History
1663 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON M4L 1G5, Canada
History is a 2,500-capacity music venue in Toronto's east end, at 1663 Queen Street East, opened in November 2021. A collaboration between Live Nation and the Toronto musician Drake, it was built into a building previously known as the Greenwood Teletheatre, and was designed for general-admission shows and seated events alike, with plans to stage up to 200 events a year. Its arrival gave the city a purpose-built mid-sized room backed by one of its most famous artists.
The venue opened to the public on 7 November 2021 with an inaugural concert by Bleachers, and has since slotted into the touring circuit as a Toronto stop sized between the club and the arena. Its profile owes much to Drake's involvement, but its function is straightforward: a modern, well-appointed room for the kind of act that has outgrown the small clubs.
Danforth Music Hall
147 Danforth Avenue, Toronto, ON M4K 1N2, Canada
The Danforth Music Hall is a former movie palace on Toronto's Danforth Avenue, opened in 1919 as Allen's Danforth Theatre and grand enough to bill itself, with period modesty, as Canada's first super-suburban photoplay palace. It cycled through life as a first-run cinema and, in the 1970s, a Greek-language theatre, before the live music came and the name with it. Protected under the Ontario Heritage Act since 1985, it closed in 2004 and reopened in December 2011, restored to a single sweeping room of around 1,500.
That capacity, big enough to matter and small enough to feel close, has made it a reliable Toronto stop for acts on the way up and the way through. The historical roll-call runs from James Brown and The Clash to The Police and The Ramones; since the 2011 reopening it has drawn Lorde, Disclosure and Father John Misty, alongside homegrown talents Daniel Caesar and Jessie Reyez. Few rooms carry quite so much of the city's gig memory.