Terrace Theatre (Minnesota)
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The Terrace Theatre's marquee in 2016
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| Coordinates | 45°1′10″N 93°19′40″W / 45.01944°N 93.32778°WCoordinates: 45°1′10″N 93°19′40″W / 45.01944°N 93.32778°W |
 Location of Terrace Theatre in Minnesota
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The Terrace Theatre was located at 3508 France Avenue North in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Designed in the mid-century modern style by the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg & Kaplan (L&K) for Twin Cities movie exhibitors Sidney and William Volk, the Terrace opened in 1951. Upon its opening, the Terrace received critical acclaim for its “bold architectural lines [and] extensive patron services.” The 1,300-seat theater 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.
The theater was built as the first phase of a ten-acre site design, with plans for a future mall to be added. In 1980 a modern strip mall was added on the east side of the site along Bottineau Boulevard (then West Broadway), but it was not built according to the original L&K design. A Rainbow Foods store became part of the 135,000-square-foot Terrace Mall, located two blocks north of North Memorial Medical Center and adjacent to a North Memorial outpatient clinic. The grocery store closed in 2013. The Mall is still standing, though many of the stores are vacant. The mall property and the block where the theater stood are owned by a developer with plans to build a Hy-Vee grocery store on the site.
According to architectural historian Larry Millett, the Terrace was "among the finest movie theaters of its time in the United States." Despite efforts to preserve the theater, place it on the National Register of Historic Places, and restore it as a multi-use facility, the Robbinsdale City Council approved demolition in August 2016 and issued a permit in September. A lawsuit had been filed to prevent demolition, but the theater was demolished before the case was heard in court.
According to a 2016 article in the Star Tribune, the theater "was instantly acclaimed as a masterpiece of mid-century design" upon opening. L&K designed many notable residential and commercial buildings, but the firm came to specialize in movie theaters, eventually designing the construction and/or remodeling of more than two hundred theaters in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and North and South Dakota.
Most homes of this period were not air conditioned, so the theater's year-round cooling system, devised using 52-degree well water, was a summertime draw.
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