Fargo Cinema Grill
630 1st Avenue N,
Fargo,
ND
58102
630 1st Avenue N,
Fargo,
ND
58102
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Closed by Plitt on November 10th, 1983 and reopened on April 24th, 1997 as the Fargo Cinema Grill. Ad posted.
Opened by ABC on November 19th, 1970.
ABC Lark theatre opening 19 Nov 1970, Thu The Forum (Fargo, North Dakota) Newspapers.com
The Lark Theatre opened in 1970, cannot find its opening date though.
This theatre was demolished in 2008.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEyYfXudLM
When it operated as the Cinema Grill it was configured with 3 screens one on the ground floor and two upstairs with kitchen on the second floor and some lobby area on each. I don’t recall the Lark configuration.
The Cinema Grill configuration had all the traditional theater seating taken out in favor of dining tables and chairs.
I just noticed that the number of screens listed here for this theater is three. I can’t say 100% for sure, but I am pretty sure that this theater never had more than a single screen. If it did have three, it was subdivided from one very late in its life. But I don’t think it was anything other than a single screen.
The Lark Theatre opened on November 19, 1970, according to the November 23 issue of Boxoffice. It was built for the North Central Theatres division of ABC Theatres. The August 24 issue of Boxoffice had said that the new house was intended to replace the circuit’s Grand Theatre, which was located adjacent to the new theater.
The May 18, 1970, issue of Boxoffice ran an item about the groundbreaking for the project. This item said that the new theater was designed by New York City architect George Henry Greene, who designed many theaters for ABC during this period. The seating capacity given in the Boxoffice item was 688. It also said that the old Grand Theatre was scheduled for demolition following the opening of the new house.
If you click on the link at the bottom of that blog post, there is another link to a nice, big, high-res version of the image.
If you go on that site the ad might be posted in a larger size. I don’t recall offhand.
Great ad—although I wish the scan was a little bigger! The image shows reasonably well the unique “on stilts” construction of the theatre, with parking underneath. This feature is even incorporated into the advertising—ride the escalator up to the theatre! Interesting also is the use of Xenon bulb projection in advertising, which was still relatively rare at the time (especially, apparently, in Fargo), and which I’ve not before seen used as an advertising appeal. (Did contemporary audiences really care or know the difference I wonder?)
Here is a newspaper ad circa 1970:
http://tinyurl.com/mtgctd
The Lark Theater and the Fargo Cinema Grill are in fact the same building. The building was built circa the late-1960s/early-1970s (by the Plitt chain, I think) as the Lark. The Fargo Cinema Grill later opened in the same building (after an interlude in the early-1990s as an indoor golf driving range!). The building was nearly one-of-a-kind in that the theater was built sort of on stilts with parking underneath it, an arrangement I’ve not seen in any other movie theatre. The building sat vacant for a few years until recently (in fall 2008), when it was torn down. A building for the downtown Fargo campus of North Dakota State University is now being constructed on the site.