Brick storefronts meet a Streamline Moderne theater tower at Hennepin and Lake, and the bowling alley Beautiful Girls used for its restaurant scenes.
What Uptown looks like
Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street cross at the neighborhood's center, four corners of two and three storey brick storefronts under apartments. The enclosed mall on the southeast corner, known today as , has a rooftop sign shaped like a seven pointed star above the intersection. Traffic runs both avenues at once, with a marked bus lane painted red along Hennepin.
The stands a block north on Hennepin, its stone front carved with two roundels on travel and adventure themes and a sixty foot vertical tower spelling UPTOWN in neon letters. Streamline Moderne curves and murals of explorers and water sprites date the building to a 1939 rebuild. It went dark in 2020 and reopened in 2023 as a live music and events venue, its marquee and tower kept as they were.
Lagoon Avenue runs a block south of the theater, home to the 's five screens behind a plain glass front. Restaurant signs light the sidewalks after dark, neon lettering over glass storefronts along Lake Street and Hennepin. Side streets off the crossroads hold brick apartment blocks two to four storeys tall, some with tile roofs and arched stone doorways, others in plain brick with speed limit signs and snowbanks in winter.
Three lakes sit within a few blocks, to the west, Lake Harriet to the south and Lake of the Isles to the north. A paved path and a parkway follow Bde Maka Ska's shoreline at 32nd Street Beach, open water and a tree line between the path and the water.
Shot in Uptown
stands in a converted 1936 garage on West Lake Street, and Beautiful Girls used it for the scene where Paul arrives to propose to Jan at the restaurant where she works. The production filmed inside the bowling alley and restaurant and on the sidewalk at its front door.
Beautiful Girls, 1996
Bryant-Lake Bowl
Played the restaurant where Jan works, the fictional Massachusetts town of Knight's Ridge, 1990s
The production shot both inside Bryant-Lake Bowl and on the sidewalk out front for the scene where Paul arrives to propose to his former girlfriend Jan, who works there as a waitress. The bowling alley and restaurant plays a version of itself, standing in for the film's fictional Massachusetts town rather than being dressed as anywhere else.
What Uptown can double for
East Side in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Oriental Theatre's 1927 marquee stands over a commercial strip on Farwell Avenue near Lake Michigan, the same pairing of a vintage single screen theater and a lake close enough to walk to. The strip's two and three storey brick storefronts match Uptown's scale closely. The Oriental's onion domed towers and East Indian ornament are far more elaborate than the Uptown Theater's plain stone front, so wide shots that keep its roofline out of frame hold the comparison better than close ups on the facade. Try searching vintage marquee near a lake now.
Lawrence Avenue in Chicago, Illinois
Chicago's own Uptown neighborhood keeps its 1925 movie palace at the corner of Lawrence and Broadway, a commercial crossroads under a vertical marquee much like the corner at Hennepin and Lake. Both crossroads pair brick storefronts with one dominant vertical theater sign. Chicago's Uptown Theatre seats more than four thousand people against the Minneapolis theater's current 350, so a wide shot that takes in its full five story lobby front gives away the scale difference immediately. Try searching corner theater marquee crossroads now.
Hollywood District in Portland, Oregon
The Hollywood Theatre, a single screen movie house from 1926, has its marquee standing over a commercial crossroads at NE Sandy Boulevard where a two storey brick strip runs both directions from the corner. The neighborhood took the theater's own name, the same way Uptown grew up around its corner. The Hollywood Theatre's Spanish Colonial tile roofline is a different silhouette from the Uptown Theater's flat Streamline Moderne front, so a shot that keeps the roofline out of frame holds the match better. Try searching single screen movie house now.
