Not long ago, an intrepid reporter for the Pioneer Press mentioned downtown St. Paul’s many old movie houses, most of them long shuttered or even demolished, in a piece on the proposed revival of the 1916 Palace Theater (better known to some readers as the old St. Paul Orpheum Theater).
Since the piece ran on March 23, readers have been calling from far and wide to quibble with a name and a number. Here’s the offending sentence:
Seven movie theaters once drew audiences downtown — the Orpheum, the Paramount, the Strand, the Riviera, the World, the Tower and the Lyceum — but those days are long past, and attempts to revive them have failed. Downtown St. Paul hasn’t had a movie house since the Galtier Plaza theater closed in 1999.
So where’s the error? The number of old theaters is not seven. It’s at least eight.
Gene Pierre, age 80, has lived in New Hampshire for 25 years, but he grew up in St. Paul, and he recalls watching Casa Blanca and other classics when they first came out — at the now-demolished Garrick Theater.
Located at 6th and St. Peter, the Garrick apparently met its end in 1950, according to this picture from the Minnesota Historical Society. There’s more history about the Garrick, which was built in 1890, online at CinemaTreasures.org (a web site true its name!). The theater, which was rebuilt after a fire in 1912, housed opera, burlesque and even a boxing match or three in its heyday. It showed movies before being torn down to make room for a parking lot, according to the web site.
But it lives on in the hearts of many. “I could tell you all the old movies I saw there. They were double features,” said Pierre on Friday.
Oh the memories! “And they’re good memories,” Pierre said.