American Theatre

Here is a 1949 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/o8rq6

The American Theater became notorious after it was converted into a porno house in 1968. The local Porn King bought all of the family owned businesses on that city block (that would sell to him) and converted them into sex businesses. In 1974, city leaders decided to demolish the six block area and build a regional shopping center on the site. Interstate 35 was built one block to the east of the theater in 1966 and city leaders thought it would be a good site for a mall. However, only a very large and ugly discount store and supermarket were built as the retail portion. The block and the theater became very notorious in the 1970's and were demolished in 1975 to make way for the discount store's parking lot. The local porn king moved his business eight blocks east to another previous neighbood theater, The Rialto Theater. He moved his sex stores four blocks east to a corner business that previously held a local drugstore for about 50 years. Each weekday over 100,000 motorists drive by the Lake and Nicollet area on Interstate 35 and have no idea the area was once the busiest traffic corner in the city with two nice theaters and over 60 family owned businesses. And the American Theater was the reason for that.

In response to tjo, there are surely MORE than 60 family-owned business in that neighborhood and it remains one of the busiest intersections in the state.

I think you've overstated the role of Porn King Ferris Alexander in the life of the city. He occupied depressed, low-rent areas. He did NOT cause the economic depression at Lake-Nicollet or Lake-BLoomington and at Fourth Street. He may have been an opportunist, but he was only a business man. He did not drag these neighborhoods down. They were already "down".

A Barton theater organ was installed in the American Theater in 1922.

The American Theatre may have been designed by the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg and Kaplan. A pencil drawing of it is in the collection of the Liebenberg and Kaplan papers in the Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Whether the design was theirs, or one of them simply make a drawing of it for reference, as architects sometimes do, the dates the library's index for the papers list with the entry for this theater are 1928-29 and 1931. If the theater is older than that, perhaps Liebenberg and Kaplan only did some remodeling work on it.

Opened in 1912, became an adult theatre in 1968, closed in 1974. Over its life span it was operated by American Amusement Co., Publix and Minnesota Amusement Co.