Uptown movie theaters were once about facades, ceilings. Now they are about luxury chairs, cocktails

The Lagoon Cinema will be briefly shuttered for a renovation. Time takes its toll, and after a period the public spaces get weary and worn, the amenities outdated. In 1995, it was enough to have seats and soda. Now we want luxurious chairs and cocktails.

According to the entertainment website Deadline, the 30-year-old, five-screen multiplex in Minneapolis that is operated by Landmark Theatres will get a “complete transformation with hand-painted murals, a new full-service bar, modernized lobby and upgraded auditoriums featuring luxury recliner seating and updated projection and sound technology.”

The extensive Lagoon overhaul completes the restoration of the three Uptown neighborhood theaters. It’s a rare event since most neighborhoods don’t have one theater left, let alone three. Everyone loves the sleek and chic lines of the Uptown Theater, with its great green mast waiting for an airship to dock at the corner of Hennepin and Lagoon avenues.

But perhaps the story of the motion picture industry is best told by a humbler house down the block on Hennepin: The Granada.

The Granada was designed by a prolific Minneapolis architectural firm, Liebenberg and Kaplan. Built in 1927, the Granada evoked a romantic vision of bygone Spain. To be specific, it was “the Churrigueresque period of Mediterranean architecture characteristic of southern Spain,” as the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune noted rather pedantically in 1928, prior to the Granada’s opening.

Churrigueresque refers to a late baroque style of extreme ornamentation, named for an architect who was active in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. This was possibly lost on moviegoers at the time.

The building’s exterior prepared theatergoers for the Spanish fantasy they’d find inside. As the Minneapolis Journal noted on Sept. 26, 1928, a day after opening night, “along the sides of the [interior] are balconies, simulated shrubbery, statuary and other elaborate decorations.” No moviegoing experience would be complete without simulated shrubbery. But this wasn’t enough.

“For a ceiling there is a representation of the open sky, with rapidly moving clouds and constellations of twinkling stars,” the article said.

It was billed in ads as Minneapolis’ “only atmospheric theater,” a term for elaborate, fantastical interiors intended to make you think you were sitting outside on a warm night in a distant aristocratic villa, not huddling indoors on a January evening.

Beneath its Old World style, it had the high-tech sound system of the day.

The Granada was born equipped for sound — Vitaphone and Movietone, the two competing standards of the day. Vitaphone used records for sound while Movietone imprinted the soundtrack on the film. The former could be tricky to synchronize — heaven forbid you put on the record that had cows mooing instead of the one that had a winsome lass singing a song. Eventually, the sound-on-film paradigm was adopted by all.

But in 1928, the Granada went with both. The first movie was “Glorious Betty,” about an affair between a Baltimore woman and Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother, Jérôme. It was a Vitaphone part-talkie, with dialogue reserved for selected scenes. The records are lost, so it will be forever silent.

The Granada had local competition — the original Lagoon, a block north of Lake on the west side of the street. It was a 1,500-seat theater finished in 1913. In 1929, it was rebranded as the Uptown, because local merchants had decided to ballyhoo the Lyn-Lake district with a name borrowed from the tony Chicago neighborhood.

The Granada, in a gracious mood, took out an ad welcoming the relaunch. It also added Uptown to its own logo.

The Uptown of 1929 is not the Uptown we know today. The theater caught fire in 1939, and was rebuilt in the streamlined moderne style by the same architects who’d designed the Granada. It had no lifelike simulated shrubbery. Instead, it had abstract murals illuminated by “black light,” giving the hall a futuristic appeal.

The Granada was bought by the owners of the downtown World theater, and renamed the Suburban World in 1954. The fortunes of the Sub World and the Uptown would wax and wane over the decades, and both were eclipsed when the new Lagoon opened a shiny multiplex in 1995. Yet 2025 will find all three theaters still in operation, with the Granada Theater back with its original name, now operating as a music venue.

Much has changed, but almost a hundred years later, you can sit in the Granada, get out your phone, and call up “Glorious Betty” on YouTube and watch the whole movie, just as they did on opening night, 97 years ago.