A bit elaborate for a cafeteria, eh? When I came to Minneapolis I wondered why this place had such an ornate facade - why, it was more suited to a movie theater than a humble hash-house. Turns out it was a movie house. This building opened in 1914 as the Saxe Theater. Fifteen hundred seats, a rose-and-ivory lobby. Total cost: a stunning $150,000. Within a few months of opening, it was renamed the Strand, perhaps because the name Saxe had Germanic connotations made unfashionable by the war.
After the theater closed, the building was converted to the most extraordinary cafeteria in the city. The interior was redone in the Moderne style, and it looked like a set from a Rogers / Astaire movie. For the next 40 years, the Forum would be synonymous with good cheap eats in an oddly glamorous setting.
Next: close-ups of the exterior, and comtemporary pictures. |
