Empire Arts Center

This is a recent photo.

Here is the 1983 photo that Chuck meant to post on Apr 10, 2009 at 10:10pm.

The list is on-line, but the UM web site is oddly set up so I can’t find the page the full list is on, only the introductory page. I’ve only seen the actual list in the Google cache of the page, which is a bunch of dismantled text, difficult to decipher. I’m not sure which theaters are already listed at Cinema Treasures, perhaps under later names, and which are missing. Four theaters on the list don’t even have names given. I’m still trying to puzzle it all out. Maybe somebody else will have more luck with it.

According to the finding aid for the Buechner & Orth papers at the University of Minnesota, the firm designed over a dozen theaters. So far, Cinema Treasures attributes only three of these, with separate listings for Charles Buechner and Henry Orth.

Considering that I already posted a link to the Empire Arts Center website on Jan 24, 2008, I would tend to agree with you.

My earliest memory of this place was seeing “Mary Poppins”, probably around ‘65 or '66. It was one of the few theaters in Grand Forks, and although as a kid it seemed old and musty, when I think back, it was a pretty cool theater – great architecture with interesting ornamentation. Also, I had an accident at this theater in the early 70s, when I walked through a plate glass window in the lobby, after a showwing of the “HR Puffinstuff” movie. Must have been some movie.

A Kimball theater organ was installed in the Grand Theater in 1919.

Photo of the Empire Theatre.
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