06/15/2026
We are celebrating 825 Arts, a 2026 National AIA Honor Award recipient for Interior Architecture (1 of 9 recipients across the US and just announced) and share the story of this amazing place and the community that created it.
A community-led and engaged design process transformed the long-abandoned historic theater to support the cultural and economic life of a diverse, dynamic neighborhood. The Frogtown and Rondo communities stopped plans to demolish the building as the abandoned theaterthrough events hosted by 825 Arts and the Frogtown Neighborhood Association. Realizing this project and saving the building was a 15-year effort by the community and a 7-year effort by the design team. For the first 7 years, the site was held in a local land bank waiting until the neighborhood could raise enough support to acquire the site.
The project is in the most culturally and racially diverse neighborhood in the state. Originally a silent movie house built in 1915 and then a Jazz Club and Speakeasy, it was vacant for 20 years before it was proposed to be razed. The community got the building historically listed—not for its architecture, but for its place in Minnesota Music.
The theater was the site of Moonshiners Dance part 1, the only recorded Northern US track on Harry Smith’s famous anthology of American Music with Folkway records. Twenty-five years later, this collection was part of the catalyst for Folk and an early American music revival (influencing Minnesota artists Bob Dylan and Prince) and led to the historic listing of the project as a birthplace for Minnesota music.
825 Arts provides a variety of flexible multi-functional gathering spaces and respects the building’s historic elements and the rich palimpsests of past occupations. The reshaped interiors include accessible, high quality performance spaces for music and dance, theater and film, gallery displays, impromptu performance and teaching, and community gatherings.
Client: 825 Arts and NEOO Partners (Owner’s Rep)
Technical Consultants: MBJ, MCE, Schuler Shook, and Kirkegaard
Photography: Corey Gaffer Photography
