Sprachman, Abraham

SPRACHMAN, Abraham (1894-1971), active in Toronto, Ontario as a partner with Harold S. Kaplan in the remarkably prolific architectural firm of Kaplan & Sprachman from 1920 until 1965. Born in Galacia, Poland on 12 July 1894, Sprachman arrived in Toronto before 1915 and he attended the Toronto Technical High School on College Street in 1915-17 where he took courses in architecture and building construction. One of his classmates at that school was another young architect, Harold S. Kaplan, who was also attending courses there in 1914-15. In 1920 Kaplan invited Sprachman to form an architectural partnership in Toronto, and during the next forty-five years their firm produced designs for commercial, residential, industrial and religious buildings throughout Canada. Their primary reputation, however, rests almost entirely on their substantial output of designs for movie theatres, and their names can be linked to over 200 theatre projects built between 1926 and 1960 (see entry under Kaplan, Harold S.). Sprachman retired in 1965 and later died in Toronto on 6 August 1971 (death notice Toronto Star, 7 Aug. 1971, 76). A full list of movie theatre buildings by Kaplan & Sprachman has been prepared by Mandel Sprachman, Architect, and son of Abraham Sprachman, and was published in the Historic Theatres' Trust Bulletin [Montreal], Spring/Summer 1996, p. 8-14, illus. A major collection of original architectural drawings by the architectural firm of Kaplan & Sprachman is now held by the Ontario Jewish Archives, Bathurst Street, Toronto.