Lee's Palace is a music venue located on the south side of Bloor Street West east of Lippincott Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The two-floor facility in The Annex neighbourhood has a long history prior to being adapted in September 1985 for its current use as a concert venue and nightclub. the venue was purchased 2001 by Jeff Cohen with partners Ben Pearlman and Bruce Bennett that also has the Horseshoe Tavern, another iconic Toronto music venue, among its list of assets.
In December 2023, Lee's Palace was acquired by MODO LIVE, a Canadian based concert and live entertainment production company, as part of their venue portfolio which includes The Pearl on Granville in Vancouver, BC.
History
The building at 529 Bloor Street West, which currently consists of two floors of 5,000 square feet each, dates back to early 1900s and was reportedly a bank at one point
Allen's Bloor Theatre
During late 1910s, the building's redesign was initiated by its new owners—Canadian-based Allen Theatres chain that decided to turn it into a silent film theater. With the redesign executed by the Detroit-based Howard Crane's company, most luxurious suburban movie houses. The undertaking came as part of Allen Theatres' aggressive 1917-1920 expansion into the Toronto marketplace, a period during which they built/redesigned many buildings around the city into theaters such as Allen's Danforth on the Danforth and Allen's Beach Theatre in the Beaches neighbourhood. The venue remained an active movie theatre until 1957. The very first live show at the new venue on its opening night was Handsome Ned. Supporting their second album and making their Toronto debut with a lineup featuring the band's twenty-four-year-old founding member and original guitarist Hillel Slovak who would die of drug overdose eighteen months later, the show—opened by fellow Southern California punk rockers T.S.O.L. and Thelonious Monster and closed with the Peppers infamous and soon-to-become signature trademark 'socks-on-cocks' stage performance during an encore of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire"—marked the first instance of a future globally-known musical act playing Lee's Palace. Touring in support of their debut album that had been selling greatly in the United Kingdom, the band were exploding back home though still largely unknown in North America. The show itself, with Can$11.75 admission (), took place in front of a capacity crowd of some 600 people. In his negative review, the Toronto Star pop culture critic Peter Howell found the performance to be "devoid of personality" and delivered with "souless jukebox efficiency" akin to a "CD listening session": summarizing it by referring to Oasis as "fame chasing British press creations with glassy-eyed stares" that thought "simply showing up was enough to justify their Next Big Thing status". Over the years that followed, in addition to Oasis going on to global fame, their Lee's Palace gig would gain further notability once their singer Liam Gallagher started a high-profile relationship with actress Patsy Kensit and it was revealed that the two first met at Lee's Palace when Kensit, in town in Toronto shooting a U.S. television miniseries, came to the club show and afterwards socialized with the band on their tour bus.
Artists who have played at Lee's Palace
The capacity of Lee's Palace is roughly 600 people in the concert area, and more upstairs in the "Dance Cave", the dance club under the same roof. The Dance Cave caters to the alternative rock crowd, playing retro rock, Mod, '60s, Britpop, and indie rock during the week, and straight alternative on the weekends.
Here is a selection of artists who have played at Lee's Palace:
International artists
Canadian artists
Regulatory agencies
As the venue serves alcohol, attendance at concerts and events at Lee's Palace is generally restricted by the laws of the province of Ontario to those 19 years of age or older, although the venue occasionally hosts all-ages shows (usually on weekend afternoons or early evenings) where alcohol is not served.