Bathurst Street Theatre

The Bathurst Street Theatre is a theater in Toronto that is housed in a former church. It is located On Bathurst Street just to the south of Bloor. The building was originally home to Bathurst Street Methodist Church. This congregation had formed in 1862 when the area was Seaton Village. The building was erected by the church in 1888 to meet the demands of the growing population.

In 1924 the congregation joined the new United Church of Canada and the church became Bathurst Street United. In the 1950s, as the earlier population emigrated to the suburbs, the congregation shrank. A number of strategies were tried to increase attendance, one of these was the Sunday Evening Forums wherein the Sunday evening sermon was replaced by a panel discussion on social issues among prominent guest. Running from 1944 to 1951 noted panelists included Tim Buck, who lived nearby.

The small congregation had difficulty maintaining the old structure and increasingly they began to rent out the building to concerts and plays. Increasingly the building became better known for its role as a theatre than for being a church. In 1985 the congregation finally opted to leave the building and it now meets at nearby by Trinity-St. Paul's United Church. The building, while still owned by the Presbytery, became a permanent and well known theatre. In 2002 the church sold the building.