The Grand Theater: A Case Study of Architecture and Community

Abstract

How do the buildings around us really affect our lives? This is a question we rarely ask ourselves. The objective of this study is to discover just how a building can influence us by investigating how people interact with it over time. The architectural adaptations made to historic buildings are an excellent record of shifting aesthetic and technological needs of their users and are informative to this topic. The one-hundred year old Grand Theater in Crookston, Minnesota exhibits a compelling story of continuous use as both a theater and a place for community interaction. Evidence for this takes the form of interviews with current and past owners, as well as historical newspaper articles from the Crookston Daily Times and Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from the archives and State Historic Preservation Office at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. The evidence reveals that the theater adapted to many technological and stylistic changes over the years. As film technology developed, new spaces had to be created for the projection and sound equipment. Similarly, the interior and exterior facades of the building were modified to fit in with the style of each decade. The theater’s place in Crookston as a destination for entertainment exhibits that it affected its community. In turn, the ways the building responded architecturally to its social context show that it also came to embody the community’s values of leisure, style, and progress. These realizations can be extended to other buildings that we live and work in.