This Toronto building used to house Second City. Now that it's for sale, some want to make it a laugh landmark

“And she was like, ‘You’re hired.’ I just did ‘Chopsticks’ the whole (show). That was my big moment.”

It’s one of the memories Summers, now a high school drama teacher in Bowmanville, cherishes from working at Second City between 1989 and 1996, and one of the reasons she has made an open appeal to some of its more famous alumni to help turn the heritage building — currently for sale for $10 million — into a monument to the city’s, and the country’s, contributions to comedy.

“Imagine The Old Firehall (sic) as a home for Canadian comedy and culture: a place that honours its history while supporting future generations of performers, writers and artists,” reads the letter that has been circulating on social media, addressed to Second City alumni Mike Myers, Eugene Levy and Dan Aykroyd, as well as Levy’s son Dan, and Canadians Will Arnett and Ryans Reynolds and Gosling.

“This isn’t a request for one person to write a cheque,” the letter continues. “It’s an invitation to consider what might be possible if the right people came together. The Old Firehall has already served Toronto in two extraordinary ways — first by helping save lives, and later by bringing laughter to countless people.

“Perhaps it still has one more chapter left to write.”

‘University of comedy’

The edifice, which the real estate listing describes as “a 13,823-square-foot, three-storey boutique office building,” started out in 1887 as Toronto’s Central Fire Hall. It was designed by architect David Roberts Jr. — who also designed more than a dozen buildings in the Distillery District — in the Romanesque Revival style, according to website TorontoJourney416. Its distinctive red brick facade includes a 30.5-metre hose-drying tower.

The website notes that the station, which closed as a fire hall in 1970, was home to a couple of local celebrities in the 1920s: Mickey and Prince, Toronto’s last team of wagon-pulling fire horses.

But there were other names associated with the building after it was taken over by Second City Toronto from 1974 to 1997, including Eugene (Levy), John (Candy), Catherine (O’Hara), Colin (Mochrie) and Martin (Short).

The late comedy legend O’Hara famously started working there as a waitress before becoming the understudy for Gilda Radner and Rosemary Radcliffe, then replacing Radner in the mainstage company when she left to join the cast of “Saturday Night Live.”

O’Hara told the Star in a 2023 interview it was her “university of comedy.”

She later joined “SCTV,” the legendary sketch comedy TV series that recruited most of its cast from the Old Fire Hall’s stage. And she and other alumni went on to make up a veritable galaxy of TV and movie stars in everything from “The Blues Brothers” to “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” to “Schitt’s Creek” to “Only Murders in the Building.”

But the Second City was also a training ground for hundreds of other less famous Canadians who have continued to contribute to the country’s entertainment industry.

They include Rick Wharton, an actor, comedian, teacher, former record-company promoter and performing-arts centre director whose claims to fame include being “The Conspiracy Guy” on TV from 1997 to 2001.

He was with the Second City for two years in the ’90s, performing in both the touring and mainstage companies. He recalled his time inside the Old Fire Hall as magical.

“It had history, it had heritage,” he told the Star. “I mean, it was like the NHL draft for comedy. I loved just walking the halls and looking at (photos of) all the people that had come before me.

“Everyone talks about Marty Short … and Mike Myers and Eugene Levy, but there’s a lot of other great performers that have come from there,” he added. “I just loved it. It was a dream come true for me.”

From fire hall to Hall of Fame?

Wharton is fully behind Summers’ plea to turn the Old Fire Hall into a Canadian comedy mecca.

He’s currently in Ottawa, where he works at the Meridian Theatres @ Centrepointe, but said he’d gladly move back to Toronto to help revitalize his old stomping grounds.

Wharton is on the board of directors of the Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame charity alongside actor and comedian Tim Progosh, who founded the Canadian Comedy Awards and has spent more than two decades and a lot of his own money trying to find a brick-and-mortar home for the hall.

Fresh out of theatre school at Western University, Progosh took classes at Second City in 1980 alongside actor Kelly Fiddick, Mike Myers and Kids in the Hall’s Kevin McDonald.

“I was so impressed by the courses that I went back to Ottawa and ran a citywide comedy contest … and then I opened my own club,” Progosh said.

He never made it into the Second City mainstage cast but started his own troupe called 500 Miles Off Broadway. It was part of a sketch comedy explosion in Toronto in the 1980s, he said, that included artists who had trained or performed at Second City.

“That’s why I started the Canadian Comedy Awards, because these people were so talented,” Progosh said.

Although attempts to establish a Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame in Niagara Falls and Hamilton didn’t succeed, Progosh believes there’s a solid case to be made for putting it in the Lombard Street building, which is currently occupied by the College of Makeup Art & Design, while Second City has a complex at 1 York St. (The real estate listing for Lombard Street says whoever buys the fire hall has the right to terminate the existing lease for vacancy as early as May 2027.)

Progosh said he’d be happy to share everything he’s learned trying to situate a Hall of Fame elsewhere, but “we need a new champion. I’ve got all the research and the business plan, all that.

“I can tell you (the) numbers and how exciting it could be, and the kind of information and things that are available,” he added, including AI and holographic technology for exhibits.

As for Summers, she’ll never forget the eight years she spent at the Old Fire Hall, first in the Second City box office and then as administrative assistant to producer Sally Cochrane and CEO Andrew Alexander.

“It was the best job I’ve ever had. I love teaching, but the memories I have from Second City are amazing,” she said.

“There’s so much that Toronto and Canada has given to comedy worldwide,” she added. “Why can’t we have one space in the city (for) a museum of sorts?

“I don’t know Ryan Gosling, I don’t know the people that I put in (the letter), but it would be great if someone with a lot of clout, money, whatever (took) the incentive.”