Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a metropolitan area in the Upper Midwestern United States centered around the confluence of the Mississippi, Minnesota and St. Croix rivers in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is commonly known as the Twin Cities after the area's two largest cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Minnesotans often refer to the two together simply as "the cities". The area is Minnesota's economic, cultural, and political center.
Larry Millett is an American journalist and author. He is the former architectural critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a daily newspaper in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of several books on the history of architecture in Minnesota. He has also written a series of Sherlock Holmes mysteries set in the United States and Minnesota in the 1890s. The books feature the character Shadwell Rafferty, who assists Holmes in his American investigations.
U.S. Bank Stadium station station is a light rail station on the Metro Blue Line and Green Line in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Pence Opera House was an opera house and later, a mission, at Hennepin Avenue and 2nd Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.
The Uptown Theatre is one of the oldest surviving theaters in the Twin Cities area. It was in active use from 1916 to 2020. The theater is planning to reopen on May 5, 2023, as a music and event venue.
Snelling Avenue is a light rail station along the Metro Green Line in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is located along University Avenue on either side of the intersection with Snelling Avenue. The station has split side platforms, with the westbound platform on the north side of the tracks west of Snelling and the eastbound platform on the south side of the tracks east of the intersection.
Orpheum Theatre is a theater located in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is one of four restored theaters on Hennepin Avenue, along with the Pantages Theatre, the State Theatre and the Shubert Theatre.
The Minneapolis Armory is a historic event center and former National Guard armory located in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Built by the Public Works Administration in 1936, the building was occupied by several Army and Naval Militia units of the Minnesota National Guard from its opening until 1985. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Depot Freight House and Train Shed, now officially named The Depot, is a historic railroad depot in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. At its peak, the station served 29 trains per day. Following decline, the station was closed and eventually adapted into various other uses.
The 1942 Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank building in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, is a former bank building that is now the home of a Westin Hotel. The building is an example of the Streamline Moderne phase of the Art Deco movement and is notable for its bold relief sculptures of a farmer and a mechanic framing the main entrance. The sculptures were designed by Warren T. Mosman, who headed the sculpture department at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
Harry Wild Jones was an American architect based in Minneapolis who designed throughout the country and the world. Born two years before the start of the American Civil War, Jones, a twelfth-generation New Englander, took his place on the American architectural stage in the late 19th century. His life spanned seventy-six years, during a period of U.S. history that matched his exuberant, spirited personality. Known as an architect adept at any design technique, Jones is credited with introducing Shingle Style architecture to Minneapolis. He created an impressive portfolio from neoclassic to eclectic, reflecting his unique brand of versatility and creativity.
The Oak Street Cinema was a small, single-screen movie theater in the Stadium Village neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, near the University of Minnesota campus. The theater played both first-run independent films and repertory showings, including retrospectives of such filmmakers as Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Akira Kurosawa and others, as well as genre-based retrospectives. It had also been home to several local film festivals, including the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. The theater has hosted visits from several well-known filmmakers and celebrities, such as Terry Gilliam, Michael Moore, Peter Fonda, Cyd Charisse, and many others.
The Hollywood Theater is a historic theater building in Minneapolis which is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The Art Deco theater building opened on October 26, 1935, and the marquee proclaimed it the "Incomparable Showcase of the Northwest". The theater, designed by architects Jack Liebenberg and Seeman Kaplan, had a generous budget that allowed for elaborate decoration in the Streamline Deco style of design; its facade and structure made a "powerful statement of geometric mass punctuated by the entrance, exits, and three small windows that served the projection booth." Liebenberg and Kaplan went on to design the Riverview Theatre in Minneapolis and the Terrace Theatre in Robbinsdale. The building featured a tall vertical sign, a patterned terrazzo floor, gilded pillars, and acoustical tiles in geometric patterns. It had a seating capacity of just under 1000. Much of the interior features are influenced by the Zig-Zag Moderne and Streamline Moderne styles. The exterior is built of smooth Kasota limestone with vertical lines that transition to horizontal.
The Rarig Center is a brutalist theater, television, radio, and classroom building on the University of Minnesota's campus in the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, US. Designed by Ralph Rapson and built in 1971, the structure houses four theaters—a thrust, proscenium, theater in the round, and black box—as well as the studios for Radio K. An anchor for the University's West Bank Arts Quarter, the Rarig has been praised for its boldness and functionality but has also been described as "menacing".
The Terrace Theatre was located at 3508 France Avenue North in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Upon its opening on May 23, 1951, the Terrace received critical acclaim for its “bold architectural lines [and] extensive patron services.” The 1,299-seat theater, designed in the mid-century modern style by the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg & Kaplan (L&K) for movie exhibitors Sidney and William Volk, was a popular Twin Cities destination for nearly fifty years. It changed hands in 1980 and again in 1987, when it was remodeled from a single-screen auditorium into three screens by dividing the balcony. The last movie was screened in 1999 and the theater remained boarded up for seventeen years before it was demolished in the fall of 2016 to be replaced by a Hy-Vee grocery store.
The Trylon Cinema is a 90-seat movie theater in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The cinema was founded and is currently run by Take-Up Productions, a group of volunteers who got their start at the Oak Street Cinema before establishing the Trylon in 2009 within a former warehouse. A 2017 expansion resulted in an increase in the cinema's seating capacity and accessibility. Throughout its history, the venue has featured a variety of regular programming, ranging from career retrospectives of famous directors to B movies and cult films. The Trylon has been well received by critics who have praised its film lineup, intimacy, and atmosphere.
Liebenberg and Kaplan (L&K) was a Minneapolis architectural firm founded in 1923 by Jacob J. Liebenberg and Seeman I. Kaplan. Over a fifty-year period, L&K became one of the Twin Cities' most successful architectural firms, best known for designing/redesigning movie theaters. The firm also designed hospitals, places of worship, commercial and institutional buildings, country clubs, prestigious homes, radio and television stations, hotels, and apartment buildings. After designing Temple Israel and the Granada Theater in Minneapolis, the firm began specializing in acoustics and theater design and went on to plan the construction and/or renovation of more than 200 movie houses throughout Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Architectural records, original drawings, and plans for some 2,500 Liebenberg and Kaplan projects are available for public use at the Northwest Architectural Archives.
The Ely State Theater is a historic movie theater in Ely, Minnesota, United States. It was designed by Liebenberg and Kaplan in Streamline Moderne style and built in 1936. The theater was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015. It was nominated for epitomizing the small-town commissions of Liebenberg and Kaplan, the leading movie theater designers in the Upper Midwest during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
