Empire Theatre

Here is a photo of the Empire taken sometime in the 1950s:
http://tinyurl.com/mdop7

The Empire Theatre indeed was located on Main Street. To be exact, it was located on the northwest corner of Main Street and Burdick Expressway. Today this location is the north parking lot for the Trinity Hospital & Clinic. If one looks at the 1950s photo from ken mc, which is looking north up Main Street, you can see the church, which is still there, just to the north of the auto dealer. The Main Street Medical Clinic now sets where the auto dealership was. The Trinity Hospital Emergency Room & Ambulance Parking Lot is now where the Mobile Station was. If one views the video of the theater’s demolition, from ken mc, they can see the Hospital and Clinic in the background, with the skywalk between the two clearly shown. The one thing that I will always remember about the Empire, is its huge red velvet curtains.The day that the Empire Theatre closed was a sad day, not only for Minot, but all of northwest North Dakota. I have lived an hour from Minot my whole life [i’m 44] and can remember that going to Minot for movies at the Empire was always a treat. There has always been a theater in the town I live in [i am now the projectionist there] but it was very plain & the screen was tiny compared to the Empire. Unfortunatly, as was the case with many old theaters, the multiplex became the preferred venue, and theaters like the Empire could not compete. If anyone has any photos of the interior of the Empire, please share them. I do not have any photos of the Empire, but I will always cherish the fond memories from my youth.

Regis, you will be pleased to see this three-page article about the Empire Theatre, from Boxoffice, October 23, 1954. There are several photos of the theater, and a small floor plan and cross section. Click on the “next page” links to see the subsequent pages.

Although the Boxoffice article gives the impression that the Empire’s reverse theater design was an innovation by Liebenberg & Kaplan, there had in fact already been a dozen or more reverse theaters operating in the United States and England, some of them dating back to the early years of the century.

The Minot Memories Blog, the source of the photos referred to by Joe, which I’ve uploaded, also indicates that, for a time the Empire had a series package, 10 tickets for a Saturday performance for $2.00. Each ticket indicated the film being shown. Children could also obtain free admission by collecting the medallions from milk cartons.

The site is now a parking lot for the medical center.