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.
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.
Design
The theater "was instantly acclaimed as a masterpiece of mid-century design" upon opening. L&K designed notable residential and commercial buildings, but the firm came to specialize in movie theaters, designing the plans for construction and/or remodeling of more than two hundred theaters in the upper Midwest, including 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.
Inside the auditorium, the -screen was covered by a velvet curtain and fronted by a semicircular stage with carpeted steps between square stone planters. An innovative soundproofing material called Celotex (made of sugar cane waste and casein glue, originally used by L&K in their design of Temple Israel in Minneapolis and then at their first atmospheric theater, the Granada in Minneapolis) contributed to its excellent acoustics.
The auditorium featured sloped seating in the front portion and stepped stadium seating in the rear. The same design can seen in other L&K theaters, including the Riverview Theater, which continues to operate as a successful movie house today.
Site
The luxurious theater was built as the first phase of a site design. The plans called for the theater to be the corner anchor, with a future addition of a shopping mall and public swimming pool, but the idea never came to fruition.
In 1980 a modern strip mall with a Rainbow Foods store 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. The Terrace Mall struggled to keep tenants and the grocery store closed in 2013. Located two blocks north of North Memorial Medical Center and adjacent to an outpatient clinic (formerly a Montgomery Wards store), the mall was torn down in 2017 following the demolition of the theater. The mall property and the block where the theater stood were purchased by Inland Development Partners in the spring of 2017 with plans to build a Hy-Vee grocery store on the site.
Construction
Materials chosen for the exterior included red and buff brick, stone, glass block windows, colored glass windows, and a metal canopy. A sign tower of brick, set off with backlit glass, was topped with the theater's name in bold capital letters. The primary entrance to the building was located at the northeast corner of the north façade. The interior gathering spaces were highly finished, with every detail planned by Liebenberg and Kaplan and the Volk brothers. While most of the interior finishes, fixtures, and furniture had been removed prior to demolition, widely published historic photographs and extensive project files held at the University of Minnesota's Northwest Architectural Archives have captured the unique character of the Terrace.