The Empress Theatre still watches over Sherbrooke Street with the cool indifference of its twin sphinxes. Built in 1927, it’s Canada’s only surviving example of Egyptian Revival architecture—a relic of the Jazz Age fascination with King Tut and modernity’s golden dawn. Designed by architect Alcide Chaussé with interiors by Emmanuel Briffa, the theatre once pulsed with vaudeville, cinema, and later burlesque and arthouse flicks. Fires, closures, and decades of neglect have since left it hollow, though its facade remains a monument to Montreal’s lost movie-palace era.

Owned by the city since 1999 and long tied up in redevelopment talks, the Empress stands frozen between ruin and rebirth.