Description of Historic Place

The Radville Senior Citizen’s Club is a Municipal Heritage Property occupying one civic lot on a commercial block in the Town of Radville. The property features a one-storey, wood-frame building constructed ca. 1912.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the Radville Senior Citizen’s Club resides in its long-standing role in the social and cultural life of Radville. For many decades, townspeople enjoyed the movies and live entertainments that were presented in a theatre on the building’s ground floor. The building also housed meeting rooms for the local Odd Fellows Lodge and other organizations on a second floor that was destroyed by fire in 1943. The theatre portion of the building survived the fire and continued to operate until 1961. After a few years of vacancy, the building was purchased and renovated by the Radville Senior Citizens Club, which continues to use the facility for its meetings and other club-related activities and events. As one of Radville’s oldest surviving buildings, constructed around the time of the town’s incorporation, the property is valued both as an historic landmark and as an important social centre for today’s residents.

Further heritage value lies in the building’s architecture, which is typical of small-town theatres of its day and speaks to the optimism of Saskatchewan’s first decades. For the inhabitants of the province’s early communities, a movie theatre was an amenity that represented progress, modernity and the transformation from frontier to civilization. The building’s relatively elaborate façade expresses the confidence and exuberance of the era, emulating the architectural style of much grander theatres that were being built in cities during this period.

Source:

Town of Radville Bylaw No. 7-84.

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage value of the Radville Senior Citizen’s Club resides in the following character-defining elements:
-elements that reflect the building’s role as an early-twentieth century theatre, including its long rectangular plan; the colonnaded entranceway with pressed-tin soffit; the projecting box office bay and flanking doorways; and the projection room;
-elements that speak to the property’s landmark status and association with community life, including the building’s location on its original site; the false-front, with cornice, wood brackets and sheet metal shingles; and the building’s interior meeting space.