This page concerns two dining and dancing establishments located at 503 1/2 Hennepin Ave., in the Hale Block at 5th and Hennepin in Downtown Minneapolis.

For the history of the Hale Block, which contained two other addresses of entertainment,  click here.

THE NEW PEKING CAFE

The New Peking Café opened on September 27, 1919, on the entire second and third floor of the Hale Block, where apartments.  The manager had the decidedly un-Chinese name of Jens Founesbeck.  Although Prohibition was at hand, it was a dining and dancing place bar none.

 

 

A devastating fire on June 29, 1921, didn’t stop them for long, and the next ad was up soon with an Amateur night, although for a long time no actual address is given until May 1922.  In August 1922 it was closed for two days and a night when two guys with Irish names got into a fight with two detectives and were arrested for being intoxicated.  Their girls were released to their mothers.  After a hard fight, the place got its soft drink license in November 1922.

 

But on May 9, 1924, it was raided by police and closed for selling liquor, selling ginger ale at exorbitant prices, and permitting people to bring in their own booze. Just two days later, on May 11, 1924, there was another fire, and in June 1924 they lost their dance hall permit – it was speculated that there was a crack down on “chop suey places.”  The place disappears until January 1944 when a place with the same name shows up at 918 Hennepin Ave.

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ROYAL GARDEN CAFE

The Royal Garden Cafe, 503 Hennepin Ave., opened for business on August 30, 1924. There was some opposition to granting it a dance hall license, since it was the New Peking by another name, but it got its license in August/September 1924.

 

It suffered smoke damage from a fire in October 1924.

 

An auction/notice of bankruptcy sale for the Royal Garden was published in the Minneapolis Tribune on February 12, 1926.  The address given was 503 1/2 Hennepin Ave., Second Floor.