditorium lurks the distressed spirit of a young boy who is regularly heard but not often seen. Several staff and patrons who heard a faint weeping rushed to the large vent under the statue and tore it off the wall, thinking to rescue the boy they thought was hopelessly trapped within. But there was nobody inside to rescue — except perhaps for a ghost, for whom it is too late to save. One rather curious witness to the crying went so far as to crawl inside the dusty vent, discovering a report card belonging to a local Hamilton boy from Ryerson elementary school’s grade 4.[7]

In the summer of 2002, the folks at Haunted Hamilton conducted an investigation of the Tivoli Theatre. Their psychics went into the building without being told any of the alleged history of the ghosts. Immediately drawn to the statue and the vent, they placed their hands on the wall and said it housed an important document.

Shortly after a side wall collapsed in upon itself in 2004, leaving a gaping hole on the south side of the building, city contractors assessed the structure as unstable. The City of Hamilton billed owner Sam Sniderman $300,000 for the cost of the demolition.

Legends suggest that the distressed spirit of a young boy lurks near the statue of Caesar on the south side of the auditorium.

Courtesy of Stephanie Lechniak.

In 2006 the Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble bought the building from Sniderman for either one or two dollars, depending on which newspaper report you read. And in the summer of 2010, Gina Gintili and Belma Diamante began trying to raise five million dollars in order to restore the theatre building into a dance, arts, and culture centre. Under a campaign called “Toonies for Tivoli,” they hope to build those funds two dollars at a time. They champion the Tivoli as a magic spot, larger than the real estate and a symbol of our city’s soul.

Those who have experienced the unexplained occurrences at the Tivoli would, of course, also suggest that there is more than magic here — and that if the legendary building known as the Tivoli rises again, so, too, will the ghosts that continue to tread the boards there.