The comment posted by noodleman on June 2, 2007 seems to be in error. By my recollection, the main room at the Cooper in St. Louis Park was never divided into two smaller screening rooms. On closing night in 1991, Dances With Wolves was playing in the original, full size, main theatre room. I saw DWW on the big curved screen at the Cooper during that run and the main theatre was not divided. On closing night, I attended Godfather Part III in the small shoebox theatre at the back of the Cooper.
One theatre in the area that did have the main house divided was the Edina. They created side by side bowling alley theatres that I think had only a single walking aisle down the middle. Eventually someone realized that mistake and gutted the interior to create what I think is five screening rooms.
Council Considers Fate of Palace
Shelley Nelson/News Editor
The Daily Telegram
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 5, 2006 02:53:04 PM
The final curtain may fall tonight for Superior’s historic Palace Theater.
The City Council will consider rejecting the sole proposal to redevelop the historic 1102 Tower Ave. vaudeville and movie house. Councilors also will consider disbanding a task force created to find a developer who would restore the theater to its former glory.
The decision could make the theater a thing of the past on the city’s landscape.
I have done a fair amount of research and exploring of the Palace Theatre over the years as part of several different efforts to consider restoration of the historic building.
When I have some time, I will make a detailed posting that describes the timeline from initial construction through a series of alterations to the lobby, marquee and front entryway. I have explored almost every inch of the theatre in visits over the years. In the 1980s, shortly after closing, it was in fine shape except for a bit of dust and grime. I walked through the basement playground area (none of the playground equipment was there), through the tunnel under the main house, past the dilapadated dressing rooms under the stage, by the animal cage room (from the vaudville era), up through the main house to the very top of the massive balcony and into the cramped projection booth. The projectors are still up there!
Not long after it closed in 1982, the Victory Fellowship took over the building for a church. And over the years, they did things like remove seats (most of which seem to be stacked on the stage now) and tore out some of the lobby (which was really just a horrible art deco change from the original design anyway). But they really just left things in a state of half destruction. During the 1990s, while the building was essentially abandoned, the pidgeons moved in with a vengance! It was the midwest’s largest pidgeon coop for many years until the city took possesion and eventually boarded up the windows and entry points.
Fortunately, copies of the “original” Rapp & Rapp blueprints exist. They are part of a collection stored in the Northwest Architectural Archives at University of Minnesota. They were part of the Liebenberg and Kaplan collection, a firm noted for designing more than 200 motion picture theatres in the Upper Midwest, many of the early ones featuring an art deco style. The Liebenberg & Kaplan Papers included copies of the Palace Theatre plans because the firm was responsible for all of the remodelings of the Palace through the years.
I obtained photo copies of the plans back in the early 1980s as part of the initial effort to save the theatre, and possibly return it to it’s original use as a stage theatre. Those copies were lost over the years and when the newest effort to rescue the theatre came about in late 2003, I returned to the Archive. This time I procured digital scans of all the plan sheets including initial construction plans and all the remodeling project plan sets. The Douglas County Historical Society has those scans in their collection now.
I will do a more complete posting including the timeline of alterations to the Theatre and hopefully some photos from the early years through present day.
If you want to help save this structure, contact the Douglas County Historical Society to see what can be done. At the very least, the structure could use a massive volunteer effort to clean the place and patch the holes that are allowing deterioration to continue.
The Cooper Theatre was truly an amazing place in which to EXPERIENCE films. I was also there the night of the last showing… and offer a minor correction to one of the comments above. While it is true that “Dances With Wolves†was shown on the main screen on the final night, that was technically not the last film to screen at the Cooper. The Cooper actually had two theaters; the main, giant, curved screen AND a little shoebox-style, standard, flat screen in the theater out back. (This was in the days when multi-plex meant TWO screens.) On closing night, I attended the late showing of “The Godfather – Part IIIâ€, which was actually the last screening at the Cooper Theatre before it was dismantled and demolished.
I had already seen DWW at the Cooper, probably earlier that week. I remember that a group of college friends and I ended up in the very front row because that was the only large group of seats left where we could sit together. With the curved screen, it completely filled your field of vision! And when you read the subtitles in DWW, you had to rotate your head back and forth like you were watching a tennis match. This is not a complaint, by the way, just another great memory of one of my experiences at the Cooper.
On that last night, since I had already seen DWW, I decided to see Godfather III. Probably a poor choice on my part considering it was on the small screen. While DWW is 180 minutes long and Godfather III was only 162 minutes (imdb rocks), the minor theater got the later start time. So, when we exited the theater, the DWW crowd had already left the building. In fact, there was a crew of people already dismantling the theater fixtures. A group of people were trying to get a court order to keep the owners from destroying this landmark, so the owners wanted to get as much dismantled as possible before any court ruling took place.
Fixtures in the lobby were already removed and being loaded on a waiting semi-truck rumbling outside the main entrance. I remember wandering about on the sidewalk, disgusted at the speed with which they were destroying the place. I even recall that they already had the projector from the main theater on a dolly and were trying to load it on the truck. The crowd in the back theater was fairly small and some of us stood around discussing the obvious finality of the process.
I do have some pictures of the Cooper Theatre. Unfortunately, I think they are all exteriors after the closing and through the demolition process. I also managed to acquire a few bricks from the pile of ruble that the Cooper ended up as.
And a final note: The Cooper property was sold to an office supply chain and their big box store closed after only a few years in business (even though it is fairly close to a vast number of office towers). I doubt that my personal boycott of that store was responsible for its demise, but I like to think that maybe the ghost from the Cooper is still holding his ground. If the contracting company now on the site goes bankrupt, we can all believe in the Ghost of the Cooper.
