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Top photo, Judy Garland with Toto. Below, the Gumm sisters –Virginia, Mary Jane and Baby Frances Gumm, who would eventually become Judy Garland.

The old expression “if walls could talk” holds true to the interesting back history of a downtown street where early day folks came to attend live performances at the New Grand Theatre in Grand Rapids, Minn. Audiences were thrilled to see the Gumm Family sisters sing, dance and perform. The daughters of New Grand managers Frank and Ethel Gumm moved on to California, where the youngest, Baby Frances Gumm, would go on to inspire the world as the talented Judy Garland. 

Rapids Brewing Company, a contemporary venue for live performance, sits solidly atop the very basement and foundation of the old Pokegama Avenue theaters. Employees of RBC tell stories of mysterious energies that arise from the basement – now painted white, serving as storage for the venue upstairs. Blinking lights, a string of sounds, a clank or a clatter sounding like a child at play is hard to miss among the historic heavy walls constructed of four layers of bricks pinned tightly with wood from another century. 

Could the ghosts in the basement come alive to old memories of vaudeville from another day? Could spirits from the bourbon barrels sit patiently awaiting a pour for when the music starts to play? Could it have been the ghosts in the basement, in the spirit of Judy Garland and her talented dancing sisters, Virginia and Mary Jane, who helped save Block 19 from a potential raze and demolition, ending live performance forever on North Pokegama Avenue?

The Gumm Family vaudeville theater, the New Grand, operated from April 4, 1917, to Nov. 10, 1931, at 212 North Pokegama Ave. The Rialto Cinema theater, which opened and operated from Nov. 11, 1931, to its closing in the fall of 1982 adjoined the New Grand at 214 North Pokegama Ave. 

For years, The Rialto Cinema sat vacant as a decaying eyesore, while the New Grand Theatre building housed a small business.

In 2004, the Grand Rapids Area Economic Development Authority was working on Phase II of what was then called “Riverfront Center.” Wells Fargo Bank was considering making a large corporate banking center on a vast portion of the block. 

The block was far from beautiful but citizens in the community raised their collective voice to stop a cooperate banking center, reflecting on downtown history, with a hope to revitalize the old theaetr locations as places for people to gather and socialize. 

The strongest voice of disapproval came from another government domain – located at 216 North Pokegama Ave., the board of the Grand Rapids Township Hall & Senior Center, stood steadfast, taking the proverbial bucket of water and dousing the plan. Block 19 was saved from the wrecking ball with hopes of better preservation and development. 

Frank Gumm and his partner Fred Bentz had been the early day dreamers while planning for a new movie picture theater in downtown Grand Rapids. Frank was devising the grander scheme of live performance, a location with 385 opera seats with an 18 x 23 stage and orchestra pit that could hold seven musicians. It would draw notable patrons from miles around. Music historians came to note the New Grand as the performance home of Judy Garland, who at age two and half in 1924, made her first stage debut to hardy applause. 

The Gumm sisters tapped and sang vigorously across the theatre stage as an area music act that drew people from near and far. The walls and the floors drew in the sounds of an early era, keeping them tucked away, secretly, awaiting to release and thrive in a new century of live performance.

Rapids Brew Co. began with the foresight of several area businesspeople who saw the need to revitalize downtown with entertainment of an earlier generation. Live performance art and a place for people to gather once again, just as they had done for the Gumm Sisters back in the early 1900s. 

The development and planning began in 2016 and by August 2019, Rapids Brewing opened its doors and continues to grow, hosting the Festival Rialto each summer. The brick building covers the grounds of the New Grand and Rialto Cinema with a total transformation and remodel. The owners had hoped to preserve more historic content, which was not possible due to deterioration. What they did preserve was keeping live performance in the same location that thrived a century before. 

Excitedly, the Grand Rapids community welcomed a new downtown brewery and eatery with the symbolic history stoked by a wood-fired oven. And as with any “good ghosts in the basement” story came an eerily coincidental haunting of grand historic nature. Shortly after Frank Gumm opened the New Grand, the Spanish flu pandemic struck the United States and in 1918, the theater was forced to close for six months as the deadly virus raged on. 

Similarly, in March of 2020, Rapids Brew Co. had to close the doors and operate on a food delivery pivot while the world experienced a new virus called Covid-19. The deadly virus forced many a new business to permanently shutter. RBC followed the protocols and rose from the new pandemic stronger and healthier. 

Today, Rapids Brewing Co. stands as a central downtown destination brewery, food and live performance location. Bourbon and brews are a specialty, as is a non-alcoholic beverage named Judy Garland. The drink made with fresh squeezed orange juice and ginger beer serves as refreshing drink for a family-friendly brew pub that kicks out the best musicians, bands and performers in the Northland – as lively as the Gumm Sisters tapping across the stage to enthusiastic applause from another time. Live performance lives on from the ghosts in the basement, and a rising star, Judy Garland, (Wizard of Oz, 1939) who tapped her ruby red slippers three times to return home.

*Footnote: Judy Garland returned to Grand Rapids and appeared on stage at the Rialto Cinema in 1938. She told reporters she had nothing but fond memories of her childhood in Grand Rapids.

Background collected from the Judy Garland Museum and the Grand Rapids Herald Review Archives.