Hollywood Theater Minneapolis, Minnesota

National Register of Historic Places Data

Hollywood Theater has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places with the following information, which has been imported from the National Register database and/or the Nomination Form . Please note that not all available data may be shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since listing.

National Register ID
13001145
Date Listed
February 5, 2014
Name
Hollywood Theater
Part of
N/A (Multiple Property Submission)
Address
2815 Johnson St., NE.
City/Town
Minneapolis
County
Hennepin
State
Minnesota
Category
building
Level of Sig.
local
Areas of Sig.
ARCHITECTURE; ENTERTAINMENT/RECREATION

Description

Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

The Hollywood Theater is significant under Criterion C for architecture as a substantially intact example of a neighborhood movie theater designed by the architectural firm Liebenberg and Kaplan (L&K), masters of movie theater design. The work of this regionally prominent and remarkably prolific firm has been widely noted in secondary literature about movie theater architecture. L&K's Hollywood Theater is a notable local example of Streamline Modeme architecture applied to a small neighborhood movie theater typology. The Hollywood was the second Great Depression-era theater designed by L&K that was built entirely new from the ground up (as opposed to the firm's many remodeling commissions), and retains a high degree of historic integrity as compared to most other local theaters of the same style and era. Lastly, the theater is locally significant under Criterion A for entertainment/recreation as an example of the patterns and trends of movie theater ownership and development in the years between World War One and World War Two. The Hollywood Theater' s period of significance spans from 1935, when the building was constructed, to 1954, when the Johnson Street Streetcar line that once transported moviegoers to the theater was demolished along with the entire Twin Cities Rapid Transit streetcar network. Removal of the streetcar line dramatically reduced the economic viability of the Hollywood Theater, which faced further reductions in patronage due to competition with drive-in and suburban movie theaters that were spurred by increased adoption of the automobile, federally-financed highway construction, and growth of the suburbs in the first two decades after World War Two. The end date ofthis period of significance also closely follows the last major historic alteration of the theater in 1948 when the marquee was updated and a candy counter was added to the interior.