The comment posted by noodleman on June 2, 2007 seems to be in error. By my recollection, the main room at the Cooper in St. Louis Park was never divided into two smaller screening rooms. On closing night in 1991, Dances With Wolves was playing in the original, full size, main theatre room. I saw DWW on the big curved screen at the Cooper during that run and the main theatre was not divided. On closing night, I attended Godfather Part III in the small shoebox theatre at the back of the Cooper.
One theatre in the area that did have the main house divided was the Edina. They created side by side bowling alley theatres that I think had only a single walking aisle down the middle. Eventually someone realized that mistake and gutted the interior to create what I think is five screening rooms.
The end of the Palace Theatre is probably coming very soon. Here is a link to the Daily Telegram Article:
<http://www.superiorwi.com/placed/index.php?sect_rank=1&story_id=221812>
Here is the first portion of the article:
Council Considers Fate of Palace
Shelley Nelson/News Editor
The Daily Telegram
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 5, 2006 02:53:04 PM
The final curtain may fall tonight for Superior’s historic Palace Theater.
The City Council will consider rejecting the sole proposal to redevelop the historic 1102 Tower Ave. vaudeville and movie house. Councilors also will consider disbanding a task force created to find a developer who would restore the theater to its former glory.
The decision could make the theater a thing of the past on the city’s landscape.
I have done a fair amount of research and exploring of the Palace Theatre over the years as part of several different efforts to consider restoration of the historic building.
When I have some time, I will make a detailed posting that describes the timeline from initial construction through a series of alterations to the lobby, marquee and front entryway. I have explored almost every inch of the theatre in visits over the years. In the 1980s, shortly after closing, it was in fine shape except for a bit of dust and grime. I walked through the basement playground area (none of the playground equipment was there), through the tunnel under the main house, past the dilapadated dressing rooms under the stage, by the animal cage room (from the vaudville era), up through the main house to the very top of the massive balcony and into the cramped projection booth. The projectors are still up there!
Not long after it closed in 1982, the Victory Fellowship took over the building for a church. And over the years, they did things like remove seats (most of which seem to be stacked on the stage now) and tore out some of the lobby (which was really just a horrible art deco change from the original design anyway). But they really just left things in a state of half destruction. During the 1990s, while the building was essentially abandoned, the pidgeons moved in with a vengance! It was the midwest’s largest pidgeon coop for many years until the city took possesion and eventually boarded up the windows and entry points.
Fortunately, copies of the “original” Rapp & Rapp blueprints exist. They are part of a collection stored in the Northwest Architectural Archives at University of Minnesota. They were part of the Liebenberg and Kaplan collection, a firm noted for designing more than 200 motion picture theatres in the Upper Midwest, many of the early ones featuring an art deco style. The Liebenberg & Kaplan Papers included copies of the Palace Theatre plans because the firm was responsible for all of the remodelings of the Palace through the years.
I obtained photo copies of the plans back in the early 1980s as part of the initial effort to save the theatre, and possibly return it to it’s original use as a stage theatre. Those copies were lost over the years and when the newest effort to rescue the theatre came about in late 2003, I returned to the Archive. This time I procured digital scans of all the plan sheets including initial construction plans and all the remodeling project plan sets. The Douglas County Historical Society has those scans in their collection now.
I will do a more complete posting including the timeline of alterations to the Theatre and hopefully some photos from the early years through present day.
If you want to help save this structure, contact the Douglas County Historical Society to see what can be done. At the very least, the structure could use a massive volunteer effort to clean the place and patch the holes that are allowing deterioration to continue.
The Cooper Theatre was truly an amazing place in which to EXPERIENCE films. I was also there the night of the last showing… and offer a minor correction to one of the comments above. While it is true that “Dances With Wolves†was shown on the main screen on the final night, that was technically not the last film to screen at the Cooper. The Cooper actually had two theaters; the main, giant, curved screen AND a little shoebox-style, standard, flat screen in the theater out back. (This was in the days when multi-plex meant TWO screens.) On closing night, I attended the late showing of “The Godfather – Part IIIâ€, which was actually the last screening at the Cooper Theatre before it was dismantled and demolished.
I had already seen DWW at the Cooper, probably earlier that week. I remember that a group of college friends and I ended up in the very front row because that was the only large group of seats left where we could sit together. With the curved screen, it completely filled your field of vision! And when you read the subtitles in DWW, you had to rotate your head back and forth like you were watching a tennis match. This is not a complaint, by the way, just another great memory of one of my experiences at the Cooper.
On that last night, since I had already seen DWW, I decided to see Godfather III. Probably a poor choice on my part considering it was on the small screen. While DWW is 180 minutes long and Godfather III was only 162 minutes (imdb rocks), the minor theater got the later start time. So, when we exited the theater, the DWW crowd had already left the building. In fact, there was a crew of people already dismantling the theater fixtures. A group of people were trying to get a court order to keep the owners from destroying this landmark, so the owners wanted to get as much dismantled as possible before any court ruling took place.
Fixtures in the lobby were already removed and being loaded on a waiting semi-truck rumbling outside the main entrance. I remember wandering about on the sidewalk, disgusted at the speed with which they were destroying the place. I even recall that they already had the projector from the main theater on a dolly and were trying to load it on the truck. The crowd in the back theater was fairly small and some of us stood around discussing the obvious finality of the process.
I do have some pictures of the Cooper Theatre. Unfortunately, I think they are all exteriors after the closing and through the demolition process. I also managed to acquire a few bricks from the pile of ruble that the Cooper ended up as.
And a final note: The Cooper property was sold to an office supply chain and their big box store closed after only a few years in business (even though it is fairly close to a vast number of office towers). I doubt that my personal boycott of that store was responsible for its demise, but I like to think that maybe the ghost from the Cooper is still holding his ground. If the contracting company now on the site goes bankrupt, we can all believe in the Ghost of the Cooper.